Part 1 47:33 | Part 2 47:36 | Part 3 47:30 | Part 4 47:30 | Part 5 41:20
(Recorded August 21, 1984)
Covering the numerous and varied activities of the notorious “ex” CIA operatives Frank Terpil and Edwin Wilson, this program centers largely on the pair’s activities training and equipping some of the world’s most notorious “left-wing” terrorists. Mohammar Khadafy’s terrorist cadre, the Red Brigades and Carlos the Jackal were allegedly among the recipients of Wilson and Terpil’s expertise.
Although they supposedly performed as renegades, they claimed that their activities supportive of “left” terror were performed at the bequest of U.S. intelligence. This program presents information which bolsters this contention. Many of the people and elements discussed in this broadcast later figured prominently in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Program Highlights Include: the group’s use of active-duty Green Berets to train Khadafy’s terrorists; Ed Wilson’s operation of Task Force 157, an intelligence operation that spawned the Nugan Hand Bank (a CIA-connected bank that laundered drug and arms deal profits); Wilson’s role in brokering shipments of U.S. arms to Egypt; Eyewitness substantiation of the duo’s connection to Carlos the Jackal; the role of former CIA officials Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines in Terpil and Wilson’s activities; the untimely deaths of numerous witnesses to, or participants in, the pair’s operations; Wilson’s past operations for CIA, including the Bay of Pigs project and the U‑2 spy plane; Wilson’s alleged role in procuring explosives for the assassination of Orlando Letelier; Wilson’s connections to Republican kingmaker Robert Keith Gray; allegations of connections between Terpil and a drug-smuggling gang known as “The Company;” Terpil’s claims that drug profits from the above-mentioned Nugan Hand Bank sustained U.S. electronic surveillance facilities in Australia; statements from former U.S. intelligence officers that the Terpil-Wilson operations in Libya were, indeed, officially sanctioned; allegations that a “tame CIA insider” deflected Congressional inquiries into Terpil and Wilson’s activities; Libyan strongman Khadafy’s bankrolling of the Paladin Group, a fascist mercenary organization; a Latin-American assassination consortium known as “Operation Condor.”
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
Edwin Wilson dies.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49134559/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/t/edwin-p-wilson-spy-who-lived-it-dies/#.UF7QR46sQpp
Apparently this savage spent his last years living in the same city I live in, Seattle.
Had I known, I would have done everything in my power to find him, detain him, and obtain information, using the CIA’s methods.
Dave,
In the news it is being reported that Ed Wilson passed away at the age of 84.
Thanks for heroicly sounding the alarm on the elements behind Terpil, Wilson and Company for so long and so well.
You have been so spot on in your analysis in this area for thirty plus years. Thank you.
The latest machinations of Robert Keith Gray.
Article will not post when I include link, which is at hawaiireporter (dot) com slash obama-lifestyle-criticized-as-royal-author-documents-presidential-vacations-staffing-as-costing‑1–4‑billion-annually/123
Obama Lifestyle Criticized as ‘Royal’: Author Documents Presidential Vacations, Staffing as Costing $1.4 Billion Annually
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN — President Barack Obama and his family have taken a $4 million vacation in Kailua, Hawaii, each Christmas, since 2008, courtesy of the nation’s taxpayers.
According to a new book — “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” –by Author Robert Keith Gray, Hawaii Reporter’s investigation into the vacation expenses on the island of Oahu merely scratches the surface of the $1.4 billion the taxpayers spend in just one year for transportation, housing, staffing, security and entertainment for President Obama and first family.
Gray, who worked within the White House under three presidents and had close ties with two more, notes that while other presidents have taken advantage of perks, the amount of money spent on the first family has risen substantially under the Obama administration, and must be brought under control.
Gray also notes the inequity of taxpayer dollars being spent by Obama for his re-election effort by using Air Force One to travel between campaign stops.
Some of the examples of presidential perks that are highlighted in Gray’s book:
There are 26 cabin crewmembers and five chefs on Air Force One.
The president’s dog gets its own high-paid staffer, who is always on duty, paid an annual salary of $102,000 last year.
On at least one airline flight, Bo the dog and his handler were only passengers aboard.
The president has a full-time movie projectionist in the White House theater who sleeps at the White House and is on duty 24 hours a day in case anyone needs to see a movie.
First Lady Michelle Obama spent more than 42 days on vacation in one year with security, travel and accommodations paid for by taxpayers.
And because the president can appoint high-paid staffers without Senate confirmation, Obama has 469 senior staffers and 43 “czars.”
226 are paid more than $100,000 a year, and 77 are paid as much as $172,000 per year.
In 2009, Gray said the military payroll at Camp David was $8 million and were put there serve the First Family and its guests.
“The British spent $57.8 Million on its royal family last year. We Americans spent nearly $2 Billion housing, transporting, entertaining, staffing, our First Family and paying a hefty portion of the president’s campaign expenses,” Gray said.
Gray notes that responsible citizens want the President to be “safe, comfortable and happy” but he maintains the “unchecked growth of out-of control perks, bestowed on this duly elected official without oversight by any individual or governing body, are a dangerous surrender of the democratic process because the seated president has a virtually insurmountable re-election advantage over his opponent.”
Gray said what he discovered during his research for this book led him to view the Obama lifestyle and administration as “our presidency going royal.”
Gray asks: “With our current president’s billion- dollar lifestyle, can we reasonably expect a president to identify with the real-world problems of his citizens, when tens of millions of them are currently unemployed?”
We’ve had a string of stories recently about politicians seeming to almost be forced to adopt a ‘no negotiations’ stance regarding the conflict in Ukraine. First, we had this bizarre story in the US about a letter signed by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus calling on President Joe Biden to look for diplomatic solutions for Ukraine. The letter was promptly withdrawn and excuses were issued for why it was released in the first place. The story that eventually emerged was that this letter was drafted back in July and ended up only getting released now through some sort of staffer mistake.
The second story comes out of Romania, where the defense minster was pressured into resignation days after making the case that Ukraine’s only chance to end the war was to negotiate with Russia.
Then there’s another part of the context for these stories: it’s happen at the same time Italy has a new government led by the modern day version of Mussolini’s fascist party. A government that’s been largely embraced by its Western allies based largely, it seems, on pledges to remain steadfast in support for Ukraine and opposed to negotiations with Russia
So with stories about politicians running scared from even suggesting negotiations with Russia at the same to fascists are welcomed into power in Italy as long as they toe the line on Russia, here’s a story about a recently declassified scandal out of the UK: The UK’s plot to interfere in Italy’s 1976 elections. A plot that appears to have been run out of the UK’s Information Research Department (IRD), an agency that was disbanded the following year but handled at the time the UK’s most sensitive foreign propaganda operations.
The target of the operations was the Italy communist party, the PCI, which appeared to be poised for a victory in that year’s elections. UK officials remained highly wary of the potential consequences of a communist party coming to power in Italy despite the assurances by PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer that the party was not pro-Soviet and would remain a firm backer of NATO.
Adding to the disturbing nature of this story is that it appears the IRD’s operation was run as a rogue operation without the approval of the Foreign Secretary’s office. Instead, according to an internal IRD minute dated 3 June 1976, it was agreed during a meeting held by Richard Sykes, then deputy undersecretary for Europe at the Foreign Office, that “continuing unattributable information activity” did not require “ministerial sanction”. So the IRD just decided it could go ahead with this operation with the approval of the deputy undersecretary for Europe at the Foreign Office but not the approval of the actual foreign secretary. It’s the kind of story that should raise all sorts of questions about how typical this kind of independent covert action really is inside the UK government.
As we’re going to see, MI6 was almost surely involved in the IRD’s actions, so any rogue IRD action was also rogue MI6 action. Interestingly, as we’re also going to see, the IRD had an ally in its covert efforts to discredit the PCI: the Soviets, who also didn’t like Berlinguer and worked to discredit the PCI.
Oh, and get this: the propaganda being sent to journalists by the IRD against the PCI included suggestions for articles comparing the PCI’s surge to the rise of Benito Mussolini. Yep. Because that’s how our world works:
“Now, newly declassified documents reveal that the IRD ran a campaign with MI6 to “undermine the credibility” of the Italian communist party and influence the 1976 election.”
Surprise surprise. Newly declassified documents reveal a covert UK campaign to intervene in Italy’s 1976 elections. The Information Research Department (IRD) was the agency largely in charge of the operation. An operation that appears to have involved the IRD’s Special Editorial Unit (SEU), which was responsible for running the most sensitive propaganda missions around the world. Hence the intentionally provocative questions posed to the PCI candidate during the first foreign television interview of then PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was quite literally a plan for foreign election interference against a fellow NATO ally:
Also note this operation appears to have originated in the office of then-foreign secretary Jim Callaghan, who became the UK’s new prime minister in April 1976. Callaghan tapped Anthony Crosby to replace him as foreign secretary. And according to declassified files, Crosby was told by the foreign secretary office’s top mandarin, Sir Michael Palliser, that it was “not too late” to “prevent a communist accession to power in Italy” and promised him proposals. At the same time, the IRD was apparently just going ahead with its own covert operations without waiting for Crosby’s approval. In other words, this foreign election interference was rogue foreign election interference being carried out unilaterally by an intelligence agency without approval. It’s an ominous anecdote:
Perhaps the most disturbing part about learning that the IRD went ahead with that covert action on its own is the justification the agency used to do it: during a meeting with then deputy undersecretary for Europe at the Foreign Office, it was agreed that “continuing unattributable information activity” did not require “ministerial sanction”. It’s the kind of ‘agreement’ that should raise all sorts of questions about how other activity of this nature the IRD was engaged in without the approval of the UK government. How much rogue anti-democratic propaganda was there?
Ultimately, we find that two forged pamphlet ended up getting circulated a week for the election. And while there isn’t direct evidence the IRD was behind it, circumstantial evidence suggests that the case. So we have classified documents indicating that the IRD was engaged in rogue operations, but we don’t actually have documents confirming the specific operations and are still forced to speculate. It’s the kind of detail that again raises major questions about how many undisclosed and undiscovered operations of this nature were being run by rogue UK agencies during the post-War period:
Similarly, we have to ask just how many other journalists were getting fed propagandistic questions and other weaponized content from the IRD. According to these declassified documents, foreign correspondents for the Financial Times and Washington Post also received the same brief that shaped that Panorama interview of PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer:
But as the article notes, we shouldn’t assume the IRD was the only agency involved with these covert operations. Due to their highly sensitive nature MI6 was almost certainly involved:
Nor should we assume UK spies were the only ones engaged in this kind of action regarding Italy’s democracy. The CIA, for example, was also playing in that arena:
Finally, note one of the grandest ironies here: the Soviets didn’t trust the PCI and, like the IRD, tried to discredit Berlinguer. It’s the kind of detail that should raise questions about whether or not the fears of a Soviet orientation were really the driving force behind this covert action:
It was a group effort: the IRD, MI6, and the KGB all effectively working to undermine the functioning of Italy’s democracy. And while the PCI was kept from winning an outright victory in that round of voting, it was eventually part of the government that was formed. And then the Red Brigades’ ‘left-wing’ terror campaign rocked Italy. Because that’s also how our world works.