Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

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Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby justdrew » Mon Oct 18, 2010 4:46 am

Hollywood Hitmen
Black helicopters, underground bases, laser weapons and the mysterious death of Schwazenegger's screenwriter...
By Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham
September 2010 | FT266

As he drove through the small hours of the Californian night, Gary Devore insisted to his wife Wendy: “I’m pumping pure adrenaline.”

“This was not a normal phone call… I felt he was warning me,” Wendy later recalled. “I love you,” she had said, expectantly.

“See you later,” Gary mumbled. It was the last time Wendy Oates-Devore would ever speak to her husband, the 55-year-old Hollywood screenwriter who’d worked on major projects with stars such as Kurt Russell, Christopher Walken and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had vanished. Swallowed, it seemed, by the desert highway.

Gary had been returning from actress friend Marsha Mason’s New Mexico residence where he had just finished a screenplay he’d told his wife would be the hardest-hitting piece of film Hollywood had ever seen. A year later, in the summer of 1998, his car was located by a police dive team in a shallow aqueduct following a tip-off from an ‘amateur sleuth’. Inside the vehicle, belted into the front seat and dressed in Gary’s cowboy clothing, sat a skeletal corpse.

The Californian Highway Patrol wrote a 158-page report declaring it an accid­ent: case closed. And that was that… except for the fact that many of those who knew Gary Devore remain convinced that the official investigation was a whitewash, that Gary was murdered, and that the US government itself has been trying to wipe clean its fingerprints from the case.

Gary’s script, a remake of the 1949 heist movie The Big Steal, was to be an action thriller set against the backdrop of the 1989 United States invasion of Panama and the overthrow of its dictator, former CIA asset Manuel Noriega. It was to be Gary’s direct­orial debut and expect­ations were high. Gary was being assisted in his research by his old friend Charles ‘Chase’ Brandon, veteran CIA case officer, first cousin to Tommy Lee Jones; also the Agency’s new public face in Hollywood and – according to Gary’s publicist Michael Sands – “the real Jack Bauer”, referring to the fictional super-agent of the television show 24.

However, the screenplay was acutely critical of US foreign policy, presenting a picture of a country ravaged by the US military and in which US Army intelli­gence organises the theft of Noriega’s drug money. An early draft obtained by the authors gives its main characters lines like: “Shit, we’re really kicking the crap outta this little bitty country to get one man [Noriega]. It’s embarrassing.”, “Starting a war you can’t lose is good for morale.”, and “a little scrimmage to make the varsity look good”.


THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
The official ‘accident’ explanation of Gary’s death is certainly creative, if nothing else. By the police’s own calculations, in order to have ended up in the aqueduct, Gary would have had to have driven in excess of 110km/h without headlights – they had been deliberately turned off, the investigation found – the wrong way up a major highway for 3.2km, unnoticed, and through the only gap in the road rail – a mere 5m wide – all without causing any damage to either rail or car. “Evel Knievel on his best night couldn’t do that,” snorts Hollywood private investigator Don Crutchfield.

Officially, the wreckage was discovered following some savvy sleuthing by a laid-off accident specialist from aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. Gary’s ex-wife – and Babylon 5 star – Claudia Christian finds the circumstances suspicious, telling us via email: “My friends (one of whom is an ex-marine) took infrared equipment to the aqueduct where he was found days after he was missing and found nothing… so they were convinced that his car and that body was planted there.”

A number of things were missing from Gary’s car – the laptop computer containing The Big Steal, the gun and ammunition he always carried with him on long trips… and his hands.

Following protests from Wendy, police discovered hand bones on the back seat and in the silt at the bottom of the car, but none of them included Gary’s deformed pinky finger, which would have confirmed the body’s identity. Still unsatisfied, Wendy commiss­ioned a second autopsy by Dr David Posey (assisted by Dr Robert Byrd), but she claims their report never turned up and she has since been in a state of limbo, unsure even whether the body was that of her husband.

We secured a copy of Posey’s report, which states the body was indeed Gary Devore’s. It also confirmed startling rumours that the hand bones provided by the authorities had been over two hundred years old. What did these old hands imply? A cock-up at the original coroner’s office? A police tactic to ease a grieving widow’s mind? Or signs of a professional assassination? Posey agreed with the original verdict that exact cause of death was “undetermined” but with the chilling addendum: “homicide”.


BAD COMPANY
The discovery of Gary’s vehicle was punctuated by another sinister moment – the presence of a mysterious, unmarked black helicopter. The incident was recalled by Mike Burridge, then public information officer for the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department: “As we were wrapping up for the afternoon, I was standing next to the cameraman from a national network [CNN], and he tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Hey, is that your helicopter?’”

Burridge looked up to see a chopper approaching, “at a high rate of speed, almost as if it was following the path of the aqueduct, and very low”.

“That’s not ours,” said Burridge, “is it yours?”

“No,” replied the cameraman, “we don’t have a helicopter like that.”

Burridge was able to see “somebody in the back who was taking pictures”, and sugg­ested to the cameraman that he respond in kind. However, “as soon as he put the camera back on the tripod, and panned down that way, and began to record, the helicopter took off. He [the cameraman] told me when he looked at it, it didn’t have any markings, there was no tail number, no end number, everybody inside the helicopter was wearing dark clothing, it was completely black. I could see the majority of that with my naked eye, it was that close… That obviously raised suspicions, about… who was in that aircraft.”

Even stranger, the next day Burridge received an unsolicited phone call from a man named ‘Anderson’ identifying himself as an Air Force Public Information Officer. According to Burridge, “Anderson said that they [the Air Force] were receiving a lot of radio interference from that area out at [Edwards Air Force Base]… so they sent a crew over to check it out.” Thus was explained the presence of the mysterious chopper. Soon after, however, a media agency learned of the incident and decided to call the number ‘Anderson’ had given to Burridge, but the number didn’t check out. Puzzled, Burridge decided to enquire with the Air Force Public Information Office, which replied, “No, we’ve never heard that name [Anderson] and we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This wasn’t the only blind alley Burridge trod during the Devore investigation. In further testimony – corroborated by Wendy and her friends – he explains how the CIA’s ‘Chase’ Brandon showed up at Wendy’s house just days after the disappearance and shut himself in Gary’s office. A friend of Wendy’s had gone into the room to find a sweater and saw Brandon bent over Gary’s computer. Shortly afterwards, they discovered that the computer had frozen indefinitely, and thus vanished the entirety of Gary’s research and earlier drafts of The Big Steal.

Concerned about Brandon’s actions, Burridge decided to ask some questions. However, the Sheriff’s Department “had a very difficult time communicating with that individual [Brandon] to the point that he actually refused to return our telephone calls and our letters”. In exasperation, Burridge enlisted the help of the FBI, who agreed to interview Brandon – astonishingly – at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, about the events that took place in Wendy’s home. The FBI reported back to Burridge that there was no need to follow up this avenue of enquiry.

What was Brandon doing in Gary’s office? Taking a quiet moment to remember an old friend, as he explained to Wendy? Conducting his own investigation into the disappearance, mindful, perhaps, that close family are often the most likely suspects? Or was he frying sensitive information he’d provided to Gary about CIA activity in Panama?


SPY GAME
According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves. To this day, Wendy can’t shake the memory of her husband in his dimly lit office one evening, uncharacteristically hunched at his desk, head in hands: “The deeper you look, the dirtier it gets,” he had said.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was outraged by the Pentagon’s “use of sophist­icated weaponry merely to test it”. “Above all, though,” said Clark, “there was a use beyond any conceivable necessity of just sheer fire power… just an excessive use of force beyond any possible justification.”

Curiously, during the year that Gary was missing, three men in civilian clothes with a ‘military look’ approached Wendy, out of the blue, as she was emerging from a driving test and said in no uncertain terms that the subject of Panama, as a “dangerous and dirty event”, was best avoided, before leaving abruptly.

Remembering her brother, Gary’s sister Judy says: “Since the time he was a small boy he wanted to be, and fantasised about being, a cowboy.” But Gary’s self-styled cowboy image went deeper than his front­ier-style getup: beneath the Stetson was a genuine tough guy, not to mention ladies’ man. But who really was Gary Devore, and what was the true nature of his relationship with the US intelligence community?

Wendy says she once saw “strange symbols” on her husband’s computer. When she asked what they were, Gary said they were “encryption codes”, but, not being com­puter literate at the time, she asked nothing more. Claudia Christian makes a similar claim: “I recall when we were married I walked into his office unannounced and saw what appeared to be Cyrillic writing on his computer. He was furious at me for disturbing (catching?) him.”

A few months after Gary’s disappearance, Wendy received a visit from an alleged retired employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) – the highly secret­ive intelligence agency specialising in intercepting communications and deciphering encrypted information. He expressed to her his view that Gary’s disappearance was somehow connected with high-level public spy scandals dating from the mid-1990s, such as the selling of state secrets to Russia by the CIA’s Aldrich Ames and the FBI’s Robert Hanssen. He told Wendy: “We never kill our own,” but expressed his concerns that Gary might have fallen into the hands of Russian mobsters linked to US intelli­gence. He advised Wendy to look more deeply into Gary’s background and, upon checking her missing husband’s finances, she discovered a million dollar pension fund in government bonds. “We all get that,” said the NSA man, cryptically.

The NSA informs us that Gary did not work for them, but refuses to release any intelligence information relating to him either, citing a series of statutes relating to espionage, security and encryption.


STEALTH
In the early 1990s, Gary went to a military base in the Nevada desert while he was working on an abandoned film called Stealth for the producer Walter Mirisch. Wendy only found out about her husband’s trip when she stumbled across a photo in their attic of Gary sitting in a Stealth plane in a quonset hut structure. In his autobio­graphy, Mirisch claims he himself took a trip to Tonopah Test Range in the desert in connection with the same film. The base, also known as Area 52, was known for housing Lockheed’s F-117 Nighthawk, which was used to great effect in the 1991 Gulf War. It seems likely that Gary’s trip to Nevada was also to the Tonopah base, raising more question marks about his level of security clearance.

Taking us even further into the Twilight Zone is Wendy’s friend Karen Prisant Ellis, a psychic who had worked with the police on various cases. It was through Ellis, shortly after Gary’s disappearance, that Wendy was contacted by a Columbian man; here we will refer to him only as ‘Carlos’. After months without any leads, intrigued and desperate, Wendy agreed to meet with Carlos in the presence of Ellis at a retreat in Escondido. There, Wendy listened as Carlos told her how he had met Gary while working at an underground facility operated by defence contractor Rocketdyne where locator chips had been implanted in each of their right pectoral muscles. Carlos claimed he had been recruited by the CIA based on his expertise in electromagnetics and that it had taken him 10 years to disengage from the Agency after having his chip illegally removed. Carlos told Wendy he had been watching the Devore case unfold on TV, that he was dying of cancer due to the nature of his work at Rocketdyne, and that he wanted her to know that he thought Gary was a good man. “Many weirdos came out of the woodwork at the time,” Wendy explains, “so I didn’t take much notice of Carlos. But the man was clearly close to death… Why would a dying man spend his final days telling me, a total stranger, a false life story?”

One of Rocketdyne’s biggest claims to fame – or rather notoriety – is the partial nuclear meltdown which occurred at the company’s main Santa Susana facility in 1959, along with numerous toxic spills before and since that time. A state-funded study estimated that the meltdown released up to 300 times more radiation than the infamous accident at Three-Mile Island and may have triggered in excess of 260 cancer cases among Rocketdyne employees. If the cancer-stricken Carlos really had worked for Rocketdyne in California, then he almost certainly would have spent considerable time at the Santa Susana facility. Might Carlos have been among those contaminated?

On the subject of underground bases, Gary’s car was discovered at the very heart of America’s military-industrial-complex – Southern California’s ‘Aerospace Valley,’ so dubbed by locals for its numerous sens­itive military and corporate aerospace installations. Only a 10-minute car ride from the scene of Gary’s ‘accident’ sits the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, birthplace of the U-2, SR-71 and F-117. To the north sprawls the sensitive Edwards Air Force Base, a stone’s throw from which is the Denny’s Diner where Gary ate during his last known movements. It was in the diner’s unmonitored car park that Wendy suspects her husband was accosted. At the extreme east of the valley, McDonnell Douglas maintains an electromagnetic research base, and to the west, allegedly plunging 42 levels deep into the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains, sits Northrop’s mysterious ‘Anthill’ facility where – according to people who claim to have worked at the base – hovering orbs patrol the corridors keeping tabs on employees and force fields operate in place of doors.


ENEMY OF THE STATE
If there is even a shred of truth in stories of Gary’s links to black projects and the NSA, then the motives for ‘disappearing’ him will surely never be known.

Then there’s the CIA. How close was Gary to the Agency? His relationship with Brandon goes back to 1986, when Gary was best man at Tommy Lee Jones’s wedding, and he spoke with Brandon frequently by phone in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. Brandon told entertainment website UGO.com: “I’ve been an Agency officer for 30 years, 25 years of that undercover… It’s not a job or a career. It’s a lifestyle, a life of deception. You have to go out and procure information and find people who are willing to work for you. You’re not an agent, but rather an officer who finds agents to provide information.” Was Gary one of Brandon’s recruits? If so, he certainly wouldn’t have been the first Agency man in Tinseltown (see “The CIA in Hollywood”).

But would the intelligence services really murder an established screenwriter over a movie? It would be highly irregular. And yet, to the Agency, with a newly bolstered presence in Hollywood, Gary Devore’s Big Steal might have represented a sudden and inconvenient shift in political stance from a cowboy with a reputation for sticking to his guns. What was to stop Gary from blabbing to the press during the promotion of The Big Steal? And if the film was a success for the new director, then what might he be tempted to make next?

On the other hand, maybe it was, as the authorities insist, just a terrible accident. Maybe Gary, after a gruelling 12-hour drive, had made a series of foolhardy decis­ions (turning off his headlights, driving the wrong way up the highway at speed). Maybe; but this official version of events will never satisfy many of those who knew Gary best.

“I think he was killed,” says Claudia Christian. “He never would have fallen asleep on the road, he was a long distance driver, that’s what he did to think out scripts… he would drive for days on end.”

The local and national print media stopped asking questions when Gary’s car was discovered. A few television programmes have since discussed the case, though nothing has been broadcast about the intelligence service link. In 2001, E! Entertainment made an episode on Gary as part of its Mysteries and Scandals series, which included frank discussion proposing the possibility of CIA involvement. The filmmakers say that the show was pulled from broadcast at the last minute. We contacted the then head of E! for an explanation, but, although initially open to discussion, she abruptly cut off contact when we mentioned the CIA.

As for Wendy Oates-Devore, she never used to believe in conspiracy theories, but the nature of Gary’s disappearance haunts her. She has asked countless questions but received no satisfactory answers. “You don’t want a Rashomon ending,” she says, referring to the multiple interpretations of what has actually transpired in Kurosawa’s famous film. Sadly, in the case of Gary Devore, a Rashomon ending is all we have; that, and one seemingly inescapable truth – as the man himself once said: “The deeper you look, the dirtier it gets.”




THE CIA IN HOLLYWOOD
The CIA has had a long history in Holly­wood. During the 1950s, CIA asset Luigi G Luraschi used his posit­ion as head of censorship at Paramount Studios to bring film content in line with the Agency’s ideals. Scenes that portrayed the US in a bad light were cut; films such as High Noon (1952) were prevented from receiving certain industry awards; and well dressed ‘negroes’ were placed in lavish on-screen environ­ments to suggest that the US didn’t have a race problem. In order to tame or otherwise subvert their content, the CIA also covertly assisted on the film adaptations of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) and Animal Farm (1955), as well as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1958).

In the mid-1990s, the Agency established its entertainment liaison office, headed by Chase Brandon, supposedly as part of its more ‘open’ remit. In truth, the CIA’s role in Hollywood remains decidedly clandestine. In the case of CIA-assisted product­ions like Bad Company (2002), 24 (2001–), and Spy Game (2001), not even isolated comments exist from anyone involved to indicate what happ­ened on set (although we do know the CIA withdrew its endorsement from the latter). Others are less bashful, as with Alias (2001–6) star Jenni­fer Garner, who appeared unpaid in a recruitment ad for her friends at Langley.

The CIA may even have used entertainment for psycho­logical warfare purposes and to develop real-world scenarios, as Texas State Professor Tricia Jenkins heard in a series of sensational interviews for her forthcoming book For Our Spies Only. Michael Frost Beckner, creator of the TV series The Agency (2001–03), recalls that Brandon phoned him to suggest a plotline involving biometric identification techno­logy. When Beckner questioned Brandon on the story’s realism, Brandon told him to “put it in there, whether we have it or not. Terrorists watch TV too. It’ll scare them.” For another episode, Brandon suggested using a Predator drone out­fitted with a Hellfire missile to kill a Pakistani general, asking Beckner to “see how it plays out, how you could make it work”. One month after the show aired, the CIA assassin­ated a Pakistani general using Hellfire missiles from a Predator drone. “I’m not a big conspiracy theor­ist,” says Beckner, “but there seems to have been a unique synergy there.”
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby brekin » Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:33 pm

I don't know why this story is resonating with me more then all the other examples of the CIA rubbing
out those who get close to telling the truth. I think maybe because of the desire that the movies could be the one arena that is still free to challenge the powers that be. A make believe reservation like your dreams.

Obviously that's not true, but I'd like to think some truth can come out even if it's cloaked and modified so much from its original that it feeds us on some level. It's just sad to think this guy was probably killed for a potentially illuminating movie that if released most people wouldn't even bother to see unless Bruce Willis was the star.
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby justdrew » Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:43 pm

brekin wrote:I don't know why this story is resonating with me more then all the other examples of the CIA rubbing
out those who get close to telling the truth. I think maybe because of the desire that the movies could be the one arena that is still free to challenge the powers that be. A make believe reservation like your dreams.

Obviously that's not true, but I'd like to think some truth can come out even if it's cloaked and modified so much from its original that it feeds us on some level. It's just sad to think this guy was probably killed for a potentially illuminating movie that if released most people wouldn't even bother to see unless Bruce Willis was the star.


yeah, if he's really dead it's tragic, but I can't help but wonder if maybe they just decided to change his cover for some reason. It seems less than clear that the remains were DNA tested.
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Sounder » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:55 am

I have it on maybe sketchy authority that indeed the CIA does not kill its own. It seems this practice is needed to keep the 'agents' from going nuts with paranoia.

So my uninformed guess is that this fellow is still alive.

My curiosity though is about WHY anyone would choose this kind of 'lifestyle'.

Oh, never mind, asked and answered; it's mostly ego gratification and a cover for ones insecurities that comes gift wrapped along with a shiny new license to ill.

Have a happy day all, (and you will be sure to piss someone off.)
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:11 am

According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”

:eek2:
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby elfismiles » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:47 am

Wow! I just got Matthew Alford's book REEL POWER and was hoping to maybe get him on the show as a guest to interview about the book and these past articles:

Spielberg: 'I knew something must be happening'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29317&p=354491

Primary sources for the keyword hijacking theory
viewtopic.php?p=354068#p354068

Close Encounters with the Pentagon
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24313&p=270130

The Deep Politics of Hollywood
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23089&p=270129

An offer they couldn't refuse: Hollywood and the CIA
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21484&p=229638
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby elfismiles » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:56 am

Bruce Dazzling wrote:
According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”

:eek2:


I've still never seen this documentary but I see by the search below that it is available via torrents and maybe even on YouTube:

http://www.google.com/search?q=panama+i ... ser+weapon

Image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panama_Deception

The Panama Deception is a 1992 documentary film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1] The film is critical of the actions of the US military during the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States, covering the conflicting reasons for the invasion and the depicting of the US media as biased. It was directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project and was narrated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery.

The film asserts that the U.S. government invaded Panama primarily to renegotiate the Torrijos–Carter Treaties. Another allegation made by the film is that the United States tested some form of laser or energy weapon during the invasion. The film also includes footage of mass graves uncovered after the US troops had withdrawn, and depicts some of the 20,000 refugees who fled the invasion.
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:19 pm

justdrew wrote:According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves. To this day, Wendy can’t shake the memory of her husband in his dimly lit office one evening, uncharacteristically hunched at his desk, head in hands: “The deeper you look, the dirtier it gets,” he had said.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was outraged by the Pentagon’s “use of sophist­icated weaponry merely to test it”. “Above all, though,” said Clark, “there was a use beyond any conceivable necessity of just sheer fire power… just an excessive use of force beyond any possible justification.”



I heard about this stuff in the late nineties from a former boss of mine. She had been a captain in the army during Panama. I'm guessing she left partly due to her sexuality/don't ask/tell etc., but she also seemed very disturbed by what she saw there. She wouldn't divulge detail, but she would say "We were using space-age weapons against machetes. Lasers and stuff. It was horrible and unecessary." It's kind of odd to finally be hearing some corraboration for her story after all these years...
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Nordic » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:42 am

9/11. Inexplicably burned vehicles.

Image
Image
Image


It blows me away how during the GWB administration, with Iraq and Afghanistan happening, and all the antiwar stuff going on, NOBODY mentioned Panama. Nobody.
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby 82_28 » Fri Oct 22, 2010 3:59 am

Twyla LaSarc wrote:
justdrew wrote:According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves. To this day, Wendy can’t shake the memory of her husband in his dimly lit office one evening, uncharacteristically hunched at his desk, head in hands: “The deeper you look, the dirtier it gets,” he had said.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was outraged by the Pentagon’s “use of sophist­icated weaponry merely to test it”. “Above all, though,” said Clark, “there was a use beyond any conceivable necessity of just sheer fire power… just an excessive use of force beyond any possible justification.”


I heard about this stuff in the late nineties from a former boss of mine. She had been a captain in the army during Panama. I'm guessing she left partly due to her sexuality/don't ask/tell etc., but she also seemed very disturbed by what she saw there. She wouldn't divulge detail, but she would say "We were using space-age weapons against machetes. Lasers and stuff. It was horrible and unecessary." It's kind of odd to finally be hearing some corraboration for her story after all these years...


And I just bet, the "cover" for this was the "blasting of heavy metal" on Noriega's compound. I remember that was big news back then. Made people to ask "wtf pockmarked 'enemy' of America. All we're doing is blasting metal at you!" And that was the big story, not the experimentation of advanced weaponry. Good times.

Most people watching the news remember that in addition to the cordon of troops which surrounded the papal Nunciatura, General Stiner had directed that a sound barrier of loudspeakers surround the Nunciatura. What's not commonly known is how in the wake of a visit there on Christmas Day by General Thurman the music playing came to be.

On Christmas morning, Thurman spoke personally to Monsignor Laboa at the gate of the Nunciatura. As Thurman turned to depart a reporter from an upper floor window of the nearby Holiday Inn shouted, "Hey General Thurman, how ya doin'? Merry Christmas! Fearing that reporters could use powerful microphones to eavesdrop on delicate negotiations between Cisneros and Laboa, General Thurman ordered that a music barrier be set up around the Nunciatura. Later, as hard rock music blared around the clock, a psychological operations specialist claimed it was part of a campaign to harass Noriega.

Depicted as a form of press censorship by the media, the rock music soon aroused other critics. By 28 December, diplomats, Catholics in the United States, and Vatican officials had deplored the practice as a clumsy effort to harass Noriega that inflicted needless stress upon the papal nuncio and his staff. The President made his concern known to Secretary Cheney and General Powell."

About 1140 General Powell asked Brigadier General Meier to explain the purpose of the music. Meier repeated General Thurman's original rationale: to mask sensitive negotiations between General Cisneros and Monsignor Laboa. General Thurman, however, also justified the music as an effective psychological tool. At this point, Laboa was talking about sleeping outside the compound, and Noriega and his henchmen were becoming increasingly worried and nervous. Thurman believed that applying pressure, not only to Noriega but to his host as well, would compel Monsignor Laboa to release Noriega.

Setting up more loudspeakers

In the face of mounting public criticism and presidential concern, General Powell grew increasingly uncomfortable with the rock music at the Nunciatura. President Bush viewed the tactic as politically embarrassing and "irritating and petty." On 29 December, after returning from an NSC meeting in which he had been instructed not to "make things any more difficult or unpleasant for Monsignor Laboa than necessary," Powell told Thurman to stop the music. Rear Admiral Sheafer relayed the order to Thurman's staff and tasked the National Security Agency to provide a less provocative noise jammer to prevent the media from eavesdropping on negotiations between Cisneros and Laboa."

And that's the rest of the story on how the blaring rock music surrounding the Vatican Embassy came to be.


http://www.psywarrior.com/rockmusic.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_p ... operations
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby 82_28 » Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:11 am

Twyla LaSarc wrote:
justdrew wrote:According to Wendy, Gary had become “very disturbed” by his research into Panama, especially over US weapons-testing and alleged money-laundering. He had once told her that the US had used illegal laser weapons to split a bus full of Panamanian civilians from front to back and then buried them in unmarked graves. To this day, Wendy can’t shake the memory of her husband in his dimly lit office one evening, uncharacteristically hunched at his desk, head in hands: “The deeper you look, the dirtier it gets,” he had said.

It is well established that the US piloted newly developed technologies such as the Stealth Fighter, the Apache Attack Heli­copter and laser-guided missiles in Panama. But there also exists multiple witness testimony describing the Pentagon’s use of experimental particle beam weapons attached to military aircraft. Professor Cecilio Simon of the University of Panama describes combatants who “literally melted with their guns”, lasered automobiles, and “poison darts which produce massive bleeding”. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was outraged by the Pentagon’s “use of sophist­icated weaponry merely to test it”. “Above all, though,” said Clark, “there was a use beyond any conceivable necessity of just sheer fire power… just an excessive use of force beyond any possible justification.”


I heard about this stuff in the late nineties from a former boss of mine. She had been a captain in the army during Panama. I'm guessing she left partly due to her sexuality/don't ask/tell etc., but she also seemed very disturbed by what she saw there. She wouldn't divulge detail, but she would say "We were using space-age weapons against machetes. Lasers and stuff. It was horrible and unecessary." It's kind of odd to finally be hearing some corraboration for her story after all these years...


And I just bet, the "cover" for this was the "blasting of heavy metal" on Noriega's compound. I remember that was big news back then. Made people to ask "wtf pockmarked 'enemy' of America. All we're doing is blasting metal at you!" And that was the big story, not the experimentation of advanced weaponry. Good times.

Most people watching the news remember that in addition to the cordon of troops which surrounded the papal Nunciatura, General Stiner had directed that a sound barrier of loudspeakers surround the Nunciatura. What's not commonly known is how in the wake of a visit there on Christmas Day by General Thurman the music playing came to be.

On Christmas morning, Thurman spoke personally to Monsignor Laboa at the gate of the Nunciatura. As Thurman turned to depart a reporter from an upper floor window of the nearby Holiday Inn shouted, "Hey General Thurman, how ya doin'? Merry Christmas! Fearing that reporters could use powerful microphones to eavesdrop on delicate negotiations between Cisneros and Laboa, General Thurman ordered that a music barrier be set up around the Nunciatura. Later, as hard rock music blared around the clock, a psychological operations specialist claimed it was part of a campaign to harass Noriega.

Depicted as a form of press censorship by the media, the rock music soon aroused other critics. By 28 December, diplomats, Catholics in the United States, and Vatican officials had deplored the practice as a clumsy effort to harass Noriega that inflicted needless stress upon the papal nuncio and his staff. The President made his concern known to Secretary Cheney and General Powell."

About 1140 General Powell asked Brigadier General Meier to explain the purpose of the music. Meier repeated General Thurman's original rationale: to mask sensitive negotiations between General Cisneros and Monsignor Laboa. General Thurman, however, also justified the music as an effective psychological tool. At this point, Laboa was talking about sleeping outside the compound, and Noriega and his henchmen were becoming increasingly worried and nervous. Thurman believed that applying pressure, not only to Noriega but to his host as well, would compel Monsignor Laboa to release Noriega.

Setting up more loudspeakers

In the face of mounting public criticism and presidential concern, General Powell grew increasingly uncomfortable with the rock music at the Nunciatura. President Bush viewed the tactic as politically embarrassing and "irritating and petty." On 29 December, after returning from an NSC meeting in which he had been instructed not to "make things any more difficult or unpleasant for Monsignor Laboa than necessary," Powell told Thurman to stop the music. Rear Admiral Sheafer relayed the order to Thurman's staff and tasked the National Security Agency to provide a less provocative noise jammer to prevent the media from eavesdropping on negotiations between Cisneros and Laboa."

And that's the rest of the story on how the blaring rock music surrounding the Vatican Embassy came to be.


http://www.psywarrior.com/rockmusic.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_p ... operations
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby streeb » Fri Apr 13, 2012 4:10 pm

The Bizarre Death - and Life - of Publicist/CIA Operative Michael Sands (Exclusive)

Michael Sands, an effusive Hollywood publicist, has died after a bizarre accident in the deli section of an upscale supermarket in Century City, where he choked to death on a sample of meat.

Best known as the brains behind Mr. Blackwell’s annual Worst Dressed List, Sands also was an inveterate self-promoter who claimed to be an undercover CIA operative who may have helped in the capture of Abu Abbas, the terrorist behind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

He was 66.

“He was eating a beef sample, and since he has narrow airways due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, it got stuck,” his son Nick told TheWrap.

After several attempts at the Heimlich maneuver failed, Sands was pronounced clinically dead on the scene for five minutes, until paramedics revived him and transported him to Cedars Sinai. There, his son said, he was placed in an induced coma to inhibit brain swelling, a common medical procedure for brain injuries.

“He was ashen, very gray and on the floor,” said Stephen Randall, deputy editor of Playboy Magazine, who witnessed the Gelson's incident but did not know Sands. "There were no signs of life. It was terrible, awful to be present, watching a guy who I assumed was dead."

A Gelson's assistant manager who also was present declined to comment; a spokeswoman for the supermarket told TheWrap, "He has been long and valued customer and out of respect to his family, we have no comment at this time."

Sands, a Boston-area native, was born Michael Shapiro on Dec. 14, 1945. His client list included Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan; actress Kristy Swanson; and Kevin Federline, who was involved in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife Britney Spears, who was undergoing a series of public breakdowns.

Sands also handled a lineup of Beverly Hills plastic surgeons, defense attorneys, family law practitioners and Hollywood private eyes. He also sold designer cheesecakes -- based on his own recipes and sold at several dozen franchised stores around the country.

A tireless promoter of his own career, he once appeared partially nude in carefully orchestrated photo of himself in People magazine to promote his cakes. He also appeared in TV commercials and had various roles on screen. In the late '90s he produced CelebrityDoctor.com. The website pioneered using the Internet for live screenings of face-lifts, most notably with Arabella Churchill, granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill.

But it was Sands’ efforts to publicize an aging fashion designer, Mr. Blackwell (above) -- a fading designer of women’s clothing -- that caught the attention of the media.

“He was the consummate PR man who led a very colorful life,” Linda Deutsch, an award-winning Associated Press court reporter and a longtime friend of Sands, told TheWrap. “The high point in his career was the Worst Dressed List. It was his idea to host an elaborate breakfast at Blackwell’s elegant mansion in Hancock Park, and it gained international publicity.”

Sands death occurred on March 24, and he died on April 6, but it has not been previously reported.

Theresa Coffino, executive producer of the syndicated entertainment news show “Extra,” was another admirer of Sands, said she, like many reporters and editors who were once consumed by the pitchman’s calls, was unaware that Sands had died.

“For such a blabbermouth,” she said. “Nobody knew about what happened to him.”

Perhaps most puzzling about Sands was his frequent boasting about his role as an undercover operative for U.S. government agencies, involving law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

Sands frequently handed out trinkets from the FBI, CIA and the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Beautiful models and actresses and even secretaries were frequent recipients of official pens, shirts and even dental floss.

The AP's Deutsch claimed Sands was legitimate. “He was very tied into the military,” she told TheWrap, pointing to a court martial case at Camp Pendleton where he gained her access to military sources. “He was very effective because he know what I needed.”

And in her book “The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television," Texas Christian University professor Tricia Jenkins reported that Sands supported the CIA in establishing a presence in Hollywood in the mid-1990s.

When his client screenwriter Gary DeVore went missing in 1997, Sands theorized that his friend had been involved with government intelligence services, which may have been connected to his disappearance.


DeVore's body was eventually found submerged in the Californian aqueduct -- an apparent accident, but the tip that led to the discovery of the body came directly to Sands.

In 2011, Sands was approached by the Utah family of Wassef Ali Hassoun for a $1 million book and movie deal about the Marine corporal charged with desertion, but who allegedly faked his own kidnapping in Iraq. The deal never materialized.

But most bizarre is Sands' claim that he aided in the capture of Abu Abbas, the terrorist behind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

Sands arranged for Abbas to be interviewed in Baghdad for a book and movie deal about his career as a terrorist, dangling a $1 million offer. With the help of a Romania journalist, Sands obtained Abbas’ cellphone number and gave Abbas' contact details to the FBI and CIA. U.S. Special Forces captured Abbas in 2003.

Memorial services for Sands have yet to be finalized

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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Nordic » Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:55 pm

One of the reasons we have these ongoing wars is for weapons testing on real live guinea pigs. I have it on good authority that we did the same thing in Vietnam. The dodgier stuff we would give to the south Vietnamese to try first. Sometimes it didn't work out too well for the users, and they would go back to the shop/drawing board to make sure it worked better before they'd have the American troops try it out.

God only knows what kind of experimental abominations are being used in the endless back country of Afghanistan these days. Truly diabolical I'm sure.
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat Apr 14, 2012 12:23 am

Another chiii... warning. See 'Ronnie Chasen killed' and 'mysterious arsons.'

Decoy book of limited-hangout persuasion gets big promotion by chill-rubout. The message is getting around.

And in her book “The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television," Texas Christian University professor Tricia Jenkins reported that Sands supported the CIA in establishing a presence in Hollywood in the mid-1990s.
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
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Re: Hollywood Hitmen; the Gary Devore incident

Postby MinM » Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:00 am

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Another chiii... warning. See 'Ronnie Chasen killed'...

Image
1) Ronni Chasen was brought up in the Andrew Breitbart thread. It just so happens that Wall Street 2 was one of the last things she worked on...
Chasen became known in Hollywood for her PR work on such films as On Golden Pond, and the second film in the Oliver Stone/Michael Douglas Wall Street movie franchise, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. She was pushing for Oscar recognition for Douglas in his role as the money hungry, risk averse character Gordon Gekko...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronni_Chasen

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