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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 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.”

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 inves­ti­ga­tions 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.)