Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'CIA' is associated with 852 posts.

FTR#‘s 1322, 1323 and 1324 Interviews with Jim DiEugenio and Paul Bleau about “Chokeholds”

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of […]


FTR#1321 The Assassination of John Lennon

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of […]


FTR#1320 “La Plus Ca Change. . . .”

This pro­gram is a “blast from the past.” Record­ed just past mid­night on 9/20/2001, this broad­cast is a [some­what dis­tort­ed] con­ver­sa­tion record­ed via tele­phone hookup.

Speak­ing with the late Roy of Hol­ly­wood, Mr. Emory parsed some of the intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion that was avail­able a lit­tle over a week after the attacks.

The pro­gram con­cludes with an eerie state­ment by Roy, fore­shad­ow­ing what is tak­ing place in the Mid­dle East today.


FTR#‘s 1314 & 1315 “Injun’ Country”: The Mohawk Mothers’ Trail of Tears Parts 1 and 2

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE. You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of […]


Mr. Emory’s Agenda Going Forward

In the spring, fol­low­ing a bad­ly-need­ed rest, Mr. Emory will con­tin­ue to pro­duce some new pro­grams, how­ev­er they will be mixed-in with old­er pro­grams that are essen­tial to under­stand­ing the mate­r­i­al. Vital series such as ten very infor­ma­tive inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da about his book “The Hitler Lega­cy” will be re-cycled, along with the new shows. Those lis­ten­ers who wish to keep up with the week­ly flow of events must sub­scribe to Mr. Emory’s Patre­on plat­form in order to “remain cur­rent.” Con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s work on Covid-19 and the Ukraine War, the lat­est 32GB flash dri­ve is now avail­able! (The last iter­a­tion of the dri­ve is almost two years old.) WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


R.I.P. Daniel Hopsicker

Over many years, it was Mr. Emory’s priv­i­lege and hon­or to have inter­viewed Daniel Hop­sick­er fre­quent­ly and at length. In the wake of his pass­ing from can­cer on 8/22/2023 at the age of 72, we mourn the loss of this pro­fes­sion­al, and yet can be very glad for his hav­ing shared his work with us. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.


FTR#1307 Interview with Peter Vogel (Reprise of FTR#444 Because of the Attention Generated by the Movie “Oppenheimer”)

Fol­low­ing up infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M23 and FTRs 129, 163, this broad­cast fea­tures the land­mark research of Peter Vogel on the Port Chica­go explo­sion of 7/17/1944. One of the largest man-made dis­as­ters in his­to­ry, the Port Chica­go explo­sion claimed the lives of 320 sailors, 220 of them African Amer­i­cans. Sub­se­quent­ly, African-Amer­i­can sailors refused to con­tin­ue load­ing ammu­ni­tion at Port Chica­go and were con­vict­ed of Mutiny. Offi­cial­ly the explo­sion of con­ven­tion­al muni­tions aboard an ammu­ni­tion ship, the E.A. Bryan, the Port Chica­go blast was actu­al­ly the test of an ear­ly atom­ic weapon, the auto­cat­alyt­ic ura­ni­um hydride lat­er­al implo­sion exper­i­men­tal device—named the Mark II. After relat­ing Peter’s long odyssey explor­ing the explo­sion and the offi­cial dis­sem­bling that sur­rounds the event, the pro­gram relates the fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary trail con­firm­ing the nature of the explo­sion and the chronol­o­gy of this ear­ly, sig­nif­i­cant step in the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic weapons.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Peter’s proof that a suf­fi­cient amount of fis­sion­able mate­r­i­al for test­ing a fis­sion weapon was avail­able in 1944 (despite offi­cial pro­nounce­ments to the con­trary); the neg­a­tive reac­tions of Edward Teller (father of the H‑bomb) and Don­ald Kerr (direc­tor of Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry) to Peter’s inquiries about Port Chica­go; the tremen­dous inter­est of the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in this (sup­pos­ed­ly con­ven­tion­al) explo­sion; the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons (the point man for the Los Alam­os research on Port Chica­go); the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion that pin­point it as being a nuclear fis­sion blast; cor­re­spon­dence among some of the prin­ci­pals in the Man­hat­tan Project con­firm­ing that the Port Chica­go explo­sion was a test of the Mark II; indi­ca­tions that the Ger­mans were work­ing on a ura­ni­um hydride weapon; Sovi­et espi­onage on the Man­hat­tan Project that indi­cat­ed aware­ness of the test of Mark II; the pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chica­go explo­sion for the revo­ca­tion of Robert Oppen­heimer’s secu­ri­ty clear­ance; the sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chica­go explo­sion in the his­to­ry of African-Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties.

Note: This descrip­tion is for­mat­ted by pre­sent­ing the ques­tions that Dave asked Peter Vogel, and then a syn­op­tic overview of Peter’s response. For more detailed infor­ma­tion about the Port Chica­go explo­sion, see The Last Wave from Port Chica­go.


FTR#1306 Where’s Nuremburg?

Exper­i­ment­ing on human beings with­out their knowl­edge and/or con­sent is for­bid­den by the Nurem­burg code. Nonethe­less, the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment has been doing just that as a mat­ter of course in the years since World War II.

Hav­ing import­ed many Nazi Ger­many’s and Impe­r­i­al Japan’s war crim­i­nals, the U.S. was on track to insti­tu­tion­al­ize exper­i­ment­ing on unwit­ting human sub­jects by the end of the Sec­ond World War.

This pro­gram doc­u­ments some of the exper­i­ments and the pro­grams which gave rise to such oper­a­tions:

Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: CIA researched the occult in what Hank Albarel­li spec­u­lates may have been a research project inspired by the Nazi Ahnenerbe; The agency researched var­i­ous ways of caus­ing can­cer and the effects of var­i­ous lev­els of stress on those suf­fer­ing from the dis­ease; Both the CIA and the Army researched the effects of radi­a­tion on human beings in a vari­ety of clan­des­tine exper­i­ments; The CIA’s “Human Ecol­o­gy” research projects embraced a wide vari­ety of exper­i­men­tal projects designed to learn how to con­trol and mod­i­fy human behav­ior; Ver­mont-based doc­tor Robert Hyde was among the pre­mier researchers to test LSD on human sub­jects, some in projects the details of which have not been ful­ly dis­closed.


FTR#1305 How Groovy Was It Really?

Explor­ing aspects of the “counter-cul­ture” of the 1960’s against the back­ground of the CIA and mil­i­tary’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with mind-alter­ing sub­stances and var­i­ous mind-con­trol tech­niques, this pro­gram asks the ques­tion: “Was it real­ly good?”

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1.–Details con­cern­ing SPAN, the oper­a­tional code-name for the dos­ing with LSD of the entire town of Pont St.-Esprit in South­ern France.

2.–The sto­ry of William Hay­ward, the direc­tor of the ’60s cult film Easy Rid­er. Hay­ward was the vic­tim of psy­chi­atric con­fine­ment by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

3.–The mon­i­tor­ing of Ken Kesey’s LSD events by mem­bers of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

4.–Former OSS agent Gre­go­ry Bateson’s stew­ard­ship of the intro­duc­tion of Ken Kesey to LSD.

5.–Sourcing for the infor­ma­tion about the Bateson/Kesey dynam­ic and dis­cus­sion of CIA and mil­i­tary exper­i­ments with mind-alter­ing sub­stances at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont.

6.–CIA oper­a­tive George Hunter White’s sur­rep­ti­tious dos­ing of unwit­ting sub­jects with LSD.

7.–George Hunter White’s arrest of jazz singer Bil­lie Hol­i­day for opi­um pos­ses­sion in 1949. Drug arrests destroyed Hol­i­day’s abil­i­ty to work in estab­lish­ments that served alco­hol.

8.–The sto­ry of a San Fran­cis­co event fea­tur­ing the cream of the psy­che­del­ic bands of the time. The event ben­e­fit­ted the Hare Krish­na cult.

9.–Discussion of the fas­cist phi­los­o­phy of the leader of the Hare Krish­na cult.

10.–The biog­ra­phy of John Per­ry Bar­low, for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Dick Cheney and lyri­cist for the Grate­ful Dead. Bar­low’s role with the EFF, an orga­ni­za­tion with many wor­thy mem­bers and rep­u­ta­tion but one which, nonethe­less, has worked for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

11.–Barlow’s inter­ac­tion with the CIA and NSA and an exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his stew­ard­ship of social media.