Ptech: Successor of Promis Software, Part 2

Al-Qadi appeared on the Bush administration=s first terrorist list, and his US assets were frozen. He was also head of Saudi Arabia's Blessed Relief Foundation ( Muwafaq). Qadi claims that he met Dick Cheney in Jeddah and that they remain on good terms. He also has a stake in Ptech through BMI, a real estate investment firm in New Jersey, that had links to BCCI. Governor Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission , used BMI to sell a property. Qadi's lawyer said his client had no direct storck in the firm by 2000. Yaqub Mirza, a director of Ptech, is also on the terrorist list.Suheil Laher and Muhammed Mubayyid, two people the FBI sought after 9/11, turned out to be Ptech employees. Directors and investors also had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.


For two years, consultants Ptech were working in the basement of the FAA. They had access to the FAA=s computer systems and would have been in a position to find holes in the nation=s domestic air defenses Others who use the software are the FBI and Air Force.

Whistleblower Indira Singh is a computer software who started with JP Morgan in the mid-199-s and stayed with the firm when it became MorganChase. She was trying to develop interceptive software for the bank that would prevent PROMIS progeny software from stealing data. She first became familiar with Ptech six months after 9/11, when she was asked to permit Pteche to give a demonstration at JP MorganChase. That bank was considering the use of the software to detect terrorist money transfers. A team from Ptech appeared that was lead by Dr. Hussein Ibrahim, co-founder of BMI. After the Ptech people were on the premises half an hour, their behavior alarmed her. Ibrahim wanted to demonstrate the program on his laptop by using proprietary Morgan Chase data. Singh learned through her calls that Yasin al- Qadi had a major interest in the firm. She took her security concerns to the MorganChase=s General Auditor who advised her to forget about it and keep quiet or she was out. She continued to pursued the matter and was fired. She then became a senior consultant for Interoperability Clearing House. Why Morgan Chase covered for a firm that seemed to have terrorist ties remains unexplained.

Ms. Singh had an apartment near Ground Zero and was a volunteer EMT there on September 11. She claims that her apartment is contaminated and that her lungs were damaged by working as an emergency EMT that day. She developed strong feelings about what happened that day and took her concerns about Ptech to the Boston FBI, where someone finally told her there was nothing they could do as " Saudis have been given a free pass for 9/11." Then she contacted Joe Bergantino a reporter the local CBS station, WBZ who was also investigating Ptech.


At one point, people Singh thought the Secret Service debriefed her. She wanted to tell them about the people behind Ptech, but they told her A:We can=t investigate the people behind Ptech. Just trust me, let=s focus on the software.@ She later decided her questioners were from military intelligence.


A former Ptech employee and several current employees called the Boston office soon after 9/11 and that there was no follow up. Two FBI agents in Chicago in Chicago encountered many problems when they reported that al- Qadi was funding terrorist organizations. They were told they could keep writing reports but not to make arrests. Their supervisor apparently shouted at them, “You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects.” Al Qadi was working with the CIA in the U.S., Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia. He helped get funds to the Kosovo Liberation Army. Subsequently, the US, Albania, and Turkey froze his assets. He was a CIA operative at time, but who knows what else he wad doing. It is clear now that Ali Mohammed, once a CIA employee, appears to have been a skilled double agent for Al Qaeda, who took advantage of both the CIA and FBI, making both appear inept.

Ptech: Successor to PROMIS Software, Part 1

We know less about Ptech software than we do about PROMIS. But the new software is much more powerful and important, because our defense against terror depends upon its effectiveness. Unlike PROMIS, it appears to be owned by private interests. However, we would not be surprised if the US government somehow had some ownership rights.

Ptech is a high tech command and control system is probably the most advanced command and control and data mining software in the world. Experts call this Adata blueprinting software.@ This software combines artificial intelligence and interoperability, the capacity to read, modify source codes, and operate other programsCall without being detected thereafter. It is commonly called "Ptech" after the name of the firm that builds it. . It is a very advanced version of PROMIS and its progeny. It is used in a variety of areas including finance, medicine, intelligence, warfare, and aviation. The military uses it in a number of ways and looks to the day when it can be used from space to provide a "God's-eye view" of the battlefield. Some might think that reliance on this Saudi-owned computer software company might be more dangerous to the US than having most ports operated by a UAE company.

A version of Ptech is headquartered in the basement of the FAA. It is intended for use when planes were hijacked and it is intended link and coordinate the activities of the FAA, NORAD, and the Secret Service. As a firm, Ptech works with DARPA, the Department of Defense's research group and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency uses Ptech software.

This software was built in Quincy, Mass. Ptech ( now GoAgile), which emerged in 1994 with ample funding, is an outfit financed by Yassin Al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman with ties to Al Qaeda, who invested $5 in 1994 and $18 million in 1998. Ptech is currently harvesting significant profits with its Playstation products. Apparently it produces toys for all ages.

Russell Herman: Covert Federal Banker , Part 2 of 2

Colonel Herman was sprayed with something while mowing his lawn on July 1, 1993. He later found it was SERINE. He was never well after that. Herman was kidnapped on October 28, 1993. He was found at St. Mary’s Hospital , Clayton, Missouri in a wing occupied by ONI personnel. There is no evidence he was held in the Springfield, Missouri prison hospital where whistle blowers and dissidents are often sent. When he saw his wife, he told about how he had been tortured. At a Marion, Illinois Veteran’s Health Care Center. He complained that the hospital fed him rotten chicken and mashed potatoes cooked in water. He was being asked to sign over some securities, including her Bonus 3392-181, which was held in the Durham Family Trust. He claimed that high government officials, including former President Bush, Alan Greenspan, and Oliver North came to the hospital to urge him to sign over the accounts. She claimed that when exiting an elevator, she saw the three men leave his room and go down the hall to another elevator.

On or about August 29,1994 Colonel Herman died. Mrs. Herman obtained the opinion of a second coroner who showed her the signs of torture and offered the opinion that Herman had been frozen to death. Grisly pictures of his tortured corpse are posted on the internet.

http://www.theantechamber.net/VkDocuments/Herman/index.htm#rbi .

Subsequently, Nevada Secretary of State Frankie Sue Del Papa changed the names of the board of directors for his holdings there. Still later, the couple’s signatures were forged on a Goldman-Sach account certification.

Mrs. Hermann was denied widow’s benefits on the grounds they were married two days less than necessary. They had lost their 1987 Mexican marriage certificate and were remarried in 1993. She went to her Illinois Congressman for help, and a staffer shouted at her: RUSSELL HERMAN had no right to break his CODE OF SILENCE. RUSSELL HERMAN was U.S. Treasury. He had no right to break his CODE OF SILENCE!" There is other evidence, including his will, that he may have been an employee of the Secret Service, like Wanta. Later the Department of Health and Human Services dealt with her request for disability due to an auto accident and other factors by claiming she was “deceased.”

Russell Herman: Covert Federal Banker , Part 1

The story of Colonel Russell Herman (aka Herrmann) is almost as interesting as that of Leo Wanta. Both held covert funds on behalf of the U.S. government. Both seem to have concluded that the funds they held should be used for the benefit of the people of the United States rather than for dubious black operations. Wanta remains alive, but Herman may have died as a result of his efforts to hang on to funds.

Born in Lansing Illinois on July 2, 1927, Russell Herman served in the military for 53 years, beginning with a stint in the Coast Guard when he wa far under age. Mostly he worked mostly for the Office of Naval Intelligence. He attempted to retire in 1990-1991 and was refused. . Like Al Carone, he became a banker for the CIA using military cover. Don Hughes was another of these government bag men. According to Herman’s widow, V.K. Durham, he once had a meeting with Vincent Foster in Marion, Illinois, and he was tasked with overseeing 175 secret accounts. He once couriered $30 million to Mexico for Ed Meese to acquire TIAS 12087 "Multilateral Inter-American Investment Corporation securities. Twelve years later, a TIAS 12087 GROUP bought space at One Worlds Trade Center. Durham Limited had five shares in the venture. Mrs. Herman said she gave the account numbers to Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Dan Burton.

Herman held some US government funds and securities through Cosmos Investment Corporation and Cosmos Seafood Energy Marketing in Nevada..V.K. Durham, claimed that , without her permission, Secretary of State James Baker used her Hereditary Owner Bonus 3392-181 as collateral for some Brady Bonds. Her owner bonus 3392-181 was based on gold certificates issued by the treasury under the Transcontinental Agreement of 1875, to some Latin American countries The Treasury thought it had redeemed all the certificates and considered them cancelled. . The U.S. government used this instrument and other non-performing foreign instruments to issue ten-year Brady Bonds, which in turn were used as collateral to acquire currencies, including dollars. The Brady Bonds were to come due September 12, 2001 and be redeemed through the auspices of the trustee, Cantor Fitzgerald. It is difficult to determine whether the government or the Hermans were owners of land and water rights in their name in California.

Herman had been involved with the CIA in the 1980s and had objected to the murder of women and children. He was tossed into a Latin American jail, but with the help of Chiapas Indians made his way back to the United States. Herman’s widow claimed that he had spent two years looking into the involvement of the G.H. Bush administration and Bill Clinton in the laundering of drug money. The Clinton involvement was about whether Governor Clinton permitted the CIA to fly drugs into Mena, Arkansas.

MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said TOO Much, Part 7

In February, 2001, through his lawyers, Riconoscuito contacted Colin Powell and John Ashcroft offering information about terrorists within the United States who planned to hijack planes and bomb American sites. Michael also offered information about “sleepers” in the United States. He was also concerned about the possibility that 37 Soviet surface to air missiles had been shipped from Bulgaria to Canada and that they could be misused. In return for his information, he asked for immunity for himself and his contacts regarding anything learned in following up his leads. Nothing was done. This man had been involved in providing Stinger missiles (SAMs) and other weapons for the Mujahadeen in the 1980s and had even dealt with Osama bin Laden, who was known as Tim Osman when he visited the United States. After he contacted the press about the FBI rejecting his warnings, he was moved from Allenwood Federal Prison to the hole in Springfield, Missouri. He was not allowed to take any records or papers with him.

Mike claimed that the famous MI6 agent, Sir Denis Kendall advised Oliver North before he appeared before the Senate. Kendall was proprietor of some biological labs in Los Angeles

At one point, he asked to speak to representatives of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network because he had something to say about SWIFT chips. SWIFT is a an exchange agency for international banks. He hinted that he could prove that the US had somehow tampered with SWIFT chips.

Some say Mike was a casualty in a small war between two intelligence factions. On the one side is the Aquarius faction, clustered around MJ-12. It can be assumed that it is somehow tied to the rogue intelligence operations that emerged in the late 1970s called The Enterprise. The other faction , COM-12, is based in Naval Intelligence and is trying to keep intelligence work lawful.



The late Sherman Skolnick believed that Robert Booth Nichols was somehow involved in the World Trade Center bombing. When he told Michael, he went through the roof. Michael shouted into the phone:” “ *get* *off* *that* *case*!” Skolnick insisted Nichols was part of Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.


Robert Booth Nichols ( born ,1943) was a licensed arms trader and invented the submachine pistol. He was an admitted CIA agent. In 1993 he sued the LA police, claiming they had ruined a multi million dollar arms deal in an action that ended as a mistrial. He claimed to be an intelligence expert and his office/apartment number in Marina Del Rey was “007.” . Nichols has been described as a “handsome, dashing figure, frequently described as ‘Clark Gable without ears….” His friend Steven Seagal got him a cameo role in “Under Siege.” He headed Meridian International Logistics (MIL) and did substantial business in Japan and Australia. MIL also controlled Meridian Arms Corporation, and eccentric scientific genius Michael Riconosciuto was Vice President of that firm for a brief period. MIL , in 1988, made a substantial grant to a Japanese medical school, probably to carry out research in biological weapons. Directors of MIL include Harold Okimoto and Eugene Giaquinto, head of MCA Home Entertainment. He and Riconoscuito worked together in the development of weapons at the once secret Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture. Aslthough that venture was also involved in the drug trade used to support the Nicaraguan Contras, there is no solid evidence that Nichols was intimately involved in the domestic side of the drug business.

Nichols was Senior Vice President of F.I.D.C.O.( First Intercontinental Development Corporation) a firm closely tied to the NSA that carried out various contracts, including construction, abroad. Another director and friend is George Pender, who is also tied to the Suma Corporation , which is linked to Howard Hughes . Pender, Meese, Dr. Earl Brian, and Nichols were close friends of Ronald Reagan and members of his California kitchen cabinet. Reagan advisor Michael McManus and Clint Murchison, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,were also directors of F.I.D.C.O.

Nichols and Earl Brian were involved in a firm known as Bio-Rad Laboratories, which occupied some of the property owned by Hercules, in Hercules, California. The above facility looks insignificant, but it sets on twenty underground stories. It manufactures the most deadly biological substances known to man. Their most important produce was Cytotoxic Tlymphocytes, which c an be used to wipe out people with certain DNA codes. He has also claimed that Bio-Rad, , had developed deadly toxins designed to attack people with certain DNA structures. In other words , it can attack races. Conversely, people with certain DNA structures could be immunized, leaving others to be attack by biological agents. About the time one has written off this claim, evidence turns up that there could be some truth to it.

In September 1987, FBI Special agent Thomas Gates of Los Angeles began investigating Nichols and International Logistics. They suspected he was running drugs in connection with Eugene Giaquinto, and they thought Eugene Giaquinto was funneling MCA-Home Entertainment profits to Ed “The Conductor” Sciandra of the Buffalino crime family. They also thought Nichols had ties to the Gambino family and was infolves in a $500 million stock fraud case. The matter became public when the feds indicted Giaquinto and said they had a picture of him handing Nichols a box and tapes of their conversations. Nichols’ lawyer introduced a great deal of information about his involvement with prominent people and the White House and offered to call witnesses from the intelligence community. Nichols admitted that he had no visible means of support for fifteen years. Then the trial simply stopped and was never resumed.


Attorney Allan Boyak, a former DEA agent, published a piece on Nichols in the Executive Intelligence Review that claimed Nicols was a major heroin dealer but that he kept all of his dealings outside the country. Boyak also found Nichols had close ties to the leading Japanese crime figure in Hawaii, Harold Okimoto. Okimoto was a ranking Japanese intelligence officer in World War II.

For a time in the late 1980s, Nichols was head of the Special Service Unit in Dominica. It is a small security force for the island. It is said that there boiling lake that provides energy for a remarkable geothermal power plant on the island used to power multiple intelligence computer complexes belonging to Project Echelon, a joint effort of the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Hughes Aviation had some kind of tie to the power plant. It was designed to combine as many data bases as possible and was coordinated by Douglas Dillon of New York City, a former Eisenhower and Kennedy Official. Casolaro knew about this and believed Michael Riconosciuto ‘s claim that it is going private, and the late Senator Frank Church had warned congress about efforts to take it private. Nichols also operated a rum-importing firm that some thought was a cover for drug operations, including moving China white heroin into Mexico.

According to Robert Booth Nichols’ estranged brother, James, he was a hit man for the Tongs in Hawaii as a young man. Boyak claims that Nichols laundered $50,200,000,000 for Ferdinand Marcos. It’s a good bet that this was done on behalf of the CIA and that the money was World War II Japanese gold that Marcos was minding for the US. Nichols has a castle outside Milan and an estate in Hawaii as well as the Marina Del Ray home. Bob Nichols also had business ties with the Yakuza crime clan of Japan.

Robert Booth Nichols was a major source for Joseph “Danny” Casolaro ( 1947-1991) , who was investigating POMIS, and died an apparent suicide in a Martinsburg, West Virginia motel on August 10, 1991. Barbara Bittinger, the assistant head housekeeper, reported that there was blood everywhere but it also appeared that someone tried to wipe it up. He was not a nail-biter but three nails were damaged and there was a bruise on the top of his head. Danny had told his brother, Dr. Tony Casolaro, that he had been receiving a number of threatening telephone calls.Danny told FBI agent Thomas Gates that Nichols warned him, "If you continue this investigation, you will die." He went to Martinsburg to meet a “source,.” Bill turner, who gave him documents about corruption in Hughes Aircraft. The paers were not found in Danny’s hotel room,. He told Turner there was a second source he planned to meet there.

Danny published Computer Age for ten years before giving it up in 1990. Studying the origin PROMIS software was a natural for him. Michael Riconosciuto provided the initial information on it, and Bill Hamilton egged him on. Soon he was chasing many leads and meeting spooks and quasi spooks. Other information came from Alan D. Standorf, a NSA employee who worked in electronic intelligence. He also provided information to Michael Riconosciuto. . Standorf gave Danny records showing wire payments to Brian from foreign entities, most likely in connection with the sale of PROMIS software. E also provided information on banking scandal and government ties to the underworld. In room 900 of the Hilton, Danny placed a high speed copier so that Standof’s files could be quickly copied and returned. Before Danny was found dead, Standorf’s body would be found stuffed into his a car trunk at Washington National Airport on January 31, 1991. He died from a blow to the head and luggage and personal items were placed on top of his body.

Danny learned about the BCCI scandal before it became news and found the story of the Republicans 1980 deal with the Iranians fascinating. He had earlier published a novel about the JFK conspiracy and was prepared to look for pieces that would fit together and to believe that all was not as it appeared to be. David Corn of The Nation, who later worked to hard to discredit critics of the official 9/11 explanation, said that Casolaro was pursuing the “silly theory” of the Christic Institute that a secret intelligence and political team, which Danny called the Octopus, was somehow behind the theft of PROMIS, supplying the Contras, the October, 1980 Surprise, the BCCI scandal and much else. Eliot Richardson, attorney for Inslaw, had written Attorney General Thornburgh asking for an independent counsel to investigate the PROMIS case and never got a reply. Richardson later said: "I have never understood why ... I mean, I was attorney general when Thornburg was a U.S. attorney. I appointed him chairman of a committee of U.S. attorneys, newly formed for the first time. I am a responsible former public official. I am not a wild-eyed nut." Richardson thought Danny’s death a suicide was “highly implausible” and should be investigated further.

MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard who Said Too Much; Part 6

Riconscuito has been handled as though he was a serial killer, being moved from prison to prison to prison and being subjected to unusual punishments. The federal prosecutor ridiculed the claim that Riconosciuto could be involved with the intelligence community and said work could not be done on software on the reservation because sand interferes with computers. He received 30 years for possessing chemical solvents that could be used to manufacture illegal drugs.

Today,.prisoner Riconoscuito is dying of cancer and is in a facility ill equipped to treat him. He had previously served two years in prison in the seventies on drug charges, and psychiatrists found him unstable and having a poor grip on reality. He had stashed various documents in a trailer in Vallejo, California, think they would assure his safety and freedom. They did not, and eventually permitted the Canadian Royal Mounted Police officers Sean McDade and Randy Buffam to access the documents in 2000. They were trying to decide whether their government had purchased stolen software when it acquired PROMIS software and whether there were ways US intelligence people could get into that software in Canada. Cheri Seymour, a southern California reporter who had emptied another Riconosciuto trailer, worked with them. The Mounties found ample evidence that Riconosciuto worked for Wackenhut for a long time developing weapons of various sorts and they found some evidence that the CIA operation on the reservation was tied to organized crime and to powerful interests in the entertainment industry. According to Michael’s acquaintance Professor Orlin Grabbe, he was thrown into the “hole” at Allenwood after reports surfaced about what he told the RCMP. The Canadians later found that what Michael told them checked out with what British MI6 had on him and the reservation.

Up to this point, evidence can be developed to support his claims. He has made other claims that have not been verified. Riconosciuto spent years working with people who were involved in all sorts of black operations, and he seems to have reached the point where he could believe almost any evil scheme attributed to government. Hence, he thinks government scientists knew they were spreading AIDs when testing HIV vaccines in Greater New York in the late 1970s and he also believed reports in the early 1990s that the government was testing software that would allow it to monitor an infinite number of telephone calls anywhere in the world. Of course, in the latter case this turned out to be true.

Riconosciuto hypothesized that the Oklahoma City bombing(April 19, 1995) could have involved the use of one of his bombs because the primitive McVeigh device could not have sheared structural steel. He added that it looked like a well-controlled blast and that this could not be done by the average person; it required volumetric initiation by means of sophisticated electronic circuits. General Benton K. Partin , who tested most non nuclear bombs for the Air Force, wrote that the McVeigh device could not have done all the damage that was done to the Alfred P. Murrah Building.

He told an journalist Michael Lindemann that he tried to get a helicopter full of documents out of the Nevada Test Site but that it blown out of the air, taking five people to their deaths. He said the documents involved illegal biogenic experiments and illegal aliens. Lindermann asked him if there were any extraterrestrials there and Michael said he did not know. He did say that the US had some propuolsion vehicles that looked a bit like flying saucers. The Messerschmit BO-105 chopper did indeed go in the worst accident in the history of the Nevada Test Site. The rest cannot be verified. However, there are reports that he told an interviewer that he witnessed an autopsy of an alien body. Perhaps he was referring to the famous and controversial filmed autopsy that appeared on television.

In 1991, Riconosciuto claimed to be staying at the apartment of Robert Booth and Ellen Nichols in Nicosia Cyprus, monitoring efforts to regain American hostages in Lebanon. He claimed that the bombing of Pan Am 103 was connected to a DEA “controlled operation” that involved Lebanon and Cyprus. The DEA was permitting some drugs to pass through as bait for arrests to be made in the US. controlled DEA. The Syrian mob ran a Casino du Liban, from whence they ran drugs. It was these drugs that were in the controlled delivery. Michael claimed that some CIA people were using this cover to send some “noncontrolled” drugs to the US. Tony Asmar, a German Lebanese, figured out what was going on and lost his life for having this knowledge. Michael thought a senior DEA official was involved. He also named Bub McFarland and Michael McManus, former assistant to Ronald Reagan, as being involved. The story contradicts the official story and it seemed far-fetched, but the passage of time has proven him to be correct in most details. Some writers have assumed that the rogue operation was for private profit, but it was more PanAM 103; CIA;DEA; likely intended largely to raise money for the government. . Retired Mossad agent Rafi Eitan affirms that he had met Michael in Lebanon and that Michael had talked about working for the DEA out of a safe house in Cyprus. .

Thirty-four days before the bombings of two US embassies in Africa, he notified the FBI in Miami that the bombings would occur. Two days before the bombings, he asked the Coleman, florida Bureau of Prison authorities for permission to telephone ECOMOG to warn African security officials. The request was denied.

Michael Riconosciuto: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said too much, Part 5

A modified version of the software was spread throughout the defense industry by 2000. Eventually, major banks and many kinds of enterprises used PROMIS. One of the first banks to have the software was BCCI, which was used by the CIA, NSA, and intelligence agencies friendly to the US. BCCI would serve as the front for arming Iraq in the late eighties, and of course people connected with it helped the shaky enterprises of George W. Bush. Since 2002, the French, Germans, and a committee of the European Parliament have suggested PROMIS is used for economic and industrial espionage against them. Eventually the software, with its “Trojan horse” was used in 88 countries. The PROMIS program today seems to be part of a much a far more complex program developed by NSA called MOSIS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation System) which Riconosciuto alluded to on a German television documentary

Riconosciuto got into very deep trouble by befriending the late investigative reporter Joseph Danny Casolaro and by signing an affidavit stating that the federal government had stolen PROMIS software from Bill Hamilton, owner of Inslaw. Casolaro wrote about how the software was stolen and said that a small group of men, whom he called the Octopus, had found ways to profit personally from federal clandestine operations. No one actually uses the name “Octopus;” t here is no formal organization. Danny just used the name to refer to people and firms that participate in intelligence and black ops for profit. He was making progress in his investigation of a huge drug operation in the Bekaa Valley in which the CIA, and probably F.I.D.C.O., were participation. The latter was handling a US reconstruction program there. There were major drug labs in the Valley and product from Columbia was being refined for distribution in Europe. He was also investigating fraud at Hughes Aircraft Corporation and the possibility that Republicans had made a deal with the Iranians to hold the 52 hostages until after the election. His bok was to be entitlede Behold a Pale Horse and was also to include material on the BCCI scandal and MCA. Casolaro apparently committed suicide in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Michael said that in his last days, Danny gathering information about Mike Abbell, a man who was the key to a huge government drug operation. Abbell had been with the criminal section of the Justice Department and later became a US Attorney in DC. In the mid-1990s, he was given three years for laundering money for the Cali drug cartel. For a time, he practiced law in Bogotá. He worked closely with Gilbert Rodriguez, leader of the cartel. Riconosciuto claims to have handled gold transfers for Gilbert Rodriguez, Abbell, Norm Casper, Robert Booth Nichols, Harold Okimoto, George Pender, and others. Michael claimed that the CIA’s drug operations within the US were appropriately labeled “the company,” and involv ed some 300 agents and contractors. He was willing to turn in these people if he could enter the Witness Protection Program. He claimed to have turned over twenty nine to US Attorney in California, who made some arrests based on that information. However the attorney, after onec having admitted the connection, subsequently made a point of denying any contact.

Michael’s written testimony for the Inslaw trial and interviews with Brooks Committee attorneys included information of Wachenhut’s double billing, how Iran was paid for retaining the 52 hostages past the 1980 election, the mechanics of CIA money laundering including the listing of dead drop accounts in the West Indies, how highly sensitive technology was sold to Red China through third parties. Riconosciuto tied Reagan Justice Department attorney Michael Abbell to the Cali cartel and confirmed CIA drug operations in the Bekaa Valley. Michael gave up Abbell as part of an unsuccessful effort to enter the Witness Protection Program, but it failed. In subsequent litigation, there was testimony that Riconosciuto helped launder $40 million for the Bush-Quayle campaign; however, only one government source has supported this claim. He claimed that a great deal of illicit money was laundered through HUD, and he added that corrupt figures in the Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush administrations all used the money laundering operation at his reservation to hide their ill-gotten gains. He also claimed that the CIA , working with Wackenhut and sometimes the Mossad, plays a big role in providing California with met amphetamine.

A week after signing that Inslaw statement, he was arrested for running a drug lab in the State of Washington Three weeks before testifying before the Brooks Subcommittee on PROMIS, Peter Viedenieks, a Justice Department official, said there would be consequences for appearing including a long child custody suite for his wife. . Viedenieks was the same official who was supposed to meet Danny Casolaro at the time of his suicide. At one point he managed the PROMIS preogram for the Department of Justice. Michael claimed that Videnieks had been a frequent visitor to the Cabazon Reservation. Viedenieks and Brian both told House investigators that they did not know Riconosciuto, but Viedenieks refused to give Congress another interview after it Riconosciuto had spoken to Congressional investigators. Indio city policemen, who sometimes provides security on the reservation, had placed Brian and Riconosciuto together at a weapons demonstration on the reservation. Customs Agent Scott Lawrence carried on a two year investigation of Viedenieks but was rebuffed by his superiors when he asked that a grand jury be impaneled to look into the case and har testimony from CIA agents. Riconosciuto defenders point to a 1993 affidavit from Peter Viedenieks’ secretary that made it clear he was lying about not being involved in the intelligence drug trade. He had probably been placed in Customs to make sure the shipment could be moved without incident.Journalist Harry Martin claimed that he had previously heard Videnieks admit to knowing Michael and an individual privy to the RCMP investigation PROMIS thought it supported this conclusion. The Mounties were able to establish that Videnieks had been driven to the reservation by `Drug Tug' captain Calvin Robinson. The Customs Service investigated Videnieks and former Secretary of State Al Haig was called as a witness, but the probe was dropped when Videnieks retired. The boat had been seized in 1988 for transporting drugs.


The Brooks Committee report said that Attorney General Dick Thornburgh had overlooked the destruction of evidence by his personnel case and that the Department of Justice had harassed witnesses.

The lab, Michael said, was devoted to creating new technology for electrohydrodynamic mining operation, and soil samples were found in his lab. No drugs were found there and the DEA people destroyed all his glassware, even though it could have been tested for drug residue. All of his equipment was destroyed. In the 1970s, Michael served two years for manufacturing drugs. Two of his lawyers died during his strange trial in 1991. Michael’s wife Bobbi was later arrested and held without bail on charges of custodial interference. The federal agent who arrested Michael is the same person who arranged for her arrest. In order to protect his son’s life, Riconoscuito decided not to add to his affadavit by personally testifying in the Inslaw trial. .

A year after Michael was sentenced, Ian Stuart Spiro, another figure involved in the Inslaw case and Iran Contra, turned up dead in the desert and his family was subsequently killed. Spiro’s relatives said his files and business records were missing.

MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard who SAid Too Much; Part 4

The most important modifications of PROMIS were made in 1983-1984. Riconcuito added telecommunications access to the program. He improved the program at Ido, Silver Springs, Maryland, and Miami, Florida. The DOJ then added a ed a “back door” that could be used to access information on the program wherever it was being used. Eventually PROMIS was used by many foreign governments and their intelligence agencies as well as by financial institutions around the world. Michael said some of the profits were used to reward intelligence operatives and that the rest of the money was used for operations not funded by Congress. Ari Ben-Menashe, an Iranian Jew and Mossad operative, also confirmed Riconosciuto’s story about the theft of Inslaw’s PROMIS, and he, too, ended up in federal prison.

Harry R. Kumnick was one of the people involved in making modifications to the program. Kumnick wrote his sister in Idaho that the new version was so powerful that enormous harm could be done if the wrong people got control of it. He later disappeared. His business partner now says he never heard of him. It will never be ascertained what he was referring to, but it is known that Federal Emergency Management Administration acquired PROMIS and modified it into MAINCORE, a system for keeping track of dissidents in the US so that they can be rounded up in a period of emergency. MAINCORE is housed in Cupleper, Virginia

Much later, Congressman Jack Brooks investigated whether Meese was trying to force Hamilton to sell to Hadron, a rival firm led by Dr. Earl W. Brian and several other ranking Republicans. Brian had lent Meese money and Mrs. Meese was an investor in the firm. Inslaw would retain the services of attorney Elliot Richardson, who pursued the matter for ten years. A serious blow to his efforts occurred when the Justice Department was robbed on April 27, 1991. The bandits trucked away many filing cabinets with information on the Inslaw case. . He won twice, only to be eventually overruled on a technicality. The case would cost one judge his job and get one Justice Department whistle blower his job. IBM subsequently bought Inslaw.

The Justice Department PROMIS facility was allegedly used by Oliver North to track people he claimed to be potential terrorists. Earlier, CIA director Bill Casey had sought an executive order giving the CIA power to spy on American citizens within the United States. The proposal caused an uproar and was dropped. The desire of conservatives to keep track of what other citizens are thinking and doing has a long history. Attorney General--later Chief Justice- Richard Rehnquist told a Senate committee that the government had the "right to collect whatever information it want on anybody."Bill Casey; CIA; In August, 1971, Richard Nixon was considering a plan to wire houses, boats, and other facilities on America. He decided it was unnecessary because the existing surveillance system was pretty efficient. The Justice Department claimed that the FBI did not use the software, but , later, Director William Sessions has refused to give that guarantee. At a 6,100 square foot command center on the 6th floor of Department of Justice headquarters was created for the use of PROMIS

Michael Riconosciuto: The Math/Science Wizard who Said too Much; Part 3

One Indian leader, Fred Alvarez, who raised questions about tribal profits going into foreign banks was executed along with two companions in 1981. Alvarez had been involved in the various black operations that centered there, including some involvement in the October Surprise of 1980. They also objected to use of the reservation to manufacture biological weapons. Michael also claimed that in conjunction with Park-O-Meter Corp., he developed biological and chemical weapons.

A security guard admitted to being the bagman who paid three former Green Berets who came in from Chicago for the hit. After making a taped interview, he disappeared. Barbara Walters reported the incident on 20/20 and raised the possibility that this was a CIA action These joint projects were also tied to the government=s efforts to assist the Contras in Nicaragua, and it has been suggested that some of the profits from the sale of PROMIS software were used to finance the Contras. . The Alvarez murder remained unsolved for 31 years before Dr. Nichols was convicted of engineering the three murders.


Riconcuito claimed that Alvarez was concerned with some aspect of the October Surprise operation and wrote directly to Ronald Reagan to express his concerns. Eventually, Jimmy Hughes, the bagman who paid for the murders was caught and testified in a Riverside Court. He subsequently relocated in Guatemala, and Anson Ng, a stringer for the Financial Times,.was murdered in Guatemala City on his way to interview Hughes. Ng was also looking into the corrupt bank BCCI as well as corruption in Guatemala. He was killed with one bullet to the head and his head was propped up with two pillows to reduce external bleeding and delay the discover of the crime. Officials said he was a victim or ordinary crime, but Senator Alan Cranston told the Senate it looked like a professional hit. Paul Morasca, who shared a San Francisco Condo with Michael, also worked on the reservation and began to oppose some activities there that he thought were illegal. He was murdered in 1982. In 1992, Larry Guerrin was killed in the State of Washington while gathering information on PROMIS for Riconosciuto. Alan Michael May, a onetime Nixon campaign financial aid, was killed in his San Francisco home in May 1991. According to Riconosciuto, he was also involved in moving $40,000,000 to the Iranians in 1991 but was not connected to PROMIS.

As director of research, Michael became involved in modifying a very valuable program named PROMIS, which the Department of Justice had stolen from a private firm, Inslaw, owned by William Hamilton and his wife. Hamilton was a former NSA employee. . It was his knowledge of this matter that was to ruin his life and cause many to attack his credibility. PROMIS is a database that includes a sort-of Rosetta stone of computer languages. It could pull and integrate data from any number of languages. Its only limitation is that it is a software package that must exist at the facilities of the target. At first it was to be used by prosecutors to manage their caseloads. But it soon was used to monitor and manage banking transactions. It can tract electronic information of any kind, including troop movements.

In 1982, Dr. Earl Brian, a close friend of Ed Meese and Ronald Reagan, acted on behalf of the Justice Department and agreed to lease William Hamiltons PROMIS software for $10 million over three years. It was initially a very sophisticated database that prosecutors could use to keep track of cases. Reagan=s Attorney Generals ,William French Smith and Ed Meese, wanted it to fight domestic crime, but it was soon put to other uses. Using information provided by a high government official, the Hamiltons eventually concluded that the Justice Department stole the software initially at the behest of the Army and Navy Hamilton’s basic mistake was probably not selling the firm to a friend of Meese. But he refused and was told " We have ways of making you sell." Soon Justice Department and Hamilton later disagreed over what services were to be provided. Justice stopped payments and seized the program, forcing Hamilton's Inslaw Corporation into bankruptcy. Meese became attorney General in 1985 after much of the damage was done. PROMIS was soon made available to the Israelis and Wackenhut Corporation, which sent PROMIS to its computer laboratories on the Cabazon Indian Nation=s Reservation in Indio, California, where weapons and ammunition was also being manufactured for the Contras. Using some information provided by the Israelis, CIA computer wizard Michael Riconciuto improved the program at Ido, Silver Springs, Maryland, and Miami, Florida. .

MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said TOO Much, Part 2

Among the other tribes that provided bases for covert operations were Minominee of Minnesota , Arizona's Papago reservations, and the Jicarilla Reservation in Dulce New Mexico The Cabazon, as a minority, had the ability to front and receive government contracts. The Indians appeared to be under control of CIA veteran and mobster “Dr.” John Phillip Nichols ( 1924-2001), who operated a casino with them. His son Mark worked with him and eventually took over control of the reservation upon his father’s death. Journalist Virginia McCullough insists the Nichols family had mob connections.

Riconscuito’s operation on the reservation included weapons development and testing. The Indians manufactured night vision glasses , laser-sighted assault weapons, 9 mm machine pistols, 120mm combustible cartridge cases, 9mm machine pistols, , sniper rifles, portable rocket systems, and biological weapons for the Contras. Riconscuito worked on a new, high tech machine gun for use in Central America. Robert Booth Nichols, no relation to the other two, headed Meridian International Logistics (M.I.L.), a California-based company that conducted extensive business in Australia and Japan. M.I.L. also controlled Meridian Arms Corporation of which Riconosciuto was briefly Vice President. These joint projects were also tied to the government=s efforts to assist the Contras in Nicaragua, and it have been suggested that some of the profits from the sale of PROMIS software, which was enhanced there, were used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. highly implausible. He also claimed that the US had developed a gene-specific biological weapons that attacked people with certain DNA. Eight years after he made this claim, evidence turned up that such a weapon existed.

Robert Booth Nichols, a CIA agent who headed Meridian International Logistics, was a business partner of Riconosciuto and associated with him for about twenty years. Bob Nichols was not related to Dr. Nichols. Their relationship probably began in 1967 when Michael was sent to Lebanon as part of a drug sting operation. Nichols was also tied to Music Corporation of America. He testified that Riconosciuto was frequently in contact with Admiral Bobby Inman, who was at different times head of the National Security Administration and Assistant Director of the CIA. According to Bobbie, Michael’s wife, Bob Nichols was a long-time friend of Bill Hamilton, the ex-NSA man from whom Justice stole the PROMIS software. This tie probably had something to do with Michael’s eventual decision to help Hamilton seek redress in the federal courts. However, his critics say he knew nothing about the Hamiltons until 1990, when a Lyndon La Rouche follower introduced him to them.

Michael and Nichols began to fall out in the eighties over Booth’s insistence that they take embargoed cargo to Australia in 1984 for further development to fill a large contract for FIDCO, a NSA cutout. . Michael had accompanied Nichols to the secret facility at Alice Springs in Australia, which was a “city of sorts” with very sophisticated labs, but he was troubled that it was privately owned rather than a US government asset. He thought moving the manufacturing to Australia placed him in danger of being terminated. This must be a reference to the top secret Pin Gap facility, jointly operated by Australia and the CIA. His reference to it being privately owned is curious.


The other problem was the Lockerbie crash of Pan Am 103 in 1988. Nichols and Riconscuito knew that a bomb was likely to be planted on that flight, and Nichols promised Mike that he would get Major Charles McKee to cancel the reservations for his team. They had come upon evidence that suggested a rogue drug operation involving some CIA people and perhaps DEA agents. Mike was furious when he learned that his friends had been on that flight.

Earlier, in the 1960s, he spent some time in Lebanon working on communications equipment and involved in some way in either a drug bust or drug selling scheme. It is likely that he was also involved in CIA, Wackenhut, Mossad drug activities in California.

Michael has been credited with developing several highly effective explosives. One was a sort of super bomb in which chemicals in a gaseous cloud were blown into the air and infused by means of a rocket carried wire with a large electronic charge and then detonated (Multiple Explosives Transitional Container). The resulting fuel-air mix produced something almost as powerful as a small nuclear explosion. He was also involved in another sub-atomic weapon called “blue lightening.” The latter leaves a residue of Tritium, which some claim was found at the Oklahoma City site. When Riconosciuto was brought before a special federal Grand jury investigating federal corruption in Chicago, retired Judge Nicholas J. Bau forbade any mention of “blue lightening ” and made prejudicial comments about Riconosciuto.

While working at the reservation and other places, he became involved in many intelligence activities. He developed advanced weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras and met some of their leaders. He spent much time on developing communications and encryption equipment for the intelligence community. He developed chemical warfare weapons and improved night vision goggles. At Lear in Nevada, he learned technology of enhanced fuel-air explosive weapons and did some work in that area along with Gerald Bull of Space Research Corporation. Bull also developed the “Giant Gun” of Saddam Hussein which an Israeli Mossad team took out before our first war with Iraq. Bull was eliminated by a Mossad-CIA operation. Michael managed to save enough Wackenhut correspondence to prove his expertise in weapons making, even though the company has said he was just a “hanger on.”

Riconosciuto had developed considerable expertise laundering money, and he told House Judiciary Committee investigators that he was involved in routing the $40,000, 000 down payment to Iranian leaders as part of the GOP’s deal to have them hold 52 hostages until after the US election of 1980 was over. Allegedly, Maurice Stans produced the money that was routed to the Iranians through a Mexican bank. There is no longer any question about the deal or the $40,000,000 down payment, but Michael’s involvement cannot be independently established.

The reservation was a favorite visiting shot for Saudi sheiks, mob leaders, politicians, military officers, and foreign intelligence people. Two important visitors were Dr. Earl Brian, a businessman with long CIA ties and Peter Videnieks, a Customs lawyer on loan to Justice who Michael said managed the Department a software system. Brian was said to have had many transactions through BCCI and banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. According to both Mike and Bob Nichols, Videnieks was involved with them and Dr. Earl Brian in Hadron Corporation, which tried to buy Inslaw, producer of PROMIS software. Hadron also manufactured lasers. Nicaraguan Contra leaders visited it because weapons were being manufactured there for their use.

MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said TOO Much, Part 1

, Michael Riconosciuto (pronounced Riconoshooto), has been called a lying conspiracy theorist, and though he was a child prodigy and often praised as a scientific and computer wizard, ,he is now said to lack skills in both areas. Some of his claims seem outrageous: the Justice Department stole a marvelous software from a private company; the CIA has dealt in drugs, and the Reagan administration broke the law by supplying weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. He also talks about a strange Indian reservation and numerous experiences no single person was likely to have. Occasionally he takes the legitimate knowledge he has to reach erroneous conclusions. His father was friend of one president and his business partner was an intimate of another, so he may have been inclined to believe that all is not as it appears. Nevertheless, a close examination of his main claims could lead to the conclusion that his claims are mainly on target.

Michael Riconosciuto was a child prodigy and scientific genius who was recruited by the CIA and spent years in successful black operations research. When he was ten years old, he wired his parents’ neighborhood with a working telephone system. In the eighth grade, he created a three dimensional sonar system. As a teenager he won many science fair competitions with laser technology and was invited to do summer research at Stanford. He was involved with his father , Marshall Riconosciuto, in Hercules Research Corporation and developed various electronic devices including an acclaimed power cell. When his father operated a local Hercules Power Company Plant, owned by Dupont, Michael assisted him. His father had been a friend of Richard M. Nixon.

Marshall was also close to W. Patrick Moriarty, the safe fireworks king, who played a key role in Nixon’s kitchen cabinet. Moriarty would eventually go to prison in 1985 on mail fraud counts connected with the failure of his Bank of Irvine. In the process he admitted to bribing many California politicians, and he named some of them. Marshall was allegedly an admirer of Hitler and clearly was a friend of Fred L. Crisman, who helped G-2 agents acquire samples from an alleged crash of 6 UFOs at Maury Island in 1947. They were probably from some US. Experimental craft. Marshall was also a close friend of Clay Shaw and was involved in defending Shaw when Jim Garrison tried to associate him with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crisman was questioned by Garrison because some thought he was one of the three tramps picked up after Kennedy was shot.

Investigator James Rothstein, a former New York detective, interviewed Michael Riconosciuto and found that the intelligence people began using him as a “chicken” for sexual purposes to entrap people since he was 13. Michael did not quite admit this to Rothstein, but the investigator found many bits of information that pointed in this direction, including the fact that Michael was sometimes taken to New York City. How likely could this be? Rothstein has been involved in similar cases and may be too anxious to find what he believed were “signs” of abuse. On the other hand, there is a possibility that Rothstein is correct as the author has found, strange as it seems, that some parents—especially members of the conservative elite-- actually find this sort of exposure desirable for their children.

As a young fellow, At that time Michael was manufacturing drugs and once built an under the water lab in Seattle to avoid police detection. He appears to have done a great deal of scientific free-lancing work, including development of modem accessing and error trapping software for Tyme Share, Inc. Charles Emmert, a pal of both Pat Moriarty and Michael’s father, claimed that Mike lived with Janis Joplin for a period and that he was also a cooked amphetamines for the Hells Angels. Emmert added that Michael once shot down an RCA satellite in Mozambique when he was angry with the corporation. According to Emmert, Riconosciuto hung around the Stanford Research Institute wad knew everyone there. For a time, Mike and a fellow named “Victor” ran a teenage prostitute ring to service LA cops.


Before entering Cal Tech, he was recruited for the CIA at age 17. Michael studied physics under Arthur Shallo, inventor of the laser and a Nobel Prize winner. By most accounts he worked for the agency for about 25 years At age 16 or 17, Michael was recruited for the CIA by Al Holbert, a Mossad agent who was connected with federally sanctioned methamphetamine operations in Madera and Mariposa counties. This would have been in 1966. Holbert was allegedly involved in the California drug trade, probably in partnership with CIA people. Michael said learned that Al was also a Soviet agent and he severed his ties with Hobart . In time. Michael became Director of Research for a Wackenhut operation in the California desert. Wackenhut provides security at sensitive military bases, and is filled with former CIA and NSA people. Some say Wackenhut is the “CIA’s CIA.” CIA Director Bill Casey had once been its outside counsel. Wackenhut had a number of joint ventures with the Cabazon Indians, whose reservation was an ideal site for its operations because the tribe has some of the benefits of sovereignty. This nation , had less than thirty members, but numerous companies were located there-- almost all of them fronts for covert operations. In some ways, the alliance with this small nation gave Wackenhut and the intelligence community the advantage of having a small country located on Interstate 10, in the middle of California. Wackenhut, of course, had very close ties to the CIA and has a number of former CIA people in high positions. The CIA used other sovereign Indian reservations for money laundering and drug and gun running. Michael was involved in these activities, particularly laundering the money from these illicit transactions. He told a reporter that gold mesh filters made by Wirecroft Products are often used as currency by intelligence operatives.

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 8

The June 15, 2001 Washington Times reported that Osama bin Laden had PROMIS software. Apparently rogue FBI agent Robert Hanssen sold it to a Russian, who then sold it to bin Laden. While this appeared to be a major foul-up, the truth is that the software was a Trojan Horse. In 1981-1982, the US and Israel installed a trap door that enabled them to access any files of firms using this software. The operation of the trap door was handled for the NSA by Systematics Corporation of Arkansas. Security people also monitored all sorts of transactions from a super-secure center in the World Trade Center. Riconosciuto'Al Qaeda; PROMIS;FBI;CIAs deposition stated that the software had been sold to many nations including the intelligence agencies of Canada, Singapore, Lybia, Australia, and south Korea.

The Hamiltons had won a $6.8 million judgement in a bankruptcy court in 1987, but it was later overturned. They had to start litigating all over again. By then, Elliott Richardson was representing the Hamiltons and asked for a settlement that could reach $500 million.

Riconoscuito's wife Bobbie was arrested on a custodial warrant and her three children were awarded to her former husband. Riconosuito's lawyer Dennis Eisman died of a gunshot wound while he was enroute to meet a woman in a Philadelphia parking lot who had information that would substantiate the prisoner=s claims, including his insistence that a Justice Department official threatened to harm his son and put family members in jail. Eisman's death was ruled a suicide. Investigative journalist Danny Casolaro was in touch with Eisman before this and would die in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 10, 1991B an apparent suicide. His telephone records showed a number of telephone calls to Colonel Charles Hayes, a former CIA operative concerned about the government drug trade. Casolaro went to that city to discuss promise documents with the Justice Department's Peter Videnieks and Robert Altman, a banker connected to BCCI. At his funeral, a bemedaled army officer and a man in a trench coat marched up to his coffin, put a medal on it, and marched off. He had not served in the military. Webster Hubbell handled the investigation of his death as well as the Inslaw case. In a February 14, 1994 court filing, Inslaw said that the Justice Department=s Office of Special Investigations was its own intelligence service and was probably responsible for the death of Casolaro.


Alan D. Standorf, an intelligence employee who probably gave Casalaro information, was found beaten to death in his car at Washington National Airport William Richard Turner, a former Hughes Aircraft employee who provided Casaloro with information on corruption in defense contracting, was arrested on charges of bank robbery. All of his files were seized. Prosecutors showed a film of him running away from the bank, the problem was he has only one leg. Turner said he was frightened "shitless" when he saw Danny's papers connecting North and BCCI He also saw material about the Silverado failure and some guy named Ibrahim . Anson Ng, a reporter for the Financial Times died a month before Casolaro. He was in Guatemala to interview Jimmy Hughes, a witness who had information about the reservation murders

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 7

A group of former CIA agents calling themselves the Fifth Column claim accessed the trap door via a mobile Cray computer. Like the PROMIS program itself, they acquired the computer through purchases of surplus government equipment. The former agents were led by Colonel Charles S. Hayes, whose 1992 testimony in the Inslaw case was redacted by the NSA. Hayes was sent to a Kentucky prison in a bizarre case in which he was accused of hiring someone to kill his son. Before he was sentenced, the judge made many arbitrary hearings including refusing to let him defend himself. Hayes attorney was prevented from asking many questions of a key government witness Lawrence Myers, a right-wing journalist who had ties to Timothy McVeigh and had once been involved in extortion and grand theft. The Army ruled he had multiple personalities. Myers has given similar testimony in similar cases. Kennetta Williamson, criminal investigator for the Tennessee attorney general's office, said he was "a pathological liar."

Visitors to Hayes in the hospital were intimidated by US Marshals, and a Kentucky State trooper who was probably with Hayes when he met President Clinton at Cincinnati airport was intimidating for telephoning the hospital to learn of Hayes= condition.

. After Bill Clinton was recruited for the CIA by London Station chief Cord Meyer, Hayes claimed that he supervised Clinton=s journey to the USSR. Hayes and his colleagues were mainly concerned with tracing drug money, particularly as it went to government official . Hayes later spoke of his fears that the US could become a narco republic. Their investigations included careful scrutiny of the Chicago exchanges and the transactions involving one Federal Reserve official. Before Hayes was sentenced, he met with Newt Gingrich, who was seeking financial records that would help Kenneth Starr's pursuit of Bill Clinton.

The Cram computer was on a truck that is used to move it around. The former agents claimed they found that many politicians had billions stashed away in off-shore and Swiss banks. The rogue agents appeared to have a right-wing orientation, and preyed upon many more Democrats than Republicans. They found that Vincent Foster, who handled the Systematics accounts for Rose Law Firm since the late 1970s had several million in a Swiss account. Foster=s account was in the Banca Della Svizzera Italiana in Chiasso, Switzerland. That money could have been skimmed out of other accounts or , some say, it was payment from Israel for unknown services. The Fifth Column moved many of the politicians money to Treasury holding accounts in several Federal Reserve branches with nary a complain from them or their banks. It is claimed that they emptied Vinc Foster's account of $2.73 million. But it is likely that they also skimmed off large sums for themselves. The information they provided the Mexican government resulted in serious legal problems for the Salinas family and disclosure of a half billion they had stashed in secret accounts. The Fifth Column also fed the tabloids information on the toe-sucking and philandering political advisor, Dick Morris. They also presented politicians with printouts showing their illegal dealings and accounts. Almost sixty senators and representatives decided not to run again in 1996. This was a record number only matched in 1896. is job for pursuing this story. and estimated the five former agents were moving around about $ 4 billion. His July 23, 1995 interview on USA Radio Network was interrupted for reasons of national security. Press Secretary Mike Mc Curey worked hard to convince journalist Sarah McClendon that Norman was mentally unstable, but in the end he lived in her home for a while for safety purposes.

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part s 5 and 6

In 1991, Congressman Jack Brooks began a three year investigation that concluded that there was a conspiracy to steal Inslaw's technology. The Brooks Committee recommended that a special prosecutor be appointed, but Attorney General William Barr refused to do so. John Cohen, one of the committee=s lead investigators believed the software was being used to track money laundering and also to carry out illicit money operations. He also thought some of the latter was tied to drug trafficking. PROMIS had the capacity to jimmy the two Banking systems, SWIFT and CHIP, enabling users to move drug money around the world without detection. The staff was also looking into how a certain large entertainment corporation, with alleged mob ties, could have been using PROMIS to move drug money. However, none of the laundering concerns appeared in the final report. Some who have written about the schemes connected to Promis have tried to tie them to prominent Democrats, but it should be noted that not one Republican voted to support the Brooks Committee Report.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police eventually began investigating the Inslaw case on the pretext that Canada may have purchased stolen property. Their main concern was probably that the software was being used to spy on them. Interest was heightened by the double murder of Neil Abernathy and his 12 year-old son, Brendan. The Canadians thought Riconoscuito had given him, through PROMIS, information on US law enforcement and US Bureau of Prison records. Some of Riconosciuto=s files on how the system was stolen, improved, and used were carted up to Canada by an Canadian Mounties investigator . Janet Reno investigated Canadian complaints and said that the PROMIS system was not the one used in the US. It was a coincidence in names. Private investigator Larry Guerrin, who was working for Riconosciuto in connection with the Inslaw case, was found dead in the Mason County, Washington in February, 1987. Other Riconscuito associates were to turn up dead around this time: David Eisman, who was working on the Inslaw Case; Tony Burkett, found dead of a gunshot wound in the mouth, and Alan May, who had been involved with Riconoscuito in the Iran Contra scandal. May had multiple pharmaceuticals in his blood. Burnett had been meeting with Riconosciuto, and a pathologist hired by his parents found considerable physical damage to his body. Ian Spiro, who was gathering documents for Michael, was found dead by his own hand in his truck, after he had apparently killed his wife and children. Later, Joseph Aguilar, who sometimes did manual work for Spiro, shot himself. In 1994 the body of Vali Delahanty turned up in Lake Bay, Washington. She had been trying to warn Riconosciuto that the DEA was preparing to free him on drug charges.



PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 6



In the mid-1990s, Debra von Trapp, a high technology communications specialist, reported that she had been connected with a CIA operation in a Xerox-owned plant in Shugart, Germany which was selling Japanese hard drives to the Eastern Bloc and KGB even though this was illegal. It is possible, but she did not say so, that the drives were equipped with software that US intelligence could access. Later, she was forced to help a task force in Washington working to develop software that could be used to gather enormous amounts of information on people's private lives. This was probably the beginning of the Total Information Awareness Program that was developed under the administration of George W. Bush. The team was headed by Robert Goetzman, he told her he worked in the office of President George H.W. Bush. He also held a high position in the FBI, but was a "dual agency" person, working also for the CIA. Through threats, he forced her to use her connections to help develop what he called "black hole technology." Also involved were Peter Stanley of the CIA and DIA's Jim Cofield, an expert on banking software. These men constituted the core of the Bush plumbers unit that was assigned to the Ross Perot campaign. Probably as part of another operation, Linda Tripp retained a job in the White House monitoring possible security breaches. She had been an operations assistant for the Delta Force and later administrative assistant for Army Intelligence at Fort Meade.

When George H.W. Bush lost the election, the program was shut down, but the team working on it were successful in replacing the computer and communications software in the Executive Branch so that the CIA could keep track of what the Clinton administration was doing. She also thought that the Japanese government through MCA Corporation had been used to finance the operation in return for receiving vital economic intelligence via these bugs. In addition to planting bugs in the White House, Democratic National Committee, and Executive Office of the President offices, the team inserted another agent in the purchasing office of the Executive Office of the President. Sarah McClendon, who was well informed about what went on behind the scenes in Washington, agrees that these people bugged the White House, but she thinks von Trapp was also fed some disinformation about the Oklahoma City bombing.


Riconscuito's career will be discussed in a series that will appear in several days.

Also coming is a short series on Ptech software

PROMIS: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 4

In 1991 Riconcuiuto signed a deposition for Hamilton, an old NSA hand, in his efforts to recover lost profits. Riconcuito was then arrested before he could testify in person. His written testimony and subsequent interviews with Brooks Committee attorneys included information of Waackenhut double billing, how Iran was paid for retaining the 52 hostages past the 1980 election, the mechanics of CIA money laundering including the listing of dead drop accounts in the West Indies, how highly sensitive technology was sold to Red China through third parties. Riconoscuito tied Reagan Justice Department attorney Michael Abbell to the Cali cartel and confirmed CIA drug operations in the Bekaa Valley.

He is now in prison for operating a meth lab and has been in prison ever since. In the litigation, there was testimony that Riconcuito helped launder $40 million for the Bush-Quayle campaign; however, only one government source has supported this claim.

. Ari Ben-Menashe testified that he was present when Brian made a presentation of the program to the Israeli government in 1987. In his affidavit, he said Israel bought the program and that all US intelligence agencies were using it by then. He further stated that Israel helped Brian sell the software to Iraqi intelligence and that he was present in Brian=s Santiago, Chile office when the deal was consummated. A British Air Force officer who was present was later found hanged. The death was ruled a suicide. Brian acquired the nickname ACash@ in Brazil where he sold the software to that government. But before concluding the sale, Brazilians said he placed a call to Attorney General Edwin Meese. President Joao Figueiredo gave a deposition to this effect in 1992 and was supported by a CIA agent who was present. However, the NSA redacted the agent=s testimony.

The Israelis and Americans developed plans to quietly sell the software to intelligence agencies all over the world. Senator John Tower, with long experience in the covert arms trade, helped the US and Israelis develop a working arrangement. Israel used firms connected with Robert Maxwell=s Macmillan publishing empire and the United States worked through Earl Brian=s Hadron, Inc. Using a firm called SCT, Brian tried to purchase Inslaw. It is likely that Brian was operating CIA fronts, but one can assume that he was sharing in the profits. Some speculate that this was his payoff for handling the financial side of the October, 1980 Surprise, in which Bill Casey, he, and others made a deal with the Iranians to hold 52 hostages until after the American presidential election. Brian was eventually convicted of ten counts of financial fraud in matters apparently not related to Inslaw.

A modified version of the software was spread throughout the defense industry by 2000. Eventually, PROMIS was used by major banks and many kinds of enterprises. One of the first banks to have the software was BCCI, which was used my the CIA, NSA, and intelligence agencies friendly to the US. BCCI would serve as the front for arming Iraq in the late eighties, and of course people connected with it helped the shaky enterprises of George W. Bush. Since 2002, the French, Germans, and a committee of the European Parliament have suggested PROMIS is used for economic and industrial espionage against them.

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 3

Using some information provided by the Israelis, CIA computer wizard Michael Riconciuto improved the PROMIS program at Ido, Silver Springs, Maryland, and Miami, Florida. He was research director for the joint ventures of Wackenhut Corporation and the Cabazon Indians. At age 16, he built his own argon laser at Stanford, and his family had close ties to Richard Nixon .He also had close NSA ties and was sometimes seen at NSA contractor facilities in the Silicon Valley. Riconcuito=s operation included weapons development and testing. The Indians manufactured night vision glasses , laser-sighted assault weapons, 9 mm machine pistols, and biological weapons for the Contras. These joint projects were also tied to the government=s efforts to assist the Contras in Nicaragua, and it has been suggested that some of the profits from the sale of PROMIS were used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras.


One Indian, Fred Alvarez, who raised questions about tribal profits going into foreign banks was executed along with two companions in 1981. Ten years later, Anson Ng, a stronger for the Financial Times.was murdered in Guatemala City. He was there to interview the former CIA men who paid the murderers of the three Indians. He was also looking into the corrupt bank BCCI as well as corruption in Guatemala. He was killed with one bullet to the head and his head was propped up with twop pillows to reduce external bleeding and delay the discover of the crime. Officials said he was a victim or ordinary crime, but Senator Alan Cranston told the Senate it looked like a professional hit.

They also objected to use of the reservation to manufacture biological weapons. A security guard admitted to being the bag man who paid three former Green Berets who came in from Chicago for the hit. After making a taped interview, he disappeared. Barbara Walters reported the incident on 20/20 and raised the possibility that this was a CIA action. were slain. These joint projects were also tied to the government=s efforts to assist the Contras in Nicaragua, and it has been suggested that some of the profits from the sale of PROMIS were used to finance the Contras.

The most important modifications of PROMIS were made in 1983-1984. Riconcuito added telecommunications access to the program. .Barry R. Kumnick was one of the people involved in making later modifications to the program. Kumnick wrote his sister in Idaho that the new version was so powerful that enormous harm could be done if the wrong people got control of it. He later disappeared. His business partner now says he never heard of him. It will never be ascertained what he was referring to, but it is known that Federal Emergency Management Administration acquired PROMIS and modified it into MAINCORE, a system for keeping track of dissidents in the US so that they can be rounded up in a period of emergency. MAINCORE is housed in Cupleper, Virginia.

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 2

In 1982, Earl Brian, acting for the Justice Department, seemed to have agreed to lease William Hamilton's PROMIS software for $10 million over three years. It was initially a very sophisticated data base that prosecutors could use to keep track of cases. Reagan=s Attorney Generals William French Smith and Ed Meese wanted it to fight domestic crime, but it was soon put to other uses. Hamilton's basic mistake was probably not selling the firm to a friend of Meese. But he refused and was told " We have ways of making you sell." Soon Justice Department and Hamilton later disagreed over what services were to be provided. Justice stopped payments and seized the program, forcing Hamilton=s Inslaw Corporation into bankruptcy. Meese became attorney General in 1985 after much of the damage was done.

Much later, Congressman Jack Brooks investigated whether Meese was trying to force Hamilton to sell to Hadron, a rival firm led by Dr. Earl W. Brian and several other ranking Republicans. Brian had lent Meese money and Mrs. Meese was an investor in the firm. Inslaw would retain the services of attorney Elliot Richardson, who pursued the matter for ten years. A serious blow to his efforts occurred when the Justice Department was robbed on April 27, 1991. The bandits trucked away many filing cabinets with information on the Inslaw case. He won twice, only to be eventually overruled on a technicality. The case would cost one judge his job and get one Justice Department whistle blower his job. IBM subsequently bought Inslaw. This facility was used by Oliver North to track people he claimed to be potential terrorists. Earlier, CIA director Bill Casey had sought an executive order giving the CIA power to spy on American citizens within the United States. The proposal caused an uproar and was dropped. The desire of conservatives to keep track of what other citizens are thinking and doing has a long history. Attorney General--later Chief Justice-- Richard Rehnquist told a Senate committee that the government had the Aright to collect whatever information it want on anybody.@ In August, 1971, Richard Nixon was considering a play to wire house, boats, and other facilities on America. He decided it was unnecessary because the existing surveillance system was pretty efficient.


PROMIS was soon made available to the Israelis and Wackenhut Corporation. Wackenhut provides security at sensitive military bases, and is filled with former CIA and NSA people. Some say Wackenhut is the “CIA’s CIA.” CIA Director Bill Casey had once been its outside counsel. The Justice Department claimed that the FBI did not use the software, but Director William Sessions has refused to give that guarantee. At a 6,100 square foot command center on the 6th floor of Department of Justice headquarters was created for the use of PROMIS.

Wackenhut sent PROMIS to its computer laboratories on the Cabazon Indian Nation=s Reservation in Indio, California, where weapons and ammunition was also being manufactured for the Contras. This nation, which claims sovereign immunity, had less than thirty members, but all sorts of companies were located thereB almost all of them fronts for covert operations. In some ways, the alliance with this small nation gave Wakenhut and the intelligence community the advantage of having a small country located on Interstate 10, in the middle of California. Wakenhut, of course, had very close ties to the CIA and has a number of former CIA people in high positions. The CIA used other sovereign Indian reservations for money laundering and drug and gun running. Among them were Minominee of Minnesota and Arizona's Papago rese4rvations. The Cabazon, as a minority, had the ability to front and receive government contracts. The Indians appeared to be under control of CIA veteran and mobster “Dr.” John Phillip Nichols ( 1924-2001), who operates a casino with them. His son Mark worked with him and took over control of the reservation upon his father’s death. The reservation was a favorite visiting shot for Saudi sheiks, mob leaders, politicians, military officers, and foreign intelligence people. Two important visitors were Dr. Earl Brian, a businessman with long CIA ties and Peter Videnieks, who managed the Department of Justice=s interest in PROMIS. Brian had many transactions through BCCI and banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 1

The massive expansion of the powers of electronic surveillance was based on two sophisticated software systems. In the late 1970s, the federal government acquired the Systematics system, which enabled it to follow banking transactions of all sorts. In a few years, it obtained the pore powerful PROMIS, the foundation stone of electronic surveillance systems previously existing only existing as the dreams of spymasters and cryptographers.

PROMIS is a data base that includes a sort-of Rosetta stone of computer languages. It could pull and integrate data from any number of languages. Its only limitation is that it is a software package that must exist at the facilities of the target. At first it was to be used by prosecutors to manage their case loads. But it soon was used to monitor and manage banking transactions. It can tract electronic information of any kind, including troop movements. .

It was software developed by William Hamilton, a former NSA employee, and briefly marketed by his private company, Inslaw. Earlier, financier Jackson Stephens had stolen another piece of Inslaw software called Systematics. Systematics was designed to track financial transactions throughout the world. Stephens had been a friend of Jimmy Carter at Annapolis and he gave government a large share of the software and company..He operated one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street and was to play a major role in helping the international bank BCCI establish itself in the United States. This bank became famous for its involvements with various intelligence agencies, drug dealers, arms traders, and other criminal elements. Bert Lance, a top Carter Aid, was also connected to BCCI, and his attorney Robert Altman, who later became president of Financial General, renamed First America in 1982, a bank owned by BCCI. Hillary Clinton of the Rose Law Firm, according to Vincent Foster of the same firm, handled the intellectual property litigation for Systematics. Kadal Adham, former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, fronted the BCCI take over of Financial General.


It is unclear if Carter knew where Stephens got the Systematics software of if he knew much about its use. Eventually, it was used in centers in Arkansas , Boston, United Kingdom, and Israel. . The Rose Law Firm in Little Rock coordinated its use for the government. It is likely but unclear whether this system was later combined with PROMIS. Eventually, the NSA spun off Systematics as Alltel Information Systems, and many banks used its services to keep track of transactions. As money today exists largely on computers, possessing the power of Systematics meant one could use other people=s money for short periods or even transfer it to others by just changing ownership codes. The federal program to collect financial data was based on the idea that the Communists were employing terrorism on a major scale. This federal program including tapping into other collection programs such as CHIPS, Fedwire, and SWIFT. The latter was a Belgium-based financial consortium that tracked international banking activity. Some use by NSA was permitted by organizations controlling the software; however, most access based on abuses by so-called software salesmen, repair services, and simple black bag jobs. Much of the financial information scooped up by the NSA is stored at a modern complex in Dallas that is owned by Rayethon. Systematics/Alltel Information Systems was also in the business of money laundering for the intelligence community. Typically, in this age of digital cash, money laundering involves placement, layering, and integration. The latter means getting clean money out of the system, which may come as loans from off shore banks that are never repaid. It became a major computer services contractor for the Atlanta subsidiary of the notorious bank, BCCI. This bank was used to fund the Afghan insurgency and was closely tied to the financing of Pakistan=s nuclear bomb. Its functions were assumed in 1991 by the Bank of England. When BCCI=s Atlanta subsidiary was no longr available, Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh became a hub for covert money laundering, some of which was connected with the nuclear arming of Paskistan. CIA director Bill Casey established a super spy unit called the Squad D. One of its duties was hacking banking transactions and finding secret accounts of other governments. It is likely that they used both Systematics and PROMIS software. One member of that hackers unit was Colonel Charles Hayes.

PROMIS SOFTWARE VASTLY INCREASED GOVERNMENT'S SURVEILLANCE CAPABILITIES

Senator Frank Church commented in the mid-1970s on the U.S. intelligence community=s almost unimaginable to eavesdrop and warned: “That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left... These comments were made at a time when Congress was probing the domestic spying under the Nixon and Ford administrations as well as looking into rogue conduct on the part of the CIA. The CIA was forbidden to operate in the United States, and the NSA, with enormous electronic capabilities, was expected to spy abroad. Yet, NSA professionals generally thought the executive branch had the power to spy on U.S. citizens if it wished to. President Richard Nixon demanded that the NSA, CIA, and FBI spy on domestic dissidents. In providing information on telephone calls, the NSA had a practice of not telling who received the call so that information on the surveillance would be unlikely to come out in court. An interagency task force produced the Houston Plan, which would have legalized what the agencies were doing and made room for even more spying. At length, the Nixon administration decided not to formally adopt the report out of fear that it would became public, and copies of the report were ordered destroyed. Fewer than 4,000 people were objects of special surveillance, and it is not known whether these agencies were used against the Democratic party. Through membership on an interagency committee, G. Gordon Liddy of the White House plumbers unit was given access to NSA's electronic spying apparatus, and one of his interactions with that agency has never been revealed or declassified. In view of what appears to be today=s emerging domestic surveillance net, it is important to remember that the Church committee produced 14 separate reports on the illegal practices of intelligence agencies. A committee headed by Representative Otis Pike unearthed the now notorious COINTELPRO, a broad operation used to spy on leftist critics ofd the government. Until the hearings that preceded this legislation, no one from the NSA had officially appeared before Congress; it was as though the super-secret agency did not exist. In 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act became law, prohibiting the NSA from domestic spying unless authorized by a special court.

- Three decades later, during George H.W. Bush=s second term, there are many indications that Senator Church's worst fears have come to pass. The claim that the constitution did not limit the president=s power to spy on citizens was resurrected and received widespread public support. This attitude that laws of Congress could not bind presidents in the exercise of their national security powers was common in the intelligence community in the 1980s, especially among those who answered to Oliver North, Donald Gregg, and ultimately to George H.W. Bush, an experienced spymaster. The powers that Church worried grew in the eighties and ballooned exponentially under George H.W. Bush.

Leo Wanta and the World of Black Ops, Part 4

The roughly $70 trillion held by Wanta as trustor is held in accounts around the world and are held by Title 18 , Section 6 US intelligence community corporations. Wanta is now trying to recover more than $200 billion he claims deposited abroad. He is also claiming that the huge amounts the federal government has deposited abroad should be brought home and that he be given the 1% customary finders fee. In 2005 and 2006 Wanta and an associate tried to access $4.5 trillion which they wanted to put to use for the American people. They believed that they had an agreement with the White House that allowed them to distribute this money in return for his giving up trusteeship for a much larger amount that Wanta thought belonged to the people of the United States. His legal efforts to access the money were blocked.


A German Socialist party source reported that a German bank twice attempted to honor Wanta’s request for payment and was prevented from doing so by Herman Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury.

This led to unbelievable reports that Germany issued an arrest warrant for Paulson. There were also press reports that Treasury Secretary Herman Paulson asked the German Chancellor to turn the money over to him. The press insisted he was briefly held. None of this is believable. It is known that by the end of the week chancellor met with President bush in the White House, and she did not look happy. As for the rest of the story, there will never be enough information to verify it.

Leo Wanta and the World of Black Ops, Part 3

In 1993, Wanta somehow was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland and Canada by Somalia, an East African nation ruled by a crooked military. He claimed the ambassadorship was a cover for arresting Rich. Wanta probably thought the diplomatic immunity would be a useful cover. AS it would develop, he was not to enjoy diplomatic immunity in Switzerland or the United States. He was also involved at that time in helping the Clinton administration route $250,000,000. Through the Children=s Relief Fund as part of an intended payment to the PLO and Israel for a peace agreement. The agreement did not go through, but it was called AUN Contract 4.@ He was also working with Rich on the project, but Rich seemed to be having troubles with the Israeli=s at that time. Rich was to redeem himself by handling the collection of money to contribute to the parties to the Oslo Accords, and Bill Clinton, at the request of the Israeli prime minister, pardoned him in 2001.

Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster supervise the transfer of funds and believed that security agencies were squirreling away some of it for themselves. FBI director sent Wanta to Switzerland to go to Switzerland to supervise the last steps and to arrest or neutralize Marc Rich on tax evasion charges when he was out of Swiss territory. The arrest was to occur while Rich was on a ferry from Lausanne to a French casino, but none of the three Office of Naval Intelligence snipers was able to get a clear shot.

Foster never made it to Switzerland and was found dead at Fort March Park in Virginia. Sessions had been removed one day before this, and he later speculated that he was fired so he could not look into the badly bungled investigation of Fosters= death. The National Reconnaissance Office should have satellite images of what happened at Fort March Park, but none have been produced. Daniel Porter, head of the agency, was later murdered.

Wanta was subsequently seized by Swiss authorities and jailed and questioned for 130 days. The mission Session gave him wa a set-up. He was carrying $18 billion worth of US Treasury instruments, which were seized. The chief Swiss prosecutor was also an officer of a Rich company. The Israeli government secured his release because he was head of a front company they owned. Wanta claimed to be “trustor” for US and Israeli black funds. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin secured his release and he was taken to New York City, where a judge released him. He was then taken to Wisconsin on charges he had not paid state income taxes since 1985. He claimed he ceased to be a resident in that year .



Wanta was accused of owning $14,000 in taxes for 1989 -1991. That figure would eventually be raised . Some of his claims about his activities seemed so fantastic that he was not permitted to hire his own attorney. John Chavez, the attorney selected for him, did not believe his story and initiated competency hearings. The Wisconsin papers ridiculed his claims and the judge said he was delusional but capable of standing trial. Due to health problems, he was eventually placed under house arrest. He paid a $90,000 bond but was not released, and in 1995 he was slapped with a gag order. Eventually he was permitted to hire Tom Henry, a former U.S. Attorney. He was sentenced to 22 years.. A friend paid the state $30,626.97 and all state charges were dropped. Meanwhile, his home was sold at a knocked-down price and he got none of the proceeds.

In 1997, he was released, and Bill Clinton subsequently pardoned him of pending federal charges. . On July 25, 2002 he was rearrested and held first in Chicago, and later under house arrest in Colorado. He was carrying large amounts of money and Treasury securities. When his attorney tried to visit him, he too was arrested, and the FBI said he too was carrying large amounts of money and securities. Henry was later released. It is likely that the FBI had been tipped off about their movements by Delbert Vreeland, whom the US considers a rogue former ONI agent. Henry admitted that they had hired him to help recover some of the money Wanta had left in abroad. Vreeland has admitted in an interview that AI switched sides.@ He had every reason to switch as the US wanted him extradited from Canada to face drug charges in Michigan, and he had preciously said that would have amounted to an informal death sentence.

Wanta had filed suite in the federal district court for Eastern Virginia to recover his commission. He sued George H.W. Bush, the Department of the Treasury, the CIA, and some other defendants. On April 15, 2003, Federal Judge Bruce Lee ruled that Wanta had a commission contract and that the facts he presented were largely accurate. However, it was held that Wanta could not collect for national security reasons. The court confirmed that Wanta was the trustor for these federal accounts.. According to Wanta, former Vice President Daniel Quayle arranged for him to be held under house arrest in Switzerland until 2016.

Leo Wanta and the World of Black Ops, Part 2

Despite Wanta's success in bring down the Soviet currency, he was to be deprived of payment for his services. Marc Rich received his commission, but George H. W. Bush prevented Wanta from getting his commission. Wanta made the great mistake of talking about how he was cheated and saying that + Bush wanted to divert a large portion of the $70 billion profits into his own accounts and Wanta refused to help. Later, Wanta said Bush had managed to seize some of his commission and place it in his own accounts abroad. This money was sent to accounts in the Republic pf Vanuatu, about 500 miles west of Fiji, where many world intelligence agencies have accounts. Some of that money was then sent to the South Pacific Islands Bank, LTD. of the Philippines. At the same time that gold was reported missing from the Russian central bank, 2000 tons of soviet gold was routed to Algemene Bank in the Netherlands, now known as ABN-Amro. That bank used its share of the profit to allow its American flagship, La Salle National in Chicago, to establish 15 branches and buy out a number of other big banks.

The profits from these operations were estimated at $27.5 trillion in 1992 and about $70 trillion in 2006. Comprised of many accounts, it is called the Global Security Fund. Wanta was insisting in 2006 that the money should go to the US treasury. Eventually, international banks decided that these funds could be used to solve various liquidity problems and opposed the money being used. According to Wanta, US intelligence agencies have been able to get control of some of the money. Dark motives have been ascribed to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but it seems Clinton only wanted to use some of it to buy peace in the Middle East by bribing various Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab leaders. Wanta agreed to divert one billion to an account in Spain for the use of George H.W. Bush and he reported that he was co-trustor of another $210 billion which Bush wanted under his sole control. Although the Bush did not get control of this money, his family was able to siphon off $100 billion through the use of various banking connections. They laundered it through Pilgrim Investments. Marc Rich was able to steal a similar amount, and he gave half a billion to Neil Bush . It is assumed that the senior Bush and Rich were acting on behalf of the CIA and Mossad respectively. In all, he claims that $745 billion hs been taken from the accounts over which he claims to be “trustor.”

Wanta had worked for the NSC, CIA, and the Treasury and was also a White House operative for Ronald Reagan, who called him his favorite “junkyard dog.” Apparently, his main employment then was as a Secret Service agent. Close friend and traveling companion of Vernon Walters, a longtime government operative. Wanta claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate his friend “Dutch.” In 1988, he was caught trying to sell 30,000 machine pistols to Manuel Noriega for his by his security force. It has been speculated that the weapons carried devices that would enable the US to later locate Noriega loyalists.

Wanta used to visit FBI director William Sessions by accessing the office through J. .Edgar Hoover’s secret tunnel, called “back of the stage.” While there he also met with the two agents charged with enforcing RICO statute against organized crime.

V.K. Durham has traced ten massive transfers of money made by Wanta after FBI raided BCCI’s false front, the Banco Lavoro Nazionale’s branch in Atlanta. The feds found that the bank had loaned $4 billion to Saddam Hussein. All of Wanta’s transfers were routed through BANCO EXTERIOR DE ESPANA ~ MALAGA. Of course, he was not the only person moving massive amounts of money after that event. What is interesting is that federal authorities apparently permitted him to move the money for some reason, but he was still not in control of the funds. Some of the money went to a London house controlled by Marc Rich, to Switzerland, Monaco, China and Panama, but the bulk went to US firms such as Chase, Prudential Bache, Morgan, and several trust attorney firms.

Leo Wanta: A View of the World of Black Ops, Part 1

Leo Emile Wanta, a 63 year-old Appleton, Wisconsin native, is acknowledged to be a very effective commodities trader and international financier. Los Angeles commodities trader and Democratic operative Tom Hanneghan is no fan of Wanta but called him a "brilliant engineer" with "lots of technical skills." Wanta A worked for the U.S. intelligence agencies@ and A helped bring down the Soviet communist government.@ His government service included working for the U.S. Treasury, the CIA, and the NSC. He worked for the 1988 Bush campaign and raised $50,000 for Bush=s reelection. His activities as a US government operative are shrouded in mystery, but what little is known about them reveals that there is a vast world of clandestine activity that powerfully effects events.

Wanta claimed to be Ronald Reagan=s favorite “junkyard dog." He went to work for the US government in 1963 , working for the DEA and CIA, and became a Republican operative in 1965. In 1988, the Associated Press carried stories about his selling 30,000 automatic pistols to Manuel Noriega. It has been speculated that the guns had homing devices that later enabled the US to find Noriega=s security people. He was known to travel frequently with General Vernon Walters, an US ambassador to the UN, and visited FBI head William Sessions through the secret entrance to his office.

While fronting various Treasury operations abroad, he accumulated a fortune for himself. A prime front for the Treasury was his Aneko Credit PTE, LTD in Singapore. He also conducted business for the CIA through a front named Miracle Investments and AmeriTech, which seems to be partly owned by the CIA. He has been accused of working covertly to drive down the price of gold on the international market, but there is very little information on it. His 1992 tax documents listed his net wealth at $432 billion. It is likely he was fronting much of that for the government. He was a specialist in currency swaps and in selling and trading arbitraged guaranteed currency deposits called "prime bank guarantees" to banks for the US Treasury. Unfortunately, his funds and those of the Treasury were commingled, and the government continued to use his funds after he was no longer in a position to direct their use.

His great accomplishment was destabilizing the Russian currency in 1990-1991. One of his firms was New Republic/USA Financial Group Ltd. was used in this operation. US journalist Claire Sterling, who has a record of being friendly to the CIA, described the Great Ruble Scam in Thieves' World ( Simon and Shuster, 1994). Wanta came off as a scoundrel but a highly effective one.


In fact, he was working in cooperation with Israel and China and used the services of the Russian mafiya to acquire vast amounts of counterfeit rubles. He started with over a hundred billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, money he repaid with interest. The idea was to accumulate rubbles and then present them for redemption as payment to debts owed the Soviet Union of for redemption other currencies or gold. Speculation with real currency against the rubble was also involved. Marc Rich, an Israeli agent and US citizen was also involved. The Chinese and Israelis helped him accumulate rubles on the black market. The accumulated funds were used to bring down the ruble and were used in part by the Chinese to pay debts. Some rubles were sold to east European countries, who also paid down their debts. Still others were used to buy 2000 tons of Russian gold. The rubble was pegged at $1.20 to a rubble, but they could not be legally purchased. Wanta and others started with more than a hundred billion from the US treasury and other funds and bought the currency at about .28 and sold them to people with debts to Russia at .88.

Sybil Edmonds: Muzzled Whistle-Blower, Part II

Part 2


The Justice Department quickly muzzled Edmonds, and her efforts in court to regain free speech were not successful The first gag order was issued by Michael Chertiff. Court proceedings were blocked when the government twice employed the assertion of the AState Secret Privilege.@ The Project on Public Oversight and The ACLU supported her efforts to regain free speech. Federal Circuit Judge Reggie Walton upheld the government=s right to silence her. He was later to preside over the case of Lewis AScooter@ Libby, who was accused of perjury in the matter of the exposing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Oddly, Walton, listed no prior employment on the disclosure forms that federal judges must sign.

At the heart of her problems were her claims that Turkish money was making its way to US politicians and that the Turks and others were involved in the drug and illicit arms trade. She has repeatedly claimed that she was gagged because she knew criminally obtained money was reaching people in high places in the United States government. In 1997, British Home Secretary Tom Sackville angered his government by openly stating that Turkey was neck-deep in the international drug trade. He was correct in point of fact, but Turkey is an important western ally, and it would be disconcerting to take the next step and suggest that the US and UK simply look the other way, even when some of this drug money ends up in the coffers of Al Quada.


About $40 billion worth of heroin and illegal drugs pass through Turkey each year; most of it going to Europe. Turkey receives, processes, and ships heroin from a AGolden Triangle,@ Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. The Turkish mafia coordinates all this, but they work in conjunction with the MIT (Turkish Intelligence Agency), the military command, and police. The trade comprises about a quarter of the nation=s GNP, and it can be assumed that much of the profit goes to the state itself.

For some reason, the people on Vice President Cheney=s staff who were busy discrediting CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson had close ties to Turkey. So did their ally Assistant Secretary of State Marc Grossman, who busily discredited Plame and her husband. He was also under investigation for passing classified information to Turkey and AQPAC. It is ironic that Ambassador Joe Wilson first met his wife at the American Turkish Council in 1997. Brewster Jennings, a CIA front for the counterproliferation division, had dealings with all the Turkish American organizations. Some of Sibel=s comments suggest that she thought someone within those organizations found out Plame was a spy and could have been tied to the effort to out her .


It is probably more than coincidental that a number of top neo-cons have business relationships with Turkey. Richard Perle and doug Feith do consulting and lobbying for Turkey through International Advisors, Inc. Others who work or worked for Turkey are Marc Grossman, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz. Most of these people also have close ties to Israel. Of course, there is a strong de facto, but silent alliance between Turkey and Israel. Citizens of both countries work together moving illegal arms and procuring illegal Aend user certificates@ to cover their shipments. Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith have established records of trying to create loopholes in regulations effecting the arms trade.


In January, 2004, Israeli citizen Asher Karni, who was connected to the network, was arrested for shipping 66 nuclear triggers to Pakistan. Federal judge Thomas Hogan released him on $100,000 bail--- which t he prosecutor did not challenge, and Karni moved into a Jewish rest home. Hogan is the same judge who permitted the FBI to raid William Jefferson=s Congressional office. Karni ws eventually goven a three year sentence. Zeki Bilman. His alleged accomplace, died under strange circumstances.

Karni lived in South Africa for twenty years and is said to have masqueraded as a Muslim. FBI leakers claim that wiretaps named Douglas Feith and Turkish MIT intelligence agents working in the American Turkish Council. (Madsen, February 1, 2007). In 1995, Der Spiegel claimed that Urs Tanner, who operated a plant in Switzerland and was allegedly tied to the ring, was a CIA agent, probably tied to Plame=s Brewster Jennings counterproliferation effort. The same leakers claim that Eric Edelman , former ambassador to Turkey, was deeply involved in the drug and nuclear arms network. He had served as Scooter Libby=s assistant and is now Undersecretary of Defense. Richard Pearle=s International Advisors, Inc., a lobbyist for Turkey, was also tied to the network. Former Speaker Bob Livingston also lobbies for Turkey, and Dennis Hastert has received large political contributions from the Turkish lobby.
1.


Intelligence sources claim it was this network that Valerie Plame was trying to shut down. Her Brewster Jennings operation had intercepted a nuclear materials shipment that was supposed to have been planted in Iraq to make the case for weapons of mass destruction there .Richard Barlow, head of the Counter-Proliferation Divison, was fired in 1989, when he found evidence that the George H.W. Bush administration was helping the A.Q. Khan nuclear manufacturing program in Pakistan. Stephen Hadley, then an assistant to Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney led to effort to fire Barlow. Today, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor =s Office has been complaining that the administration of George w. Bush will not assist it in its investigation of AQ Khan.


The Scooter Libby case is interesting because ATurkey@ kept turning up in documents that were released. When Cheney aids and Rove discussed Plame their discussion evolved into a discussion of Russian mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, A Q Khan and the Turks/. At one point, some of the White House e=mail had been lost, but prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned that it was stored at a facility in Olney, Maryland. After he found what he needed, the White House also found the missing e-mail and turned it over. In the trial, the prosecution produced hand written notes that proved that Cheney, and Libby, and Deputy White House communications director Cathie Martin, and others conspired to besmirch the reputation of Plame=s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. (January 27, 2007) Despite revelation of this damaging information, some believe that Fitzgerald, who covered up some important information regarding the first World Trade Center bombing, has little choice but to take a dive in the current case for the Bush administration and that only Libby would suffer in connection to the revelation that Plame was a CIA covert operative. (January 16, 2007) The defense continually said it would put Vice President Cheney on the stand, but declined to do so in the end. This could be a sign that Libby would eventually be pardoned.

Sybil Edmonds: Muzzled Whistle-Blower, Part 1

Sybil Edmonds, then 32, was employed by the FBI after 9.11 to translate intercepts of conversations in Turkish and Farsi. She was employed as a language specialist for the FBI's Washington Field Office. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. She repeatedly claimed that the government had enough information to enable it to foil the 9/11 plot. Specifically, she said the FBI had information that terrorists planned to fly planes into the World Trade Center. She also believed the evidence she saw meant that narcotics money was going to both Al Qaeda and US politicians. Three weeks after she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee she was terminated.


Edmonds found one co-worker who had worked for an organization that was then under FBI surveillance. Edmonds was sure that that woman was changing texts that dealt with Turkish interests. She found a nest of Turkish spies operating in the US, some at the Turkish embassy and others in the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, the American Turkish Associations, and the American Turkish Council. Questionable activities included bribery, espionage, and infiltration of nuclear research labs. Some investigators assume that many of the weapons and secrets were not intended for Turkey, but were to be resold to China and others.

Edmonds first got into trouble with her FBI employers when she complained of sloppy translations being by others and that one translator was asked to translate communications from a former employer. She was forced to take a polygraph test and was hounded for typing her complaints on a home computer even though the inspector general later determined that her supervisor said she could do this.


She claimed that she was instructed to translate slowly so the agency could claim it needed more staff. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Edmonds found Turks trafficking in nuclear materials and narcotics, and they also has some links to Israel. Moreover, she thought it likely that profits from, these criminal dealings made their way to Speaker Dennis Hastert in the form of campaign contributions and bribes .

According to Daniel Ellsburg’s account of her message: Suitcases of cash were delivered to the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert at his home near Chicago from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.” He interpreted her to mean that Afghan drugs made their way to Turkey where they were processed and sent to Europe via the Kosovo Liberation Army and a number of private military contractors. She also claimed that Al Qaeda was 95% financed by drugs, but the 9/11 Commission went out of its way to write “there is no reliable evidence that Bin Laden was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking.” This drug trade goes back to the CIA’s long-time involvement with Pakistan’s ISI and the BCCI. It grew greatly during the effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. If today, the CIA, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda are all involved in the Afghan drug trade, it would not be surprising if they had some bcomon business relationships or, at the least, were all dealing with the same major Afghan drug lords.



She has hinted at corrupt roles of unelected officials, whom some investigators thought could well have been neocons Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Marc Grossman. It is known that Grossman worked hard to stop probes of the possible link between Turkey and Al Qaeda. Ms. Edmonds told Congress that she thought Al Qaeda was financed almost entirely (95%) by drug money. She has repeatedly spoken about how the international black markets in arms, sex, and drugs are interlinked. Before Congress, she also described the sale of information by State Department employees, various payments, and Adead drops.@ There were also Pentagon officials being paid for passing on secret information.

Representative Henry Waxman and two Senators defended her, Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley . Grassley, a Republican, even went on camera to speak up for her. Behrooz Sarshar, another translator, took information to Grassley to support her claims, but the senator has not acted on it. In an informal meeting, FBI investigators confirmed that there was substance to her charges. John M. Cole, now a retired FBI counter intelligence agent, made the mistake of supporting her and saw his career go up in flames. He was forced to resign in 2004, but not before he was able to use numerous bureau contacts to affirm her story. A Justice Department Inspector General's letter, released January 14, 2004, concluded that her claims "were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services." Attorney General John Ashcroft, retroactively classified what she had told Congress as well as the Inspector General=s report

What the US Knew about Mohammed Atta before 9/11

A little less is known about Mohammed Atta=s activities than about those of Ali Mohamed, but it is clear that even without information from Able Danger, the government had enough information to keep tabs on him. Moreover, it is clear that the FBI had knowledge of the movements of Atta and two others in Venice, Florida before 9-11. In addition, two Al Qaeda terrorists were tailed in San Diego by the FBI. They resided there with a known FBI asset. The bureau forbade agent Stephen Butler from telling t he 911 Commission of his frustration that his superiors would do nothing about these two subjects, Hazmi and Midhar.

For almost four years, while he was in Germany, Atta was employed by a foundation run by the German and US governments -- Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. He was an instructor in an exchange program , and did some work for it in Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo. The US part of the program was overseen by the State Department but ranking private citizens such as David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger were also involved. He also attended the Technical University at Hamburg, and German federal police ( BKA) investigated him for minor drug crimes.


According to a September 24, 2001 article in the German intelligence magazine Focus, German security people were watching and listening to the Hamburg cell in 1998 and 1999, and it is not unreasonable to assume their information was shared with the CIA. In 1999, the CIA attempted to recruit one member of that cell, Mamoun Darhazanli. There is evidence that he visited the Philippines in 1999, but there is no clear evidence that the Germans knew this. The American agency started following Atta in January of 2000 and found that he was buying dangerous chemicals in Frankfurt. On May 18, 2000, he obtained a visa in Berlin and arrived in New Jersey on June 3, 2000. There is some evidence that he had been in the US before, and there is clear evidence that he and Marwan Alshehhi visited the Philippines in 1999. Several months later, while in Florida, he received $100,000 from General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of the Pakistani intelligence service. This man was in Washington on September 10, 2001. In all, they probably received $325,000 from Pakistani intelligence. About $175,000 more came from unknown sources. Atta was attending a flight school at Huffman Avaiation in Venice, but he had previously attend two others. He and Marwan each paid $28,000 for instruction, but there were many places where instruction would cost a great deal less . He was a licensed pilot already and was given the privileges of an instructor. He may have even gone on some drug runs for them. It was known that he had business dealings with men who flew in from Germany to see him. It is also known that twelve other hijackers had lived somewhere near those two flight schools at one time or other.

The DEA confiscated and auctioned a private jet owned by one of the owners of the school. The agency found 43 pounds of heroin. No action was ever taken against the owner Wally Hilliard, a 70 year old born-again retired Midwesterner whose firm=s motto was AFight Sin, Hate Communism, and Back the Pack.@ The DEA did not arrest the pilot even though he had refused to give them his cell phone. He obtained the jet from the same people who provided Barry Seal with jets when he was working for the CIA, bringing drugs into Mena, Arkansas.( Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 Commission had been Seal's lawyer.) The same jet had made 39 weekly milk runs to Venezuela before the DEA acted. The school=s co-owner was Rudi Dekkers, a native of Holland who owed his government $3,000,000. A former Huffman executive said it was clear their drug trade had government protection. Hiliard also operated an air carrier which was used and endorsed by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. There was a second flight school at that airport owned by another native of Holland, Arne Kruithof. The two Hollanders bought flight schools within months of one another. Other airlines operated out of that airport, including one known CIA company, Caribe Air, and the little known , Bratannia Aviation which was to obtain a multi-million dollar contract to maintain the Lynchburg, Va. Airport. Pilots for the3 various firms moonlighted by doing missionary flights at night for religions groups like Pat Robertson=s Operation Hope..

Dekkers claimed he did not know her, but they both used Pascal Schreier, a German, to recruit Arab students. From the time Dekkers came to Venice in 1999 Arab students were frequenting ths school in significant numbers. Dekkers and Hilliard had been in business together before, paid too much for the flight school, and had apparently lost millions in their ventures. Money was not their problem. They had an odd habit of conducting private conversations inside a plane that was in a building.

Dekkers said Atta was a terrible person, an incompetent pilot who left school December 20, 2000 and did not return.. Others claim Atta was there in 2001 and that he and the operator were friendly. In August, two of the other hijackers were with Atta, and Atta=s attorney father visited from Egypt. The three younger men were said to hire a Yellow Cab in the evenings which was driven by a retired Navy Seal, who left soon after they left Venice. Another driver reported that the two were on very friendly terms and that they shared a cab to a Sarasota night spot in August, 2001. Atta was apparently a hard drinker, and he sometimes partied with pilots most probably tied to CIA operations. . On September 8, 2001 he was two companions in a Ft. Lauderdale bar named Shuckums, where he got wasted and called out AF**k God.@Atta was also known to gamble and mix with ladies of the night, but he was not the only terrorist who was not a strict Muslim.


Four terrorists lived above a strip club called ALance in Wayne, New Jersey. They were Lebanese pilot Ziad Jarrah and three Saudi musclemen, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi Probably because the were portrayed as religious fanatics, the FBI confiscated the security tapes showing them in the club. Videotapes of a nearb y video store patronized b y the hijackers and the Mossad agents tailing them were also seized, and later telephone numbers of the store patrons disappeared in a strange robbery.

The FBI showed up at Shuckums' bar eight hours after his plane hit the World Trade Center. For some reason, the FBI asked all kinds of questions about him in places other than Venice, where he spent much of his time. The FBI also asked a few questions in Venice, and agent talked to a flight school executive four hours after the planes struck. However, the bulk of the investigation there was left to the state Department of Law Enforcement.


Around 2 AM on September 12, according to Venice policemen, the flight school records were spirited away in two Ryder trucks that went to the Sarasota Airport, where Jeb Bush and a Florida Air National Guard C-130 were waiting. .

Mohammed el-Amir Atta insists his son was not involved in 9/11. Unable to accept what appears to have happened,has said that his son telephoned him on September 12, 2001. Almost a year later, he was sticking to his story, saying his son was in hiding.



Following the lead of the FBI, the 9-11 commission did not discuss the schools. The FBI has repeatedly said that Atta left the school in late 2000. At the Moussaoui trial, clear evidence was produced that Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were still there and flying in February, 2001 and that the FBI knew all about it. Moreover, they violated airpark rules by taking off at night and were observed by a watchman and the police, who conducted the flight school. The FBI subsequently interviewed a Huffman administrator about the incident. Yet, another administrator told a Congressional panel under oath that the school had no knowledge of the two men after December 24, 2000.The Knight Rider papers, the Washington Post, and Newsweek reported a week after 9-11 that five of the hijackers had been trained at US military facilities at one time or another. This did not involve Atta=s brief employment much earlier in Hamburg, before he experienced a religious conversion in Egypt. It was said that Atta was at the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Abdulaziz Alomari was at the Areospace Medical School in Texas.The Sarasota Herald-Times discovered that Atta lived for more than two months at the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice in March and April of 2001 with a part-time stripper and lingerie model. She reported that the FBI urged her to keep quiet. Florida records show that Atta became a business partner of chief Morrocan military attache Colonel Ahmed Arara and another man in business venture of some sort. The attache could have been related to highjacker Mohammed Araras.
Soon after 9-11, FBI agents were in Venice asking questions that made it clear they knew about Atta=s movements there. The nature mof their questioning activities strongly suggests they were very much aware of Atta=s presence there before 9-11. They questioned another cabbie about their nocturnal rides with the other driver. They seized a pharmacy=s security tape for the day Atta and his father were there and excised that part of the tape. It develops in an odd coincidence that the woman who helped one of the hijackers find an apartment was the wife of Michael Irish, the senior National Enquirer editor who received an anthrax letter. Irish also used that aifield.

There were rumors that the flight schools had a CIA connection, and that their records were removed on September 12, 2001. . The limited action taken after the biggest drug seizure in central Florida history led to speculation about some kind of a protected drug trade. For years there have been rumors about CIA and DIA drug trading; and those who have written about this have had their careers ruined. There will probably never be enough evidence to prove why the Pentagon did not want to move against Atta and now claims it knew nothing about him. One employee said Atta and others moved on to a school in Pompano Beach to learn to fly big jets via simulator. He added that he did not think this approach could be successful.Fired FBI translator Sibel Edmunds was asked if she came across evidence that there was any evidence of a connection between drug trading and 9-11. She said,
"The 9/11 terror plot intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network of international scope, in ways that form a "crystal clear" picture of what was going on.@ As she came to understand how tight federal gag order placed upon her was, she later answered this question with a "nondenial-denial." Don=t look for solid answers anytime soon. Daniel Hopsiocker, who has long investigated the Venice flight school attended by Atta, ties the seized a hereoin shipment found in the plane of one of the co-owners of the school. Puzzling over why the plane was seized but the politically connected owner was never touched, he concluded that someone with great influence in DC was buying drugs from Osama bin Laden. We know Al Qaeda sells drugs, but that connection is just a guess. It has also been suggested that he had been involved in a protected heroin smuggling operation and that this accounts for the Pentagon=s reluctance to pursue him earlier. Given the history of that airport, it is far more likely that the CIA was moving drugs through it. in 9-11


Quite a bit has been written about 120 Israeli Aart students who were in the United States before 9/11. Very frequently they stayed in close proximity to where Al Qaeda agents were staying. It is very likely that they were keeping the terrorists under surveillance. They worked hard to penetrate some federal agencies, particularly the DEA but their reasons for doing this are unclear. The fact that they were scouting federal facilities in places other than Washington and New York City might suggest they either did not know what the targets were or expected there to be more targets. Some of the agents were deported before 9/11 and several were detained for several months after that event. About 60 Israelis were picked up for questioning. Some speculate that the Israeli=s were working with Al Qaeda, but there is little evidence to sustain that notion. What they were doing was unclear.

There was altogether too much information about Atta and his movements easily available to federal intelligence agencies prior to 9/11. One could also assume that the Germans filled in American intelligence on what they knew. The CIA and Mossad have historically close ties, and it is possible that Langley knew most of what the Israeli painters knew. It would be possible to reach a definite conclusion if we knew for certain that the aviation schools at Venice still had strong CIA ties in 2000 and 2001. We lack that information, so the reader must draw her own conclusions.

Ali Mohamed

Republicans spun the Able Danger story as an illustration of the failures of the Clinton administration. They noted that the Clinton Pentagon failed to act on information about these terrorists. The Able Danger story can better be grasped in the context of what was known about Mohamed Atta and the BrooklynCell.



James Woolsey, former CIA director and neocon who detested Clinton, worked closely with Pa. Republican Congressman Curt Weldon to give the story a strong anti-Clinton spin. Weldon claimed before the House that Shaffer and civilian contractor James D. Smith told him the Able Danger project had warned the Navy not to refuel the Cole in Yemen in 2000. Former FBI director Louis Freeh has used Able Danger this to sell his book, claiming the Clintons kept him from hunting Al Qaeda. But the fact was that Able Danger was shut down under Bush, and no one has said that Able Danger had stopped tracking Al Qaeda cells outside the US before the project ceased operation. Freeh, has never explained why three good leads within his agency were quashed or why he did not stand by John O=Neill, the best terrorist hunter we have had to date Freeh's greatest failure was not acting on information that it had about the Al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn. The FBI knew a great deal about the Brooklyn cell, which was involved in the 1993 bombing. It was led by the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman. The cell=s chief trainer was Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had taught Green Berets at Fort Bragg.



Ali Mohammed


The strange relationship of the FBI and Ali Mohamed raises many questions.The FBI has a thick file on the target shooting activities of Ali Mohamed and other men from his mosque at Calverton. They apparently went shooting after mosque services in Brooklyn. According to Investigators Tom Hennigan and Peter Lance, he was a triple agent, loyal in the end If they were wrong, the other reasonable conclusion was that the FBI was somehow complicit in his dangerous activities. A somewhat similar situation existed in relationship to Mohammed Atta. Various government agencies knew quite a bit about Atta=s doings. It seems to come down to a matter of incredible incompetence or some degree of complicity.

Ali Mohamed had been the chief security advisor to Osama bin Laden and had trained the terrorist leaders=s security detail. He worked briefly for the CIA in the early eighties. The agency claims it found him unreliable and placed him on a watch list to prevent entry to the United States. Yet he obtained a visa, according to one account through a secret CIA program, and became a US citizen in 1986. At Fort Bragg, he was an instructor in Islamic culture. While there, he frequently traveled to New York, where he trained young Muslims in the use of explosive and fire arms. Ne student bled the head off Rabbi Meyer Kahane. The FBI said he was a Alone gunman.@ Another became involved in a scheme to blow up the United Nations. A third student was convicted in the plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. He also spent time training Islamic fighters in Afghanistan and the CIA has 1989 footage of him training terrorists. It is also known he taught them how to seize an airplane. Ali was detained in a Canadian airport in 1993 when he was found to be carrying two fake Saudi passports. He was released after Royal Canadian Mounted Police called his American handler, John Zent.(Toronto Globe and Mail, 11/22/01)]

In the 1990s, he did surveillance on the US consulate in Nairobi, Kenya and other places in north Africa. One wonders how he explained his frequent absences to his FBI employers and whether they ever doubted his explanations. The 9/11 report ( page 68) bluntly states that he led those who plotted to attack the embassy in Kenya.

In 1989, Ali Mohamed settled in California where he soon helped Ayman al-Zawahiri raise money. Again, in 1994 he helped al Zawahiri. His neighbors were certain he was an intermediary between the CIA and the Afghan rebels , arranging for the movement of arms. By the 1990s, he infiltrated the FBI and became involved in its super-secret Division Five. The agency admitted using him but claimed it was just to track down illegal immigrants, and it did not admit linking him with terrorists. At that time, he somehow obtained the complete list of unindicted coconspirators, which included himself, and faxed it to bin Laden. The FBI held him on a John Doe warrant for 9 months to keep him away from the press and prevent his testimony in the trial of the 1993 bombers. His name came up frequently in the trial and defense lawyers demanded that he be produced as a witness because they knew he worked for the FBI and perhaps also the CIA. In 1996, he was helping Al Qaeda move from Sudan to Afghanistan. Yet, in the late 1990s, he was also in some kind of FBI custody for considerable periods.


As late as 2000, he worked in the bureau's Sacramento office, was briefly detained after that, and then released. Then he was indicted for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings and entered a guilty plea. The people who produced the National Geographic special on him claim that after 9/11 he was able to explain to federal interviewers all the ins and outs of the 9/11 plot.(Peter Lance, "Triple Cross: National Geographic Channel's Whitewash of the Ali Mohamed Story," Huffington Post, 8/29/06, http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060829/cm_huffpost/028270. )CBS reported in October, 2001 that he was awaiting sentencing, but he then disappeared from the federal criminal justice system.

Next: More on what the US knew about Mohammed Atta

Able Danger, Part 3

Shaffer was deployed to Afghanistan in October, 2003 , where he had an opportunity to brief Dr. Philip Zelikow and his staffers on Able Danger. Zelikow had worked for Condoleezza Rice in the NSC. He told the Rice deputy that AWe found two or three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta.@ After Zelikow told Shaffer to contact him when he returned to Washington. The 9/11 commission materials show that Zelikow called the US almost immediately, at 4AM eastern time. When Shaffer tried to contact Zelikow at the Kean ( 9/11) commission, staffers told him there was no need for a meeting as they had all the necessary information on Able Danger. Zelikow did not give this information to the commission and did not include it in the document. . Zelikow denies the meeting with Shaffer in Afghanistan, but Shaffer has Zelikow=s business card as evidence. Zelikow later said said it was "not historically relevant." Zeliknow had been on loan from the White House National Security Office and is now special counselor to his friend, Secretary of State Rice. The Able Danger project also turned up business dealings between Stanford University Provost and the People’s Republic of China.

The Pentagon initially said that Able Danger never existed, and later said the files on the project had disappeared. . Shaffer, a Bronze medal winner, could not leave well enough alone. He sought to make certain that people in power, including Congressmen, realized what could be accomplished by using the Able Danger approach. He also revealed that the team had been aware of Mohammed Atta and the five Al Qaeda cells in the US and abroad. Shaffer lost his security clearance as well as his DIA job. He was also charged with stealing government pens from an embassy where his father worked when he was thirteen years old. In an effort to frame him, someone sent Shaffer a package with five secret documents and a bag of 20 government pens. A inquiry costing about $400,000 was launched to determine whether Shaffer had fraudulently charged to the government $67 worth of telephone calls over eighteen months.

When he appeared on Wolf Blitzer=s program, the broadcaster blind-sided him with the charge he was sleeping with a woman in the office of Congressman Curt Weldon. Shaffer claimed that when the Bush administration replaced his top superior General Peter Schoomaker, that all hope of using the knowledge gained was gone. Navy Captain Scott Philpott, hade of the team, said they identified Atta as a member of the Brooklyn cell, but the US had certain knowledge Atta was in Hamburg at the time . However, J.D. Smith, a civilian contractor, has said he was "absolutely positive" Atta was in Brooklyn at that time. Smith was to withdraw his firm from the project. . Shaffer was forbidden to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, this decision was later reversed..

The DIA moved to take Shaffer off its payroll, and an unidentified DIA representative told CNN=s Wolf Blitzer that Shaffer was having an affair with one of Congressman Curt Weldon=s staffers. The Congressman answered that the colonel did not know anyone on his staff. Some other members of the Able Danger team are represented by Shaffer=s lawyer and are now saying other members of the data-mining task force do not support his claim that they knew Atta was physically in the United States. The colonel must be under enormous pressure to modify his story. . Two conclusions are inescapable. (1) There was great reluctance on the part of the Pentagon, under both Clinton and Bush, to act on the knowledge it had about Atta and his three friends.( 2) Now it is clear to all, that the Pentagon was and is busy denying it had this knowledge, and it was mightily assisted in this cover-up by the executive director of the 9-11 commission. A third conclusion is likely and may explain much of the lying about Able Danger. Kean Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste openly denied that the United States had any of the data mining capacities described by Colonel Shaffer. It could all be about denying these capabilities and what possession of such capabilities mean to US citizens.



The reason why the Bush Administration worked so bury information about Able Danger are not clear. It was a sophisticated data-mining project designed to gather information about Al Qaeda. Discussion of the findings of the Able Danger project lead to consideration of how much the US knew about Atta and other terrorists before 911. At the very least, it is a picture of incredible incompetence. But some of the evidence could be used to raise questions about what else was being hid. This piece will focus on what was known about Ali Mohamed, who was convicted for involvement with the 1998 embassy bombings and Mohamed Atta. Ali Mohammed is relevant because he was connected to the 1993 bombing and the embassy bombings of 1998. There is clear evidence that he was connected to the FBI, and at least briefly to the CIA. The next post will deal with him.

ABLE DANGER,Part 2

Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who worked at the DIA, became aware of Atta and his three colleagues in mid-2000. Shaffer informed the FBI of what was known about these four Al Qaeda operatives. Pentagon lawyers became involved to prevent passing on the information. There were concerns about whether there was adequate supervision of collecting information from open sources, which would necessarily net information on US citizens as well as people legally living within the United States. The lawyers claimed they had problems recommending action against someone holding a green card. But Atta did not have a green card or a valid entry visa. He came to the US three times on a visitor=s visa. For a time he was enrolled at the International Officers at Maxwell Air Force Base. The Pentagon is now denying that it knew anything about these people before 9-11. Pentagon lawyers had also required a unit tied to Able Danger to discard information about four Chinese from corporations in the US that were attempting to acquire US military technology.


There is mounting evidence that concealing information about Able Danger was much more than protecting the methods of an anti-terrorist operation. The Pentagon should not be faulted with keeping quiet about those aspects that involved highly sophisticated electronic surveillance of foreign targets outside the US. There could also have been concerns that FBI action on these leads would eventually lead to revealing information about the governments=s highly sophisticated data mining technology. That would have opened a bigger can of worms. But as it turned out, most Americans later seemed to support the government=s extensive domestic and foreign electronic spying programs.


Another possibility is that a discussion of Able Danger would have led to a discussion of what else government knew about Atta before 9/11. Eventually the Army destroyed the Able Danger files on Atta claiming this was necessary because he was a "US person" under the meaning of legislation that said the military could only retain intelligence information on US persons for 90 days. In all, 2.5 tetrabytes on Al Qaeda were erased. It has been reported that some of the destroyed information involved ties between prominent Americans and the Chinese military The data also showed that several Al Qaeda operatives rented rooms in a New Jersey hotel and that a cell met there. The Able Danger team was so good at tracking these terrorists that they discovered a meeting of representatives of cells at the Wayne Inn in northern New Jersey.. Able Danger was moved from Virginia to Texas, and in February and March of 2001, it was shut down by the Defense Department, only to be reactivated later as Able Providence. Able Danger was shut down soon after the Bush administration took office. General Schoomaker , its protector, retired, and the new officers to whom the Able Danger people were to report were clearly hostile. A two star general in DIA bluntly told Shaffer to back away from the project telling him spying was not his job. The general subsequently denied that the conversation took place.