John Simkin

According to Donald Freed (Death in Washington), William F. Buckley and the Young Americans for Freedom (in th form of Marvin Liebman) played a major role in the cover-up of the assassination of Orlando Letelier (152-1961). It is on public record how Buckley and his CIA cronies attempted to blame the assassination on Fidel Castro. However, it is less well known that the CIA agent, Michael Townley, and Guillermo Novo, two men who were later to be convicted of the Letelier/Moffatt murder, visited Senator James Buckley, William´s brother, on 14th September, 1976, one week before the assassination (page 168).

Gerry, could you tell us anything about the White Hand group?

Gerry, do you plan to take advantage of this offer?

I second that. It is as good as anything you would get in the mainstream press.

When David Phillips testified before the HSCA in 1976 claimed that the CIA had taped Oswald´s conversations in the Soviet embassy but these were destroyed on 9th October, 1963. However, a FBI report on Oswald dated 23 November, 1963, states that the tape was listened to by agents and it was declared that "These special agents are of the opinion that the above-reference to individual is not Lee Harvey Oswald". Phillips clearly lied to the HSCA. Why was he not charged with perjury?

Found an interesting story in Donald Freed´s book, Death in Washington. He claims that Jimmy Carter told Andrew Young that he was convinced that there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK and Martin Luther King. He said that when he became president he was going to appoint Ted Sorenson as Director of the CIA and that he was going to carry out a full investigation into the two deaths. However, the Senate refused to accept Sorenson and he was forced to nominate Stansfield Turner instead. He did what he could but was given the runaround by the CIA´s top officials.

This is not the case. Please find below the complete Sheehan affidavit issued on 12th December, 1986. Sheehan does not mention Tony Avirgan in this affidavit. As I have said before, the two main sources for this information was Gene Wheaton and Carl E. Jenkins (although Jenkins was later to claim that Sheehan misunderstood his information. 1. I am a duly licensed attorney at law, admitted to practice before the State and Federal Courts of the State of New York in both the Northern and Southern Districts of New York. 2. I am duly licensed and have been admitted to practice before the Courts of the District of Columbia, both local and Federal and I am in good standing before both the Bar of New York and the Bar of the District of Columbia. 3. I have practiced law before the courts of New York and numerous other states in our nation since 1970, having served as counsel in some 60 separate pieces of litigation in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Mississippi. 4. I graduated from Harvard college in 1967 as an Honors Graduate in American Government, writing my Honors Thesis in the field of Constitutional Law, and was the Harvard University nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship from New York in 1967. I graduated from Harvard School of Law in 1970, having served as an Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights)Civil Liberties Law Review and as the Research Associate of Professor Jerome Cohen, the Chair of the International Law Department of Harvard. 5. While at Harvard School of Law, I served as a summer associate at the State Street law firm of Goodwin, Proctor and Hoar under the supervision of Senior Partner, Donald J. Hurley, the President of the Boston Chamber of Commerce and Massachusetts Senatorial Campaign Chairman for John F. Kennedy. At this firm I participated in the case of BAIRD v EISENSTAT, under Roger Stockey, General Counsel for the Massachusetts Planned Parenthood League (establishing the unconstitutionality of the Massachusetts anti-birth control law) and in the Nevada case, under Charles Goodhue, III (establishing the constitutional right to bail in criminal extradition cases, including capital cases). While at Harvard School of Law, I authored "The Pedestrian Sources of Civil Liberties" in the Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review and I served under Professor Milton Katz, the President of the International Law Association, as the Chairman of the Nigerian Biafran Relief Commission responsible for successfully negotiating the admission of mercy flights of food into Biafra in 1968. 6. While serving as a legal Associate at the Wall Street law firm of Cahill, Gordon, Sonnett, Rheindle and Ohio under partner Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines directed the Phoenix Project in Vietnam, in 1974 and 1975, which carried out the secret mission of assassinating members of the economic and political bureaucracy inside Vietnam to cripple the ability of that nation to function after the total US withdrawal from Vietnam. This Phoenix Project, during its history, carried out the political assassination, in Vietnam, of some 60,000 village mayors, treasurers, school teachers and other non) Viet Cong administrators. 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. From 1976 to 1979, in Iran, Richard Secord supervised the sale of U.S. military aircraft and weapons to Middle Eastern nations. However, Richard Secord did not authorize direct nation-to-nation sales of such equipment directly from the U.S. government to said Middle Eastern governments. Instead, Richard Secord conducted such sales through a "middle-man", one Albert Hakim. By the use of middle-man Albert Hakim, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Secord purchased U.S. military aircraft and weapons from the U.S. governament at the low "manufacturer's cost" but sold these U.S. aircraft and weapons to the client Middle Eastern nations at the much higher "replacement cost". Secord then caused to be paid to the U.S. government, out of the actual sale price obtained, only the lower amount equal to the lower manufacturer's cost. The difference, was secreted from the U.S. government and Secord and Albert Hakim secretly transferred these millions of dollars into Shackley's "Secret Team" operations inside Iran and into Shackley's secret Nugen-Hand bank account in Australia. Thus, by 1976, Defendant Albert Hakim had become a partner with Thomas Clines, Richard Secord and Richard Armitage in Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team". Between 1976 and 1979, Shackley, Clines, Secord, Hakim, Wilson, and Armitage set up several corporations and subsidiaries around the world through which to conceal the operations of the "Secret Team". Many of these corporations were set up in Switzerland. Some of these were: (1) Lake Resources, Inc.; (2) The Stanford Technology Trading Group, Inc.; and (3) Companie de Services Fiduciaria. Other companies were set up in Central America, such as: (4) CSF Investments, Ltd. and (5) Udall research Corporation. Some were set up inside the United States by Edwin Wilson. Some of these were: (6) Orca Supply Company in Florida and (7) Consultants International in Washington, D.C. Through these corporations, members of Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team" laundered hundreds of millions of dollars of secret Vang Pao opium money, pilfered Foreign Military Sales proceeds between 1976 and 1979. Named in this federal civil suit to be placed under oath and asked about their participation in the criminal "enterprise" alleged in this Complaint is probative of the criminal guilt of the Defendants of some of the crimes charged in this Complaint. Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs' Counsel, The Christic Institute, possess evidence constituting "probable cause" that each of the Defendants named in this Complaint are guilty of the conduct charged. If further detailed evidence is required by the Court to allow the Plaintiffs to begin the standard process of discovery in this case, the failure to place it in this Affidavit is the function of the short time allowed by the Court for the preparation of this filing, it is not because the Plaintiffs lack such evidence.

This is not the case. Please find below the complete Sheehan affidavit issued on 12th December, 1986. Sheehan does not mention Tony Avirgan in this affidavit. As I have said before, the two main sources for this information was Gene Wheaton and Carl E. Jenkins (although Jenkins was later to claim that Sheehan misunderstood his information. 1. I am a duly licensed attorney at law, admitted to practice before the State and Federal Courts of the State of New York in both the Northern and Southern Districts of New York. 2. I am duly licensed and have been admitted to practice before the Courts of the District of Columbia, both local and Federal and I am in good standing before both the Bar of New York and the Bar of the District of Columbia. 3. I have practiced law before the courts of New York and numerous other states in our nation since 1970, having served as counsel in some 60 separate pieces of litigation in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Mississippi. 4. I graduated from Harvard college in 1967 as an Honors Graduate in American Government, writing my Honors Thesis in the field of Constitutional Law, and was the Harvard University nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship from New York in 1967. I graduated from Harvard School of Law in 1970, having served as an Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights)Civil Liberties Law Review and as the Research Associate of Professor Jerome Cohen, the Chair of the International Law Department of Harvard. 5. While at Harvard School of Law, I served as a summer associate at the State Street law firm of Goodwin, Proctor and Hoar under the supervision of Senior Partner, Donald J. Hurley, the President of the Boston Chamber of Commerce and Massachusetts Senatorial Campaign Chairman for John F. Kennedy. At this firm I participated in the case of BAIRD v EISENSTAT, under Roger Stockey, General Counsel for the Massachusetts Planned Parenthood League (establishing the unconstitutionality of the Massachusetts anti-birth control law) and in the Nevada case, under Charles Goodhue, III (establishing the constitutional right to bail in criminal extradition cases, including capital cases). While at Harvard School of Law, I authored "The Pedestrian Sources of Civil Liberties" in the Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review and I served under Professor Milton Katz, the President of the International Law Association, as the Chairman of the Nigerian Biafran Relief Commission responsible for successfully negotiating the admission of mercy flights of food into Biafra in 1968. 6. While serving as a legal Associate at the Wall Street law firm of Cahill, Gordon, Sonnett, Rheindle and Ohio under partner Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines directed the Phoenix Project in Vietnam, in 1974 and 1975, which carried out the secret mission of assassinating members of the economic and political bureaucracy inside Vietnam to cripple the ability of that nation to function after the total US withdrawal from Vietnam. This Phoenix Project, during its history, carried out the political assassination, in Vietnam, of some 60,000 village mayors, treasurers, school teachers and other non) Viet Cong administrators. 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. From 1976 to 1979, in Iran, Richard Secord supervised the sale of U.S. military aircraft and weapons to Middle Eastern nations. However, Richard Secord did not authorize direct nation-to-nation sales of such equipment directly from the U.S. government to said Middle Eastern governments. Instead, Richard Secord conducted such sales through a "middle-man", one Albert Hakim. By the use of middle-man Albert Hakim, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Secord purchased U.S. military aircraft and weapons from the U.S. governament at the low "manufacturer's cost" but sold these U.S. aircraft and weapons to the client Middle Eastern nations at the much higher "replacement cost". Secord then caused to be paid to the U.S. government, out of the actual sale price obtained, only the lower amount equal to the lower manufacturer's cost. The difference, was secreted from the U.S. government and Secord and Albert Hakim secretly transferred these millions of dollars into Shackley's "Secret Team" operations inside Iran and into Shackley's secret Nugen-Hand bank account in Australia. Thus, by 1976, Defendant Albert Hakim had become a partner with Thomas Clines, Richard Secord and Richard Armitage in Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team". Between 1976 and 1979, Shackley, Clines, Secord, Hakim, Wilson, and Armitage set up several corporations and subsidiaries around the world through which to conceal the operations of the "Secret Team". Many of these corporations were set up in Switzerland. Some of these were: (1) Lake Resources, Inc.; (2) The Stanford Technology Trading Group, Inc.; and (3) Companie de Services Fiduciaria. Other companies were set up in Central America, such as: (4) CSF Investments, Ltd. and (5) Udall research Corporation. Some were set up inside the United States by Edwin Wilson. Some of these were: (6) Orca Supply Company in Florida and (7) Consultants International in Washington, D.C. Through these corporations, members of Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team" laundered hundreds of millions of dollars of secret Vang Pao opium money, pilfered Foreign Military Sales proceeds between 1976 and 1979. Named in this federal civil suit to be placed under oath and asked about their participation in the criminal "enterprise" alleged in this Complaint is probative of the criminal guilt of the Defendants of some of the crimes charged in this Complaint. Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs' Counsel, The Christic Institute, possess evidence constituting "probable cause" that each of the Defendants named in this Complaint are guilty of the conduct charged. If further detailed evidence is required by the Court to allow the Plaintiffs to begin the standard process of discovery in this case, the failure to place it in this Affidavit is the function of the short time allowed by the Court for the preparation of this filing, it is not because the Plaintiffs lack such evidence.

Some more information on Issac Irving Davidson. He was born in 1921. Davison arrived in Washington. in 1941 and worked for the War Production Board. In 1944 he began working in public relations. Later he became a licensed arms dealer. In 1955 Davidson was employed by Anastasio Somoza. Over the next few years he arranged arms deals between Israel and Nicaragua. He also sold arms to Batista, the military dictator of Cuba. Davidson was a close associate of Carlos Marcello and played an important role in the legal attempt to prevent Jimmy Hoffa from being sent to prison. According to Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics), in September, 1960, Davidson was at a meeting where a suitcase containing $500,000 was passed from Marcello to Hoffa for Richard Nixon. After the fall of Batista, Davidson developed a close relationship with those Cubans attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro. In 1963 Davidson met Roland Masferrer. Davidson also represented Clint Murchison and his oil company in Dallas. It is also alleged by John H. Davis (Mafia Kingfish) that Davidson was a specialist in "putting people together". This included Rafael Trujillo, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Bobby Baker, and Santos Trafficante. In 1964 Papa Doc Duvalier hired Davidson to represent the Haitian government. It has been claimed that while in Haiti, George DeMohrenschildt. According to recently released classified documents, Davidson provided information to both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency during this period. When he returned to Washington, Davidson shared an office with investigative journalists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. In his book, The Kennedy Contract (1993), John H. Davis claims that Davidson was a constant source of information for Anderson. In the early 1970s Davidson became involved with Santos Trafficante and the Teamsters Union. The FBI were closely watching these two men and they were eventually charged with pilfering large sums from the Teamsters Southeast States Health and Welfare Fund. Although indicted, the charges were eventually dropped. Davidson is still alive and is likely to take legal action against people who make false claims against him.

I suppose that is a no. I have posted what I know about Helliwell. Maybe you might want to comment on this thread. http://www.namebase.org/main3/Paul-Lionel-...-Helliwell.html In case you missed it I will repeat an earlier posting: I have a link from my page on you to this thread. However, I suspect my readers will be very confused by this debate about your knowledge of the JFK assassination. It seems that you have been misquoted or misunderstood in the past. I think it would be a good idea to clear-up this confusion. I have therefore started a new thread for you. Maybe, you could state clearly and concisely what you know about the assassination of JFK. Maybe you could also post a timeline of your life (what you were doing and when you were doing it). I would then use this information to correct my web page on you. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhemming.htm If you did this you would provide a good response to those who have argued that you have confused people on purpose. You might also wish to use this new thread to put forward your own theory of the assassination. The new thread can be found here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5751

Paul Lional Helliwell is someone who I have never seen named as a possible figure involved in the assassination of JFK. However, I think he is worth a look. Helliwell was a lawyer before he joined the United States Army during the Second World War. Later he was transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where he served under William Donovan. In 1943 Colonel Paul Helliwell became head of the Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS in Europe. Helliwell was replaced in this post by William Casey in 1945. Helliwell now became chief of the Far East Division of the War Department's Strategic Service Unit, an interim intelligence organization formed after OSS was closed down. In 1947 Helliwell joined the Central Intelligence Agency. In May 1949, General Claire Chennault had a meeting with Harry S. Truman and advocated an increase in funds for Chaing Kai-shek and his Koumintang Army (KMT) in his war in China. Truman dismissed the idea as "impractical". However, Frank Wisner, was more sympathetic and when Mao Tse-tung took power in China in 1950, he sent Helliwell to Taiwan. Helliwell's main job was to help Chaing Kai-shek to prepare for a future invasion of Communist China. The CIA created a pair of front companies to supply and finance the surviving forces of Chaing's Koumintang Army. Helliwell was put in charge of this operation. This included establishing Civil Air Transport (CAT), a Taiwan-based airline, and the Sea Supply Corporation, a shipping company in Bangkok. It was Helliwell's idea to use these CIA fronted companies to raise money to help support Chaing Kai-shek. According to Joseph Trento (Prelude to Terror): "Through Sea Supply, Helliwell imported large amounts of arms for the KMT soldiers to keep the Burmese military from throwing them out of the country. The arms were ferried into Burma on CAT airplanes. CAT then used the "empty" planes to fly drugs from Burma to Taiwan, Bangkok, and Saigon. There the drugs were processed for the benefit of the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt government on Taiwan." Civil Air Transport (CAT), later renamed Air America, provided the CIA with the air power needed to sustain its covert operations for the next twenty-five years. Helliwell was to play an important role in running this operation. By the late 1950s it became clear that Chaing Kai-shek would never be strong enough to invade China. The main focus changed to stopping the spread of communism to countries like Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. At the time, the main group fighting communism in the region were the large private armies controlled by the Asian drug lords. For example, General Vang Pao was employing his 30,000-man army to fight the Pathet Lao. In return for working with the CIA, Helliwell helped Vang Pao to modernize the drug trade. William Corson claims that: "Portable heroin processing facilities were brought in. It was a creation of the CIA's technical services division." Some of these profits went to help CIA run some unofficial covert operations. In 1960 Paul Helliwell was transferred to provide business cover for the CIA’s Cuban operations. According to Peter Dale Scott (The Iran Contra Connection) Helliwell worked with Howard Hunt, Mitch WerBell and Lucien Conein on developing relationships with drug-dealing Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion. It was during this period that Helliwell met Ted Shackley and Tom Clines. Helliwell later became CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE. In this way, Shackley was able to finance unofficial CIA operations against Cuba. Maybe he also paid for the assassination of JFK? In 1964 Helliwell was sent by the CIA to the Bahamas where he set up offshore banks for CIA use. At first he established the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company and then the Castle Bank and Trust Company. Helliwell also established the American Bankers Insurance Company based in Galveston, Texas. This provided insurance cover for businessmen who cooperated with the CIA. Helliwell also established a Miami office for the Sea Supply Corporation. According to Joseph Trento (Prelude to Terror): "The primary objective of Helliwell's operations in Florida was to cement the CIA's relationship with organized crime." This included Santos Trafficante, who had a common business interest in Asia, the "successful exportation of Chinese white heroin." In 1973 the Internal Revenue Service began what was called Operation Trade Winds. During its investigation it discovered that some major organized crime figures such as Morris Dalitz, Morris Kleinman and Samuel A. Tucker were using the Castle Bank and Trust Company. It soon became clear that the bank was laundering CIA funds and drug profits. The IRS eventually announced that it was dropping its investigation of Castle Bank because of "legal problems". According to the Wall Street Journal, the reasons for this was "pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency". The CIA now needed a new bank. Later that year, 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 CIA officials, Ted Shackley and Thomas G. Clines. Nugan ran operations in Sydney whereas Hand established a branch in Hong Kong. This enabled Australian depositors to access 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." Paul Helliwell died on 24th December, 1976. This was very handy as it stopped him being interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Joe Trento does not mention the assassination of JFK in his new book, Prelude to Terror. However, I believe that this was the most important book on the assassination published in 2005. Trento’s book is based largely on interviews carried out with Edwin Wilson, Tom Clines and Shirley Brill. Trento also uses documents provided by Wilson. Critics will claim that Trento is over-reliant on Wilson. He seems to believe everything Wilson has told him (he is more wary about accepting some of the information provided by Clines). Brill is also believed, although as Clines’s former badly treated girlfriend, she obviously has her own agenda. Despite these problems, I agree with Trento, that Wilson and Brill are telling the truth. My problem with Wilson is that I don’t believe he is telling the full story. His main concern is to prove that he was set-up by Ted Shackley. He tells us virtually nothing about what Wilson, Shackley and Clines were up to in the early 1960s. I think there are reasons why Trento has not explored these areas. Hopefully, Joe will be willing to discuss these issues here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5753 The first chapter takes a look at the activities of Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush. He looks in some detail at Bush’s business dealing during the Second World War. On page 3 he states that John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles were both involved in covering up Bush’s dealings with Nazi Germany. Of course, McCloy and Dulles were also both members of the Warren Commission. I believe this is highly relevant but Trento ignores this connection. McCloy was also German High Commissioner after the war. In February, 1951, he ordered the release of Alfred Krupp from Landsberg Prison. Krupp was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. He was accused of plundering occupied territories and being responsible for the barbaric treatment of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. Krupp was found guilty of being a major war criminal and sentenced to twelve years in prison and had all his wealth and property confiscated. When he was released, Krupp had his is property, valued at around $45 million, and his numerous companies were also restored to him. He was not the only wealthy war criminal released by McCloy. Is it possible that Krupp and his Nazi colleagues went on the fund CIA illegal covert activities? In other words, was McCloy part of CIA’s “Secret Team” as early as 1951? If that is the case, could this be the reason why he was on the Warren Commission with Dulles in 1964? Trento quotes John Loftus to argue that “Bush and his associates did not invest in Nazi-controlled companies out of any ideological devotion to Hitler, but because this was simply good business practice”. I disagree with this proposition. A significant number of businessmen in the US and the UK supported the Nazis in the 1930s for “ideological reasons”. The main reason for this was that they supported the way the Nazis were dealing with the threat of socialism and communism. Remember, the first thing that Hitler did when he gained power was to put left-wing activists in concentration camps (the Jews were dealt with at a later date). This was very popular with right-wing elements in the Western World (it of course helps to explain why the Pope and the Catholic Church refused to condemn what was going on in Nazi Germany). I believe that people like Prescott Bush, Allen Dulles and John McCloy did have ideological reasons for their political activities. After all, the main thing that drove the CIA agenda was the perceived fear of communism. In Prelude to Terror, Joe Trento argues that Ted Shackley’s “Secret Team” began during the Carter presidency. Carter had campaigned against the “rogue CIA” and promised to do something about it. When he took office he sacked George Bush as director of the CIA. He initially selected Ted Sorenson to become the new head of the CIA (that would have been interesting as he was one of JFK’s aides who had doubts about the Warren Commission). However, he was blocked by the Senate and instead he appointed Stansfield Turner, who was ordered to clean-up covert operations. In August, 1977, Turner ordered that the CIA reduce the Directorate of Operations by 823 positions. People like Shackley and Clines were told their careers were finished. Trento argues that it was at this point that Shackley decided to privatise some of CIA’s covert operations. The money for these activities came what was called the Safari Club. This was established when George Bush was director of the CIA. This was admitted by a speech made by Prince Turki (February 2002). He claimed: “In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.” Turki admitted that Saudi Arabia had taken over financing some covert operations. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. According to Joe Trento: “with the official blessing of George Bush, Sheikh Kamal Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine” (page 104). Shackley used some of this money to run some covert operations that could not be traced back to the CIA. He also used Edwin Wilson to use his companies to raise money for other operations. This included arms dealing and drug running. Trento argues that it was this decision that compromised US intelligence and led to 9/11. According to Trento, Shackley’s “manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden’s fundraising to thrive, as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.” I go along with most of Trento analysis of this situation. However, there is considerable evidence that this privatisation of some covert operations began as early as 1962. Some of this evidence appears in Trento’s book, but it is not accepted by him because it conflicts with the theory that the CIA was behind the assassination of JFK. In his book Secret History of the CIA, Trento argues that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination (based on information supplied by James Jesus Angleton). My theory is that the Shackley’s Secret Team began in 1962. The key figure in the operation was Paul Helliwell. He was transferred to Miami in 1960 to provide business cover for the CIA’s Cuban operations. This is where he meets Ted Shackley and Tom Clines. After the Bay of Pigs he become CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE (page 29, The Prelude to Terror). Helliwell got some of this money from arms and drug dealing. In this way, Shackley is able to finance unofficial CIA operations. I believe one of these operations was the assassination of JFK. This was the beginning of Shackley’s use of anti-Castro Cubans assassination teams. Shackley later used these same people (most of them had been members of Operation 40) to murder people in Laos, Vietnam, Chile, etc. This nearly came unstuck with the killing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Kapen Moffitt in Washington on 21st September, 1976. Two of Shackley’s Cubans, Virgilio Pablo Paz and Dionisio Suarez carried out the assassination. George Bush was able to block the internal investigation that suggested that Shackley was responsible. These illegal Shackley operations were financed by Paul Helliwell. He did this via CIA fronted companies such as the Sea Supply Corporation in Bangkok and the Castle Bank & Trust in Nassau. As a result of an IRS investigation of Castle Bank, Shackley needed another way of paying for his operation. In 1976 he arranged for two of his former CIA operatives in Laos and Vietnam, Michael Hand and Bernie Houghton, to establish the Nugan-Hand Bank in Australia. He also employed Edwin Wilson as his “cut-out” to organize these illegal drug and arms deals. It was also used to pay for assassinations of people who posed a danger to Shackley’s clients. However, the Nugan Hand bank collapsed in 1980. Both Frank Nugan and Michael Hand were eliminated. According to Trento, Edwin Wilson was sacrificed to the authorities in order to distance the CIA from these activities. With the demise of Nugan Hand Bank, the CIA had to rely on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to fund its activities. The money for these operations came from Saudi Arabia and this again provides a link to 9/11 and enhances the theme for Trento’s book. This book raises the issue of how the political perceptions of an historian influences the way he uses the sources. As Daniel Brandt’s review on his Namebase site points out: “Joseph Trento is a veteran intelligence reporter who can claim inside access for his books. For example, his book "Widows" was co-authored with William R. Corson, who had a long career in U.S. intelligence at a fairly high level. Trento's "Secret History of the CIA" benefited from interviews with James Angleton, the counterintelligence chief who had a closet full of axes that he spent many years grinding, and who was eventually fired from the CIA. Similarly, "Prelude to Terror" is essentially based on rogue agent Edwin Wilson's account of how he was framed by Ted Shackley. While everything Trento has ever written may be absolutely true, for all we know, he is too close to his sources for our tastes. Internal spook wars may be interesting, but they don't contribute anything to the issue of what the U.S. is doing to the rest of the world. What if all of Trento's sources really do belong in prison? Where does that leave us?” The problem with Prelude to Terror is that Joe Trento still believes that James Jesus Angleton is a reliable source. Angleton has provided Trento with his CIA framework. Everything he heard from Wilson had to be fitted into this ideological paradigm. This means that certain evidence has to be ignored. For example, Daniel Sheehan is not mentioned in the book. This is strange as Trento’s account of Shackley’s activities is very similar to the one provided by Daniel Sheehan in his affidavit (12th December, 1986). Why does Trento ignore Sheehan as a source? Nor does he mention Gene Wheaton in the book. He was of course Sheehan’s main source in 1986. Wheaton also told Sheehan that Shackley’s Secret Team was involved in the assassination of JFK. Wheaton repeated this claim to the Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board, in July, 1995, and in a filmed interview in 2005. He also claimed that Carl Jenkins, Chi Chi Quintero and Irving Davidson were also involved in the assassination. This is of course why Trento does not wish to acknowledge Sheehan and Wheaton as sources. He only likes part of their story. The fact that Shackley’s Secret Team began in the early 1960s clashes with his view that Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. Trento can therefore be accused, like George Bush and Tony Blair, of “cherry-picking” his evidence. As a result, he only tells part of the story. It will therefore be left to someone else to tell the full account of Ted Shackley’s role in the corruption of the CIA.

Joe Trento does not mention the assassination of JFK in his new book, Prelude to Terror. However, I believe that this was the most important book on the assassination published in 2005. Trento’s book is based largely on interviews carried out with Edwin Wilson, Tom Clines and Shirley Brill. Trento also uses documents provided by Wilson. Critics will claim that Trento is over-reliant on Wilson. He seems to believe everything Wilson has told him (he is more wary about accepting some of the information provided by Clines). Brill is also believed, although as Clines’s former badly treated girlfriend, she obviously has her own agenda. Despite these problems, I agree with Trento, that Wilson and Brill are telling the truth. My problem with Wilson is that I don’t believe he is telling the full story. His main concern is to prove that he was set-up by Ted Shackley. He tells us virtually nothing about what Wilson, Shackley and Clines were up to in the early 1960s. I think there are reasons why Trento has not explored these areas. Hopefully, Joe will be willing to discuss these issues here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5753 The first chapter takes a look at the activities of Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush. He looks in some detail at Bush’s business dealing during the Second World War. On page 3 he states that John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles were both involved in covering up Bush’s dealings with Nazi Germany. Of course, McCloy and Dulles were also both members of the Warren Commission. I believe this is highly relevant but Trento ignores this connection. McCloy was also German High Commissioner after the war. In February, 1951, he ordered the release of Alfred Krupp from Landsberg Prison. Krupp was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. He was accused of plundering occupied territories and being responsible for the barbaric treatment of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. Krupp was found guilty of being a major war criminal and sentenced to twelve years in prison and had all his wealth and property confiscated. When he was released, Krupp had his is property, valued at around $45 million, and his numerous companies were also restored to him. He was not the only wealthy war criminal released by McCloy. Is it possible that Krupp and his Nazi colleagues went on the fund CIA illegal covert activities? In other words, was McCloy part of CIA’s “Secret Team” as early as 1951? If that is the case, could this be the reason why he was on the Warren Commission with Dulles in 1964? Trento quotes John Loftus to argue that “Bush and his associates did not invest in Nazi-controlled companies out of any ideological devotion to Hitler, but because this was simply good business practice”. I disagree with this proposition. A significant number of businessmen in the US and the UK supported the Nazis in the 1930s for “ideological reasons”. The main reason for this was that they supported the way the Nazis were dealing with the threat of socialism and communism. Remember, the first thing that Hitler did when he gained power was to put left-wing activists in concentration camps (the Jews were dealt with at a later date). This was very popular with right-wing elements in the Western World (it of course helps to explain why the Pope and the Catholic Church refused to condemn what was going on in Nazi Germany). I believe that people like Prescott Bush, Allen Dulles and John McCloy did have ideological reasons for their political activities. After all, the main thing that drove the CIA agenda was the perceived fear of communism. In Prelude to Terror, Joe Trento argues that Ted Shackley’s “Secret Team” began during the Carter presidency. Carter had campaigned against the “rogue CIA” and promised to do something about it. When he took office he sacked George Bush as director of the CIA. He initially selected Ted Sorenson to become the new head of the CIA (that would have been interesting as he was one of JFK’s aides who had doubts about the Warren Commission). However, he was blocked by the Senate and instead he appointed Stansfield Turner, who was ordered to clean-up covert operations. In August, 1977, Turner ordered that the CIA reduce the Directorate of Operations by 823 positions. People like Shackley and Clines were told their careers were finished. Trento argues that it was at this point that Shackley decided to privatise some of CIA’s covert operations. The money for these activities came what was called the Safari Club. This was established when George Bush was director of the CIA. This was admitted by a speech made by Prince Turki (February 2002). He claimed: “In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.” Turki admitted that Saudi Arabia had taken over financing some covert operations. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. According to Joe Trento: “with the official blessing of George Bush, Sheikh Kamal Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine” (page 104). Shackley used some of this money to run some covert operations that could not be traced back to the CIA. He also used Edwin Wilson to use his companies to raise money for other operations. This included arms dealing and drug running. Trento argues that it was this decision that compromised US intelligence and led to 9/11. According to Trento, Shackley’s “manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden’s fundraising to thrive, as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.” I go along with most of Trento analysis of this situation. However, there is considerable evidence that this privatisation of some covert operations began as early as 1962. Some of this evidence appears in Trento’s book, but it is not accepted by him because it conflicts with the theory that the CIA was behind the assassination of JFK. In his book Secret History of the CIA, Trento argues that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination (based on information supplied by James Jesus Angleton). My theory is that the Shackley’s Secret Team began in 1962. The key figure in the operation was Paul Helliwell. He was transferred to Miami in 1960 to provide business cover for the CIA’s Cuban operations. This is where he meets Ted Shackley and Tom Clines. After the Bay of Pigs he become CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE (page 29, The Prelude to Terror). Helliwell got some of this money from arms and drug dealing. In this way, Shackley is able to finance unofficial CIA operations. I believe one of these operations was the assassination of JFK. This was the beginning of Shackley’s use of anti-Castro Cubans assassination teams. Shackley later used these same people (most of them had been members of Operation 40) to murder people in Laos, Vietnam, Chile, etc. This nearly came unstuck with the killing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Kapen Moffitt in Washington on 21st September, 1976. Two of Shackley’s Cubans, Virgilio Pablo Paz and Dionisio Suarez carried out the assassination. George Bush was able to block the internal investigation that suggested that Shackley was responsible. These illegal Shackley operations were financed by Paul Helliwell. He did this via CIA fronted companies such as the Sea Supply Corporation in Bangkok and the Castle Bank & Trust in Nassau. As a result of an IRS investigation of Castle Bank, Shackley needed another way of paying for his operation. In 1976 he arranged for two of his former CIA operatives in Laos and Vietnam, Michael Hand and Bernie Houghton, to establish the Nugan-Hand Bank in Australia. He also employed Edwin Wilson as his “cut-out” to organize these illegal drug and arms deals. It was also used to pay for assassinations of people who posed a danger to Shackley’s clients. However, the Nugan Hand bank collapsed in 1980. Both Frank Nugan and Michael Hand were eliminated. According to Trento, Edwin Wilson was sacrificed to the authorities in order to distance the CIA from these activities. With the demise of Nugan Hand Bank, the CIA had to rely on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to fund its activities. The money for these operations came from Saudi Arabia and this again provides a link to 9/11 and enhances the theme for Trento’s book. This book raises the issue of how the political perceptions of an historian influences the way he uses the sources. As Daniel Brandt’s review on his Namebase site points out: “Joseph Trento is a veteran intelligence reporter who can claim inside access for his books. For example, his book "Widows" was co-authored with William R. Corson, who had a long career in U.S. intelligence at a fairly high level. Trento's "Secret History of the CIA" benefited from interviews with James Angleton, the counterintelligence chief who had a closet full of axes that he spent many years grinding, and who was eventually fired from the CIA. Similarly, "Prelude to Terror" is essentially based on rogue agent Edwin Wilson's account of how he was framed by Ted Shackley. While everything Trento has ever written may be absolutely true, for all we know, he is too close to his sources for our tastes. Internal spook wars may be interesting, but they don't contribute anything to the issue of what the U.S. is doing to the rest of the world. What if all of Trento's sources really do belong in prison? Where does that leave us?” The problem with Prelude to Terror is that Joe Trento still believes that James Jesus Angleton is a reliable source. Angleton has provided Trento with his CIA framework. Everything he heard from Wilson had to be fitted into this ideological paradigm. This means that certain evidence has to be ignored. For example, Daniel Sheehan is not mentioned in the book. This is strange as Trento’s account of Shackley’s activities is very similar to the one provided by Daniel Sheehan in his affidavit (12th December, 1986). Why does Trento ignore Sheehan as a source? Nor does he mention Gene Wheaton in the book. He was of course Sheehan’s main source in 1986. Wheaton also told Sheehan that Shackley’s Secret Team was involved in the assassination of JFK. Wheaton repeated this claim to the Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board, in July, 1995, and in a filmed interview in 2005. He also claimed that Carl Jenkins, Chi Chi Quintero and Irving Davidson were also involved in the assassination. This is of course why Trento does not wish to acknowledge Sheehan and Wheaton as sources. He only likes part of their story. The fact that Shackley’s Secret Team began in the early 1960s clashes with his view that Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. Trento can therefore be accused, like George Bush and Tony Blair, of “cherry-picking” his evidence. As a result, he only tells part of the story. It will therefore be left to someone else to tell the full account of Ted Shackley’s role in the corruption of the CIA.

In Prelude to Terror, Joe Trento argues that Ted Shackley’s “Secret Team” began during the Carter presidency. During his campaign Carter claimed he was going to sort out this “rogue CIA”. When he took office he sacked George Bush as director of the CIA. He initially selected Ted Sorenson to become the new head of the CIA (that would have been interesting as he was one of JFK’s aides who had doubts about the Warren Commission). However, Sorenson was blocked by the Senate and therefore Carter appointed Stansfield Turner, who was ordered to clean-up covert operations. In August, 1977, Turner ordered that the CIA reduce the Directorate of Operations by 823 positions. People like Shackley and Clines were told their careers were finished. Trento argues that it was at this point that Shackley decided to privatise some of CIA’s covert operations. The money for these activities came what was called the Safari Club. This was established when George Bush was director of the CIA. This was admitted by a speech made by Prince Turki (February 2002). He claimed: “In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here (in the US), your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything… In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa.” Turki admitted that Saudi Arabia had taken over financing some covert operations. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. According to Joe Trento: “with the official blessing of George Bush, Sheikh Kamal Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine” (page 104). Shackley used some of this money to run some covert operations that could not be traced back to the CIA. He also used Edwin Wilson's companies to raise money for other operations. This included arms dealing and drug running. Trento argues that it was this decision that compromised US intelligence and led to 9/11 (it also helps to explain Bush’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and his decision to blame countries like Iraq and Syria for this terrorist attack). I go along with most of Trento analysis of this situation. However, there is considerable evidence that this privatisation of some covert operations began as early as 1962. Some of this evidence appears in Trento’s book, but it is not accepted by him because it conflicts with the theory that the CIA was behind the assassination of JFK. In his book Secret History of the CIA, Trento argues that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination. This was based on information supplied by James Jesus Angleton. My theory is that the Secret Team began in 1962. The key figure in the operation was Paul Helliwell. He was transferred to Miami in 1960 to provide business cover for the CIA’s Cuban operations. This is where he meets Ted Shackley and Tom Clines. After the Bay of Pigs he becomes CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE (page 29, The Prelude to Terror). Helliwell got some of this money from arms and drug dealing. In this way, Shackley is able to finance unofficial CIA operations. I believe one of these operations was the assassination of JFK. This was the beginning of Shackley’s use of anti-Castro Cubans assassination teams. Shackley later used these same people (most of them had been members of Operation 40) to murder people in Laos, Vietnam, Chile, etc. This nearly came unstuck with the killing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Kapen Moffitt in Washington on 21st September, 1976. Two of Shackley’s Cubans, Virgilio Pablo Paz and Dionisio Suarez carried out the assassination. George Bush was able to block the internal investigation that suggested that Shackley was responsible. These illegal Shackley operations were financed by Paul Helliwell. He did this via CIA fronted companies such as the Sea Supply Corporation in Bangkok and the Castle Bank and Trust in Nassau. As a result of an IRS investigation, Shackley needed another way of paying for his operations. In 1976 he arranged for two of his former CIA operatives in Laos and Vietnam, Michael Hand and Bernie Houghton, to establish the Nugan-Hand Bank in Australia. He also used Edwin Wilson as his “cut-out” to organize these illegal drug and arms deals that went through Nugan Hand. It was also used to pay for assassinations of people who posed a danger to Shackley’s clients. However, the Nugan Hand bank collapsed in 1980. Both Frank Nugan and Michael Hand were eliminated. According to Trento, Edwin Wilson was sacrificed to the authorities in order to distance the CIA from these activities. With the demise of Nugan Hand Bank, the CIA had to rely on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to fund its activities. The money for these operations came from Saudi Arabia and this again provides a link to 9/11 and helps to explain the theme for Trento’s book.

Article in the Times (30 December): http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/...1962714,00.html Wikipedia chief considers taking ads By Rhys Blakely The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues. Jimmy Wales told Times Online that despite widespread "resistance to the idea" of advertising on Wikipedia, "at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down." Wikipedia would be in a prime position to exploit the current boom in online advertising. It expects to record around 2.5 billion page impressions this month and traffic volumes are doubling every four months. According to figures released this month by Nielsen/Netratings, it was the ninth-fastest growing site on the web in 2005. However, "wikitopeans" - the members of the public who create Wikipedia's articles on a voluntary, unpaid basis - are likely to oppose any suggestion of commercialisation of the site. The site has only three full-time employees. Mr Wales, an ex-futures trader who now heads the non-profit Wikimedia foundation that owns Wikipedia, does not draw a salary. The Foundation's mission is to provide a free online encyclopaedia to everyone in the world in their own language. Mr Wales said that both he and the site's community of vounteers would have to ask themselves "how the charitable mission could be supported by money raised through advertising". Wikipedia’s continued growth is despite recent accusations of irresponsibility and inaccuracy. Last month it emerged that a Wikipedia article on John Seigenthaler had falsely linked the founding editorial director of USA Today to the assassination of President John F Kennedy. In his interview, Mr Wales admits that the site cannot be considered authoritative. "If what you’re after is 'who won the World Cup in 1986' it’s going to be fine – no problem," he says. "If you want to know something more esoteric, or something controversial, you should probably use a second reference – at least." Here is the full interview: Question for World's Encyclopaedia By Rhys Blakely "In my vision of the future of journalism what we will see is an increasing amount of citizen participation in the gathering of news and in feedback and in reporting and analysing the news. At the same time, we’ll have professional organisations managing the process" "It is pretty weird," the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, says. "A few years ago, I was just some guy sitting in front of the internet. Now I send an e-mail or edit an article and it makes headlines around the world ... I used to be just a guy – now I'm Jimmy Wales." Depending on your point of view, there are, at least, two very different Jimmy Wales. For hard-core "wikipedians" there is the founder of one of the wonders of the internet age – a massive, charitably-funded online repository of knowledge, compiled completely by volunteers whose long-term aim is to create versions in all the languages of the world. In contrast, for John Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today who last month was linked with the assassination of President John F Kennedy by a libellous Wikipedia article, there is an irresponsible rogue running a haven for "volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects". For Mr Wales, neither of these will do. He calls the Seigenthaler entry the "worst" article on Wikipedia – "not the only bad article on Wikipedia for sure, but … the worst". But while he "definitely worries a lot about how to make sure that articles on Wikipedia are right", he suggests his biggest fear was that the incident would overshadow the rest of the work on the site "which is actually pretty good". Indeed, according to a recent study by Nature, the scientific journal, Wikipedia is actually no more unreliable than the venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica – the standard to which the website aspires. The report, Mr Wales acknowledges, came in the nick of time – just as the Seigenthaler crisis risked rubbishing Wikipedia's reputation for good. "It was good to have this thing out there that said it’s not just this crazy place on the internet where people just post nonsense - that Wikipedia’s actually pretty good in parts," he explains. That "pretty good" refrain sums up the cautious Wikipedia champion. Never mind the Nature commendation. Or that the site now carries more than 2,500,000 articles and has 80 "live" language versions - from Asturian to Waloon, via Scots, "Simple English" and Telugu - with another 100 already in the pipeline. "If what you’re after is 'who won the World Cup in 1986', it’s going to be fine – no problem," he says. "If you want to know something a little more esoteric, or something that’s going to be controversial, you should probably use a second reference – at least." To understand Wikipedia's place and potential, Mr Wales argues, you have to accept these kind of qualifications. As one reader wrote to the Editor of The Times, to criticise a website which anybody can edit for being "non-authoritative" is a bit like criticising a "newspaper for being flammable". Similarly, Mr Wales is reluctant to over-hype the worldwide web as a whole. He recently read The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage, a history of the telegraph that describes how in the 19th Century the then new technology was lauded in remarkably similar terms to those used by today’s internet gurus. "We all like to think that we are living through a time of very rapid change, but that was true in the 19th Century as well," he says. "On the brink of the 20th Century, people thought that because they could suddenly communicate nearly instantaneously across continents, this could be an end to war. And then the 20th Century came and was a fiasco as far as wars were concerned." The "outlaw" Jimmy Wales, it turns out, is a very reasonable revolutionary. A finance graduate, he ended a six-year spell as a futures trader in Chicago in 2000. According to one report, he earned enough money in the commodities markets to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives". Mr Wales says that is true – but only because he "lives in a normal house and drives a Hyundai". As a trader, he was involved in computer programming, through which he became interested in the "open software" movement - where volunteer collaborators build "free" software - and began thinking about using similar methods to build an online encyclopaedia. Now 39, he is the head of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit body that owns Wikipedia, but works unpaid. The Foundation employs just three people to carry out its mission: to provide every person on earth with a free online encyclopaedia in their own language. The real work, after all, is done by the site’s volunteer writers. The demand for their output is already phenomenal: Wikipedia, which started in 2001, will notch up around 2.5 billion page impressions this month. According to Mr Wales, its traffic volumes are doubling every four months. The combination of ultra-low overheads and massive readership would excite any media executive. And while the site does not carry any advertising, Wales admits it might. "There is a great deal of resistance to the idea, both from the community and from me. But at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down," he says. "In my vision of the future of the newspaper industry and of journalism in general, people who think that traditional media organisations are going to go away are just kidding themselves," he says. "That doesn’t make any sense to me. On other hand, people who think that journalism can just stay the way it is are also just kidding themselves. "What we will see is a set of hybrid models with an increasing amount of citizen participation in the gathering of news and in feedback and in reporting and analysing the news. And at the same time, we’ll have professional organisations managing the process – basically being the core framework." The example Mr Wales gives comes from a spell of consulting he carried out for the BBC last year. "In the sport division of the BBC they are very interested in thinking about how they can have better coverage of minor sports. Sometimes they are criticised for focusing only on major sports. They don’t carry coverage of every sport and every local club around the country – they don’t have enough money, it’s impossible. "So what they’re saying is, 'wouldn’t be interesting if we had a model where we could cover the major sports with our traditional people and enrich the whole experience by bringing in people to allow other sporting communities to report on themselves?' "I’d say that makes a lot of sense. In a similar way, if people out there are willing to make webpages and content, then it makes sense for the newspapers to get involved with that." Alongside blogging, "wiki" technology (the name, according to Wikipedia, is derived from the "wiki wiki", or "quick", buses found at Honolulu Airport) is one obvious route for newspapers to explore if they want to involve their readers online. The software could be the key to involving potentially limitless numbers of contributors to co-operate on a single piece of content. It works, Mr Wales explains, by incorporating a series of "incentives" that encourage positive amendments. For example, it requires just a single mouse click to undo a piece of "vandalism" on Wikipedia – far less effort than it takes to spoil an article in the first place. Old media companies, however, have an awful track-record in experimenting with wikis. The biggest disaster came in June, when the Los Angeles Times conducted a live trial to discover whether Wikipedia’s software could be used by users of the newspaper's site to collaboratively write a comment piece on the Iraq war. "Plenty of sceptics are predicting embarrassment," the paper had said prophetically. "Like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, the Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than to be hip. We acknowledge that possibility. Nevertheless, we proceed." So it turned out. In a matter of hours the LA Times's "Wikitorial" proved an unmitigated failure, being swamped with obscene messages and photos. Mr Wales applauds the paper’s "brave experiment". But he also makes it clear he would have done things very differently. "They used our software, but made a few mistakes when they set it up," he says. "They hid all the community features – so they hid ‘recent changes’ for example, so it was impossible for the community to monitor the site’s development. "Also, they didn’t take the time to build a community. They just started promoting it wholesale to the general public. So that rather than having a core community of people who cared about the site and to look after it they just had people wandering in with no real personal stake in it. "And the final point I would make is that they chose just about the most difficult thing there can be to write collaboratively: opinion. And in particular, opinion on the Iraq war – that’s a tough topic. It’s not as if there’s a simple for-or-against argument to be made. There’s a million possible variations and it’s not immediately clear how a community can converge on something." Such moderation has played a major part in the development of the Wikipedia project. Long-standing plans to ring-fence "completed" articles, once they have been reviewed and checked, were given fresh impetus by the Seigenthaler crisis. The software to allow such "stable" articles, which will be closed off from further revision, is now in the final stages. But there will be no hurry to implement it. "Exactly how we’re going to do that is going to be open to the community," Mr Wales says. "As we go along, there will be a lot of debate. It turns out that for us there is almost never a simple answer to anything. Just a lot of questions, a lot of discussions and some fairly detailed policies."

Review in the Rocky Mountain News http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/book...4349812,00.html The Berlin Conspiracy By Tom Gabbay (William Morrow, $24.95) Grade: A If you're wondering what to do with that gift card from a bookstore you just received, I suggest newcomer Tom Gabbay's first book. It's the perfect antidote to the mid-winter blahs, combining the secret Cold War world of John Le Carre with the fast-paced paranoia and violence of Robert Ludlum - a spy novel of the first rank. Set in 1963, the story covers five days in Berlin in the summer of that year. Jack Teller, disillusioned by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, has retired from the CIA. Now he lives on the beach in Florida where he is writing a bad novel and fishing even worse. Teller had left Germany as a young boy in 1927. Now he's being called back by the Agency because someone behind the Iron Curtain is asking for Jack Teller in person. Apparently, they have important information they will only give to him. Reluctantly, he flies to Berlin. Things don't go well at first as the local spooks insist on shadowing Teller as he attempts a meeting with the mystery man. Eventually, though, Teller manages to elude his handlers and make contact with an East German colonel in Intelligence. The information he gives to Teller is too much to believe. It seems there's a plot to kill President Kennedy during his visit to Berlin in only a few days. Teller is also told that the plot is coming from the CIA, which is planning to blame the Communists for the assassination. Teller dutifully tells his former boss what he has learned and is told to forget such crazy tales. But Teller knows what the CIA thinks of Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, and he realizes what might sound absurd to normal people is precisely the kind of thing others might think up. Now Teller is on his own in a foreign city, trying to track down killers that are after him too. His only ally appears to be the enemy. Using Kennedy conspiracy theories may not be a new plot device, but Gabbay tells such an engaging and fast-paced tale it doesn't matter. Add a new and adept name to the must-read list of thriller writers. Peter Mergendahl

Is this person named Paul Helliwell?

Here is a list of authors currently discussing their books on the Forum. Joe Trento, Prelude to Terror http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5753 Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5671 Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5756 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5686 Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5494 Gerald McKnight: Breach of Trust http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5226 William Pepper: Act of State http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5230 Joan Mellen: Farewell to Justice http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5015 G. Robert Blakey: The Plot to Kill the President http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5225 Josiah Thompson: Six Seconds in Dallas http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4895 Matthew Smith: JFK: The Second Plot http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4896 Tom Gabby, The Berlin Conspiracy http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5654 Jim Feltzer, The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4542 Don Bohning: The Castro Obsession http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4761 William Turner: Deadly Secrets http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4858 William Turner: Rearview Mirror http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5100 Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3028 Jim Marrs, Crossfire http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2489 William Reymond: JFK, Le Dernier Témoin http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2891 Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4734 Nina Burleigh: A Very Private Woman http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4641 Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=693 Donald Gibson: The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1064 Ian Griggs: No Case to Answer http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5251

Here is a list of authors currently discussing their books on the Forum. Joe Trento, Prelude to Terror http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5753 Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5671 Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5756 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5686 Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5494 Gerald McKnight: Breach of Trust http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5226 William Pepper: Act of State http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5230 Joan Mellen: Farewell to Justice http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5015 G. Robert Blakey: The Plot to Kill the President http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5225 Josiah Thompson: Six Seconds in Dallas http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4895 Matthew Smith: JFK: The Second Plot http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4896 Tom Gabby, The Berlin Conspiracy http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5654 Jim Feltzer, The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4542 Don Bohning: The Castro Obsession http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4761 William Turner: Deadly Secrets http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4858 William Turner: Rearview Mirror http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5100 Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3028 Jim Marrs, Crossfire http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2489 William Reymond: JFK, Le Dernier Témoin http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2891 Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4734 Nina Burleigh: A Very Private Woman http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4641 Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=693 Donald Gibson: The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1064 Ian Griggs: No Case to Answer http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5251

(1) John McAdams posted this message on his message board recently: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.assassi...998a9dcaf08b94d I was listening to an archived interview with Lisa Pease on Black Op Radio earlier this week. She was discussing the recent 'Cracking the JFK Case' conference in Washington, D.C. Tony Summers, who was a panelist on the first day, stated that he regretted titling his book 'Conspiracy.' Lisa said that she was surprised to hear this, and took him aside later and asked him why he felt that way. He said that he just didn't think that a conspiracy had been proven. Lisa considered Summers' comment to be self-serving, since he makes his living as a journalist, and he doesn't want to become another Gary Webb. Is Lisa Pease quoting you accurately? (2) Have you come across the names of Carl Jenkins, Gene Wheaton and Paul Helliwell during your research into the assassination of JFK. (3) Did you ever find any evidence that Ted Shackley, Irving Davidson or Rafael Quintero were involved in the assassination of JFK? (4) Bill Kelly has posted an article on the Forum about the possibility of obtaining a grand jury in order to investigate the assassination of JFK. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5634 As a result of your own research, what evidence is currently available that suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only one responsible for killing JFK? Anthony Summers "The Kennedy Conspiracy"

My copy of Prelude to Terror arrived yesterday. So far I have only read the first 70 pages (plus sections on topics that I am very interested in) but it is clearly a very important book. Like all great history books, it is about the present as much as it is about the past. It is definitely a book that needs to be better known (as far as I can see it has had no publicity in the UK). Here are some questions that the reading of the book has raised so far. (1) The first chapter takes a look at the activities of Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush. You look in some detail at Bush’s business dealing during the Second World War. On page 3 you state that John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles were both involved in covering up Bush’s dealings with Nazi Germany. Of course, McCloy and Dulles were also both members of the Warren Commission. Is that relevant? (2) McCloy was also German High Commissioner after the war. In February, 1951, he ordered the release of Alfred Krupp from Landsberg Prison. Krupp was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. He was accused of plundering occupied territories and being responsible for the barbaric treatment of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. Krupp was found guilty of being a major war criminal and sentenced to twelve years in prison and had all his wealth and property confiscated. When he was released, Krupp had his is property, valued at around $45 million, and his numerous companies were also restored to him. He was not the only wealthy war criminal released by McCloy. Is it possible that Krupp and his Nazi colleagues went on the fund CIA illegal covert activities? In other words, was McCloy part of CIA’s “Secret Team” as early as 1951? If that is the case, could this be the reason why he was on the Warren Commission with Dulles in 1964? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWkruppA.htm (3) On page 7 you quote John Loftus to argue that “Bush and his associates did not invest in Nazi-controlled companies out of any ideological devotion to Hitler, but because this was simply good business practice”. I would like to challenge this proposition. A significant number of businessmen in the US and the UK supported the Nazis in the 1930s for “ideological reasons”. The main reason for this was that they supported the way the Nazis were dealing with the threat of socialism and communism. Remember, the first thing that Hitler did when he gained power was to put left-wing activists in concentration camps (the Jews were dealt with at a later date). The most high profile supporter of the Nazi Party in the UK was the media magnate, Lord Rothermere. Throughout the 1930s he used his newspaper empire to support Hitler and was the leading advocate of what became known as “appeasement”. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/BUrothermere.htm Recently released MI5 documents show that there were a significant number of people within the British establishment that supported Nazi Germany even after the outbreak of the war. Some of these characters even supplied the Nazis with classified information. See for example the activities of the Right Club (interestingly they were working with people from inside the American Embassy) below: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWrightclub.htm Is it therefore not possible that people like Bush, Dulles and McCloy did have ideological reasons for their political activities? After all, the main thing that drove the CIA agenda was the perceived fear of communism. (4) On page 9 you mention that Prescott Bush was a “close friend and adviser to William Pawley”. Are you aware that some people believe Pawley was one of those right-wing businessmen who helped fund the assassination of JFK? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm (5) I found the section on Paul Helliwell very interesting. You make a good case that he was the CIA officer who originally came up with the idea of working closely with those involved in the drug trade in order to fund illegal covert operations. I was interested to read that he was transferred to Miami in 1960 to provide business cover for its Cuban operations. You state on page 29 that Helliwell was CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE. This is where Helliwell becomes very close to Ted Shackley. Is it not possible that Shackley’s “Secret Team” dates back to the early 1960s and might have been a reaction to the Bay of Pigs disaster? (6) In Chapter 4 you outline the CIA career of Edwin Wilson. You say that Wilson first met Clines in 1960. Is there any evidence that Wilson was involved with Shackley and Clines at JM/WAVE? (7) You point out that Chi Chi Quintero and Felix Rodriguez were important members of Ted Shackley’s Secret Team. Were they working for Shackley at JM/WAVE in 1963? (8) Your account of Shackley’s activities is very similar to the one provided by Daniel Sheehan in his affidavit (12th December, 1986). However, you do not mention Sheehan in your book. As you know, Shackley took a successful legal action against Sheehan. Do you think Shackley would have taken you to court if he was alive today? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsheehan.htm (9) Nor do you mention Gene Wheaton in your book. He was of course Sheehan’s main source in 1986. Wheaton also told Sheehan that Shackley’s Secret Team was involved in the assassination of JFK. Wheaton repeated this claim to the Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board, in July, 1995, and in a filmed interview in 2005. He claimed that Carl Jenkins, Chi Chi Quintero and Irving Davidson were also involved in the assassination. Did you come across this suggestion during your research? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwheaton.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKquintero.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjenkinsC.htm (10) Wheaton, Jenkins and Quintero are still alive (as are two other members of the Secret Team, Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada). Did you interview any of these men for your book? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKposada.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKroderiguez.htm (11) On page 247 you describe William Buckley as “one of Shackley’s oldest and dearest friends.” Where did you get this information from? Do you know when they first met? Leslie Cockburn pointed out in her book, Out of Control (1987) that Buckley had “to approve CIA assassinations undertaken by the Shackley organizations”. Did you find any evidence of Cockburn’s claim while researching your book? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbuckleyWF.htm

Richard Nixon told the American people during the 1968 presidential election that he fully supported Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks. However, at the same time he used Anna Chennault (a Chinese born Republican) to carry secret messages to President Thieu. Nixon persuaded Thieu not to go along with these peace talks. In return, Nixon promised to send South Vietnam enough US troops to “win the war”. This is why Thieu refused to take part in the peace talks (he announced this on 2nd November, three days before the election). Nixon knew the American people would not accept an escalation of the war. He therefore continued Lyndon Johnson’s policy of talking to the North Vietnamese government. Nixon eventually accepted the peace terms available in 1968. By that time another 20,763 American soldiers had died. So had 109,230 South Vietnamese soldiers, 496,260 combatants from the North and an unknown number of civilians. This information appears in several books. Probably the best account appears in Anthony Summers’s book, The Arrogance of Power (298-306).

(Q5) I am a high school student at Benjamin Banneker High School in Washington DC, USA. I am in the IB Program and thus I need to write an "internal assessment" (similar to a research paper) for my IB History class. I chose to research the Vietnam War, I further narrow down my focus into "During the Vietnam War, did the American make any promise to the Vietnamese, if yes, what? And did they break this/these promises? http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5701

Some politicians like Barry Goldwater did advocate fighting an offensive war. This included using nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. Curtis LeMay shared these views. They were similar to the kind of views expressed by Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War. Luckily, America has elected presidents with more sense than these idiots and nuclear war did not take place in Korea and Vietnam (LeMay even wanted a nuclear war in Cuba in 1962). MacArthur was able to persuade Harry Truman to invade North Korea. As a result, the Chinese Army got involved and the US and UN troops were forced to withdraw. The same thing would have happened if the US had invaded North Vietnam (both Korea and Vietnam share a border with China). There would only be one winner if there was a land war between China and the US. The US troops would have left fairly quickly and Vietnam would now probably be occupied by China.

Richard Nixon told the American people during the 1968 presidential election that he fully supported Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks. However, at the same time he used Anna Chennault (a Chinese born Republican) to carry secret messages to President Thieu. Nixon persuaded Thieu not to go along with these peace talks. In return, Nixon promised to send South Vietnam enough US troops to “win the war”. This is why Thieu refused to take part in the peace talks (he announced this on 2nd November, three days before the election). Nixon knew the American people would not accept an escalation of the war. He therefore continued Lyndon Johnson’s policy of talking to the North Vietnamese government. Nixon eventually accepted the peace terms available in 1968. By that time another 20,763 American soldiers had died. So had 109,230 South Vietnamese soldiers, 496,260 combatants from the North and an unknown number of civilians. This information appears in several books. Probably the best account appears in Anthony Summers’s book, The Arrogance of Power (298-306).