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Ana­lyz­ing the Clin­ton administration’s trou­bles from the stand­point of covert action, Mr. Emory spoke about the Bush fac­tion of the intel­li­gence community’s prob­a­ble role in pre­cip­i­tat­ing the scan­dals beset­ting the Pres­i­dent. Not­ing that Clin­ton defeated George Bush (for­mer direc­tor of the CIA and, accord­ing to one school thought, the real “power behind the throne” dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions), Mr. Emory dis­cusses a num­ber of evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing Clinton’s mis­for­tunes with the world of “black-ops.”

In par­tic­u­lar, many intelligence-connected ele­ments in the Clin­ton scan­dals over­lap the Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate scan­dals. Shortly after George Bush was sub­poe­naed to tes­tify in the trial of Chriso­pher Dro­goul (the cen­tral fig­ure in the BNL/Iraqgate affair), Vince Fos­ter was found dead. (Mr. Emory is skep­ti­cal of the “sui­cide” ver­dict in Foster’s death, but con­sid­ers it prob­a­ble that, if, Fos­ter was mur­dered, the Bush fac­tion was the most prob­a­ble author of the crime. Foster’s death may have been a sig­nal to Clin­ton. Mr. Emory believes alle­ga­tions that Bill Clin­ton was the author of the deaths of Vince Fos­ter and oth­ers of his asso­ciates, to be preposterous.)

The last per­son to see Vince Fos­ter alive was Linda Tripp, who served him lunch. (A blonde, female hair was found on Foster’s body. Right-wing con­spir­acy the­o­rists have posited that it was Hillary Clinton’s. Few have con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­ity that it may have belonged to Tripp.) A Bush admin­is­tra­tion appointee, Tripp (who, with the aid of Lucy Gold­berg, pre­cip­i­tated the Lewin­sky imbroglio) had a high secu­rity clear­ance, hav­ing worked for the Army’s Secret Intel­li­gence Com­mand at Fort Meade and for the Delta Force at Fort Bragg, N.C. (Note that the Delta Force func­tions in a counter-terrorist capac­ity. “Counter-terrorism” is the rubric under which the Bush pri­vate intel­li­gence net­works, described below, operated.)

One of the cen­tral ele­ments of dis­cus­sion involves the Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials’ deci­sive pres­ence on-site in Waco. Asso­ci­ated with an inter-agency net­work admin­is­tered by then Vice-President (and for­mer CIA direc­tor) George Bush, these offi­cials were from the Jus­tice Depart­ment and FBI. Hav­ing chaired the Vice-President’s Task Force on Counter-Terrorism, Bush over­saw and imple­mented rec­om­men­da­tions issue­ing from the Task Force. In a series of National Secu­rity Deci­sion Direc­tives, Bush was given com­mand of what authors John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons describe as “His (Bush’s) own pri­vate spy agency,” and “a White House within the White House.” (See FTR-29.)

Osten­si­bly cre­ated to pro­vide a rapid, pro­phy­lac­tic response to “inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism,” these net­works became the pri­mary vehi­cle for the real­iza­tion of the ill-fated, ille­gal, and trea­so­nous Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate schemes. Far from being “out of the loop,” as he claimed, George Bush was the pri­mary player in both affairs. His “pri­vate spy agency” was the most sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment in their admin­is­tra­tion. Mr. Emory sets forth the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Waco affair of Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials, who had pre­vi­ously been involved in retard­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into crim­i­nal oper­a­tions that were part of the Iran-Contra and BNL (Iraq­gate) affairs. Allegedly involved with the Branch David­ian siege was Mark Richard, a long-time Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial whose career has involved over­see­ing invesi­ga­tions into the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity. Mr. Emory ana­lyzes Richard’s involve­ment with frus­trat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into some of the drug-related, Iran-Contra shen­nani­gans, as well as the BNL affair. (The arm­ing of Iraq and Hussein’s result­ing mil­i­tary power were accom­plished, in con­sid­er­able mea­sure, through an ille­gal covert oper­a­tion cen­tered on the Atlanta branch of the BNL, a major Ital­ian com­mer­cial bank.) Work­ing with Richard in divert­ing the BNL inves­ti­ga­tion, was Ed Den­nis, who wrote the final report on the Branch David­ian siege and exon­er­ated the Jus­tice Depart­ment of any wrong­do­ing in the affair. Janet Reno con­cluded an inves­ti­ga­tion into BNL that,in turn exon­er­ated the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing in that affair. Con­ser­v­a­tive New York Times colum­nist William Safire referred to this as “one hand white­wash­ing the other.”

The dis­cus­sion also high­lights for­mer FBI offi­cial Jack Rev­ell, and other Bureau peson­nel, and their involv­ment in the Iran-Contra cover-up. Rev­ell was the chief spokesper­son for the Branch David­ian oper­a­tion. Vet­eran Wash­ing­ton reporter Sarah Mac­Clen­don has reported that Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial Richard Scruggs over­laps the Waco and Iraq­gate affairs. The pos­si­bil­ity that the Waco oper­a­tion may have been delib­er­ately con­ducted, in order to dis­credit and de-stabilize the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion and to help obfus­cate the Iraq­gate affair, is not one that should be too read­ily cast aside.

The lec­ture briefly exam­ines the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans which, like the Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate affairs, had their gen­e­sis with the rec­om­men­da­tions stem­ming from the Vice-President’s Task Force. These plans called for the dep­u­ti­za­tion of para-military right-wingers as fed­eral agents, in the event of the dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law. Mr. Emory notes that the Waco inci­dent has served to help coa­lesce the mili­tia move­ment, cre­at­ing the very para-military for­ma­tions that could be uti­lized in a fas­cist takeover. Another cen­tral ele­ment of dis­cus­sion focuses on a pos­si­ble link between then Speaker of the House Newt Gin­grich, the Repub­li­can Party, and a right-wing ele­ment of the Mossad (the Israeli Secret Ser­vice.) Mr. Emory notes that Lewin­sky coun­sel Ginsburg’s stated that Lewinsky’s sup­port for the Pres­i­dent was rein­forced by Clinton’s sup­port for Israel. The dis­cus­sion under­scores that, after Gin­grich trav­eled to Israel to under­mine Amer­i­can sup­port for the peace process and Hillary repeated her sup­port for a Pales­tin­ian state, Lewin­sky switched coun­sel, employ­ing lawyers involved with the defense of peo­ple in the Iran-Contra affair. Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized that Lewin­sky may have been used (per­haps with­out her knowl­edge) as a pawn by a right-wing ele­ment of the Mossad, as well as the Republicans.

Bol­ster­ing Mr. Emory’s work­ing hypoth­e­sis about the pos­si­ble Gingrich/Lewinsky/Mossad link, a 1999 book recounted an alle­ga­tion that the Mossad (the Israeli intel­li­gence ser­vice) had used wire­taps of the Lewinsky/Clinton con­ver­sa­tions to black­mail the United States. After allegedly tap­ping the White House phone, the Mossad allegedly used dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the Clinton-Lewinsky affair to deter an alleged counter-intelligence inves­ti­ga­tion of “MEGA,” an Israeli spy deep inside the White House. This charge was made in Gideon’s Spies, by Gor­don Thomas. The book indi­cates (among other things) that Ben­jamin Netanyahu, was close to being indicted for incite­ment in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion of his pre­de­ces­sor, Yitzhak Rabin.

Lec­ture High­lights Include: Bill Clinton’s con­nec­tions to the Mena, Arkansas oper­a­tions of Iran-Contra oper­a­tive Barry Seal (these are seen by some ana­lysts as com­pro­mis­ing Clin­ton, even before he took office); Newt Gingrich’s use of the oper­at­ing par­a­digm of the Wehrma­cht as his func­tional polit­i­cal model; Lucy Goldberg’s role as a polit­i­cal spy in the McGov­ern cam­paign; Goldberg’s role as Mark Fuhrman’s lit­er­ary agent; the link between the shoot­ing out­side of CIA head­quar­ters and the Iraq­gate cover-up; con­nec­tions between the Afghan covert oper­a­tion of the 1980’s and Sheik Rakhman (con­victed in the World Trade Cen­ter Bomb­ing); an evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary con­nect­ing the World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing; the sus­pi­cious deaths of numer­ous fig­ures asso­ci­ated with Clin­ton (as with Foster’s death, Mr. Emory feels that, if any or all of these deaths were unnat­ural, that they were intended to weaken Clin­ton.) (Deliv­ered in Octo­ber of 1998.)