The Slaughterhouse Informer

A Compendiium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

Presenting a new magazine that contains material that is not found elsewhere and is very difficult to post on the Internet. The ‘Voice of the White House’ will appear in each issue containing material not found on TBR News for very obvious reasons.This publication will appear once a week, on Wednesday, every week, will be ten pages in length and is available by subscription only. The price is $5.00 a month and can be paid via PayPal or by check, sent to ‘Morris Productions, 1350 E. New Yort St. Ste A2-190, Aurora, Il 60504.’ If you don’t like it, and Bush supporters can read the Drudge Report for free, you can cancel at any time.

The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C., October 2, 2007: “There is a very serious aspect to the current economic collapse that no one wants to discuss, neither the economic pundits, the media or the scared politicians. This concerns an aspect of the subprime scams and, basically and stripped of euphemistic words and propaganda phrases, is that very large amounts of money from various banks and financial institutions and the owners and controllers thereof were, and are being, sent outside this country to a secure area. I am speaking most specifically of American business frantically sending, electronically, huge amounts of money to banks in Israel. The three banks that are getting most of the stolen money are: Hapoalim group, Bank Leumi group, Discount Bank group. It is not necessary to mention that the senders are all Jewish and it should be noted that Israeli banking concerns practice strict banking security (see their Protection of Privacy Law, 1981 [PPL]) Under the PPL, “an infringement of privacy is, inter alia, a violation of an obligation to maintain secrecy regarding a person’s private affairs, established by explicit or implicit agreement.” The bank’s obligation of secrecy extends not only to the details of the client’s account but also to all transactions related to the account In other words, if the US authorities want to know about this, they can bend over while the Israeli bankers drive them home. And if the sticky-fingered ones decide to make a quick flight to Israel ahead of FBI investigators, like their new accounts, they are entirely safe. Note here that Israel does not extradite its citizens. But it does allow prosecutions in its own courts for crimes committed abroad. None of this information is really secret but is well-known to investigative bodies such as the Department of State and the FBI. Currently,U.S. law-enforcement personnel and prosecutors, who fear that Israeli-oriented economic criminals will use the Jewish state as a refuge.

 Lehman Brothers Shipped Off $400B Just Before Bankruptcy… Nice !
September 27, 2008
by Linda Sandler

Bloomberg

                Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage unit, in the months before its parent filed for bankruptcy protection, lost more than $400 billion in assets, according to the trustee overseeing customer accounts.

                Lehman's holding company filed for bankruptcy Sept. 15 claiming $639 billion in assets, using four-month-old data. The wholly owned brokerage unit shrank to less than $100 billion in assets from $500 billion ``a few months ago,'' according to a Sept. 19 court statement by James Giddens, the trustee overseeing the settling of Lehman brokerage customer accounts by the Securities Investor Protection Corp.

                The loss in value was caused by ``changes in the market,'' according to Giddens, a partner at law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, who spoke at a bankruptcy court hearing in Manhattan. The runoff may indicate Lehman's customers, including many hedge funds, canceled and closed out trades as they began to doubt the firm's ability to navigate the credit crunch, bankruptcy analysts and lawyers said.

                ``There was the proverbial run on the bank'' at Lehman, said Martin Bienenstock of the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, who is advising clients including Walt Disney Co. on recovering their money from Lehman. There was a similar capital flight from Bear Stearns earlier this year, he said.

                Most of Lehman's pre-bankruptcy assets were securities, according to its balance sheets. Lehman said on Sept. 10 that the consolidated gross assets of the firm stood at $600 billion and net assets at $311 billion. The difference between net and gross is the so-called matched book, which is overnight lending or securities pledged for overnight borrowing. 

The Iranian Mystery Ship: Death from the Sea 

October 3, 2008

by Brian Harring

www.brianharring@yahoo.com

The MV Iran Deyanat. Photo from Maritime News Russia.

On August 21^st, 2008, the MV Iran Deyant, 44,458 dead weight bulk carrier was heading towards the Suez Canal. As it was passing the Horn of Africa, about 80 miles southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was surrounded by speedboats filled with members of a gang of Somalia pirates who grab suitable commercial ships and hold them,, and their cargos and crews for ransom. The captain was defenseless against the 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He had little choice other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates were not banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.

                The MV Iran Deyanat is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) - a state-owned company run by the Iranian military that was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on September 10, shortly after the ship's hijacking. According to the U.S. Government, the company regularly falsifies shipping documents in order to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments to avoid the attention of shipping authorities, and employs the use of cover entities to circumvent United Nations sanctions to facilitate weapons proliferation for the Iranian Ministry of Defense.

                The MV Iran Deyanat departed  Nanjing, China, July 28,  and, according to its manifest, planned to sail to Rotterdam, where it would offload 42,500 tons of iron ore and "industrial products" purchased by an unidentified “ German client”. The ship has a crew of 29 men, including a Pakistani captain, an Iranian engineer, 13 other Iranians, 3 Indians, 2 Filipinos, and 10 Eastern Europeans, stated to be Albanians

Somali pirates in action   

The MV Iran Deyanat was brought to Eyl, a sleepy fishing village in northeastern Somalia, and was secured by a larger gang of pirates - 50 onboard and 50 onshore. The Somali pirates attempted to inspect the ship's seven cargo containers but the containers were locked. The crew claimed that they did not have the "access codes" and could not open them. Pirates have stated they were unable to open the hold without causing extensive damage to the ship, and threatened to blow it up The Iranian ship’s captain   and the engineer were contactd by cell phone and demanded to disclose the actual nature of the mysterious “powdered cargo” but the captain and his officers were very evasive. Initially they said that the cargo contained "crude oil" but then claimed it contained "minerals." Following this initial rebuff, the pirates broke open one of the containers and discovered it to be filled with packets of  what they said was “a powdery fine sandy soil”

                 Within a period of three days, those pirates who had boarded the ship and opened the cargo container with its gritty sand-like contents, all developed strange health complications, to include serious skin burns and loss of hair. And within two weeks, sixteen of the pirates subsequently died, either on the ship or on shore

                .News about the illness and the toxic cargo quickly reached Garowe, seat of the government for the autonomous region of Puntland. Angered over the wave of piracy and suspicious about the Iranian ship, authorities dispatched a delegation led by Minister of Minerals and Oil Hassan Allore Osman to investigate the situation on September 4. and they witnessed some of the deaths due to exposure to ‘something on that ship.’

                The Somali pirates initially set the ship's ransom at $2 million and the Iranian government provided $200,000 to a local broker "to facilitate the exchange." The $2 million dollar ransom agreement, which was supposedly secured on September 6th, never took place for reasons unknown. After September 10th, sanctions  on IRISL were applied specifically because the company was said to engaged in illicit operations on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

                Serious  negotiations were broken off completely. Iranian authorities subsequently denied that it agreed to the price nor had paid any money to the pirates. Nevertheless, after sanctions were applied to IRISL on September 10, Osman says, the Iranians told the pirates that the deal was off. "They told the pirates that they could not come because of the presence of the U.S. Navy." The region is patrolled by the multinational Combined Taskforce 150, which includes ships from the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

                Subsequently, it was disclosed that the U.S. government had offered to pay  $7 million to the pirates to "receive entry permission and search the vessel." Officials in the Pentagon and the Department of State have consistently refused to comment on the situation.

The exact nature of the cargo remains officially a mystery but officials in Puntland and Baidoa are convinced the ship was carrying weapons to Eritrea for Islamist insurgents. "We cannot inspect the cargo yet," Osman said, "but we are sure that it is weapons."

                The US Navy (and the French and the Russians) have been hove to off the coast of Eyl, going anywhere once released, it will be seized once it gets to sea. The specific clauses that have been approved in both the UN and in Congress would allow the US Navy to seize the ship under the suspicion clause. The claims that there are weapons onboard, and the possibility there might be chemical weapons, has insured there is at the very minimum, an inspection of the ship by outside authority will be mandated. At this writing, the  MV Iran Deyanat is at anchor, watched closely by American, French and Russian naval units.

                Although American intelligence and government sources are maintaining a strictly observed silence, the same does not apply to the Russians and so it is that we learn the real story of the MV Iran Deyanat. She was an enormous floating dirty bomb, intended to detonate after exiting the Suez Canal at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and in proximity to the coastal cities of Israel. The entire cargo of radioactive sand, obtained by Iran from China (the latter buys desperately needed oil from the former) and sealed in containers which, when the charges on the ship are set off after the crew took to the boats, will be blasted high into the air where prevailing winds will push the highly dangerous and radioactive cloud ashore.

                Given the large number of deaths from the questing Somali pirates, it should be obvious that when the contents of the ship’s locked cargo containers finally descended onto the land, the death toll would be enormous. This ship was nothing more nor less than the long-anticipated Iranian attack on Israel. Not the expected rocket attacks (which could be interdicted by the Israelis) but even more deadly and unexpected attack by sea.. It is very interesting to note that the Israeli government has in the past few weeks, been loudly demanding that the United States establish a naval blockade of Iran.

                The reason for this blockade would be to prevent any more Iranian ships with deadly cargos from attacking either Israel or other targets from the sea.

                See also: ‘Pirates Die Strangely After Hijacking Iranian Ship’ by Andrew Donaldson September 28, 2008,  The Times of London

The Collapse of America’s Banking and Credit

Credit hangover, big headache for American Express

October 2, 2008

by Juan Lagorio

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Express Co (AXP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which launched its charge card business 50 years ago today, may wish it was back in those good old days.

The fourth-largest U.S. card issuer expanded aggressively in recent years beyond charge cards paid off once a month into revolving credit cards, a strategy that could be backfiring.

"You're feeling the effects of lending too much in a time when they should have been pulling back, which is 2006 and 2007," said John Williams, an analyst of Macquarie Research.

Higher delinquency rates, bigger loan losses provisions and more expensive funding costs are now widely expected to hit American Express harder than its peers at least until the end of 2009.

Often seen as catering to relatively wealthy customers and companies, the firm has been expanding into credit cards faster than rivals such as Discover Financial Services (DFS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) by reaching a wider range of clients.

Investors are already punishing American Express in the stock market. The credit card company, part of the Dow Jones industrial average, lost a third of its market value in 2008, while Discover's shares fell 10 percent and Capital One stock was up 4 percent.

The company's U.S. card lending portfolio grew 17 percent and 23 percent, respectively, over the last two years, 11 points and 14 points faster than the industry, Credit Suisse analyst Moshe Orenbuch said in a research note.

Furthermore, American Express has grown more in states -- such as California and Florida -- that have been hardest hit by the housing downturn.

After defaulting on their home loans, some consumers are now expected to do the same with their credit cards, in particular given growing unemployment and a broad deterioration in the U.S. economy, which could hit consumer spending in 2009.

American Express U.S. net charge-offs -- a measure of cardholder defaults -- jumped to 5.3 percent in the second quarter of 2008 from 4.3 percent in the first quarter and 2.9 percent a year earlier.

Analysts estimate net charge-offs rates could increase to close to 7 percent by the end of next year. The rate of increase would be two or three times higher than its rivals, according to Credit Suisse.

FUNDING COSTS, RESERVES THREAT

American Express is more dependent on short-term capital markets to fulfill its funding needs than some of its bigger rivals with huge deposits.

Although the firm has already been able to raise 85 percent of its funding needs for 2008 -- which total $27 billion -- investors said the current credit squeeze would significantly increase its funding costs.

"They're paying more for money and they're not being able to pass that through to their cardholders, and that's a squeeze for them," said Walter Todd, portfolio manager of Greenwood Capital Associates.

The company has a further $20 billion in debt expiring in 2009.

"The interest rates on their short-term borrowing have gone up significantly in the last few months and even in the last two weeks, which could present a problem for them," Williams said. "It could drive their interest expense higher and it could be another crimp on their profitability."

Like other credit card companies, American Express is selectively scaling back some U.S. customers' credit lines and reducing efforts to gain new customers domestically. It is also cutting advertising and promotion expenses.

In the second-quarter, American Express set aside $1.889 billion to cover losses, nearly double the $977 million it set aside the same quarter last year.

Credit Suisse's Orenbuch said American Express reserved for about 60 percent of prospective loan losses at the end of the second quarter, below the 80 percent rate for Capital One and Discover, a sign it has less margin for error going forward.

Orenbuch, who recently cut his earnings estimates for American Express, expects American Express to boost reserves by a further $800 million in 2009.

CHALLENGING ECONOMY

American Express is expected to suffer more as the U.S. housing collapse hits consumer spending.

U.S. consumer confidence has weakened as food and fuel prices have risen and job losses have mounted. U.S. unemployment hit a five-year high of 6.1 percent in August.

The outlook for the U.S. economy has deteriorated even further as the financial crisis forced the U.S. government to craft a $700 billion financial industry bailout plan.

In July, American Express shocked some investors when it posted a lower-than-expected net income, abandoned its earnings outlook and increased its loan losses provisions.

But investors and analysts said there could be more surprises to come. American Express's earnings per share are expected to rise 8 percent to $2.93, according to Reuters Estimates, but many believe those figures are too rosy.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)

China Could Be Dragged Down by Wall Street Crash
October 3, 2008
by William Pesek

Bloomberg

                Few questions confound economists more: What might tip China into the meltdown that so many have feared for so many years?

                Possibilities include overheating, social instability, corruption, pollution, debt crises, war over Taiwan and a post- Olympics growth swoon. It's a perfectly rational expectation. No rapidly industrializing nation has ever avoided some kind of crisis, least of all upstarts in Asia.

                The list rarely, if ever, included a Wall Street crash. And yet, financial troubles in the U.S. may be the catalyst that devastates the world's fourth-biggest economy.

                This will sound like a reach to those viewing Asia's strengths. China, for example, is enjoying 10 percent growth as U.S. lawmakers argue over rescuing markets and averting a depression. With its $1.8 trillion of reserves, China could bail out the U.S. without batting an eye.

                Japan is returning to acquisition mode after its banks avoided the toxic debt devastating U.S. peers. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.'s $9 billion investment in Morgan Stanley this week is a case in point. After years of lecturing Japan about its shaky banks, the U.S. is coming hat-in-hand to Tokyo.

                Yet China's chances of avoiding the U.S. crisis are dwindling by the day.

                ``U.S. consumers are tapped out and they're going to stop buying Chinese exports, says Simon Grose-Hodge, a strategist at LGT Group in Singapore. ``There's no way China's domestic demand can take up that slack.

Recession Risks

                Adds Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University in Beijing: ``We should all hope the recession associated with the U.S. financial crisis is very, very mild.''

                The odds of a mild U.S. slowdown are declining almost as fast as stock prices. Even with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Wall Street bailouts, consumption decreases and big job cuts will probably intensify.

                The slow drip, drip, drip nature of Wall Street's swoon should concern officials in Beijing. China's mercantilist model makes the most populous nation dangerously dependent on consumers in the biggest economy. Growth in Asia will experience quite a setback if the U.S. enters a prolonged period of weakness.

                While a Japan-like ``lost decade'' isn't the best-case scenario, Americans aren't sitting on the kind of savings that Asians are. As U.S. growth slows, debt is reduced and households increase savings, exporters such as Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand must look elsewhere for demand.

Little Help

                Europe and Japan may be of little help. Japan is on the verge of a recession, while Europe is becoming increasingly vulnerable to events in the U.S. China will be hurt by all of the above, ridding Asia of a key source of stability.

                Many say China's slowing from 10 percent growth to 8 percent isn't a disaster. Yet if a government relies on rising prosperity to conceal domestic challenges — including the widening gap between rich and poor — slowing growth is a major problem.

                Nothing less than a drastic rebalancing will be required: More domestic consumption, a strengthening currency and greater investment in health care, pensions and education. Pulling that off quickly and with minimal disruption would be a feat like no other in economic history.

                Anyone who believes China is set for smooth sailing as the U.S. sinks is likely to be as wrong as those arguing a year ago that the subprime-loan crisis was containable.

Asia Decoupling

                One of the key points here is the importance of Asia decoupling itself from the U.S. once and for all. It's easier said than done.

                It's often pointed out that Asia is holding the cards. Were China to dump its $519 billion of Treasuries, the U.S. would be in for a shock. So would China, as the fallout in the U.S. would drag on China's all-important export industries.

                Stocks, too. Many Chinese are recession virgins — they are far more used to booming than slowing growth. Equity investors are far more accustomed to double-digit gains than big drops in shares. It's an open question how this year's 58 percent plunge in Chinese shares affects sentiment.

                There is reason to think Asia can stand its ground. The region's improvements since the 1997 crisis left banks stable, markets humming and currency reserves at comfortable levels. Turmoil in the U.S. is encouraging Asia to take steps to become more independent from bigger economies.

                Nations such as China are succeeding by ignoring advice from officials in Washington. After years of being lectured to bolster its banks, China is watching as the financial system the U.S. espoused as optimal crumbles.

                The reluctance of Asian banks to buy hard-to-value securities such as collateralized debt obligations left them in ``rock solid'' financial shape, says Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. in Hong Kong. Also, central banks have been taking steps to boost investor and consumer confidence.

                If things get shakier, though, Asia could be dragged down with the U.S. economy. Amid unprecedented upheaval, it almost seems fitting that a risk few considered a year ago could be the one to undermine China.

                http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_pesek&sid=aglZNvpnT6KU

Letters to the Editor

From: XXXXXXX

To: walter storch (tbrnews@hotmail.com)

Question: Why does Congress shut down for a Jewish religious holiday? Is nobody screaming about the separation between Church and State for this one.

Just curious.

Response:

                It is very difficult to answer this without sounding like a stereotypical anti-Semite but the fact is that at the present time, Jews basically control the United States.

                Their bankers have led the rest of us into chaos, chaos from which they all drew healthy profits (which they now bank in safety in Israeli banks), the so-called Neo-cons, all of whom are right-wing Zionists, have pushed this country into the Iraq wars and now are yammering their demands for us to attack their main enemy, Iran.

                They occupy most of the middle to upper command levels of the CIA and it is well-known in the foreign intelligence communities that anything they can lay their hands on in the way of secret information goes at once to Tel Aviv. It also goes to Moscow because the SVR has "plants" in Israeli intelligence.

                The Russians don't have to infiltrate our intelligence services as they did during the complaisant Roosevelt administration because they get the information, a la Pollard, straight from Israel.

                The pending Georgian attack on South Ossetia last August, an attack well-known in advance to Washington, was almost at once betrayed to Russia by an Israeli officer stationed in that country. 

                 No, here is the answer to your question and if you wonder if I would dare publish this exchange, rest assured that I will. 

                You might well ask, 'What is to be done?' and the answer is very obvious. 

 Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 05:02:03 -0700
 From: baylesy@yahoo.com
 Subject: Gold question
 To: tbrnews@hotmail.com
 
 Dear Brian,
 
 I just read your latest edition of TBR News (I'm a big fan), and more specifically, the article on gold. Coincidentally, I invest with Peter Schiff's firm, Euro Pacific. I have a question; is investing in SPDR GOLD SHARES (GLD) just as safe as buying and holding actual gold coins? I'm reluctant to buy real gold because if the price does skyrocket and I want to cash in on some of the profit, I wouldn't know where to sell. I have heard that the gold coin business can be very shady and wouldn't think that a local gold exchange would buy back coins at the retail value. I know that you're not an investment guru, but I have followed your blogs on things such as investing in art, and you do seem to be ahead of the curve on these types of issues so I thought that it wouldn't hurt to ask you about this. Thank-you.
 
 Cheers,
 Eric

Response:

Dear Eric:
 
                I do not profess to be an expert in anything, unlike the bloggers who know everything and do not hesitate to tell the world about their utter perfection.
                I have some comments on gold because I do know about the buying and selling of it.
                The so-called "spot price" is a snare and a delusion. "Spot price" is the commodity price, not the actual value of gold. The commodity market is a gambler's den. The market sets the price of gold, not speculators in London or New York.
                Gold coins are very hard to get now and our mint has stopped producing them. Do not ever, ever trust the scammers who want you to buy their gold from them which they will keep, safe, in their secret vaults.
                This is like the hedge funds scams.
                If you want to cash out, you can't because there ain't no gold, baby, and no "secret vaults."
                I suggest you go to a local coin store and buy gold from them. Not numismatic American gold but the standard old British, French or Swiss bullion gold coins. Then put them in a safe place and watch their value grow.
                I also suggest silver coins but stay away from any "Morgan" silver dollar because all of these, and some American gold, is being faked in China (the silver content is less and they weigh less in consequence) and beware of the glossy coin magazines that offer "24-caret gold clad" Tongan Pandas.
                Krugerrands, Maple Leafs and the older European coins are your best and safest investment and you can generally buy these coins in any coin store.
                Beware of the glossy coin emporiums who add all kinds of "premium" charges to their sales. The local people are generally best. They pay 96% of spot and sell for 2-4% over spot. 

                 Hope this has been of some assistance to you....
                Brian

Conversations with the Crow: Part 34

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!

                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: Thursday, January 23, 1997

Commenced: 1:45 PM CST

Concluded: 2:12 PM CST

RTC: Good morning, Gregory. What can we do for you today?

GD: I don’t mean to bother you, Robert, but I am doing some research on this Kennedy thing and I have a couple of questions for you.

RTC: I’ll do what I can.

GD: If it’s a problem….

RTC: No, not at all.

GD: You were telling me Oswald was not involved. Why would anyone want to stick him with the thing?
RTC: He served his purpose. Jim Angleton was determined to blame the killing on the Russians. He hated them and Jim was a very single minded man and very determined. I guess later he began to get a little crazy but at that time, he was very good at his job. Look at it this way: Oswald was a public Marxist. He was ordered to be a Marxist by both the ONI and us. He defected to Russia. He married the niece of a top MVD officer. He came back to the States, pretending to be pro-Castro. He lived in Dallas when Dallas was chosen to be the place where Kennedy was nailed out in public. You see, Jim wanted Russia blamed for the killing. He basically wanted to have all paths lead to Moscow.

GD: He was inviting a war.

RTC: Of course he was. He wanted a war with Russia and said so many times to me and the DCI among others. Now when Oswald came back, he was still connected and got this classified job with the photography company. We do that for our people. If we hadn’t smoothed his way, he never would have gotten the job there. But he never knew a thing about the Kennedy business. He was a very convenient patsy with a wonderful and provable background of being a Soviet sympathizer.

GD: I know you were a friend of Angleton and I’m not questioning his intelligence. Mueller told me about him. He personally thought he was crazy however.

RTC: At the end, everyone else thought so. Towards the end, Jim became obsessed with things better left unsaid. He thought the entire Company was infiltrated by the KGB and that Colby himself, he was the DCI at that point, was a Soviet agent. And then there was the Nosenko business. That was this so-called KRG defector. You see, the Russians got wind of what Angleton was up to, stirring up a war and all that, and they sent this Nosenko over to us as a fake defector. His most important mission was to convince everyone that Oswald had nothing to do with their agency and they had nothing to do with him. In short, they had no prior knowledge of the Kennedy business. This terrified Jim who got his hands on Nosenko and locked him up down on the Farm for two years. Put him in solitary and kept everyone away from him. Jim was afraid others would believe Nosenko and then start looking where they should not. Finally, and it really saddened me, Jim got so crazy that they forced him out and cut his department back to almost nothing. Jim had lung cancer…my God, the man smoked like a chimney…and I remember my last visit with him. He died in ’87. We met him at the Army/Navy Club for dinner. Very, very sad occasion. He was a great man, or he had been in his prime, and to see him slowly dying and forced out by that asshole Colby was devastating.

GD: What happened to the Ukrainian?

RTC: What Ukrainian?

GD: Nosenko is a Ukrainian name, Robert. Ends with an O.

RTC: Whatever happened to him? They let him out, got him a set of new teeth and paid him a stipend for his troubles.

GD: Was he telling the truth?
RTC: Oh yes, of course. The Russians had nothing to do with the business. They are far too professional to use someone with such connections with them. A defector, married to the niece of a top intelligence officer, spouting Marxist propaganda on the street corners? No, they would have done what they did when they tried to kill the Pope in ‘81. Get the Bulgarians to hire a right wing Turkish terrorist. Plausible deniability.

GD: The favorite words of Ronnie Reagan.

RTC: Exactly so. No, Oswald had much closer connections with American intelligence that with the Russians and we both knew it. Jim did not know it, believe me. Once he got something in his head, he never let go of it. At the end, before they gave him the sack, he was probably paranoid beyond redemption. Not stupid but very deluded. He saw moles everywhere. He thought LBJ was a spy and half of Congress for God’s sake. And his fondness for college students was getting a little obvious. A genuine tragedy, Gregory, a fine mind gone to seed.

GD: Male college students. Mueller caught him in bed with one at the Plaza.

RTC: Leave town and enter a new and dangerous world.

(Concluded at 2:12 PM CST)