|
The
Voice of the White House
Washington
,
D.C.
June 14,
2008
, “The
American public, the voting public, has absolutely no idea of the
degree and extent of rampant corruption at the highest levels of the
current Administration and government. No idea. Many, if not most,
of our Congressmen take bribes; governmental agencies steal with
both hands and their feet and it gets worse every day. Cheney, who
still has huge stock options in Halliburton, has pushed their stock
up to the heavens with all kinds of governmental waste-money
contracts as a good example and the Pentagon has stolen more money
that the Oligarchs did in post-Yeltsin
Russia
. Obama
threatens to shut of the
K Street
co-conspirator “lobbyists” and they are getting more afraid day
by day that he might be serious. McCain is safe for them but Obama
is not. Would they do a Kennedy on Obama? The have already mentioned
this but more or less as a private joke. We don’t need their
blatant bribery of our representatives and we don’t need
representatives who greedily grab whatever they can. The brazen and
enormous thefts at the Pentagon are redolent of the Grant
Administration but in that case, Grant himself was blameless. In
this case, Bush and Cheney are right in there stuffing their
pockets. Congress is glad to be rid of Bush and there is no chance
he will be impeached but the effort has been made to do so. What is
needed is to clean out the nests of thieves, give the FBI a mandate
to do so without any political considerations and a free hand.
Probably a good third of all of Congress could easily end up
disgraced, convicted and potential cell partners for Abramof (who is
right where he belongs) and if, as I said before, the public ever
really gets to know the astonishing extent of the arrogant thievery,
there will be a great housecleaning.”
Trouble
at the Pentagon
June
12, 2008
by
Frida Berrigan
Foreign
Policy in Focus
The
Pentagon is in crisis: The war in
Iraq
is entering its fifth hot summer. And while
U.S.
troop casualties are
down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no
closer and no brighter.
Headaches
mount on the home front as well. The head of the Air Force was
recently embarrassed and forced from the cockpit. Billions of dollars
have been misplaced or misspent. Huge cost overruns bedevil weapons
contractors. And, private contractors have formed a cubicle
mercenary force, outnumbering uniformed personnel and federal
employees in many DoD agencies.
The
Government Accountability Office has issued a series of reports on
these problems. While the watchdog agency sticks to the script of
analytic bureaucratese, what they document is cumulatively damning
to business as usual at the Pentagon.
Money
Problems
The
Pentagon has its work cut out for it. Keeping track of its more than
half trillion dollar budget and the hundreds of billions more in war
spending is no easy task. There is bound to be some slippage here
and there. But the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office
recently reported to Congress that the Pentagon is unable to account
for nearly $15 billion earmarked for the
Iraq
reconstruction effort. In a May report
to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the
Inspector General’s Office highlights $7.8 billion paid to
contractors for everything from telephones to trucks without any support
documentation-like a check for $5.6 million to an Iraqi contractor.
For what? No one knows. Or the $32 million doled out to build a
facility for the Iraqi military. Never built. Why not? No one knows.
One
reason that money just seems to disappear is that there are not
enough people watching the books. While the Pentagon budget has
soared in the past seven years, the resources and staff time devoted
to making sure that money is well spent have not increased.
In
fiscal year 2007, the Pentagon contracted with companies for $316
billion in military goods and services. But the Inspector
General’s Office only had the resources to track fewer than half
those projects. And they also have to keep an eye on war spending.
At the beginning of June, Inspector General Claude Kicklighter went
to Congress with hat in hand to ask for another $25 million for his
department next year. He is also arguing for a 25% increase in staffing over the next seven years. The funds
— comparable to just a few hours of the war in
Iraq
— are in the proposed 2009 defense authorization bill now before
Congress.
Meanwhile,
the GAO estimates that the Pentagon has $900 billion in planned
spending on weapons systems over the next five years. While
Congressional and Pentagon leaders point to the need to “reset”
military forces worn out by years of warfighting, the lion’s share
of this money is not going to repair equipment or replenish
dwindling stocks of needed material. Rather, it is going to pay the
ever-spiraling bill for high tech weapons systems still in the
pipeline.
According
to “Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs,” a March
GAO report, the Pentagon had 75 major weapons programs in
production in 2000. Collectively, the programs were $42 billion
over-budget and behind schedule by an average of 16 months. Today,
there are 95 major weapons programs, which are $295 billion
over-budget and 21 months behind schedule. Ouch.
“This
would never be tolerated in the private sector,” lamented Claire
McCaskill (D-MO). Maybe so, but when the private sector moves into
the Pentagon in a period of “more-than-enough-to-go-around”
military budgets, it seems like they have no problem spending the
public’s money hand over fist.
Whose
Pentagon?
In
Iraq
,
private military contractors like Blackwater and Kellogg Brown and
Root are doing soldiers’ work for many times the pay. PMCs — as
they are called — are so ubiquitous that the
United
States
can no longer go to war without them. According to “Additional
Personal Conflict of Interest Safeguards Needed for Certain DoD
Contractor Employees,” a March
GAO report, the Pentagon can’t do its paperwork without
private contractors either. In offices throughout the Department of
Defense, cubicle mercenaries are working shoulder-to-shoulder with
uniformed military staff and federal employees.
In
fiscal year 2006, the Pentagon spent more on contracting for
services with private companies than they spent on weapons systems
or other equipment. Over the past 10 years, contracts with private
companies for services have increased 78% in real terms — to a
total of more than $151 billion.
The
GAO looked at 21 different offices and found that private
contractors outnumbered Department of Defense employees in more than
half the locations. In some offices — like the engineering
department of the Missile Defense Agency — they make up more than
80% of the work force. The GAO found that contractors are
responsible for carrying out “a range of tasks, including studying
alternative ways to acquire desired capabilities, developing
contractor requirements and advising and assisting on source
selection, budget, planning and award fee determination.” In its
rebuttal to the GAO report, the DoD pointed out that most
contractors are involved in the technical — rather than the policy
— side of the work. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that an
employee paid by L-3 Communications is sitting at a desk in the
Pentagon and drafting the requirements that L-3 would need to
fulfill to get another contract, and that an employee with SAIC is
evaluating what sort of award fees should be granted to SAIC once
they get another contract. Contract employees are also not subject
to the federal laws and regulations designed to prevent personal
conflicts of interest.
The
GAO report did not discuss contractor pay, but a separate March report “Army Case Study Delineates Concerns with Use of
Contractors as Contract Specialists” assesses the Army’s
Contracting Center of Excellence. There, private contractors make up
less than 20% of the workforce, but they are paid far more than
federal employees. The average hourly cost of a contractor employee
was more than 26% higher than that of a government employee.
Revolving
Door: Spinning for Profit
For
those public sector employees left at the Pentagon, the door to the
corporate world is always open. In a May
report titled “Post-Government Employment of Former DoD
Officials Needs Greater Transparency,” the GAO found that
thousands of senior Pentagon officials take refuge in the corporate
world. In fact, of the almost 2,500 former Pentagon officials
analyzed, almost two thirds of them went on to senior positions at
just seven companies — SAIC, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen
Hamilton, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and
Raytheon. Except for the consulting firm Booz Allen, all seven are
on the Pentagon’s list of top ten contractors. Together, they
received more than $87 billion in contracts from the DoD in 2007.
The
GAO report asserts that “our results indicate that defense
contractors may employ a substantial number of former DoD officials
on assignments related to their former DoD agencies or direct
responsibilities.”
Military
policy will define the presidential race between Barack Obama and
John McCain. Already the rhetoric is flying thick and heavy. Who
knows more about the surge? Who has more
Iraq
stamps on his passport? Who is more bellicose toward
Iran
?
Who is more serious about beating the terrorists?
The
answers to these questions are nothing more than political wordplay
without a strategic and critical examination of the Pentagon — as
the exerciser of American power abroad, as the single largest
consumer of federal resources, and as a teetering bureaucratic
disaster. Let’s see if either of them tackles the problems on the
Potomac
in a meaningful way.
Foreign
Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program
associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation.
G.O.P. Says Ex-Treasurer Stole Funds
June 13, 2008
by
Leslie Wayne
New
York Times
An
internal investigation by the National Republican Congressional
Committee has determined that $725,000 is missing from its
fund-raising accounts, money that the group says was stolen as part
of a six-year scheme carried out by its former treasurer.
The
committee, which raises money for Republican Congressional
candidates, announced on Thursday the results of a forensic audit,
focusing on the activities of its former treasurer, Christopher J. Ward. It
said Mr. Ward had fabricated financial statements to hide the
missing money, which went undetected until January.
Mr.
Ward oversaw the collection and distribution of over $360 million
from Republican donors while collecting $120,000 a year as
treasurer. He made $10,000 a year as treasurer for the President’s
Dinner Committee, the party’s biggest annual fund-raising event.
He also served as treasurer for the campaigns of 80 other Republican
candidates, many of whom have also said money was missing.
The
thefts are both embarrassing and painful for the committee, which
has been struggling to raise money for what is expected to be a
tough year for Republican House candidates. According to the most
recent federal filings, the Republican committee has only $6.7
million in cash on hand; in contrast, its Democratic counterpart has
$45 million.
“We
have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly
respected and trusted individual,” said Representative Tom Cole of
Oklahoma
,
chairman of the N.R.C.C. Mr. Cole added that the Federal
Bureau of Investigation was conducting a criminal
investigation into Mr. Ward’s actions.
The
audit report covers only money that flowed through the N.R.C.C. and
the President’s Dinner Committee. But the N.R.C.C. said it had
found during its investigation that $28,000 had been taken from
money earmarked from the presidential dinner for the National
Republican Senatorial Committee, the fund-raising arm of Republican
senators.
Campaign
committees for Representatives Phil English, James T. Walsh, Vito
J. Fossella, Jeb Hensarling, Charlie Dent and others have
reported misappropriated funds or unauthorized expenditures during
the time when Mr. Ward handled their campaign cash.
The
report, which was prepared by Covington & Burling and
PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Mr. Ward took money from the campaign
committee and passed it through a number of other committees before
depositing it in his own bank account. Mr. Ward also prepared fake
audit reports that were submitted to the committee and its bankers,
according to the report.
Ronald
L. Machen, a lawyer for Mr. Ward, said, “We will not have comment
at this time.”
In
papers filed last Friday in
United
States
District Court for the
District
of Columbia
,
federal prosecutors accused Mr. Ward of using the stolen money to
remodel and pay the mortgage on his home in
Bethesda
,
Md.
No
criminal charges have been filed against Mr. Ward.
Robert
Kelner, the lawyer who wrote the report, said the Republican
committee had a $1 million insurance policy covering employee theft.
In
the wake of the missing money, the N.R.C.C. said it had made
changes, including greater accounting oversight, hiring a new
treasurer and providing greater administrative support for financial
operations.
Conversations
with the Crow: Part 7
Editor’s
note: When we ran the first conversation
in this series, there was the question of reader interest and
acceptability. It is pleasant to report that our server was jammed
with viewers and the only other tbrnews story that has had more
viewers was our Forward Base Falcon story that had a half a million
viewers in less that two days. We are now going to reprint all
of the
Crowley
conversations, including a very interesting one on John
McCain, in chronological
sequence. It is also pleasant to note that two publishers and three
reporters have all expressed concrete interest in the
Crowley
conversations. It is even more pleasurable to note that a number
of people inside the Beltway and in
McLean
,
Virginia
, have been screaming with rage! Here is a partial listing of
documents from
Crowley
’s personal files, now being scanned for publication:
DOCUMENT
CATALOG
Catalog
Number
Description
of Contents
__________________________________________________________________________________
1000
BH
Extensive
file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper
dated January, 1971, first document dated
October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional
Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including
electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved
and includes a listing of
U.S.
military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces
groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to
include 9th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of
all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or
supplying Viet Cong units. *
1002
BH
Medium
file (223 pages) concerning
the fomenting of civil disobedience in
Chile
as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay
vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and
student activist groups,
U.S.
military units involved in the final revolt, letter from
T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station
Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via
Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful.
Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by
force any remaining left wing leaders.
1003
BH
Medium
file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of
Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from
commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to
each picture or pictures.
1004
BH
Large
file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence
intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in
Ottawa
(1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or
sympathizers in
Canada
,
to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.
1005
BH
Medium
file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ
of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members
of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached,
covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in
Germany
and in diplomatic missions abroad.
1006:BH
Long
file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef
Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who
planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for
removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in
Finland
and
Denmark
are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements
as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on
American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a
blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into
Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on
Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of
cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the
event of a successful coup. *
1007
BH
Short
list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media
to include press and television and book publishers. Names of
contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and
specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list
of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to
1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same
paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.
1008
BH
A
file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal
activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report
dated
July
29, 1950
and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on
Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an
attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of
McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies
of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to
tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female
prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.
1009
BH
A
long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit
Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister,
Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a
replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of
AJAX
operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly
to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive
contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from
May 1951 through August, 1953.
1010
BH
Medium
file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J.
Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N.
Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of
intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S.
documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov,
a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU
connections.
1011
BH
Large
file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of
Kwangju
revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil.
Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in
Japan
to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of
“undesirables” to be liquidated
Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel
and an agreement with them to
assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.
1012
BH
Small
file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover
and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in
San
Francisco
hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.
1013
BH
Long
file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study
signed by DCI Dulles in September
of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China.
There are reports by and about
Lansdale
starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and
Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence
in the
Philippines
..
Landsale was then sent to
Saigon
under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are
copied here. Very interesting background material including strong
connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese
and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.
1014
BH
Short
file (78 pages) concerning a
Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at
Ft.
Detrick
in
Maryland
and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan
to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the
Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel
first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and
official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A
cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda
attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and
drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had
died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts
to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *
1015
BH
Medium
file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín
drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI
report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with
this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3
million in CIA funds,showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and
payments. CIA reports on sabotaging
DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan
Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.
1016
BH
A small file (159
pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific
people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S.
Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and
positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information.
Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.
1017 BH
A
small list (54 pages) of American business entities with
“significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed
along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous
and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list
of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much
information about suppressed news stories and planted stories
On
October
8th, 2000
,
Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine
Operations Division, died in a
Washington
hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's
Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph
Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on
Crowley
's
widow at her town house on
Cathedral
Hill Drive
in
Washington
and hauled away over fifty boxes of
Crowley
's
CIA files.
Once
Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal ,
Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news
of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be
a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of
that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an
associate of
Crowley
,
died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in
Bethesda
,
Md.
After
Corson's death,
Trento
and a well-known
Washington
fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and
removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt
with
Crowley
's
involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,
vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be
closed forever.
The
small group of CIA officials gathered at
Trento
's
house to search through the
Crowley
papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few
were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of
files
Crowley
was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When
published material concerning the CIA's actions against Kennedy
became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's horror, that
the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic
Crowley to another person and these missing papers included
devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to
include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the
notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse
still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of
the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A
massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using
government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid "historians" and
others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The
best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the
compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied
himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA
plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out
into the outside world.
The
originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the
FBI and CIA operatives but without success.
Crowley
's
survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by
the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of
highly damaging CIA files that
Crowley
had, illegally, removed from
Langley
when he retired.
Crowley
had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s
notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by
DCI William Colby in December of 1974,
Crowley
and Angleton conspired
to secretly remove
Angleton’s most sensitive secret files our of the agency.
Crowley
did the same thing right
before his own retirement , secretly removing thousands of pages
of classified information that covered his entire agency
career.
Known
as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the
CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate
of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”:
Crowley
was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and
raised in
Chicago
,
Crowley
grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military
Academy at
West
Point
in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated,
having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War
II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant
colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and
colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in
military intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA
at inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent
within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his
retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for
operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of
Operations.
One
of
Crowley
’s
first major assignments within the agency was to assist in the
recruitment and management of prominent World War II Nazis,
especially those with advanced intelligence experience. One of the
CIA’s major recruitment coups was Heinrich Mueller, once head of
Hitler’s Gestapo who had fled to
Switzerland
after the collapse of the Third Reich and worked as an
anti-Communist expert for Masson of Swiss counterintelligence.
Mueller was initially hired by Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA,
who was running the Gehlen Organization out of Pullach in
southern
Germany
.
Crowley
eventually came to despise Critchfield but the colonel was totally
unaware of this, to his later dismay.
Crowley
’s
real expertise within the agency was the Soviet KGB. One of his main
jobs throughout his career was acting as the agency liaison with
corporations like ITT, which the CIA often used as fronts for moving
large amounts of cash off their books. He was deeply involved in the
efforts by the
U.S.
to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador
Allende in
Chile
,
which eventually got him into legal problems with regard to
investigations of the
U.S.
government’s grand jury where he has perjured himself in an agency
cover-up
After
his retirement,
Crowley
began to search for someone who might be able to write a competent
history of his career. His first choice fell on British author John
Costello (author of Ten Days to Destiny, The Pacific War and
other works) but, discovering that Costello was a very aggressive
homosexual, he dropped him and tentatively turned to Joseph Trento
who had assisted
Crowley
and William Corson in writing a book on the KGB. When
Crowley
discovered that
Trento
had an ambiguous and probably cooperative relationship with the CIA,
he began to distrust him and continued his search for an author.
Bob
Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas
in 1993 when he
found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his
first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who
had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA.
Crowley
contacted
Douglas
and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone
conversations that lasted for four years. . In 1996,
Crowley
,
Crowley
told
Douglas
that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately
tell
Crowley
’s
story but only after
Crowley
’s
death.
Douglas
,
for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that
Crowley
began to share with him that he secretly began to record their
conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to
incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.
In
1998, when
Crowley
was slated to go into the hospital for exploratory surgery,
he had his son, Greg, ship two large foot lockers of
documents to
Douglas
with the caveat that they were not to be opened until after
Crowley
’s
death. These documents, totaled
an astonishing 15,000 pages of CIA classified files involving
many covert operations, both foreign and domestic, during the Cold
War.
After
Crowley
’s
death and
Trento
’s
raid on the
Crowley
files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA
officials and when
Crowley
’s
friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that
Crowley
’s
son had shipped two large boxes to
Douglas
.
No one knew their contents but because
Douglas
was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done
considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going
publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every
effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to
retrieve them before
Douglas
made any use of them.
All
of this furor eventually came to the attention of Dr. Peter Janney,
a
Massachusetts
clinical psychologist and son of Wistar Janney, another career
senior CIA official, colleague of not only Bob Crowley but Cord
Meyer, Richard Helms, Jim Angleton and others. Janney was working on
a book concerning the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of
Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA official, and later the mistress of
President John F. Kennedy.
Douglas
had authored a book, ‘Regicide’ which dealt with
Crowley
’s
part in the Kennedy assassination and he obviously had access to at
least some of
Crowley
’s
papers. Janney was very well connected inside the CIA’s higher
levels and when he discovered that Douglas had indeed known, and had
often spoken with, Crowley and that after Crowley’s death, the FBI
had descended on Crowley’s widow and son, warning them to never
speak with Douglas about anything, he contacted Douglas and finally
obtained from him a number of original documents, including the
originals of the transcribed conversations with Robert Crowley.
In
spite of the burn bags, the top secret safes and the vigilance of
the CIA to keep its own secrets, the truth has an embarrassing and
often very fatal habit of emerging, albeit decades later.
While
CIA drug running , money-launderings and brutal assassinations are
very often strongly rumored and suspected, it has so far not been
possible to actually pin them down but it is more than possible that
the publication of the transcribed and detailed Crowley-Douglas
conversations will do a great deal towards accomplishing this.
These
many transcribed conversations are relatively short because
Crowley
was a man who tired easily but they make excellent reading. There is
an interesting admixture of shocking revelations on the part of the
retired CIA official and often rampant anti-social (and very
entertaining) activities on the part of Douglas but readers of this
new and on-going series are gently reminded to always look for the
truth in the jest!
Date:
Wednesday,
April 17, 1996
Commenced:
8:45
AM CST
Concluded:
9:21
AM CST
RTC:
Hello?
GD:
Robert…
RTC:
Good morning, Gregory. You’re a bit early today.
GD:
I was talking with Corson about ten minutes ago. He started talking
to me about Kennedy and said he had the whole story in his safe
deposit box. Is that true?
RTC:
Did he tell you anything else?
GD:
He acted cute with me and said when he died, Plato would have the
whole story. Why not Aristotle?
RTC:
Plato is a local fix lawyer Bill uses from time to time. They all
eat from the same trough. Was Bill specific?
GD:
No, just that he had a big secret that he bet I’d just like to lay
my hands on.
RTC:
I’ll have to have a little talk with him. Bill gets it into his
head that he’s an important person and has to be brought down a
peg. Plato is a Greek and I never trusted him.
GD:
I recall a newspaper headline. It said: ‘If
Russia
attacks
Turkey
from the rear, will
Greece
help?’
RTC:
And so early in the morning, Gregory. This whole town is a moral
whorehouse. They all hang out together, lie together, steal together
and generally know nothing. I wouldn’t worry about Bill and his
secret information. What he has is a DIA report that I gave him a
copy of.
GD:
You mentioned this before.
RTC:
Yes and when the box comes and it works, then we can talk about a
copy for you.
GD:
I’m not poking but did you hate Kennedy?
RTC:
You are poking, Gregory but no, I did not hate Kennedy. Kennedy came
from a family that was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. His father
was a rum-runner and a whore monger and vicious as hell. Jack
wasn’t so bad but he couldn’t keep it in his pants and used
drugs in the White House. And enough of him for the time being.
Besides, maybe I can entertain you discussing the downfall of
Richard Nixon.
GD:
That would be interesting. You should have the box in a week or so
and then we can discuss other matters. What about Nixon?
RTC:
The Company brought Nixon down but of course he made it easy to do.
GD:
Watergate
RTC:
And other matters. Yes, Watergate. Shall I continue?
GD:
Go right ahead.
RTC:
Nixon’s problem is that he was a jealous outsider and never fit
into the political or intelligence community. But a smart man,
Gregory, very smart, and very ambitious.
GD:
I met him once. My step-mother, who had big money, was a strong
supporter of Nixon and when he was running for Governor of
California, she dragged me to a rubber chicken affair and I got to
talk with him.
RTC:
What did you think of him?
GD:
He had come across badly on the idiot box but in person, he was
taller than I thought and very sharp. I liked him as a person
because he knew I was nobody but had no problem having a very good
conversation with me.
RTC:
No doubt your step-mother’s money helped.
GD:
True but you can tell when someone is being pleasant to you for
politic reasons and when he is being genuinely communicative. He had
the left wing press after him and he hated them, believe me.
RTC:
That’s one of the factors that brought him down. Nixon’s
downfall started in early ’72 when he went to
China
.
It was a bold move and it had an effect everywhere. It also had an
effect in
Taiwan
.
Old Chaing Kai-shek had a bloody fit when he saw this. I mean a
bloody fit. He saw this as the beginning of the end of
U.S.
support for him and he wanted desperately to stop the slide. His
intelligence chief and a couple of bigwigs came to see our DCI and
wept in his office. If Nixon normalized relations with the PRC, it
would spell the end of a mutual special relationship, just like our
special relationship with
Israel
.
The long and the short of it, Gregory, is that they wanted Nixon out
of power before he went any further. And, the pleasant part of this,
is that they were more than willing to pay us very, very well for
accommodating them.
GD:
They wanted you to kill him?
RTC:
No, just removed so he couldn’t do them any more damage. We later
did discuss killing him but two dead presidents in ten years was a
bit much so we hit on another ploy. We would discredit him. Our main
man in all of this was Howard Hunt who had wonderful ideas of his
importance and besides writing bad books, he had been very helpful
in the Kennedy business in ’63. He was our station chief in
Mexico
between August and September of that year and set up the fake
‘Oswald’ visit to
Mexico
City
.
GD:
Wasn’t Oswald there? Getting a visa for
Cuba
?
RTC:
No, that was bullshit. Anyway, Howard arraigned for faked pictures,
testimony that Oswald had been there at the Russian embassy and so
on. Useful. Now let’s move ahead a few years. Nixon had won his
last election in a landslide and you know he was never too well
wrapped. He had a huge inferiority complex and the press did not
like him. Herblock the cartoonist with the Post really made some
ugly cartoons of him and Nixon was overly sensitive about that sort
of thing. So with his victory at the polls, he got a swelled head
and began to get even with his opponents by turning the FBI and the
IRS loose on them. Things like that. Remember the enemies list.
Fine. So Hunt was connected with the Nixon people as a
trouble-shooter and got involved with going after Nixon’s
perceived enemies. He planted the idea that McGovern, a raging
liberal twit, was in contact with Castro and getting Cuban money.
The next thing was to suggest that they bug the DNC offices to get
proof of this and ruin McGovern. A break-in, and they had been
breaking into offices and homes for some time, a break-in was
planned but it was planned to fail. They taped a self-locking door
open, someone tipped off Watergate security and you know the rest.
GD:
But there was no guarantee that Nixon would do what he did. I mean
the stonewalling.
RTC:
We could read Tricky Dick like a dime novel. True to form, he
believed he was an imperial figure and acted that way right up to
the end. Hunt played his part and I’m sure you watched the thing
unfold, right on the
five
o’clock
news every night. For a smart man, Nixon was very stupid and played
right into our hands.
GD:
But Hunt was destined for the big house…
RTC:
OF course. He had to fall on his sword but Howard didn’t like the
idea and he began to whine about this. We had to show him the light
and after that, he went right along with the schedule.
GD:
A serious talk?
RTC:
No, we had to kill his wife as a serious warning to follow the game
plan.
GD:
More killing. Someone shoot her from an office building?
RTC:
No, we arranged for an accident when she was flying west. Dorothy
was helping Howard with some little project he thought would help
him so we sabotaged her plane in DC.
GD:
Put a bomb on it?
RTC:
No tampered with the equipment. Plane came in for a stopover at
Midway, suddenly lost altitude and smashed into some local houses.
Midway is a terrible field, believe me. Right in the middle of an
urban area and the runways are far too short. Anyway, down it came
on top of people and the wife was dead. The local authorities found
ten thousand in cash in her purse by the way. But it had an effect
on Howard…..
GD:
I can imagine. How many people died?
RTC:
A few on the ground and forty or so in the plane. But the point is,
Howard kept to his end of things or he would have been next or
perhaps a close relative. He knew the score, Howard did.
GD:
And Nixon left office in disgrace.
RTC:
Well, yes, he did. Remember Al Haig? The General? Yes. Well we were
afraid that Nixon wouldn’t leave peacefully and might turn to the
military for help so we put Al in to keep Nixon on the straight and
narrow and limit his actions in that area. Worked out fine. And the
chinks were happy as a clam with the results.
GD:
Forty people, probably innocent at that, is a bit much, don’t you
think?
RTC:
Well, Lenin said you can’t make an omelet without breaking some
eggs first. And Gregory, you surely can’t believe that there any
really innocent people in this world? We are born in original sin as
you know.
GD:
That’s the Catholic view. Well, I suppose that’s water under the
bridge now.
RTC:
I think Teddy Kennedy said that after Chappaquidik.
GD:
Is it possible I could write about this?
RTC:
Actually, I would rather you didn’t. Hunt is still alive and
there’s no point pushing him. He’s fallen from grace and is in
decline so he might not be too receptive to having all of this
aired.
GD:
No problem. Anyway, who would publish it? It’s bad enough that I
am writing about the CIA hiring the head of the Gestapo without
adding insult to injury. Does Nixon know about this?
RTC:
I don’t really know and I don’t really care. He knows enough to
keep quiet and count his money. I don’t think he wants his
twilight years terminated with prejudice. He might be paranoid but
he is a pragmatist in the end. That ought to hold you until we move
on to other presidential removals.
GD:
It sounds like a Mayflower moving van ad.
RTC:
If it works, don’t knock it.
GD:
Well, the chinks are not that happy. Look at all the money they
spent and look at our relations with the PRC.
RTC:
Some things are destined to happen and all they did was to prolong
the final act. Jerry Ford was no threat. A wonderfully cooperative
man, Jerry was. During the Warren Commission, he called up old
Hoover
every night with the latest confidential dirt. No, Jerry was no
problem. And the peanut farmer was too self-righteous to bother with
and harmless. Actually, Nixon was lucky. If the Watergate thing
hadn’t worked, we would have found something a little more
permanent.
GD:
Nixon didn’t know anything about the Kennedy business, did he?
RTC:
No. Nixon was a Quaker and God knows what he would have thought
about that. Nixon wasn’t into what our Russian friends call wet
actions.
GD:
I’m not fishing here but did you people have anything to with
Bobby’s ascension to heaven?
|