Two pro­grams from Octo­ber 1998 pro­vide a glimpse into the pro­found dark­ness char­ac­ter­iz­ing much of the clan­des­tine Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape. In this jour­ney into the abyss, we view major nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and gold smug­gling by ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity unit­ing fig­ures from the mil­i­tary, orga­nized crime and the Vat­i­can in a con­sor­tium of evil. That con­sor­tium authored polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, coups d’etat and the fun­da­men­tal cor­rup­tion of Amer­i­can social fab­ric. It remains to be seen if the cit­i­zens of this coun­try can alter the seem­ingly irre­versible slide into fas­cism stem­ming from these events and the pow­er­ful forces behind them.

In FTR #115 (10/10/1998), Mr. Emory inter­viewed attor­ney Ray Kohlman in a con­fer­ence call with for­mer LAPD nar­cotics detec­tive Mike Rup­pert on the sub­ject of the Tyree suit. Mr. Kohlman is rep­re­sent­ing for­mer Spe­cial Forces sol­dier Bill Tyree in his law­suit against George Bush, the CIA, Oliver North and Bill Clin­ton, among oth­ers. The dis­cus­sion cen­ters on the struc­ture of the law­suit itself, the cur­rent sta­tus of the suit (as of the Fall of 1998) and the pos­si­ble impact of the pub­li­ca­tion of Vol­ume Two of the CIA Inspec­tor General’s report on the agency’s involve­ment in the drug trade.

The main ele­ment con­nect­ing the dis­parate aspects of the law­suit is the remark­able career of Albert Vin­cent Carone, who worked var­i­ously for the New York Police Depart­ment, the U.S. Army, the CIA and the Mafia. (Carone is pic­tured in his mil­i­tary uni­form at top, right.) One item of infor­ma­tion of par­tic­u­lar inter­est (and not included in the pre­vi­ous broad­casts on the sub­ject) is the alle­ga­tion Carone made (dur­ing a deathbed con­fes­sion) that he had paid money to Ruth Paine, one of the peo­ple who shep­herded Lee Har­vey Oswald around in the Dal­las area. Carone also alleged that he paid money to Jack Ruby on 11/21/63 and that he was on a rooftop on a build­ing at Love Field in Dal­las with a rifle in order to kill Pres­i­dent Kennedy on 11/22/63 but was unable to get a clear shot.

Two days later, Rup­pert and Kohlman were joined by Carone’s daugh­ter for FTR #116. After a brief dis­cus­sion of the mil­i­tary career of for­mer Spe­cial Forces sol­dier Bill Tyree and the law­suit he has filed, most of the pro­gram cen­ters on the career of Col. Carone, whose activ­i­ties could be said to be “the glue” that ties the var­i­ous ele­ments of the law­suit together.

Ms. Fer­di­nand detailed her father’s career, begin­ning with his boy­hood on the streets of Brook­lyn, where he became a pro­tege of Vito Gen­ovese (the role model for the title char­ac­ter in the movie The God­fa­ther, pic­tured at left). Dur­ing the war, Col. Carone worked for OSS (The U.S. World War II intel­li­gence agency) and con­tin­ued work­ing on the “covert side” after the war.

An inti­mate of many of the most impor­tant fig­ures in orga­nized crime, Carone was heav­ily involved with a series of activ­i­ties sub­sumed under the code name “Amadeus”. Accord­ing to Ms. Fer­di­nand, “Amadeus” cov­ered activ­i­ties going back to World War II and involved gold smug­gling (allegedly in con­junc­tion with, or through, the Vat­i­can) and the smug­gling of Nazi SS men out of Europe and into Latin Amer­ica after the War, as well as drug smug­gling. (The Amadeus activ­i­ties went on up through the mid 1980s, accord­ing to Ms. Fer­di­nand.) The “Amadeus” activ­i­ties were also con­nected to George H.W. Bush.

In addi­tion to his con­nec­tions to Oliver North, Col. Carone was also closely con­nected to the late William Casey, with whom Carone allegedly arranged lucra­tive insider trad­ing deals for var­i­ous orga­nized crime fig­ures. (Casey also served in the OSS dur­ing WWII, served as Nixon’s chief of the SEC, man­aged the 1980 Reagan/Bush cam­paign and was Reagan’s direc­tor of the CIA. Casey and Rea­gan are pic­tured at left.) The inter­view con­cludes with more dis­cus­sion of Col. Carone’s alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Ms. Fer­di­nand alleged that Col. Carone called the assas­si­na­tion “a coup” and that the Army was told to “stand down” and that Col. Carone was in Dal­las with Water­gate bur­glar Frank Stur­gis (then known as Frank Fior­ini. Stur­gis is pic­tured at left).