|
POLITICIANS KILLED IN PLANE CRASHES [From the 'Political Graveyard,' which also has links to details on each of the cases as well as others going back to World War I] Rep. Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. (1914-1972) Democrat. Disappeared while on a campaign flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, October 16, 1972, and presumed dead in a plane crash; no bodies were found. Rep. Nicholas Joseph Begich (1932-1972) of Anchorage, Alaska. Democrat. Disappeared while on a campaign flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, October 16, 1972, and presumed dead in a plane crash; no bodies were found. Rep. George Washington Collins (1925-1972) Democrat. Husband of Cardiss Collins. Died in an airplane crash during landing approach at Midway Airport, Chicago, Cook County, Ill., December 8, 1972. Rep. Jerry Lyle Pettis (1916-1975) Republican. Died in a plane crash near Banning, Riverside County, Calif., February 14, 1975. Rep. Jerry Lon Litton (1937-1976) Democrat. While running for U.S. Senator, died in the crash of a private plane, shortly after takeoff from the Municipal Airport Chillicothe, Livingston County, Mo., August 3, 1976. Rep. Ralph Frederick Beermann (1912-1977) of Dakota City, Dakota County, Neb. Republican. Died in an airplane crash at the Municipal Airport in Sioux City, Woodbury County, Iowa, February 17, 1977. Senatorial candidate Richard D. Obenshain (1936-1978) of Richmond, Va. Candidate for U.S. Senator from Virginia 1978, but died before election. Killed in a plane crash in August 1978. Rep. Lawrence Patton McDonald (1935-1983) Democrat. Killed when Korean Airlines jet on which he was a passenger was shot down by the Soviet military, At Sea over the Sea of Japan on September 1, 1983; his remains were never recovered. Jim Waltermire
(1949-1988) Secretary of state of Montana, 1980-88. While returning
from a campaign appearance, was killed in a plane crash near
Helena, Lewis and Clark County, Mont., April 8, 1988. Rep. George Thomas Leland (1944-1989) -- also known as Mickey Leland -- of Houston, Harris County, Tex. Democrat. Died in an airplane crash near Gambela, Ethiopia, August 7, 1989. Rep. Larkin I. Smith (1944-1989) Husband of Sheila Smith. U.S. Representative from Mississippi 5th District, 1989. Died in an airplane crash, August 13, 1989. Interment at Floral Hills Cemetery, Gulfport, Miss. Senator Henry John Heinz III (1938-1991) Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pa. His widow later married John Forbes Kerry. Republican. U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, 1977-91; died in office 1991. Died in the crash of a small plane at Merion, Montgomery County, Pa., April 4, 1991. John Goodwin Tower (1925-1991) of Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Tex.; Dallas, Dallas County, Tex. Republican. Nominated for Secretary of Defense in 1989, but defeated amid allegations of heavy drinking and womanizing. Killed in a plane crash near Brunswick, Glynn County, Ga., April 5, 1991. Gov. George Speaker Mickelson (1941-1993) Son of George Theodore Mickelson. Born January 31, 1941. Republican. Governor of South Dakota, 1987-93. Died in a plane crash, April 19, 1993. Sec. Ronald Harmon Brown (1941-1996). U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Democrat. Killed in a plane crash, during a storm, in Croatia, April 3, 1996. State Rep. Cecil Franklin Weeding (1934-1998) Born in Miles City, Custer County, Mont. Killed in a plane crash near Lodge Pole, Blaine County, Mont., April 6, 1998. Former State Rep. Grover C. Robinson III (c.1944-2000) of Pensacola, Escambia County, Fla. Member of Florida state house of representatives, 1972-84. Died in a helicopter crash at Lake Manapouri, New Zealand, March 28, 2000 Former State Sen. Thomas Allgood, Sr. (c.1929-2000) Born in Augusta, Richmond County, Ga. Lawyer; member of Georgia state senate, 1977-91. Killed in the crash of a single-engine airplane, during takeoff from Daniel Field, Augusta, Richmond County, Ga., August 4, 2000. Former state rep. Charles B. Yates (c.1939-2000) of Edgewater Park, Burlington County, N.J. Democrat. Member of New Jersey state senate, 1978-82. Killed, along with his family, in the crash of a small plane he was piloting, near Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Mass., October 6, 2000. Gov. Melvin Eugene Carnahan (1934-2000) -- also known as Mel Carnahan -- of Rolla, Phelps County, Mo. Democrat. Died, in a plane crash while running for U.S. Senator, October 16, 2000. Interment at Carson Hill Cemetery, Near Ellsinore, Carter County, Mo. Jasper Baxter (c.1956-2001) of Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pa. Democrat. Twice a candidate for Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Was conducting a seminar on the 93rd floor of 2 World Trade Center, when an airliner hijacked by terrorists was deliberately crashed into the building, causing an explosion, fire, and collapse of the structure, killing thousands, in New York, New York County, N.Y., September 11, 2001 FEBURARY 2001 DÉJÀ VU [In Florida, unlike the case of TWA 800, a witness who saw what appeared to be a missile shooting down a plane is put on the stand by the government, rather than being dismissed as deluded] SUN SENTINEL: At first, it looked like a flare in the sky on a clear afternoon in the Florida Straits. It was only after a second plane exploded in a ball of fire that a cruise ship officer realized he was witnessing a missile attack by a Cuban MiG back in 1996. Bjorn Johansen testified at the trial of five reputed Cuban spies, recounting his view of the deadly shooting of two planes flown by a Miami-based Cuban exile group. Gerardo Hernandez, accused leader of the Wasp Network spy ring, faces a possible life prison term if convicted of sending crucial information to Cuba about the operation of the group Brothers to the Rescue before the shoot down, which killed all four fliers in the group's two planes. "Basically, I saw something I thought looked like a flare, and I saw some relatively big pieces fall from the sky," Johansen, the first officer of the cruise ship The Majesty of the Seas, said of the first plane. The Majesty of the Seas was six to seven miles from a fishing boat in the midst of falling debris from the first plane, Johansen testified. He heard nothing, but the falling wreckage convinced him he wasn't seeing a flare. Six minutes later, he saw a small plane, a jet fighter, a missile, an explosion, more falling material and a 30-second fire on the water. SUN SENTINEL MAY 2000 SUNDAY HERALD, SCOTLAND: A FORMER CIA agent who claims Libya is not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing is being gagged by the US government under state secrecy laws and faces 10 years in prison if he reveals any information about the terrorist attack. United Nations diplomats are outraged that the US government is apparently suppressing a potential key trial witness. Diplomats are now demanding that the CIA agent, Dr. Richard Fuisz, be released from the gagging order. Fuisz, a multi-millionaire businessman and pharmaceutical researcher, was, according to US intelligence sources, the CIA's key operative in the Syrian capital Damascus during the 1980s where he also had business interests. One month before a court order was served on him by the US government gagging him from speaking on the grounds of national security, he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer, telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie bombers and claiming they were not Libyan. Lindauer, shocked by Fuisz's claims, immediately compiled notes on the meeting which formed the basis of a later sworn affidavit detailing Fuisz's claims. One month after their conversation, in October 1994, a court in Washington DC issued an order barring him from revealing any information on the grounds of "military and state secrets privilege". When contacted by the Sunday Herald ht, Fuisz said when asked if he was a CIA agent in Syria in the 1980s: "That is not an issue I can confirm or deny. I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can't even explain to you why I can't speak about these issues." . . . Fuisz's statements to Lindauer support the claims of the two Libyan accused who are to incriminate a number of terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which had strong links to Syria and Iran. SUNDAY HERALD, SCOTLAND: THE two Libyans accused of downing Pan Am 103 could not have planted the bomb, according to a devastating scientific report submitted by one of the Crown's star witnesses. The report threw the prosecution case into disarray and forced the adjournment of the Lockerbie trial on Thursday for 12 days. The report concludes that the Semtex bomb was attached to the inside of the aircraft in the cargo hold and was not concealed, as the prosecution case alleges, within a cassette player packed into a suitcase which was stored within a luggage container in the cargo hold . . . Senior Crown Office sources have admitted to the Sunday Herald that the report submitted to the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, just days before the trial started provided such startling new evidence that the prosecution had no alternative but to seek an adjournment to consider the future of the trial. In a stunning own goal for the prosecution, Edwin Bollier, who is listed as prosecution witness number 548, delivered a detailed analysis of the explosion to the Lord Advocate, claiming the Crown's version of the bombing was scientifically impossible. APRIL 2000 UNSOLVED MYSTERIES SUNDAY HERALD, SCOTLAND: The Pan Am baggage handler who was in charge of loading luggage onto Flight 103 has admitted for the first time that he knew US intelligence agencies used the airline to smuggle drugs and that their covert operation could have been penetrated by terrorists who planted the bomb on board Flight 103. The claims made on the eve of the Lockerbie trial by Roland O'Neill, from Frankfurt, could throw allegations that Libya was behind the bombing into complete disarray . . . O'Neill's admissions back up long held suspicions that Palestinian terrorists operating in Germany were behind the bombing. The extremists, it is claimed, penetrated the US drugs operation and swapped a bag containing drugs on the flight bound for America for a bag carrying Semtex. On the eve of the Lockerbie trial, O'Neill invited the Sunday Herald yesterday to his Frankfurt home because he wanted to explain how he has been tormented for the last 12 years by the fear that he could have unwittingly placed the explosives on board the aircraft. O'Neill was told for the first time yesterday by the Sunday Herald that he had failed four key questions during a lie detector test investigating his role in the Lockerbie bombing. The result of the test pointed towards O'Neill being the man who ordered that the bomb be placed on the plane. O'Neill insisted that he did not lie in the polygraph but he did admit that he knew the Drug Enforcement Agency - an arm of US intelligence - was using Frankfurt as a route to smuggle heroin into America as part of a secret plan to finance the freeing of US hostages in Beirut. MLK DEATH FIGURE DIES MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL: The former Memphis cafe owner who claimed to have hired the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has died in Union City, Tenn. Loyd Jowers, 73, who was found liable along with other "unknown conspirators'' in King's 1968 assassination by a Shelby County Circuit Court jury last December, died at the Baptist Memorial Hospital Saturday after lapsing into a coma . . . Jowers ran the bar and grill near the Lorraine Motel and said he hired King's assassin - but not James Earl Ray - at the request of a local produce dealer with ties to a New Orleans Mafia don. Jowers refused to say more without a grant of immunity from prosecutors. Jowers's version of events figured prominently in Ray's lawyer William Pepper's book Orders to Kill, which set forth a massive conspiracy involving the FBI, local police, military intelligence and organized crime. That account caught the attention of the King family who were persuaded that it was true. King's younger son, Dexter, subsequently visited Ray in prison, embraced him and announced that he and his family believed Ray was innocent. . . . A month before Ray pleaded guilty in early 1969, after being held for weeks in a specially prepared jail cell, a waitress from Jim's Grill stepped forward with information that Jowers as involved in the murder and had found a gun behind the cafe. The waitress later told authorities she'd been paid to make up the story. In December 1993, Jowers told ABC news reporter Sam Donaldson in a nationally televised interview that he received $100,000 from the late Frank C. Liberto, a Memphis produce merchant, to arrange King's murder. The FBI had investigated and discounted in 1968 a tip involving Liberto. A congressional committee re-examining King's murder a decade later found that Ray shot King and that there was nothing to allegations involving Liberto. It said that while the FBI had clearly violated his rights, neither it nor any other government agency was involved in the murder. The Associated Press reports that only about one in eight Americans believe James Earl Ray was solely responsible for the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. There has thus
far been no call by the media for law enforcement officers to
heed the results by reopening their investigations. AUG 2000 AIRWISE NEWS: The head of the Egyptian pilots' federation yesterday accused US investigators of withholding key evidence in the crash of Egyptair Flight 990 off the US coast last October, according to Reuters. Walid Murad called for the release of radar images and the evidence of two pilots who said they saw missiles in the area where the plane went down, killing all 217 people on board. He told reporters that US investigators said they were denying access to the radar images because they contained military secrets. "This is a weak excuse," he said . . . Egyptair flight 990, headed for Cairo from New York, suddenly plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on October 31. Information from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders led to assertions by some US investigators that relief co-pilot Gamil al-Batouti deliberately caused the crash. Egyptian officials have rejected that line of inquiry and worked on a theory that the plane's elevator panels on the tail, which control whether the nose points up or down, may have jammed. Murad said the Egyptian pilot's federation demanded the recovery of the remaining parts of the aircraft and the completion of an investigation to determine whether there were technical problems in the tail section. EARLIER REUTERS: The chief pilot of EgyptAir believes a bomb or missile downed the national carrier's Flight 990 by blasting off the aircraft's tail. Tarek Selim rejected theories that a suicidal pilot or mechanical glitch caused last month's crash off the U.S. East Coast. "There are two possibilities that would cause the tail unit to split off. Either a bomb was attached to the tail or it was hit by a missile," Selim told the state-owned Al-Ahram English-language weekly before heading off to New York to join Egyptian crash experts. "I flew the Boeing 767, which is one of the best aircraft, for 12 years without any major problems," he said. "Any problem, and I mean any problem, apart from an explosion, can be handled and the plane will remain under control . . . In case of a serious emergency, all the pilot has to do is say 'Mayday' and the distress call will be heard by all airports ... but they did not have the chance to utter this word." ETHNIC FORENSICS FOX NEWS: The expression apparently uttered by [EgyptAir's] relief pilot was, "Tawakilt ala Allah," which is a common phrase that can mean, "I put my faith in God," or "I entrust myself to God." In the Arab world, the phrase is used often, especially at the start of a journey or a task. It can be used by someone about to begin something as simple as cooking a meal. Intelligence officials said that the phrase has no known connection to any political or terrorist groups. In the Egyptian scenario, the co-pilot's comment could have been a worried response to some as-yet undetermined mechanical breakdown that a few seconds later caused him to disengage the autopilot. The Egyptians said that the pilot's urgent words to his co-pilot, "What's going on?" could have referred to his concern over the same undetermined problem. FEEDBACK FROM KARI ANN: The entire text in English translation of the Egyptian pilot's words were broadcast on one of the network news programs last evening. The words of the pilot, May Allah protect and comfort him, are the words of witness to the faith of Islam, the Shahadah, which converts take when they become Muslims. "I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger." I know, because I took this oath in June 1997, and I love and respect Islam. As for suicide, it is strictly forbidden by Islam, as it is also by Roman Catholicism. However, clinical depression can rear its head in any unfortunate person's mind. But the gentleman in question was apparently a very intelligent, sensitive man who took his daughter from Egypt to America for health treatments, and was almost certainly conscientious enough to take care of himself. [Says Ibrahim Hooper, of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, "The mere utterance
of this kind of phrase would in no way indicates criminal behavior
or criminal intent . . . If the inference was by a Christian
pilot who said, 'God help me,' we wouldn't even have this conversation."] OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING2007 NEW LIGHT ON OKLAHOMA CITY DEMOCRACY NOW - A Salt Lake City lawyer searching for the truth behind his brother's death has uncovered a wealth of new information that could implicate the FBI in the Oklahoma City bombings. The documents he dug up suggest the FBI knew about the plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in advance but did little to prevent it. Jesse Trentadue's brother Kenney Trentadue was found dead in his prison cell in Oklahoma City in August 1995. The FBI calls it a suicide, but Jesse maintains Kenney was beaten to death during an interrogation. Jesse believes the FBI mistook his brother for the missing second suspect in the Oklahoma City bombings - the so-called "John Doe #2." His research also suggests that the bombing was not the work of one or two men, but involved a wider network connected to the far-right white supremacist movement. INTERVIEW WITH JESSE TRENTADUE AND JOURNALIST
JAMES RIDGEWAY JAMES RIDGEWAY, MOTHER JONES - Jesse believes that McVeigh's contact was [Andreas] Strassmeir, a fixture in many Oklahoma City theories. There has been much speculation, aired most recently on the BBC show Conspiracy Files this year, that Strassmeir had ties to U.S. and German intelligence and might (along with his government contacts) have had advance knowledge of the plot. In February 2007, Jesse filed a declaration in court signed by Nichols stating, "McVeigh said that Strassmeir would provide a 'safe house' if necessary. McVeigh...said that Strassmeir was 'head of security at some backwoods place in Oklahoma.'" Strassmeir left the country in early 1996; he was later questioned on the phone by the FBI. Kirk Lyons, Strassmeir's U.S. attorney, who has defended a number of far-right figures over the years, says the reality is far simpler; Strassmeir came to the United States to take part in Civil War reenactments, liked it here, and, hoping to find a bride, ended up at Elohim City. Lyons insists that Strassmeir was never a spy, except in the minds of conspiracy theorists. ("These silly right-wingers think I am Mossad," he says. "I've given up arguing with these nutsy cuckoos.") Reached at his home in Berlin, Strassmeir told me that he met McVeigh once, at a gun show in 1993, but that they never spoke again. He said he had no intelligence affiliations and had no clues to the Oklahoma City attack before it happened; but there were definitely informants at Elohim City, he added, and sometimes surveillance planes flew overhead - probably, he thought, to check out the marijuana fields that "some of the rednecks" had planted. . . The oklahoma City bombing prefigured 9/11 in many ways. There were the missed clues; the federal informant who actually had contact with the conspirators; the turf-conscious agencies failing to share and act on vital information; and in general, a domestic-intelligence program incapable of translating surveillance into action. Just as they would misunderstand the nature of Al Qaeda, the FBI and other agencies never viewed the far right as a political movement with the strategic and tactical ability to deliver a major attack. Intelligence on these groups suffered from the broader inadequacies of domestic intelligence, especially in the use of untested freelance informants recruited under threat of prosecution. But with federal police forces and the Justice Department responsible for policing themselves, and the details of their work often shrouded in secrecy, the system remained unaccountable. The bombing "grew out of a definable social movement the authorities didn't understand," says Leonard Zeskind, a researcher who has tracked the far right for more than 30 years. "It went unsolved because of the character and gross mismanagement of the investigation. It was an outrageous crime, and the size of the crime magnifies the level of incompetence.". . . TERRY NICHOLS CLAIMS FBI OFFICIAL 'APPARENTLY; INVOLVED IN 0KC BOMBING SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, 2007 - Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah. The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government "in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma," Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit. Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment. Nichols does not say what motive the government would have to be involved in the bombing. The affidavit was filed in a lawsuit brought by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes his brother's death in a federal prison was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. The suit, which seeks documents from the FBI under the federal Freedom of Information Act, alleges that authorities mistook Kenneth Trentadue for a bombing conspirator and that guards killed him in an interrogation that got out of hand. Trentadue's death a few months after the April 19, 1995, bombing was ruled a suicide after several investigations. The government has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in the death. In his affidavit, Nichols says he wants to bring closure to the survivors and families of the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which took 168 lives. He alleges he wrote then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, offering to help identify all parties who played a role in the bombing but never got a reply. . . McVeigh and Nichols were the only defendants indicted in the bombing. However, Nichols alleges others were involved. McVeigh told him he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to Nichols. He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in the bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that. "There, in what I believe was an accidental slip of the tongue, McVeigh revealed the identity of a high-ranking FBI official who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb plot," Nichols says in the affidavit. . . In addition, Nichols says McVeigh must have had help building the bomb. The device he and McVeigh built the day before the bombing did not resemble the one that ultimately was used, Nichols says, and "displayed a level of expertise and sophistication" that neither man had. pmanson@sltrib.com http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5271117 CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY BLASTS OKLAHOMA CITY INVESTIGATION AP, 2006 - The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes. The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but that far too many unanswered questions remain. The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators. . . Mr. Rohrabacher's subcommittee
saved its sharpest words for the Justice The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 persons in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061224-101116-3060r.htm VIDEO COULD SHOW MCVEIGH HAD ACCOMPLICES JOHN SOLOMON, ASSOCIATED PRESS - A Secret Service document written shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing described security video footage of the attack and witness testimony that suggested Timothy McVeigh may have had accomplices at the scene. ``Security video tapes from the area show the truck detonation 3 minutes and 6 seconds after the suspects exited the truck,'' the Secret Service reported six days after the attack on a log of agents' activities and evidence in the Oklahoma investigation. The government has insisted McVeigh drove the truck himself and that it never had any video of the bombing or the scene of the Alfred P. Murrah building in the minutes before the April 19, 1995, explosion. Several investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated Press they had never seen video footage like that described in the Secret Service log. The document, if accurate, is either significant evidence kept secret for nine years or a misconstrued recounting of investigative leads that were often passed by word of mouth during the hectic early days of the case, they said. ``I did not see it,'' said Danny Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who ran the Oklahoma City probe. ``If it shows what it says, then it would be significant.'' 4/04 FBI TRIED, AND FAILED, TO INTERVIEW MCVEIGH ON DEATH ROW JOHN SOLOMON, ASSOCIATED PRESS - In a drama played out behind closed doors, senior FBI agents unsuccessfully sought permission in 2001 to interview Timothy McVeigh to resolve lingering questions about the case before the convicted Oklahoma City bomber was put to death, officials say. The agents wanted to clear up uncertainties about McVeigh's whereabouts on specific dates that were left unanswered by his public statements and the evidence, essentially filling in gaps in his timeline before the bombing, the officials told The Associated Press. The plan was scrapped when the government couldn't resolve who would attend the interview or how it would be conducted. Officials also became distracted by the belated discovery of some 4,000 pages of documents that had not been turned over to McVeigh's defense during his trial... The interview debate was described by several current and former officials. They said it showed the government didn't know everything it wanted about McVeigh before he was put to death. BOOK RECITES MCVEIGH'S SECRETS ALLEGEDLY TOLD TO FELLOW INMATE MCCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE- (Editor's note: David Paul Hammer, an inmate on federal death row, provided a manuscript to this newspaper several months ago with the agreement we would not publish excerpts from it without his permission. Last week Hammer authorized us to release details of his manuscript, saying he expects a book to be published soon and his death sentence to be carried out next year at Terre Haute, Ind.) J.D. CASH - A death row inmate
who had extensive contacts with convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh
over a 23-month period has completed a manuscript that includes
details of many heretofore unpublished secrets he claims McVeigh
passed to him before his death by lethal injection on June 11,
2001.. . . Hammer's manuscript is completely at odds with the
official version of events the FBI has put forward to explain
the Oklahoma City bombing. It is also much different from the
version McVeigh provided two reporters from his hometown newspaper
who later wrote the book American Terrorist. In that book, McVeigh
took credit for much of the crime. The manuscript provided this
newspaper details a wide array of conspirators who formed a cell
of revolutionaries that McVeigh told Hammer helped build and
deliver the truck bomb that killed 168 men, women and children
in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. . . "Strassmeir, who not only ran security for the Reverend Millar but (was) also the community's firearms and paramilitary instructor, escorted Tim on a tour of the compound. A short time later, a meeting was convened to discuss a "direct action against the federal government." Those in attendance included McVeigh, Nichols, Strassmeir, Richard Guthrie and Pete Langan. McVeigh and Strassmeir emerged as leaders at this meeting, where vague ideas of retaliation were discussed. McVeigh's goal was simple, to plant a seed. A mission would be developed, but for now it was left at ... "we need to raise money; select a suitable target ... plan and act.". . . While Hammer's detailed manuscript contains considerable attention to dates and locations he says McVeigh provided him, it also includes references to three men that the inmate says McVeigh told him were central to the conspiracy - men with close ties to the U.S. military. Unfortunately, McVeigh, Hammer writes, went to his death claiming he did not know the true identities of these men - only their code names. The role these men played, according to McVeigh's account, was the strangest and most difficult part of the tale to establish with independent evidence. One of these men, McVeigh claims, contacted him shortly after his discharge from the army. Referring to him only "the major," McVeigh said he was invited to work with the shadowy figure during a meeting the two had at Camp McCall. Camp McCall is located on the grounds of Fort Bragg, N.C. At this meeting, McVeigh - who was still smoldering after being passed over for a spot in the elite Army Special Forces - was told of an off-budget defense department project the Major wanted to invite him to join. The Major said McVeigh would be involved in gathering intelligence for the government on members of the radical rightwing in the U.S., specifically members of the KKK and Aryan Nations. Hammer wrote that McVeigh told him he was aware of the far-right's methods of robbing banks and armored cars for the so-called "cause" - the shorthand description of the white power agenda some in the most violent wing of the movement adhered to. It was these tactics, McVeigh said, that he was also encouraged to use. Within a matter of months of the '93 Elohim City meeting, Guthrie, Langan and McVeigh were robbing banks and gathering explosives and a vast arsenal of weapons. BOOK RECITES MCVEIGH'S SECRETS ALLEGEDLY TOLD TO FELLOW INMATE MCCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE- (Editor's note: David Paul Hammer, an inmate on federal death row, provided a manuscript to this newspaper several months ago with the agreement we would not publish excerpts from it without his permission. Last week Hammer authorized us to release details of his manuscript, saying he expects a book to be published soon and his death sentence to be carried out next year at Terre Haute, Ind.) J.D. CASH - A death row inmate
who had extensive contacts with convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh
over a 23-month period has completed a manuscript that includes
details of many heretofore unpublished secrets he claims McVeigh
passed to him before his death by lethal injection on June 11,
2001.. . . Hammer's manuscript is completely at odds with the
official version of events the FBI has put forward to explain
the Oklahoma City bombing. It is also much different from the
version McVeigh provided two reporters from his hometown newspaper
who later wrote the book American Terrorist. In that book, McVeigh
took credit for much of the crime. The manuscript provided this
newspaper details a wide array of conspirators who formed a cell
of revolutionaries that McVeigh told Hammer helped build and
deliver the truck bomb that killed 168 men, women and children
in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. . . "Strassmeir, who not only ran security for the Reverend Millar but (was) also the community's firearms and paramilitary instructor, escorted Tim on a tour of the compound. A short time later, a meeting was convened to discuss a "direct action against the federal government." Those in attendance included McVeigh, Nichols, Strassmeir, Richard Guthrie and Pete Langan. McVeigh and Strassmeir emerged as leaders at this meeting, where vague ideas of retaliation were discussed. McVeigh's goal was simple, to plant a seed. A mission would be developed, but for now it was left at ... "we need to raise money; select a suitable target ... plan and act.". . . While Hammer's detailed manuscript contains considerable attention to dates and locations he says McVeigh provided him, it also includes references to three men that the inmate says McVeigh told him were central to the conspiracy - men with close ties to the U.S. military. Unfortunately, McVeigh, Hammer writes, went to his death claiming he did not know the true identities of these men - only their code names. The role these men played, according to McVeigh's account, was the strangest and most difficult part of the tale to establish with independent evidence. One of these men, McVeigh claims, contacted him shortly after his discharge from the army. Referring to him only "the major," McVeigh said he was invited to work with the shadowy figure during a meeting the two had at Camp McCall. Camp McCall is located on the grounds of Fort Bragg, N.C. At this meeting, McVeigh - who was still smoldering after being passed over for a spot in the elite Army Special Forces - was told of an off-budget defense department project the Major wanted to invite him to join. The Major said McVeigh would be involved in gathering intelligence for the government on members of the radical rightwing in the U.S., specifically members of the KKK and Aryan Nations. Hammer wrote that McVeigh told him he was aware of the far-right's methods of robbing banks and armored cars for the so-called "cause" - the shorthand description of the white power agenda some in the most violent wing of the movement adhered to. It was these tactics, McVeigh said, that he was also encouraged to use. Within a matter of months of the '93 Elohim City meeting, Guthrie, Langan and McVeigh were robbing banks and gathering explosives and a vast arsenal of weapons. FBI, ATF KNEW OF SUPREMACISTS' DESIRES TO ATTACK OKC, BUT NEVER WARNED LOCAL OFFICIALSFBI DESTROYED POSSIBLE MCVEIGH EVIDENCE DECEMBER 2001J.D. CASH, MCCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE - A hotel record obtained by the McCurtain Daily Gazette indicates the director of the FBI's Terrorist Task Force and founding commander of the Hostage Rescue Team, Danny Coulson, checked into a hotel in Oklahoma City - hours before terrorists struck the Murrah building on April 19, 1995. Additional evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request notes the FBI sleuth was in Oklahoma City as part of a secret project set up by former Attorney General Janet Reno. Known only to a handful of agents in the Criminal Division of the FBI, Reno had months earlier ordered the FBI to form a special task force to gather intelligence on suspected terrorists operating inside a myriad of America's so-called right-wing religious and militia groups . . . Since the bombing, officials at the Department of Justice have repeatedly assured victims that the FBI had no advance knowledge of any plot to bomb the Murrah federal building. Thus, evidence of the pre-bombing arrival of the FBI's Terrorism Task Force - ahead of the terrorists - would be a monumental disaster for an agency whipsawed by scandals last year after the discovery of thousands of pages of eyewitness statements that had not been released to bomber Timothy McVeigh's attorneys in the same case . . . The Embassy Hotel receipt - submitted by the FBI's "top gun" in the agency's long running war against terrorists - belies statements recorded in his book, No Heroes: Inside the FBI's Secret Counter-Terror Force, co-authored with Time Magazine's Elaine Shannon. Published in May of 1999, Coulson wrote that he was in Fort Worth the morning of the 19th, when the bombing occurred in Oklahoma City. He said he and his wife were down in the Lone Star state, house-hunting and staying with friends . . . On the 19th, Coulson noted on his travel records that his investigation in Oklahoma City was related to "MC-111." Several days later, Coulson's voucher indicated his assignment in Oklahoma was "MC-117" - the official FBI case number assigned to the bombing of the federal building. The Gazette learned that FBI MC-111 (MC stands for "major case") evolved from VAAPCON - a project Reno started in 1994. At Reno's instruction, the FBI began gathering intelligence on right-wing religious groups and cults that espoused the same hate rhetoric found at Pastor Butler's Aryan Nations in Idaho and at Christian Identity enclave Elohim City in Oklahoma. But critics charge that in practice, Reno and the FBI took the project much further - gathering a vast database of intelligence on people active in the anti-abortion movement with absolutely no history of criminality. Reno said she suspected some of these groups were doing more than preaching racial separatism and anti-abortion politics. She told senior FBI agents to look into the possibility that a conspiracy was at work inside the so-called Christian-right movement in America, a conspiracy possibly linked to the surprising growth of the armed militia movement . . . Deep inside the bowels of the Criminal Division of the FBI during this period, VAAPCON was reportedly not well received. Some agents questioned whether it went beyond constitutional bounds in spying on citizens just because of their religious affiliations or stated beliefs. JIM McLEAN, HERALD, SCOTLAND: Gore Vidal, the commentator and author, said yesterday he had seen evidence which proved that at least five FBI undercover agents knew about the Oklahoma bomb before it went off, killing 168 people. But the FBI opted not to prevent the blast to protect their identities and maintain their deep-throat infiltration of militia groups, he claims. The federal building in Oklahoma was destroyed on April 19, 1995. Vidal made his allegations yesterday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, sponsored by The Herald. His allegations strike at the core of the US government, the role of the security services and the decision to execute Timothy McVeigh after revelations that his lawyers had been denied access to 4000 FBI documents on the case. Several critics of the execution believe McVeigh did not act alone. Vidal, 75, believes McVeigh was involved in the bombing, but had accomplices in carrying out the most serious act of terrorism and mass murder so far in the US. He identified "a researcher" as his source for the allegations of FBI compliance in the bombing. Vidal revealed: "He knows at least five of the people who were involved in the making of the bomb and its detonation. It may well be that McVeigh did not do it. He was involved. JULY 2001 JON DOUGHERTY, WORLD NET DAILY: The U.S. district judge who presided over both Oklahoma City bombing trials never read a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms informant's file that could have provided jurors with important information about others allegedly involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building April 19, 1995. According to a recently unsealed transcript of a closed-door session between U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch, attorneys for the Justice Department and attorneys for Terry Nichols, Matsch admitted that he had received ATF informant Carol Howe's sensitive informant file months earlier but never read it, in the waning days of Nichols' trial in Denver, Colo . . . Howe, a paid ATF informant, had reported to her handler, Special Agent Angela Finley, that a plot to stage violence against the U.S. government was being devised by members of a racist community called Elohim City, in northeastern Oklahoma, months before the Murrah attack. The information was contained in Howe's ATF informant file, which was kept secret by the agency and maintained by members of the Tulsa ATF office. MORE JUNE 2001 Sgt. McVeigh was an outstanding soldier. He did what he was told, anticipated what had to be done [and] took pride in his work. - Capt. Jesus Angel Rodriguez, McVeigh's commanding officer during the Gulf War, testifying at his sentencing hearing The Oklahoma City police and the FBI have confirmed there is another bomb in the Federal Building. It's in the east side of the building. They've moved everybody back several blocks. - Suzanne Sealy, CNN, April 19, 1995 Hours after a bomb ripped apart the federal building, some rescue workers were stopped from searching for survivors while federal officials removed boxes of documents. "You'd think they would have let their evidence and files sit at least until the last survivor was pulled out," one angry rescue worker told The News. The worker and a firefighter said that 10 to 12 hours after the 9 a.m. blast April 19, federal officials began limiting the number of rescue workers in the building to a dozen, confining them largely to the lower right side of the battered structure. - NY DAILY NEWS An internal FBI memo indicates FBI agents suspended their search for the elusive Oklahoma City bomb suspect John Doe No. 2 in the critical weeks soon after the April 1995 blast, belying assurances by federal officials at the time that the search was continuing. The memo, the existence of which is publicly disclosed for the first time here, undercuts the government contention that federal agents have done everything they can to find the mystery suspect . . . In the memo, San Francisco-based FBI agent Thomas Ravenelle writes that he's discontinuing efforts to investigate a lead relating to attempts to find and identify John Doe No. 2 "in view of the fact that the Oklahoma City Command Post has directed all offices to hold [John Doe No. 2] leads in abeyance." - Digital City, Denver BRASS CHECK MAY 2001 TELEGRAPH, LONDON: One of the missing FBI documents in the Timothy McVeigh trial, the discovery of which caused postponement of the Oklahoma bomber's execution, points to a possible second bomber, according to reports. If this evidence is confirmed, it will prove to be a huge embarrassment to John Ashcroft, the Attorney-General, and to the FBI, which has stated repeatedly that McVeigh acted alone. Mr. Ashcroft said last week that he was certain none of the documents handed over only days before McVeigh's scheduled execution on May 16 linked anyone else to the crime. A so-called "lead sheet", an FBI record of an eyewitness report, supports claims that a witness called the FBI two days after the bombing, which killed 168 people, to say he had seen McVeigh with another man in a car park near the federal building in Oklahoma City an hour before it was bombed. One witness at the trial, Morris John Kuper Jr., said he saw two men answering the descriptions of McVeigh and of a second, unidentified man known as "John Doe No 2.” MORE http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000118613908976&rtmo=a5KKqJhJ&atmo=rrrrrrrq &pg=/et/01/5/28/wmcv28.html ANDREW GUMBEL,
INDEPENDENT, LONDON: For six years, there have been suspicions
that Timothy McVeigh did not act alone when he bombed the federal
building in Oklahoma City. Today, The Independent reveals he
was part of an underground network of white-supremacist guerrillas
dedicated to the overthrow of the American government, and explains
how the group kept its role hidden for so long. Known as the
Aryan Republican Army, the network came to light five years ago
when its leaders were arrested for 22 bank robberies committed
across the Midwest from late 1993 until several months after
the April 1995 bombing. They were prosecuted and imprisoned for
the robberies, but their links to the Oklahoma bomb never came
out in court . . . It is now believed the ARA financed and helped
to stage the bombing, the worst peacetime atrocity on US soil,
which claimed 168 lives including 19 children. There is also
evidence that McVeigh, who faces death by lethal injection at
a US penitentiary in Indiana next Wednesday, was part of the
robbery gang and participated in at least the planning stage
of some of the hold-ups. The Independent's Review section today
demolishes the theory that McVeigh was alone in Oklahoma City
on the morning of the bombing. It shows why many of the claims
made by McVeigh in a series of interviews for the recently published
book, 'American Terrorist,' do not stand up to scrutiny. It also
explains why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and government
prosecutors gave up their efforts to find his accomplices . .
. The links between the ARA and McVeigh were established in 1993
and continued regularly until the time of the bombing. All of
them led frantically itinerant lifestyles, driving cross-country
and staying in motels under assumed names, but on several occasions
were in the same place at the same time on similar business.
In January 1995, all of them abruptly left Kansas for a six-week
stint in Arizona where there is evidence that a trial fertilizer
bomb was exploded in the desert. The ARA developed the notion
of "leaderless resistance", a cell-based guerrilla
structure in which individual members knew next to nothing about
each other. Operating out of a safe-house in eastern Kansas,
it also developed contacts with various far-right groups including
a white supremacist religious compound in Oklahoma, Elohim City,
which has long been suspected of involvement in the bombing.
STORY
1 | STORY
2 JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE: The FBI's belated disclosure comes at a time when Louis Freeh is stepping down as head of the FBI, and after both Clinton and Reno have left office. While the FBI says the papers are insignificant, press reports claim they involved the government's questioning of witnesses about a John Doe No. 2, an unknown person the government originally thought was involved in the plot. These documents may not help McVeigh, but they almost surely will affect Terry Nichols's case, perhaps even leading to a new trial. Nichols is in jail for life on federal offenses and is awaiting prosecution in Oklahoma that could end with a death sentence. ANDREW GUMBEL & MARY DEJEVSKY, INDEPENDENT, LONDON: Timothy McVeigh deliberately encouraged newspaper stories about his guilt in the Oklahoma City bombing from the earliest days of his case to deflect attention from other possible suspects, a new book by his trial lawyer shows. According to Stephen Jones, who represented McVeigh until his sentencing in 1997 and now feels unrestrained by any lawyer-client confidentiality, his client's strategy was always to be the focus of as much public indignation as possible so the world would believe he was some kind of demon terrorist mastermind who acted alone. "If no one else is arrested or convicted," Mr. Jones quotes McVeigh as telling him, "then the revolution can continue." As early as May 1995, less than one month after the bombing that ripped apart the federal government office building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, The New York Times reported that McVeigh had confessed his guilt to at least two people. At the time the assumption was that he had said too much to his cell mates. But the new book reveals that it was Mr Jones himself who briefed The New York Times ­ at the express instruction of his client. The second person cited in the article was another member of the defense team. JENNIFER BROWN, AP: Kathy Graham Wilburn has spent six years finding out as much as she can about Timothy McVeigh, the man who murdered her grandsons in the Oklahoma City bombing. Wilburn is using her research to help a film company make a documentary, A Cry for Justice: The Untold Story Behind the Oklahoma City Bombing, that contends the attack was the work of a wider conspiracy. The documentary is due for release after McVeigh's execution on May 16 . . . The documentary says McVeigh and Nichols had help from a right-wing network. It includes interviews with bombing survivors, witnesses, FBI officials and former right-wing terrorists . . . Wilburn believes four or five men helped McVeigh and Nichols plan and finance the bombing, even accompany McVeigh to Oklahoma City. She thinks the plot was hatched in Elohim City, a right-wing compound in Oklahoma. It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil... no matter how much was used... to bring the building down... The damage could not have resulted from a van parked outside. I don't care how fancy an explosive was used. What did in that building... was an inside job... I believe that demolition charges in the building placed at certain key concrete columns is the primary damage to the Murrah Federal Building." - Samuel Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb The FBI is confirming that there is another bomb in the building... They are warning everyone to get as far back as they can. They are trying to get the bomb defused right now...LATER: The second explosive was found and defused. The third explosive was found and they are working on it as we speak. I understand the second and third bombs were larger than the first. - - KFOR, Oklahoma City, on the day of the blast. These oft broadcast accounts were later dismissed as errors. For a simplistic blast truck-bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A-7 is beyond credulity. - General Benton K. Partin, US Air Force (ret) Former head of the Air Force's conventional weapon's R&D Lab General Partin's assessment is absolutely correct. I don't care if they pulled up a semi-trailer truck with 20 tons of ammonium-nitrate; it wouldn't do the damage we saw there. - Dr. Roger Raubach, physical chemist formerly on the Stanford University faculty The Partin letter states in very precise technical terms what everyone in the business knows: No truck bomb of ANFO out in the open is going to cause the kind of damage we had there in Oklahoma City. In 30 years of blasting, using everything from 100 percent nitrogel to ANFO, I've not seen anything to support that story." - Sam Gronning, a licensed, professional blaster based in Casper, Wyoming. Agricultural fertilizer prills when made into an ANFO device had very poor explosive characteristics. They would not detonate efficiently because of their high density, lack of porosity and heavy inert coatings of anti-setting agents. - Altas Powder (supplier to professional blasters) The grade of ammonium-nitrate used in the manufacture of binary explosives is required to be at least 99% pure, contain not more that 1.15% moisture, and have a maximum ether-soluble, water-insoluble acidity, sulfate, and chloride contents of 0.10, 0.18, 0.02, and 0.50 percent, respectively. - U.S. Army Technical Manual TM 9-1910 ANFO is easy to make if you know how to do it but it takes years of experience to work with safely... It is almost impossible for amateurs to properly mix the ammonium-nitrate with the fuel oil. Clumps of ANFO would inevitably fail to detonate." - Jeffrey Dean, Executive Director of the International Society of Explosive Engineers [Senior FBI chemist Frederick] Whitehurst's accusations of bias and even manufactured evidence have called into question several high-profile government cases, including the Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center bombings. - Wall Street Journal 9/19/95 APRIL 1998 SAY AGAIN? In a story concerning the intention of House Judiciary Committee chair Henry Hyde to use an old law allowing his group to looking closely into Justice Department expenditures, The Chicago Tribune said: "Abner Mikva, a former White House counsel, federal judge and Chicago area congressman, said Congress must move cautiously. Justice handles sensitive investigations, from terrorism to organized crime, and many techniques must remain secret." The Trib then quotes Mikva making this extraordinary comment: "If chairman Hyde starts asking about all the dollars they spent in Oklahoma City, that can compromise some very, very delicate information. . How much of that does he really want to get into?" The FBI claims there is no evidence of criminal activity associated with the crash of TWA 800. Which makes you wonder why it told the House Aviation Committee some weeks back that it "is not prepared to share all the information and evidence it has collected." THINGS THE MEDIA FORGOT TO TELL YOU . . . . . . That 475 family members of Oklahoma City bombing have filed lawsuits against the federal government in the incident. One such suit claims that the government "knew or should have known" that the Murrah Building was the target of a bomb attack. Another claims the government possessed "detail prior knowledge of the planned bombing of the Murrah Building yet failed to prevent the bombing from taking place. July 1997 WITNESSES NOT CALLED IN THE OKC BOMBING CASE
The OKC story is far from over. One of those not permitted to testify in the McVeigh trial was a federal government informant named Carol E. Howe. Howe, who was prepared to report a much larger conspiracy based out of a white supremacist center called Elohim Cty, was kept from testifying by Judge Richard Matsch who said her testimony "might confuse the jury." Howe passed a number of lie detector tests while serving as an informant. Elohim City, a 1,000 acre spread in eastern Oklahoma, has not only been headquarters for a mixture of Nazis, drug dealers, and bank robbers, it appears to have enjoyed immunity from federal intervention. According to Howe and others, the compound was also used to help launch the OKC bombing. Instead of testifying, Howe found herself charged with conspiracy associated with bomb threats and possession of bomb-making components. But in a Tulsa courtroom for a pretrial hearing recently, her case took a remarkable turn. According to J. D. Cash of the McCurtain Daily Gazette, who has done some of the best reporting on the bombing, an FBI agent stunned everyone by reluctantly admitting that the Rev. Robert Millar, spiritual leader of Elohim City, was also a government informant. Wrote Cash: "Millar's status as a confidential informant began in the fall of 1994. The FBI admitted in court that Millar was a paid confidential informant, although the amount of his paycheck was not revealed. When [FBI agent] Rickel disclosed this startling information, a senior FBI agent and several US attorneys bolted from the courtroom in an agitated state." May 1997 OKC investigative reporter JD Cash of the McCurtain Daily Gazette reports FBI harassment of defense witnesses in the bombing trial. According to Cash, the FBI grabs defense witnesses as they arrive at the Denver airport, tries to lure them with offers of better hotel and food, etc, and then sequesters away from the defense team. At least one witness says she was forced to change her story after hours of questioning. Cash and others believe the feds are trying to cover up broader involvement in the bombing as well as government foreknowledge of the attack.. April 1997 OKLAHOMA CITY: An Oklahoma state legislator is out raising money to support a petition drive for a county grand jury investigation into the OKC bombing. Charles Key's efforts -- spurred by serious questions as to what the federal government knew about a potential attack and when -- are possible because Oklahoma is one of two states where citizens of a county can impanel a grand jury by successfully ciruclation a petition. Despite strong opposition from the state media and the federal government, the state supreme court has upheld the right to a grand jury. Among the questions Key wants answered: why was not one of the ATF field agents assigned to the buildng present at the time of the blast? March 1997 There is growing evidence that the feds were tipped off to the Oklahoma City bombing before it occurred. Some believe the incident may have been a sting operation that went awry. So unbelievable has the government been in its response to these concerns that more than 30 relatives of those killed in the bombing are suing the federal government for negligence. Among the evidence: six witnesses who saw a bomb squad nearby before the bombing and a warning phone call to the fire department five days earlier. There is also concern about the government's disinterest in the links between accused bomber Timothy McVeigh and a neo-nazi center called Elohim City. Far from investigating, the government has indicted (on unrelated charges) a woman who served as its informant in the neo-nazi operation, and who had allegedly passed on information about plans to attack three federal buildings in Oklahoma. A white supremacist leader, Richard Wayne Snell, who had been involved in an earlier plot to blow up the Murrah building in 1983 and who had been condemned to death in another case, told prison guards that there would be a bombing on the day of his death. He was executed the day the Murrah building was blown up. February 1997 Things not OK in OKCThere is growing evidence that federal authorities had advance warning of a possible bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal office building, but failed to act promptly enough to foil it. Both the McCurtain Daily Gazette, a small award-winning paper in Oklahoma, and 20/20 have raised serious questions about how much was known before the blast. According to J.D.Cash, a reporter for the Gazette, the ATF had informants inside a 1000-acre cult compound in western Arkansas where some of the plans were made for attacks on the OKC and Tulsa federal buildings. The cult believes that its members are the true descendants of the 'lost tribes,' that Jews are impostors and that blacks are 'mud people.' Monthly reports on the planning, says Cash, was provided the Tulsa office of ATF and their informant was subjected to regular polygraph tests. Those involved include at least two persons not yet indicted or named as suspects by the federal government. One of them is a German citizen whose familiy is well connected in German political circles. Says Cash, "there was plenty of evidence of a sting operation that had gone sour. That's what all of this is about." Cash also reports that "two very important and credible witnesses" have said that several ATF employees in the bombed building were told via pagers in advance not to come into the office on the day of the attack and that the OKC fire department also got a warning to expect terrorist activity in the near future. Asks Cash: "What did they know and when did they know it? Did they use this building as bait for a high profile sting operation? I believe they did." There is other astounding evidence floating around OKC. For example, there are witnesses who claim to have seen bomb squad vehicles at the building an hour and a half before the blast, and a private detective who says he saw bomb squad personnel and dogs searching the area around the building a half hour before the explosion. A state legislator's call for a county grand jury investigation has attracted broad support although it has been vehemntly attacked by the Daily Oklahoman and by federal officials. Radio station KTOK asked its listeners what they thought; 90% wanted county grand jury investigation. A recent hearing before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee heard testimony about dozens of alleged suicides of military personnel men in which the military or civilian investigators are charged by family members with having failed to investigate the matter properly and falsely claiming the deaths to be self-inflicted. FEBURARY 1998 BCCI: The scandal With the settlement of civil fraud charges against Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, the puny and often diverted investigation into the American branch of the BCCI scandal effectively comes to an end. Under the deal, the pair will have to surrender $5 million in stock in First American Bankshares, which had been illegally controlled by BCCI as part of the biggest banking scandal in world history. They will, however, get to keep $10-15 million in proceeds obtained during their tenure as First American attorneys. Despite such sums, the Clifford/Altman aspect of the BCCI affair was only a minor part of the story. According to one journalist who investigated BCCI's American operations, up to 100 politicians and lawyers in Washington might be found criminally liable if the case were fully pursued. One reason it wasn't may have been the fact that trails in the case led to both Republicans and Democrats. For example, in 1988, a few days before the supposedly surprise arrest of five BCCI officials, some of the world's most powerful drug dealers quietly withdrew millions of dollars from the bank. Some government investigators believe the dealers were tipped off by sources within the Reagan administration. Again in 1991 the acting US Attorney in Miami found himself rebuffed by the Bush Justice Department in his efforts to indict BCCI and some its principal officers on tax fraud charges. BCCI got its start in the US with the help of Jackson Stephens, then board chair of Worthen Bank in Arkansas, which would later keep Bill Clinton's 1992 primary campaign afloat with a multi-million dollar line of credit. He was described during that campaign by the New York Post as a man who was to "Clinton what Bert Lance was to candidate Jimmy Carter." Stephens first got to know Mochtar Riady -- of Clinton fundraising fame -- in 1977 when Riady was considering buying Bert Lance's interest in the National Bank of Georgia. That year, according to journalist Alexander Cockburn, Stephens "brokered the arrival" of BCCI to this country, and steered BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Lance -- whose bank was eventually taken over by a BCCI front man -- Ghaith Pharaon. Pharaon later sold his bank to First American. Pharaon has been fined $37 million by the Federal Reserve Board and is still a fugitive. Later, Stephens joined Mochtar Riady in the purchase of a BCCI subsidiary in Hong Kong. There are interesting ties wherever you turn in the BCCI matter. For example, former special prosecutor Robert Fiske worked with Robert Bennett, now Clinton's lawyer, on the Altman-Clifford case, as did later Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. The BCCI scandal cheated depositors out of over $10 billion worldwide. Many of these were lower income people now being paid off at 15 and 25 cents on the dollar for damage done by a illegal operation willingly used not only by hundreds of drug dealers and other criminals from various countries but by the intelligence services of five nations (including the CIA) and at least one government, Pakistan, seeking to finance its nuclear weapons development. Things always moved a little too smoothly in the BCCI investigation, leaving scores of unanswered questions and, so far as can be determined, hardly anyone to blame. One exception, Swaleh Naqvi, BCCI's number two man, was given a mild sentence -- over the objections of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. He later told prosecutors that he had never explained to Altman and Clifford who really owned First American. Naqvi's plea bargain with Justice in the major bank fraud appeared to have been what the Wall Street Journal called "sweetheart justice." Said the Journal: "When drugs and money laundering arrive, political corruption cannot be far behind. If we had an explanation of how BCCI got away with its illegal purchase of First American, we could afford to dismiss such ambiguous connections as lawyer-client relationships. But we have no such answer, and are left to speculate why, in the Naqvi plea-bargain, the Justice Department does not seem to be pressing for one." The American media has studiously downplayed the story to the end. The New York Times, for example, put the Altman-Clifford settlement on its business page. BECOME A BUNCH From a 2/15 AP dispatch from Corpus Christi: "It was a scary sight to some South Texas residents: Black helicopters [sic] swooped in and dropped helmeted soldiers into the downtown area, even causing a fire in Kingsville. Those weren't foreign invaders in Kingsville and Port Arkansas, however. The soldiers were part of the Army's Delta Force, a counterterrorism unit from Fort Bragg, N.C. And they'll probably be back this week. An Army spokeswoman said there may be maneuvers this week in Kingsville, Corpus Christi and around Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio." A representative for the Army said "they're practicing skills of getting in and out of urban areas and special operations for the missions they're responsible for."
For the past few years, the media has enjoyed using reports of black helicopters as proof of wild-eyed paranoia abroad in the land. The only problem is that the unmarked craft actually existed (either black or olive green appearing black against a sunny background). Now the point is no longer debatable -- at least not by traditional establishment standards. In a front page New York Times story about a secret North Carolina CIA base that has trained over 18,000 foreign intelligence agents, Tim Wiener writes: "Black helicopters thud over tree tops at dusk ('They scare the soup out of you,' said Deborah S. Reed, the local registerer of deeds) ..." Perhaps one of our distinguished journalism reviews will now explain why the media felt so justified in deriding those who made such sightings. SEPTEMBER 2001 KEITH ROGERS, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL - A group of 70 security guards known as the "camo dudes" walked off their jobs in Las Vegas and at the covert military installation known as Area 51, a place they said they can't talk about. "Use your imagination," union President Vernell Hall said when asked where he worked as he and more than a dozen other striking security officers displayed "On Strike" signs on Haven Street near McCarran International Airport. That is where nondescript passenger jets, known as Janet planes, routinely take the guards and other workers to the installation on the dry bed of Groom Lake, 90 miles north of Las Vegas, a place they referred to only as "nowhere" and "out of town." Hall, leader of the Security Police Association of Nevada, an in-house collective bargaining unit, said the association's members decided to go on strike after three months of negotiations for a new contract with their employer, EG&G Technical Services Inc., ended in a stalemate. Hall said the issues include lack of adequate wages and benefits . . . [A] source said many of the guards had been assigned to Area 51, the much-publicized, 38,400-acre Groom Lake installation where high-tech U.S. aircraft are tested. It is the same place where former workers at the installation have charged that coatings for radar-evading stealth fighter jets were burned in open trenches, sending toxic clouds into the air that made them ill. Glenn Campbell, who operates the Internet bookstore Aliens on Earth and formerly directed an Area 51 watchdog group, said he received an anonymous call Monday from a man who said "the camo dudes are on strike." Campbell often has referred to the guards as "camo dudes" because of the camouflaged uniforms they wear while patrolling places where public lands border restricted areas around the Groom Lake installation. MORE FEBRUARY 2000 CBS: In a little-noticed message to Congress Tuesday, President Clinton again acted to protect the secrecy of military operations at the facility that has come to be known as Area 51, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller . . . Area 51 is not mentioned by name in the presidential notice. Instead, it is referred to mysteriously as "the United States Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada." In the message, Mr. Clinton informs Congress that, acting under the authority of Presidential Determination 99-37, he was exempting that facility "from any federal, state, interstate or local hazardous or solid waste laws that might require the disclosure of classified information concerning that operating location to unauthorized persons." NOVEMBER 1999 AREA 51 JASON VEST, VILLAGE VOICE: The [Area 51 environmental] lawsuits have yielded mixed results: While the workers and survivors of workers at Area 51 still don't know what they were exposed to (they've never sued seeking damages, just information), a judge has ordered the EPA to inspect the facility for compliance with federal environmental law .... Even though [plaintiffs' lawyer Jonathan] Turley's not privy to the EPA's reports, his clients say that since the EPA has been allowed in, the methods by which Area 51 gets rid of hazardous waste have "dramatically changed." The problem, says Turley, is the military's other secret bases. "Area 51 was the crown jewel of black facilities-the military has fought hard to protect it as kind of an enclave of secrecy," he says. "But there are other black facilities, and I'm not convinced the military has learned its lesson. The officers who committed these crimes have not been punished. And the president of the United States has intervened to protect them from [prosecution for] these criminal acts." Groom Lake: Whatever is going on at Groom Lake,
Nevada, is so secret that the Air Force refuses in an environmental
court case to even say whether it ever disposed of an automobile
battery there. Said the Justice Department, answering the question
"would cause grave damage to national security and possibly
a loss of life." The suit charges that environmental laws
have been broken at Groom Lake and that six unnamed plaintiffs
have developed cancers and skin problems related to the burning
of stealth bomber jet wastes. The Air Force also tried to declare
that a manual that had been circulated on the Internet and to
the press should be considered classified even though it bears
no markings to that effect. Said an Air Force representative:
"Our position is that a secret is still a secret, even if
it appears on the front page of the New York Times in a World
War II-sized headline OCTOBER 2003 DIANA FEARED SHE MIGHT BE MURDERED IN CAR CRASH SIMON JEFFERY, GUARDIAN, UK - Princess Diana warned of a plot to kill her in a car crash 10 months before her death, it was claimed today. In a letter that her former butler, Paul Burrell, says she told him to keep "just in case", she writes that a crash was being planned so Prince Charles could remarry. Diana names who or what she believes is masterminding a car crash. For legal reasons, that detail is omitted from a version of the letter published today in the Daily Mirror, which is serializing Mr Burrell's book about his life with the princess. She writes: "[Word omitted] is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry." Diana died in the early morning of August 31 1997, after the Mercedes she was traveling in crashed at high speed in the Pont D'Alma underpass in Paris. A French inquiry in 1999 blamed chauffeur Henri Paul - who died along with Diana and her boyfriend Dodi al Fayed - for the crash. The inquiry concluded that he had taken a cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs, and was driving too fast. But Mr Burrell's decision to go public with the letter will provide a spur to those who believe that something more sinister than dangerous driving was responsible for the princess's death. SEPTEMBER 1999 JUST TRUST US DEPARTMENT GUARDIAN (LONDON): George Mitchell, the former American senator who strived to bring peace to Northern Ireland, has made an extraordinary intervention to help end the long-running dispute between Mohamed Al Fayed and the security services over an alleged plot surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, two years ago. In an unprecedented move he is liaising between the Pentagon and the Harrods owner over top secret files held by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Mr. Mitchell is proposing that Robert Tyrer, a chief of staff in the US defense department, would use his security clearance to review the top secret files to see if there is any evidence that would help the French authorities still looking at Princess Diana's death in a car crash in Paris two years ago. Mr. Tyrer would then report back to Mr. Mitchell's office. He would not reveal the details of the papers, but he would disclose whether there was any reference to a plot by the security services or whether such allegations are considered a fabrication. GUARDIAN STORY: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,74245,00.html
NSA HORDES DI FILES GUARDIAN: [The NSA] has told the Guardian that it is holding reports from foreign intelligence [on Princess Di's death] - thought to include MI5 and MI6 - under both top secret and secret categories. It revealed their existence after the Guardian filed a request under the US freedom of information act. The reports cannot be released because of "exceptionally grave damage to the national security." .... The existence of documents on Diana, Princess of Wales has always been claimed by the owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son, Dodi, died with the princess in a car crash in Paris in 1997. He believes reports which claim that up to 1,056 page references to Diana exist in some 39 documents held by the NSA. GUARDIAN http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,71705,00.html FEBRUARY 1999 NEW LIGHT ON WALLACE SHOOTING Insight Magazine reports interesting new developments concerning the George Wallace shooting including evidence of the degree to which Nixon was directly involved in the aftermath. A newly released tape includes this exchange between Nixon and Chuck Colson five hours after the shooting: NIXON: Is he
a left-winger, right-winger? Nixon had been obsessed with Wallace and even put 75 IRS agents on an "Alabama Project" to dig up dirt on Wallace, friends and relatives. And he was not the only one on the case. After the shooting, the Secret Service was at would-be assassin Arthur Bremmer's apartment within an hour. When FBI agents arrived they found the Ssers -- who claimed they were on an "intelligence-gathering mission." A turf war between the two agencies ensued. More buried treasure: Robert Parry's remarkable investigation into the October Surprise continues with still more evidence that Bush, Casey and perhaps past and present CIA officials took part in an deal with the Iranians not to release its American hostages before the 1980 election. Parry's story is based on previously unreported information in the files of the bipartisan congressional task force that discounted the notion of an October Surprise. Says Parry: "To the task force, the possibility that former and current CIA officers conspired with Republicans and foreign intelligence services to unseat a president of the United States was unthinkable. If true, it would have meant that elements of the CIA mounted a silent coup d'etat that undermined American democracy to put in place a president who would unleash the spy agency. "But certainly what followed in the 1980s pleased the CIA's hard-liners. Under President Reagan's CIA director William Casey, CIA covert operations proliferated. Dozens of cashiered CIA officers were brought back on contract. Billions of taxpayer dollars were poured into CIA projects. The CIA was also spared Carter's nagging about human rights, as CIA-trained units launched death-squad operations throughout Central America and Africa." For more on this story see The Consortium More October surprise: You may not have heard that when asked in May 1993 if there was an October Surprise former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, "Of course." Alexandre deMarenches, the man who ran French intelligence in 1980, privately mocked the House taskforce that pooh-poohed the ideaand let stand the sworn testimony of his biographer that he had arranged meetings between Reagan's campaign chief William Casey and Iranians in Paris in October 1980. Digging through the House task force files, investigative reporter Parry found that, in response to the task force's request, the Russian secretary of state security, Nikolay Kuznetsov, had sent a report stating that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-war competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion. ALLEGED OSWALD-RUBY TRANSCRIPT SURFACES HERE ARE A FEW OF THE PEOPLE who have expressed doubts about the official version of the JFK assassination: - Lyndon Baines Johnson NEW FILM SAYS JFK ASSASINATION WAS CUBAN PLOT BBC - A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba. Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research. One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried. . . According to Oscar Marino, the Cubans wanted Kennedy dead because he opposed the revolution and allegedly sought to have its leader Fidel Castro killed. Mr Marino told film director Wilfried Huismann that he knew for certain the assassination was an operation run by the Cuban secret service G2, but he declined to say whether it had been ordered by Mr Castro. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4582488.stm BRASS CHECK - In case you didn't notice - and I didn't until I picked up "I Heard You Paint Houses" - the mystery of the 'disappearance' of Jimmy Hoffa has been solved. He was done in by long time friend, Teamster official, and veteran hit man Frank Sheeran and his body was cremated in a mob-controlled funeral parlor. But that's not the most interesting part of Sheeran's life story. Sheeren was a major mob figure. US Attorney, Rudy Giuliani listed him as a member of 'The Commission' along with people like Tony Salerno, Tony Provenzano, and Carmine Persico. In addition to his Sheeran's other skills, he was a skilled hit man who, according to his own account, killed people with the same nonchalance people change socks. It wasn't unusual for him to be sent to kill two different people in two different cities over a single weekend. Sheeran's biography "I Heard You Paint Houses" was written by Charles Brandt a former prosecutor and Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware, and a nationally recognized expert on cross-examination and interrogation techniques. Brandt was rigorous in his efforts to document Sheeran's life story. Some fascinating new information that appears in the account of Sheeran's life... - Chicago boss Sam Giancana was often accompanied at meetings with Jimmy Hoffa by none other than Jack Ruby. Dan Moldea got independent confirmation of this and it appears in his 1978 book 'The Hoffa Wars.' - David Ferrie was New Orleans boss Carlo Marcello's personal pilot. Sheeran recalls an incident where he was instructed to deliver an empty truck to a airfield in Maryland. Another truck appeared filled with soldiers who loaded uniforms, weapons and ammunition aboard Sheeran's empty rig. David Ferrie was present (he arrived by private plane) and provided Sheeran with paperwork to help him avoid being detained by police. He instructed Sheeran to deliver the truck and its contents to E. Howard Hunt and a group of anti-Castro Cubans in Jacksonville. - The method of recruiting deranged individuals to use as assassins and then arranging for them to be killed on the spot is discussed knowingly by Sheeran. The mob used it occasionally when they wanted to kill someone at a large public gathering and/or were not able to get the person alone. - Sheeran was ordered to deliver a package which he believed contained three rifles to Campbell's Cement in Baltimore, MD. David Ferrie and a member of the Genovese crime family, who Sheeran knew but would not name for Brandt, picked up the delivery. A few days later John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. - When Kennedy was assassinated, Jimmy Hoffa complained bitterly when Harold Gibbons, a Teamster official, flew the flag at half staff at the union's national headquarters. Hoffa was to carry a life long grudge about the incident. During Kennedy's televised funeral, Hoffa said to a Nashville TV audience: "Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now." - Sheeran states that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison who charged Clay Shaw and others with the Kennedy assassination was actually in the employ of Carlos Marcello and had often done the mob favors for example prosecuting a critic of Jimmy Hoffa named Walter Sheridan on trumped up charges. Sheeran further states that 'friendly' DAs are often employed to help flush out potentially damaging witnesses for elimination. As Kennedy assassination students know, many witnesses died in the course of the Garrison prosecution including David Ferrie. . . - The use of private pilots to take hit men to and from assassination scenes to create airtight 'alibis' is described several times during the book. This method was used in the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. Pilots in such cases were instructed not to look at their passengers. . . Sheeran reports that the Kennedys, especially Bobby Kennedy, had earned the bitter resentment of the national syndicate for the following reasons: - Joe Kennedy Sr. was a long time associate of Italian crime figures and had worked together with them during Prohibition - Joe Kennedy Sr. received active cooperation from Sam Giancana in rigging the Chicago presidential vote, giving his son John victory in Illinois and thus the presidency. - In exchange for this service, Joe Sr. had promised that Bobby Kennedy would stop his 'mad dog' prosecution of organized crime. Instead of stopping, Bobby who was appointed Attorney General by his brother, turned up the heat on them substantially. Bobby Kennedy's prosecution of organized crime was unprecedented in American history and did enormous financial damage to the Mob the scope of which is still being felt today. - Organized crime lost assets worth many billions of dollars when Cuba fell to Castro. (Interestingly, the Bush family lost quite a bit of money from the Castro takeover too. ) Mafia figures were furious with Kennedy over his refusal to support the Bay of Pigs invasion with air cover as the anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA. - Jimmy Hoffa was so incensed by the Kennedys he actually opened discussions with a hit man to have Bobby Kennedy murdered. The plot was exposed before it could be carried out. Later, it was decided by organized crime that rather than kill Bobby and face the retaliation of Jack Kennedy, it was better to 'go to the top' and kill John instead. Lyndon Johnson it was correctly assumed would likely replace Kennedy as Attorney General and would not have the same interest in pursuing organized crime. MAJORITY OF PUBLIC THINKS TWO OR MORE GUNMEN INVOLVED IN JFK DEATH ZOGBY - Forty years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, as his motorcade rolled by the Texas School Book Depository building. A year later, the Warren Commission investigating the assassination determined that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, committed the crime. Doubt still remains in the minds of many Americans. In September 3­ 5, 2003 polling by Zogby International, nearly three in five (57%) likely voters said a conspiracy of at least two or more gunmen was responsible for the slaying. Just over one in five (22%) said they believe the government's position of a single gunman. Ten percent had yet another theory, and 11% were not sure. EXNER'S EXIT In writing her obituary, the Washington Post and the New York Times brushed over the death of Judith Campbell Exner in a manner that successfully concealed the real story of this woman. The New York Times did such a heavy-handed job of dismissing Exner's relationship with Jack Kennedy that it was forced to published a subsequent editor's note in which it said it "should also have reflected what is now the view of a number of respected historians and authors that the affair did take place." But as with the current president, this was all far from just about sex. What the Post and Times didn't want to bring up was evidence that Exner was central to the first real mob involvement in an American presidential campaign -- the beginning of a new era of politics that would culminate in a president raised in the mob-ridden town of Hot Springs becoming the godfather of the most corrupt administration in our history. The Times didn't have to look any further for the story than its own ex-staffer Seymour Hirsch, whose book, "The Dark Side of Camelot," devotes a whole chapter to Exner who was involved with both Kennedy and mobster Sam Giancana and became a conduit between the two, ferrying both messages and large sums of money. The later was used in part to rig the vote count for Illinois in the 1960 election. This story has been subject to Orwellian excision by the major media, part of the glasnost interruptus of American political history. MOB POLITICS http://www.prorev.com/mobpol.htm
THANKS TO A special grant from the Center for Journalist Mediocrity, we occasionally like to check and see whether any of the press poodles are getting restless. So we sent a link to Sally Denton's favorable piece on Kitty Kelley to Poynter Online which dubs itself "Everything You Need to Be a Better Journalist." Actually we sent it twice, but nada. . . . Which is interesting since if Kelley's book on the Bushes had been reported by journalists rather than merely trashed, the recent campaign might have been a bit different. As with Gary Webb, a maliciously misleading picture of Kelley - which Denton challenged - has been drawn by professional colleagues and then adopted by others whose favorite keys on their computers are Control-C. But perhaps Poynter pointer Jim Romenesko needed the space for another slap at Webb or another career assist for the pompous Tavis Smiley, late of NPR. (The first time we ever saw Smiley was at a forum at which he announced at one point, "I'm not going to sit here and take it anymore." What was fascinating was that he didn't budge an inch, leading us to surmise that this guy's got a real future in Washington.) Romenesko did feature a piece by one of Webb's editors at the cowardly San Jose Mercury News which had deserted Webb when his series on the role of the CIA in the drug trade came under heavy fire from the Washington establishment. Earlier it had pointed to Howard Kurtz' article in the Washington Post which claimed. "The lesson, which has been proven many times since then, is that just because a news outlet makes sensational charges doesn't make them true, and just because the rest of the media challenge the charges doesn't make them part of some cover-up." This both misstates the story and slanders the writer. For example, contrary to the impression left by Kurtz and others, here is part of an interview of Webb on Dateline as the controversy heated up. Webb was asked: "On the basis of what you've learned to you believe there was a conscious decision, a meeting where someone sat down and say, 'We're going to poison the youth of black America and here's how we're going to do it?'" Webb replied: "No, no I don't. These guys were looking to raise money and I don't think it matter to them where they did it. . . They just went to where they could raise the money." Journalists like Kurtz have created a fake Webb that is easy to bash and, as they say, oh what tangled Webbs we weave, when first we practice to deceive. But then media critic Kurtz seems to have a mild obsession about the CIA. Googling him for the story we found 20,000 links for his name and the CIA. That seemed like a lot, so we compared it to Walter Pincus, who actually covers the CIA for the Post. He had only 19,600. Maybe Howie would get his facts better if he got back on his assigned beat . Local heroes DON WYCLIFF, PUBLIC EDITOR, CHICAGO TRIBUNE - It has been almost a month since he died and I haven't been able to get Gary Webb out of my mind. . . I have a confession to make: I still think Gary Webb had it mostly right. I think he got the treatment that always comes to those who dare question aloud the bona fides of the establishment: First he got misrepresented - his suggestion that the CIA tolerated the contras' cocaine trading became an allegation that the agency itself was involved in the drug trade. Then he was ridiculed as a conspiracy-monger - joked one commentator, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail." In the end, Webb was rendered untouchable. I know that I risk being marked down as something of a nut for saying I think Webb was fundamentally right. As my friend and former Commentary page columnist Salim Muwakkil said in one of his pieces on this issue: "To connect the CIA with crack - a drug with race-specific overtones - is considered a mere variation of the old theme of black genocide and is thus deemed irrational in mainstream discourse." But try thinking of it from a black American's point of view. The CIA was tasked with helping the contras, a group President Ronald Reagan had declared the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers. So intent was the Reagan-Bush administration on assuring the survival and success of the contras that it attempted an illegal bargain with the hated mullahs of Iran in order to benefit the Nicaraguans. Now, you're a CIA agent who must decide whether to blow the whistle on some of your charges for supplementing their budget by trading in cocaine on the side - or just turn your head and not "see" anything. Between the contras, beloved of the president, and some black gangsters in L.A. (we won't talk about the zoned-out, zonked-out end users), who is the more expendable? I am reminded here of the climactic chapters of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," in which a seething Harlem goes up in flames. It happens not because of anything the protagonist and his cherished "Brotherhood" do. It happens because the leadership of the Brotherhood elects to do nothing, to cease expending any energy at all on Harlem and its problems. Who is the more expendable? I think Gary Webb had it figured out just right. GARY WEBB: THE OFFICIAL STORY LA TIMES - Gary Webb, an investigative reporter who wrote a widely criticized series linking the CIA to the explosion of crack cocaine in Los Angeles, was found dead in his Sacramento-area home Friday. He apparently killed himself, authorities said. Webb had suffered a gunshot wound to the |
2004