by hanshan » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:25 pm
<br><br>the interrelationships are staggering: <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/Octopus.htm" target="top">The Company</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> was originally out of Lexington, Kentucky and Mena, Arkansas. Brian Leighton was the assistant U.S. Attorney who was the most effective person in formulating a strategy in the Justice Department to go after these people. <br><br>"We recognized what they were, for what they were, at that time, and there were a few ATF guys down in Los Angeles that recognized them for what they were, OK? Here was a group of over 300 people, most of them ex-law enforcement and ex-military, ex-intelligence people involved in a major drug and smuggling operation. And they were involved in compromising activities. The bottom line was espionage. <br><br>"And all Leighton served to do was vaccinate the group against further penetration. Just hardened them. And all the major sources that were developed from inside turned up dead. A federal judge in Texas turned up dead. <br><br>" ... This is a nasty bunch of people. And they're still alive and well. Now where that dovetails into my current situation, is in 1984 I was involved with Robert Booth Nichols who owns Meridian Arms Corporation and is a principle in F.I.D.C.O., First Intercontinental Development Corporation. The CEO of FIDCO is George Pender and Bob Maheu was Vice President ... <br><br>"FIDCO was an NSC [National Security Council] corporate cutout. FIDCO was created to be the corporate vehicle to secure the financing for the reconstruction of the cities of Beirut and Damour in Lebanon. And they were working out of an office in Nicosia, Cyprus. <br><br>" ... And here I got involved with a group of people that were all high profile and should have been above reproach. FIDCO had a companion company called Euramae Trading which operated throughout the Middle East. I came in contact with the PROMISE software (unintelligible). Euramae had a distribution contract with several Arab countries and I was asked to evaluate the hardware platforms they had chosen. That was IBM/AS400 stuff ... <br><br>" ... That had come from IBM Tel Aviv but it came through a cutout, Link Systems, because they couldn't deal directly with the Arabs. <br><br>"And I came across a guy named Michael T. Hurley and I thought he worked for the State Department but it turned out he was in-country attache for the DEA in Nicosia, Cyprus. [Nicosia is the capital of the island of Cyprus, off the coast of Lebanon]. Now, the DEA had no real presence in Lebanon. Neither did anybody else, including the Israelis. They had their usual network of contacts but it was very ineffective. The only way to penetrate that situation, was to get into the drug trade. <br><br>"Euramae got into the drug trade and I was told that it was a fully sanctioned NSC directed operation, which it turns out that it was ... All those operations were bonafide and all the people who were in them were definitely key government people, although they were not who they said they were. <br><br>"They all worked for different agencies other than was stated. Probably part of the normal disinformation that goes with that. And I was technical advisor for FIDCO and we had auspices through the government of Lebanon to get in and out of Lebanon. <br><br>"But as far as going to the eastern part of Lebanon, unless you were connected with the drug trade, your chances were slim coming out unscathed ... They built a network throughout the Bekaa Valley, and [Robert Booth] Nichols ... he is under Harold Okimoto from the Hawaiian Islands.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>CHAPTER 7</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>(1) <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/7.htm" target="top">Robert Maheu,</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> Sr, Vice President, Director former FBI agent, former CEO of Howard Hughes Operations, senior consultant to Leisure Industries.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/the_octopus.htm" target="top"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The Criminal Cabal of Guns & Drugs</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br>By David Guyatt <br><br> <br><br> <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>It is one of those stories that even the wildest novelists can’t properly imagine. A group of well placed government bureaucrats and politicians, plus numerous CIA spooks and military covert ops types shake hands with the Mafia and agree to do business on the QT. This involves shaking-down very wealthy figures, dealing guns on the black market, money laundering and trafficking drugs on a world-wide scale. Along the way they bleed the assets of numerous banks, bankrupting many of them in the process. They also involve themselves in Masonic secret societies and pull unseen strings deep inside the Vatican. And, of course, they organise a few political assassinations, invoke some random murders and set alight the fuse on dozens of major bombing events - just to add zest and confusion. <br><br> Everything is done in the name of “anti-communism,” and is conducted under the umbrella of “national security” – a designation that is sure to stifle any irksome police investigation that could otherwise lead to arrest and imprisonment. It also ensures their now decades old “business enterprise” will continue to prosper without any kind of oversight. Welcome then, to the national security “untouchables” - a group of shadowy puppet-masters who practice organised crime on a global scale in the name of freedom and democracy – and who often possess marked Nazi sympathies. <br></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>A June 1983 letter from Michael McManus Jr., the Reagan assistant who also sat on the FIDCO board, to George Pender, president of FIDCO, describes the administration's support for the rebuilding of Lebanon: "Without question FIDCO seems to have a considerable role to offer, particularly in the massive financial participation being made available to the government of Lebanon." There also is a July 1983 letter to the president of Lebanon, Amin Gemayel, from Pender in which FIDCO's desire to participate in the rebuilding of Lebanon is discussed. What is interesting about this letter is that Pender advises the Lebanese president that he (Pender) "may be reached via telex 652483 RBN Assocs. LSA." And whose address is that? None other than Booth Nichols. The same Nichols who at the time was a board member of FIDCO and under investigation by the FBI for suspected drug trafficking, money laundering and connections to the mob - and the same man who obtained the permits at the Cahuilla gun range for the weapons demonstration to Nicaraguan Contra leaders and others. <br>There is corroboration for these details. Lester Coleman, a former contract employee with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who was on loan to the DEA in the late 1980s, wrote a book in 1993 called Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie, Inside the DIA. Coleman claims there to have worked out of a safe house in Cyprus at the same location Riconosciuto described and under the same name, Eurame Trading Ltd. Coleman also confirmed secret Beka Valley drug shipments and the names of the U.S. agents working undercover in Cyprus that Riconosciuto had revealed to the FBI in 1992 - a year before it was outlined in Coleman's book. Insight asked Coleman who would know about such a secret U.S. government safe house, let alone a cutout company? "I don't know," Coleman says, "unless he was there. i I have never met or talked with [Riconosciuto], so I have no idea whether he was there or not. i But what he is describing is accurate. No one would know about the ICOM radio unless they had been there and seen it," Coleman says. Again, like Riconosciuto's comments about Justice Department attorney Abbell and his connections to the Cali drug cartel, Riconosciuto knew detailed information well before the public. And he tried to tell the FBI, among others, but to no avail.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br>http://<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.jillnicholson.com/plot.htm" target="top">www.jillnicholson.com/plot.htm</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br>http://<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.insightmag.com/media/paper441/news/2001/02/05/InvestigativeReport/The-Plot.Thickens.In.Promis.Affair-208518.shtml" target="top">www.insightmag.com/media/paper441/news/2001/02/05/InvestigativeReport/The-Plot.Thickens.In.Promis.Affair-208518.shtml</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.magickriver.net/mockingbird.htm" target="top"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <br>By Mary Louise <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The Contra/crack scandal is only the tip of the iceberg – other notorious examples include Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle and Noriega’s Panama. Had their fingerprints all over the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X. Even if the CIA is not responsible for these killings, the sheer amount of CIA involvement in these cases demands answers; And then routinely lied to Congress about all of the above. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations.4 Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust." We should note that the CIA gets away with this because it is not accountable to democratic government. Former CIA officer Philip Agee put it best: "The CIA is the President's secret army." Prior to 1975, the agency answered only to the President (creating all the usual problems of authoritarianism). And because the CIA’s activities were secret, the President rarely had to worry about public criticism and pressure. After the 1975 Church hearings, Congress tried to create congressional oversight of the CIA, but this has failed miserably. <br><br><br>....</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>