Monday, November 30, 2009

The Urantia Cult is a Skull & Bones Spin-Off - Response to "New York City Activist"

By Alex Constantine
(Repost)
In an anonymous post concerning my research on Urantia, the CIA mind control front, I am whittled down to size (seems I'm a "religious bigot" who engages in "guilt by association" and "agent baiting") for having written that the cult is a Skull & Bones spin-off. (See: http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/agent-baiting-guilt-by-association-and-religious-bigotry-2/)

My critic: "'Alex Constantine, a widely respected researcher and author on mind control, cults, and related topics, writes: ‘The Urantia Brotherhood is a Skull & Bones spin-off.’ On what grounds does the 'widely respected researcher' Alex Constantine allege that the Urantia Brotherhood is 'a Skull & Bones spin-off?' Salter quotes Constantine as saying that the Urantia Brotherhood’s holy text was 'supposedly channelled by a member of the Kellogg family, which had four members enrolled in Skull & Bones fraternity at the time to book was produced.' In other words, if someone is a member of Skull and Bones, then anything that any relative of that person says or does must be at the behest of Skull and Bones.”
http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/agent-baiting-guilt-by-association-and-religious-bigotry-2/

The Kelloggs were Seventh Day Adventists, and I devote more attention to this church than the Yale secret society because that link is more relevant to Urantia's metaphysics. BUT it isn't all metaphysics. The Urantia Book is a "treatise" on racial eugenics, a political and academic document that reflects the beliefs and serves the political purposes of the social class that makes up S&B:

Prescott Bush's "trading with enemy" (Nazis) was "unknown publicly and had no bearing when he ran for Senator in 1950, but last minute revelations of his "contacts with birth controllers" … "cost him the election ... " (Yale and many of the Skull & Bones’ family have been at the forefront of the 'race-science movement' - a whole story in itself. Yale economist Irving Fisher, S&B 1888, was the founder of the American Eugenics Society.)"
http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boodleboys1.html

Dr. Kellogg himself was a great believer in race science, and so was his psychiatric coeval in the founding of Urantia, William Sadler. Salter notes: "Sadler got his start working for Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Adventist surgeon," and writes of "the intimate connections" to Skull & Bones.

Sadler was employed by an S&B family. Further, there is Sadler's marriage to Leona Kellogg. Sadler was an S&B family member, too - that's two members of the family founding the Urantia sect.

But that doesn't matter - it's a spin-off. Secret societies and cults are constantly spinning off new lodges. The OTO, for instance, has spun off numerous Crowleyite sub-organizations because individual members walked away and formed their own lodges. (For numerous examples, see The Ultimate Evil, by Maury Terry.)

Michael Aquino left the Church of Satan and founded the Temple of Set. It is accurately described as a "spin-off." It only takes one S&B member to conceive Urantia, and that's properly referred to as a spin-off, despite my critic's protests. Take it from a "widely respected researcher and author on mind control, cults, and related topics."

Many of the cult's early members had positions in government and poltical bodies like the UN - similar to the career paths of Bonesmen. Where do you suppose Unrantia's founders got the idea of recruiting from and infiltrating government and NGO bureaucracies?

But take a closer look at the cult's "channelled" bible. The Urantia Book is highly political: "Dr. Sadler whose Urantia book preaches World Government under a World Executive - much like the Rockefeller drive for global government. ... "
http://questionsquestions.net/docs04/belitsos-urantia.html

The Urantia book is a reflection of S&B doctrines. See, for example, "Bush Family, Skull and Bones and Nazi Eugenics," November 10, 2007 post -
http://wwwthesixthestate.blogspot.com/2007/11/bush-family-skull-and-bones-and-nazi.html

The Kelloggs were prominent in the secret society.

The Urantia book is a mind control tool that serves the upper-class comprising Bones. It is larded with the same eugenics that have been a hallmark of S&B for the past century:

from The Urantia Book -- Part III. The History Of Urantia PAPER 111: Section 4.The Inner Life

“unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization”
The Urantia Book -- Part III. The History Of Urantia
PAPER 79: Section 2. The Andite Conquest Of India

“The indigo [Black] race was moving south in Africa, there to begin its slow but long-continued racial deterioration.”

THE URANTIA BOOK PART III - THE HISTORY OF URANTIA
PAPER 78 - THE VIOLET RACE AFTER THE DAYS OF ADAM Page 871

"Notwithstanding this obstacle, it seems that you ought to be able to agree upon the biologic disfellowshiping of your more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks." (P.585)

"Having failed to achieve race harmonization by the Adamic technique, you must now work out your planetary problem of race improvement by other and largely human methods of adaptation and control." (P.586)

I called Urantia a spin-off of the well-heeled Yale fraternity - my critic quibbled. But further along in his critique of me, he dismisses with a snort my postings on mind control technology. Well, I've written about the technology for 20 years, and each article was documented. The technology exists, but some flatly refuse to believe the hundreds of documents and articles on the topic that I can and have produced. If someone simply refuses to believe it, and abuses me due to ignorance, I can only shrug and ponder the complexity of his psychology, but I've already responded in those articles on the technology and have no desire to repeat myself.

My detractor writes: "10/30/2007: I just now came across A Urantia, 9/11Truth.org & CIA Mind Control Technology Development Timeline by Alex Constantine. Here, Constantine ... talks about possible infiltration of the Urantia movement by the NSA and CIA, long after its founding." I don't even recall writing a timeline, but ... not "possible infiltration," but without a doubt. The Bones society is also known to be on close terms with the CIA, but the Urantia sect had long been a front for agents of government and the Complex before the CIA came along. "On this page, Constantine comes across as reasonably cautious," good to know that I can do that, thanks for the vote of confidence, "although he nevertheless gives credence to some hard-to-believe claims such as 'It is believed that secret technology also presently allows for direct wireless access to an unwitting subject’s visual cortex both for inputting and downloading of realtime awake and dreaming field of vision data.'"

After dismissing me, however, my critic admits his ignorance: "I should learn more about the CIA’s mind control experiments."

Now, WHERE will he read about those experiments? In my books, possibly, after dragging me through the slime? "It is known, at least, that the CIA did conduct such experiments ... " Yes, I and others have exposed that ... I'm derided here, but spent years researching and writing about mind control experimentation - so the uninformed, anonymous poster could cite my own work as he carves me up. " .... although some of the claims that have been made about them have been rather wacky. (See the thread Judy Wood and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the Truth Action forum.)"

First of all, I'm not sure that I wrote the sentence ascribed to me - I edited that piece, if it's even mine, and I don't recall it (I'm a busy little researcher). But the tech can do much more than that and I say so elsewhere. But there is no doubt that it exists.

My critic's lack of knowledge puts him in a position to judge someone who spent years researching the subject?

The important thing is that these "wacky" devices are used to torture innocent civilians. Everyone who dismisses the technology as non-existent is leaving torture victims to twist in the wind. My critic, rather than act as an accomplice to torture, should go read the articles and books (mine included), and as he acknowledges, learn about mind control before addressing the topic and bad-mouthing me - then he won't seem (so long as we are talking about appearances and impressions - without bothering to lift a finger to correct them) such a misguided, trivial ass.

But let's sum up these criticisms of myself. I am guilty, the headline says, of:

"Agent-baiting, guilt by association, and religious bigotry."

I don't mind the first two accusations because they are pointless, but I'm a "religious bigot" ... because I frown on organized mind control/intelligence fronts ... that preach the decimation of inferior races ... and derationalize the guinea pigs ...

What gets into me?

Whoever wrote this, I say it's a good thing the backward creature didn't include a by-line ... .

Imagine if I had actually written something false and defamatory - you know, followed my detractor's example. He'd be angry THEN, I'm sure. I'm not irate, though. I am too sorry for every programmed prole who thinks this way. Fascism has got them, and they don't have the cognitive skills necessary to open up the universe a little and see that for themselves. Instead, they are prone to acting out on anti-fascists because they don't understand what's going on around them, and reports on fascist conspiracies "seem" incredible. The result is always flaming brainwash juvenalia vomitted my way. Unfortunately, it comes spuming up with rage and insults directed at myself as the prole passes through the denial stage, similar to the child's throes of profanity in The Exorcist. I never liked that part of the job so much ...

Advanced Mind Control Technology in Bhutan

Excerpt - Book Review: The Other Gross Side of Bhutan

Deepak Adhikari reviews Torture Killing Me Softly, a new book by Bhutanese human rights activist Tek Nath Rizal.

Tek Nath Rizal. Torture Killing Me Softly. Kathmandu: Human Rights Without Frontiers Nepal & Group for International Solidarity. September 2009. 197 pages, Price: 450 NRs or 30 US$. The book can be purchased online here

www.nepalmonitor.com

... It’s ironic that a country, which conjures up an image of the Himalayan paradise in the Western psyche, can indulge in such bizarre yet brutal practices of punishment.

Yes, we are talking about Bhutan, and the person upon whom the horrendous torture was inflicted is none other than Bhutanese human rights leader Tek Nath Rizal. Rizal, a refugee leader in exile for more than a decade, has chronicled a harrowing tale of his prison life in Bhutan in his new book Torture Killing Me Softly. In nearly two hundred pages, he narrates his predicament while he was stuck in Bhutanese jails for a decade. The most startling aspect of the book—apart from the routine torture the state metes out to its opponents—is the use of sophisticated mind control devices by the ruling elite of Bhutan. One finds hard to reconcile the image of a pastoral country with its employing cutting-edge torture tools bestowed by modern science.

Rizal claims in the book that his Bhutanese torturers applied light sensitivity, very high sound decibels, and microwaves on him in order to destabilize his mind, induce anomalous behavioral changes and create disassociation. Dr. Indrajit Rai, a security expert and member of Nepal's Constituent Assembly, in the foreword to the book, notes that mind control devices are used on prisoners-of-war. He writes, “Bhutanese government practiced mind-control techniques on Rizal as a means to inflict physical and mental pain in order to destroy his life. With a view to deviating him from his goal of fighting for democracy, the Bhutanese government used these devices on him and pumped out all his thoughts and feelings.” ...

It’s evident from the annex under the heading of “suggested reading” that the author has researched a great deal about the use of electronic devices to control one’s mind. The epilogue reads: “The global agencies must verify the tall claims of the government of Bhutan independently whether it is ‘Gross National Happiness’ or the ‘Gross National Sufferings.'” Indeed, the cases of gross human rights violations as documented by Rizal in Torture cast a shadow over the so-called Shangri-La.

FULL STORY

http://www.nepalmonitor.com/2009/11/book_review_the_other_gross_side_bhutan.html
----------------------
Mind Control Device – Prof. Dr. Indrajit Rai
http://www.apfanews.com/torture-killing-me-softly/

... Being a professor of War Studies, I found, during my military research, the mind-control technique applied to the war prisoners. It is an electromagnetic mind-control technique which can take full control of the person’s body and mind permanently. It uses modulated microwave to produce audible voices in the person’s head. It is in the form of subliminal hypnotic command and the victim can be hypnotically programmed for years without knowing.

Thoughts are implanted in the victim’s mind without letting him know. In microwave hearing, nobody can hear the voices except the targeted individual. The sound reverberates in the target’s ear monotonously. In a solitary cell the high pitched sound gets amplified. Slowly it stirs the unconscious layer of the mind and deeply affects the nerves. ...

(Rai is a Security Expert & Member of Constituent Assembly, Nepal)

An Air of Deceit: Was Convicted Smog-Credit Swindler Anne Sholtz Part of Shady International ‘Money Repatriation’ Schemes?

John Singlaub

" ... Also involved in the Ghana operation ... was the Jedburgh Group, a Lake Mary, Florida-based firm that provides intelligence, security and financial-services to industry and governments worldwide. Former US intelligence and military officers work for Jedburgh. The best known is probably retired US Major General John Singlaub, a decorated military officer involved with the CIA’s predecessor agency, the Korean War and American counterinsurgency efforts. In the late-1980s, he was connected to the Iran-Contra scandal and anti-communist, ultra-right-wing groups in Central America. ... "
***
By Chip Jacobs
Pasadena Weekly
08/20/2009

Anne Sholtz

The demise of Anne Sholtz’s once-grand life is evident in the smaller things. It’s there in the GPS-tracking bracelet — standard issue for felons in home detention — that looped around her ankle for a year, and in her near-dormant passport. It’s evident in her pillow, which rests today in leased home miles from the $5 million hillside estate that had broadcast her transformation from Caltech economist to business phenom.

Yes, the wreckage from that existence — the economizing, the isolation from connected friends who now shun her — is graspable.

Where the picture turns as murky as whisky-brown Southern California smog is how Sholtz, a then thirtysomething go-getter, was able to deceive the very air-pollution market she helped conceive, and the lessons that holds for keeping financial crooks out of the trillion-dollar, greenhouse-gas trading system that President Obama has trumpeted as a key to curbing global warming.

Unless you’re in the arcane field of emissions trading, chances are you’ve probably never heard of Sholtz. Last April, the former Pasadena entrepreneur was convicted in federal court of fraud relating to a multimillion-dollar deal for credits in Southern California’s novel smog-exchange. Despite pleas that she sock Sholtz with years behind bars, US Central District Court Judge Audrey Collins gave her just a year in home confinement.

Fortunate with that light sentence, Sholtz nonetheless sustained heavy losses. Most notably, she squandered her chance to build a unique and lucrative pollution-trading business, with access to Obama or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as an industry confidante. Those opportunities gone, she now drives her mother’s car, not the Mercedes or SUV she once did. Rather than expanding her ideas into climate change, she checks in with her parole officer.

Blown prosperity for Sholtz, it’s been no bonanza for others, either.

Between criticism over its secretive, mixed-bag prosecution of her and evidence of Sholtz’s role in a scheme to extract millions in overseas US aid assets with men purporting to be American intelligence and military operatives, the Department of Justice’s LA office probably wishes she would just fade away. Local smog regulators at the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), whose market-based regulation proved vulnerable to her deceptions, can relate.

The trouble is some events are just too big to disappear. And the Sholtz case, though little known and involving obscure and complex regulations, is important because it underscores the need for vigorous oversight of emissions markets against seemingly inevitable Wall Street-style chicanery.

Saying that she hopes to reconcile the events that dragged her from eco-visionary to convicted felon, Sholtz, 44, gave the Pasadena Weekly her first public comments in seven years. These days, she’s a freelance auditor examining white-collar fraud (ironically, for the federal court system that processed her case) and proclaims herself “happy” and “debt-free.”

Just don’t mistake that resilience for satisfaction, or expect to hear weepy remorse from her. Channeling other emotions, Sholtz said she’s “disappointed” in how prosecutors and bankruptcy officials treated her and is perplexed over why the whistleblower tips she furnished them about bank money laundering and environmental corruption seem not to have been pursued.

“Years ago I was depressed I’d made bad decisions, which led to one disastrous deal and my companies unraveling,” Sholtz said over lunch at a location she asked go undisclosed, fearing former associates she claims have threatened her. “I’ve never said anything about this whole experience until now. The only reason I’m speaking is because I’m tired of the misperceptions.”

If two Republican congressmen skeptical about Obama’s carbon-cutting plan have their way, Sholtz’s story may yet capture center stage nationally. This spring, US Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member of the House’s powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, and Greg Walden of Oregon, ranking member of the House’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, demanded the US Environmental Protection Agency provide a mass of information about the Sholtz case to them, based partly on the Pasadena Weekly’s coverage of her.

“We believe this case has great relevance in the context of the pending legislation on climate change,” Barton and Walden wrote in a statement, citing doubts that federal authorities have the money and legal punch to adequately police a national greenhouse-gas market.

It appears those doubts will be tested. An Obama-backed bill requiring industry and public utilities nationwide to buy and sell federally auctioned permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under a so-called “cap-and-trade” regimen narrowly passed the House in June. Formally titled “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” the legislation, which includes numerous new energy-efficiency standards and initiatives, represents the most substantial change in US environmental policy since passage of 1970’s Clean Air Act.

The 1,300-page bill, co-written by House Democrats Henry Waxman of Los Angeles and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, next goes to the Senate. The overriding objective is to reduce US greenhouse gases from 2005-baseline levels so that by 2020 aggregate levels are down 17 percent and by 2050 they’ve shrunk a colossal 83 percent. (Global warming is caused by the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases that reflect some of the Earth’s heat back towards the planet instead of being dispersed into space. Many scientists contend the phenomenon is imperiling the Arctic, biodiversity, food production and weather patterns.)

Hopeful as the White House is about cap-and-trade, even enthusiasts acknowledge that the complexities are jaw-dropping, with a market divided by geographic lines as well as industrial sectors. Roughly six billion tons of emissions could be traded yearly at first, estimated David Kreutzer, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. Entities discharging more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually — non-nuclear power makers, oil refiners, natural gas producers, coal-fired steel plants, among others — will participate.

Detractors believe with the money at stake, white-collar cheating is a certainty. Between now and 2035, greenhouse-gas permits may reach $5.7 trillion in value, Kreutzer said. Some investment houses are already gearing up to act as trade middlemen.

Oddly, the watchdog angle was barely touched on during congressional deliberations. Attention mainly focused on provisions allowing companies to soften emission damage offsite, even overseas, if it’s cheaper, and the initial giveaway of 85 percent of credits to carbon-heavy businesses and regions facing sharply higher energy prices.

As the bill stands, market oversight will be spread out among the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the EPA and several unspecified agencies. “Most of the people I talk to think [the market] will be set up for fraud,” said policy analyst Joel Kotkin. “There’s scamming and then there’s scamming.”

Simultaneously, seven Western states and parts of western Canada are considering launching their own regional cap-and-trade under a Schwarzenegger administration plan. It’s aimed at rolling back carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The Western Climate Initiative may be dissolved or modified if a national market is approved.

Until then, West Coast officials are studying how to ward off cheaters in areas such as insider-trading, excessive speculation and market manipulation.

Sometimes the threat hides in the open.

Another direction

LA’s implacable smog problem stood to make the Sholtz rich and maybe more influential. A dark-haired woman with wide-set eyes and a slight Midwestern twang, she grew up the brainy daughter of an aeronautical engineer. Schooled in Minnesota and elsewhere, Sholtz said her aptitude in math and science won her countless honors and early interest from NASA. It was a job offer teaching economics at Caltech that pulled her from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was in a doctoral program, to Southern California. Her timing was superb.

The Cold War had just ended and California’s recession was buzz-sawing thousands of jobs. Bigwigs weren’t debating carbon footprints. They were hollering about regulatory overkill in the fight against chronic smog. Legislators, lobbyists and boosters, convinced that costly rules were suffocating manufacturers, saw their chance to emasculate AQMD’s power. To neutralize the threat, the air district offered something chancy.

The AQMD hadn’t invented the concept of injecting market principles to detoxify the environment and allow industry leeway in deciding how and when to run its smokestacks, towers, generators and other machinery cleaner and greener. That originated with academics decades earlier and then was embraced by the first Bush’s administration to address “acid rain,” the result of harmful sulfur dioxide emissions from Midwestern plants that drifted over Northeastern states. Most consider the congressionally adopted program a success. Whether it will translate well for a prodigiously larger national greenhouse-gas market is anyone’s guess.

It’s for this reason that LA’s experience also is instructive. Instead of continuing to use fine-print dictates to regulate individual machinery at power stations, oil refiners, cement companies, defense plants and other manufacturers, the AQMD in 1994 gambled on economics. Some tactic was needed to chop overall emissions by 70 percent to meet national clean air standards.

Environmental groups fretted that the smog cap-and-trade concept was a recipe for stalling progress, but regulatory chic was in trader’s garb. The spectacle of LA’s notorious air pollution being traded like a blue-chip stock sounded exotic and the world press flocked to the district’s eco-conscious Diamond Bar headquarters to hear the details.

Green fairytale

Under the now 15-year-old market, 332 of the area’s heaviest polluters are allotted credits based on their aggregate emissions of two harmful chemicals: oxides of nitrogen and sulfur. These credits, calculated from baseline production levels, essentially are permits to pollute by the pound. If an entity reduces more of its discharges than required under its cap set by regulators — usually by installing high-tech, gunk-trapping equipment — it can sell the differential between what it’s allowed to emit and what it actually released into the skies (or expects to) to others in the form of credits. (A company can choose not to trade, just as long as its emissions fall below its limits.) Every year, firms’ emission allotments shrink by a certain percentage so pollution dips regionally. Each credit is assigned a period for its one-year use, the date it was issued and one of two geographic zones it can be used in.

To date, there have been 5,170 trades worth $980 million in the “Regional Clean Air Incentives Market” (RECLAIM). District officials assert that it’s achieved it goals, shrinking nitrogen oxides 73 percent and sulfur oxides 59 percent. Trades are made company to company, or through broker-type middleman.

Here’s where symmetry enters. During the RECLAIM design phase, the district solicited technical expertise from lawyers, academics and others, bidding out consulting contracts to some of them. The Pacific Stock Exchange and Caltech received work doing market analyses and Sholtz was on the team. It was there she hobnobbed with AQMD staff promoted two concepts: a plan to stabilize prices and planning by setting up two staggered cycles for RECLAIM credits expiring in a given year, and to deter fraud by assigning credits identifying numbers, somewhat akin to a bar code, so officials could track their movements. Only the staggering portion of the plan was approved.

Jack Broadbent administered RECLAIM for the district back then and remembered Sholtz. “She came across in a very professional manner, pretty slick, part advertising, part substance,” said Broadbent, now executive officer of the Bay Area AQMD. “Anne did a good job of ticking a number of us off. She asked what air pollution regulators know about these … ideas.”

Arrogant or merely self-assured, few seemed as poised to capitalize on RECLAIM as the ever-hustling Midwesterner. While still working out of her apartment and teaching at Caltech, as well as at USC as an environmental law scholar, she founded a smog-credit exchange allowing buyers and sellers to arrange favorable deals. Every RECLAIM transaction in this eBay-like auction made her a 3 to 6 percent commission.

Her company, Automated Credit Exchange, touted itself as the first-ever electronic trading system for pollution credits. Unlike traditional brokerages such as Cantor Fitzgerald, Sholtz’s system relied on analytical, NASA space-exploration software licensed through Caltech to create optimal trades from a mishmash of data. Industrial heavyweights like Disney, Northrop-Grumman, Chevron and the LA Department of Water and Power signed up as clients; the Pacific Stock Exchange, Bank of America and US Trust served as trade clearinghouses.

In February 1996, Sholtz celebrated her company auctioning a record 2.4 million RECLAIM credits in a single week. A Los Angeles Times story the next year exalted Sholtz’s ingenuity, quoting one client who called it “absolutely wonderful.” She’d later set up shop with an office on South Raymond Avenue in trendy Old Pasadena.

With money and publicity flowing, and nibbles about selling her analytical software to advertisers and officials auctioning federal airwaves, Sholtz appeared destined for the cover of Forbes. There were trips to the United Nations, meetings with Al Gore, that 7,000-square-foot estate with koi ponds in gated Bradbury a few miles east of Pasadena, exhilaration for what lay ahead.

It was a Horatio-Alger-meets-green-entrepreneur fairytale.

Unfortunately, some fairytales end miserably and in 2002 nine of Sholtz’s clients complained to the AQMD that the fast-riser known for her wonkish lingo and oft-clingy outfits had defrauded them in what would become a convoluted bankruptcy of her firms, with claims in the $80 million range. The EPA was summoned. Soon, investigators zeroed in on one particular transaction.

Beginning in fall 1999, Sholtz informed one of her clients, a New York-based energy trading firm called A.G. Clean Air., that then-Mobil Corp (now Exxon-Mobil) needed to purchase about $17.5-million in RECLAIM credits to operate in the LA Basin. Mobil indeed had an option contract with her to acquire those credits, and if A.G. sold them to the oil titan through her, it could make a bundle, perhaps $5 million, depending on credit prices. But when A.G. couldn’t buy enough credits to complete the Mobil transaction itself, Sholtz discovered that credits from her own company that she needed to use had been committed elsewhere by an employee while she was out ill. She had a dilemma.

To trick A.G. into believing she could still consummate the deal, Sholtz staged an act, court records show. From November 2000 to April 2002, she emailed and faxed fraudulent sales documents to A.G., including phony invoices showing Mobil owed her about $16 million when in fact it did not under the option contract. In more artifice, she emailed A.G. officials “falsified” correspondence between her and a Mobil executive that she was impersonating. The fakery was intended to stall for time until she could unload A.G.’s credits to someone else besides Mobil and pay A.G. what it could’ve made with the oil company if the original deal could’ve been completed. Eventually, A.G. caught on to the stonewalling, technically known as “lulling,” and demanded to be paid in full. By then, authorities were onto her.
A.G. and Mobil declined comment for this story.

An easy fix

Sholtz argues, as she has in court documents, that the initial charges against her were overblown, and she has a point. Contrary to media accounts and government reports, she never trafficked in counterfeit credits because there weren’t any.

Her downfall, she said in interviews and in her plea agreement, came from her entanglements with a smooth-talking Texas financier named Jimmy Keller. He was on Sholtz’s payroll from 1998 to 2000 before she fired him. Sholtz said she last spoke with Keller in 2002, and one of her ex-associates said he died several years ago.

Sholtz said it was Keller who committed the credits that could’ve stopped her prosecution by encumbering them in a phony, high-yield investment scheme involving bank notes. She said it took her about eight months to reconstruct what had happened. By then, RECLAIM credit prices had plunged, diminishing the money she had to throw at the problem.

“I wasn’t panicked — I was angry,” Sholtz said. “I should have just said, ‘I will find a way out,’ and admit I messed up. I could’ve sold my part of the company and learned a big lesson. But I thought nobody would’ve traded with us anymore or that A.G. might’ve forced us to sell the company to them and fire our employees. I didn’t have the courage or maturity to ask for help.”

Because AQMD regulators were blind originally to what had transpired, Sholtz continued barreling forward. Among other actions, she solicited money from new investors to pay off existing ones in a “Ponzi-type” scheme, according to Howard Grobstein, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee. In another instance, she blamed the destruction of the World Trade Centers during the 9/11 attacks for missing deal paperwork.

Sholtz disputes she misled as many people as some have charged, and said she felt demonized. “There’s been so much misinformation, it’s astounding,” she said. “Some people really didn’t want to know the truth. They just wanted to blame me without looking at themselves or their associates.”

Nonetheless, in February 2001, while still misleading A.G., Sholtz assisted the Netherlands test its own nitrogen-oxide emissions-trading program. Months later, she tried playing white knight when RECLAIM credit prices soared during the California electricity crisis by offering to stabilize trading through a centralized auction similar to hers. Gov. Gray Davis had ordered power plants statewide to generate electricity however they could, even from high-polluting machinery. Traders and speculators from Texas to New York seized the opportunity, hoarding credits to sell to utilities frantically buying more than their allotment. With RECLAIM nearing meltdown, district brass temporarily pulled utilities from the market. They also spurned Sholtz’s rescue plan.

The next year, her two promising companies flopped into bankruptcy. What she hoped would be a reorganization plan became dissolution. It got messier. Investors claimed losing retirement accounts, college funds and nest eggs in the collapse. Multimillion-dollar settlements were cut with two large energy entities, Calpine and Intergen. The Bradbury mansion was sold. Where she was once hailed as brilliant, foresighted and charming, she was now portrayed as dishonest and, according to one official, “manipulative.”

Just as that was occurring, questions arose about her PhD cited in stories, the Netherlands and elsewhere. In actuality, she had no doctorate because she hadn’t completed her dissertation at Washington University. Sholtz said that a colleague had introduced her at a public function as “Dr. Anne Sholtz” and since she was close to earning her advanced degree, she let the lie stand. “That would have been so easy to fix,” she said, “but, again, it required a level of maturity that I didn’t have.”

Gaming the system

EPA agents arrested her at a Monrovia gym in 2004. The theatrics of it, Sholtz suspected, were meant to intimidate her. “I was handcuffed and outside there were guys with big guns,” she recalled. “They wanted to embarrass me. Did they think I was going to flee in my Spandex?”

The incarceration of a niche celebrity chummy with AQMD brass at the Metropolitan Detention Center rattled others, too. Inside local environmental and regulatory circles, feelings of betrayal, fury and anguish swirled.

She’d eventually be indicted on six federal counts stemming from the A.G.-Mobil deal. One knowledgeable source said Sholtz lucked out, because federal investigators had turned over to the Justice Department enough evidence for more than 80 counts.

Charges filed, the white-collar case seemed to turn invisible, as if the region’s murky air — still the unhealthiest in the nation for ozone and particulate matter — had swallowed it. Four years lapsed from her 2004 arrest to her 2008 sentencing, and even then her punishment warranted no Justice Department press release.

The two prosecutors handling the case, Assistant US Attorneys Joseph Johns and Dorothy Kim, have steadfastly refused comment beyond Johns saying last year it was a calculated gamble to have Sholtz plead guilty to a single count. Adding to the mystery in United States v. Anne Sholtz, many of the key court documents, the transcript of her sentencing hearing among them, remain quarantined by judicial order. Justice Department spokesman Thom Mrozek said one reason is that her case involves “under seal filings” that might signal ongoing investigations into other areas.

Wayne Nastri, the EPA’s West Coast administrator, was practically the only significant suit to speak up. In a January 2008 letter to Judge Collins, Nastri recommended she hand Sholtz a message-sending sentence. “Environmental regulatory programs which utilize market mechanisms,” Nastri wrote, “will fail if the integrity of such programs can be seriously compromised.”

At the April 2008 sentencing hearing, which caught many off guard because of the case’s frequent delays, Sholtz wept and foretold of family harm if she were given hard time. But what mattered to Collins, according to numerous people present that day, was that Sholtz’s companies had paid A.G. so it actually turned a profit in its dealings with her in spite of her misleading actions. (Sholtz estimates that amount at $28 million.) Citing that and other factors, Collins stunned the Justice Department, EPA and others by giving Sholtz a skimpy sentence: one year of home detention as part of her five years of probation, plus a conditional ban on AQMD emissions trading.

In a surreal end to one of the bigger cases of cap-and-trade criminality, Collins chided prosecutors for their strategy while praising Sholtz’s defense attorney, Richard Callahan of Pasadena.

Even so, environmentalists and others say it’s incumbent on regulators to learn from Sholtz’s gaming so it’s not repeated on the bigger carbon stage.

“We definitely see [this] fraud as a cautionary tale for the state and the country as we move toward greenhouse gas regulations and potential market mechanisms,” said Bill Magavern, director of Sierra Club California. “In discussions about it, I’ve brought up the fact that there has been outright criminal fraud and I find that most people don’t know about it.”

Operation Bald Headed Eagle

Thumb through the government paperwork against Sholtz and you’d think she’d confined her ambitions to smoggy Southern California. The felony that torpedoed her career, after all, involved Torrance refiner ExxonMobil Corp.

What you’d never glean from the prosecution documents is Sholtz’s involvement in a spectacular and alarming international venture — one intersecting the worlds of espionage, foreign policy, environmental markets and con-artistry — in the years before authorities were chasing her.

All of that has been buried until now.

A months-long Pasadena Weekly investigation, based on business records, operational memos, wire transfers, invoices, resumes and other documents scooped up by federal and bankruptcy officials and obtained by the paper, coupled with Sholtz’s own rendition of events, tells part of this bizarre story of cap-and-trade money gone sideways.

Time warp back to 1998. After losing about $1.7 million in soured deals in the AQMD’s smog-cap-and-trade program when a credit’s buyers’ check bounced, Sholtz said that Keller, the well-connected financier-dealmaker she’d hired that year, convinced her there were opportunities to recoup the losses while serving her country.

Keller, she said, told her the US government farmed out contracts to private firms for an extraordinary purpose: returning to federal coffers some of the government bonds, gold, cash and other valuable items distributed to America’s allies, in some cases decades back. Whether they were first allocated as foreign aid, secret payments or other forms of US funding was not evident.

According to Sholtz, Keller said that once the items were returned to the US, they could be converted into high-yield securities able to generate revenue. Contractors involved in this so-called “repatriation” or “extraction” effort could use the interest from the securities for their own business and charitable purposes before delivering the items back to the US Treasury.

Sholtz said Keller introduced her in Las Vegas to a group of men supposedly able to pull off these overseas extractions. Many of them had CIA and military special-forces backgrounds, and she said Keller told her it was “normal business” to employ them. “He said, ‘You’re special, the government has been watching you.’ I fell for it hook, line and sinker.”

Sholtz wasn’t exactly suspicious of the older Keller in those days. In fact, she was in a romantic relationship with him, impressed by his smarts, interests and charms. “He swept me off my feet,” Sholtz said. “He had that Southern air about him.”

So, during the same summer the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, Sholtz, then 33, launched a money-retrieval mission dubbed “Operation Bald Headed Eagle.” Its target was a pallet of boxes stashed near the Philippine capital of Manila allegedly containing $20 million in mid-1930s US Federal Reserve notes, plus German bonds, platinum bars and other commodities of mysterious origin and undisclosed value. Based on her operational memos, the former Caltech professor seemed spellbound by it all.

With the money she expected to rake in, Sholtz said she hoped to pave over the financial hole she claimed Keller dug for her, re-capitalize her companies and support local charities.

To accomplish this trifecta, she founded a “charitable trust” supposedly blessed by the United Nations to take initial possession of the goods, memos show. Sholtz said one of the lawyers assisting her set up “Gold Ray Ltd.” It was chartered in the British West Indies. Technically, her companies Automated Credit Exchange and its parent, EonXchange, were not part of Gold Ray.

Still, mission financing was daring. According to a Sept. 14, 2004, memo by Kathy Phelps, the lawyer for the court-appointed trustee overseeing Sholtz’s bankruptcy proceedings, an outwardly normal series of RECLAIM trades actually was Sholtz misappropriating roughly 500,000 credits owned by clients Chevron Corp., Mobil and oil-and-gas producer Aera Energy, which she then sold to power maker Southern California Edison for $1,913,162. In a June 18, 1998, memo from Sholtz to Edison, Sholtz instructed the utility to pay that amount to a Florida attorney assisting her with “Eagle.”

Phelps, approached about her memo titled “EonXchange – analysis of stolen credits,” said she and the bankruptcy trustee turned over evidence about “Eagle” to the government. Phelps said the scheme wasn’t the focus of the bankruptcy proceedings, which are just now winding down, but wonders if the losses incurred were a reason why Sholtz initiated some of the financial improprieties later alleged. “The depth of what [she] was involved in was extensive,” Phelps said.

Sholtz, shown the memo herself, adamantly denied the RECLAIM credits sold to Edison were stolen, though she conceded she lacks the records to pinpoint where they originated. “The money we made from the Edison deal was our money!” Sholtz added. “We just sold [Edison] credits we got stuck with from another transaction. It wasn’t some grand scheme.”

Within days, the windfall from the Edison transaction became the down payment on her Philippine plan, records show. At its core, the mission involved retrieving the booty in a meticulously choreographed transfer from a holding company near Clark International Airport outside of Manila and flying it 7,400 miles to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.

An El Segundo aviation outfit calling itself “Air America Holdings, Inc.” agreed to transport the goods on an executive Boeing 707. Sholtz negotiated with the firm’s president and a pilot with his name claimed to have been a CIA pilot for the agency’s Air America charter airline, which was exposed as a CIA paramilitary asset during the Vietnam War. The airline later disbanded.

This pilot, in a missive on a conspiracy-focused Web site, said after the war the CIA formed a new, covert airline under his last name. With the agency’s assistance, he said he flew missions from 1974 to 1988, ferrying arms to Asia, the Middle East, even the Soviet Union. By the late-1980s, he said he shut down the charter because he believed CIA operations were hurting US interests. Two years later, he asserted the Justice Department charged him with wire fraud to “silence and discredit” him. A book also captured his story.

This pilot, whose name and others the Weekly is withholding because none of them were charged for their participation in “Eagle,” did not return phone calls.

‘Eagle’ lands

Sholtz said this pilot not only told her he was still associated with the CIA; he instructed her on what to write in operational memos. Whether you believe her insistence she was merely the front, and not a ringleader, this was no standard mission. Unspecified members of the “Eagle” team declared holding “diplomatic immunity” and other high-level governmental protections (one called a “rain repellent”) freeing the plane from customs, immigration and security checks, Gold Ray memos signed by Sholtz stressed repeatedly.

The team itself was no less formidable. A retired US Army lieutenant colonel with 14 years in US Special Forces and a Philippine colonel were two of the point men. Another, the overseas lawyer representing the Philippine company maintaining the goods, was once connected to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’ administration, several knowledgeable sources said. Sholtz recalled meeting this lawyer to discuss “Eagle” in Sri Lanka, where she said he told her the loot was given to Marcos’ people by US authorities who supported them. Marcos was deposed in 1986.

Emails and calls to the Philippines embassy about the colonel and to the Philippine bar association about the lawyer went unreturned.

Sholtz and Air America Holdings settled on a $200,000 fee for the chartered 707 to make the three-leg trip that would take it from Los Angeles International Airport to the Philippines and then to Las Vegas, invoices show. On June 29, 1998, the pilot wrote to Sholtz certifying that “traditional formalities” for personnel and cargo “will not be observed” under a “safe passage” understanding in Las Vegas, implying Nevada airport personnel were aiding him.

Asked why she believed Washington would condone such actions when the Air Force could dispatch a C-130 to collect the pallets, Sholtz responded: “I wasn’t looking at the mechanics. We were meeting real people who were supposedly working with the US government. We needed to help our country. I was starry-eyed, thinking this is going to be fantastic! You don’t think something this big could not be true.”

Guy Bailey, a Miami attorney who represented Sholtz on “Eagle” before a falling out, remembered her recounting the same story as the documents paint. “She said she was in some sort of contractual arrangement with the CIA and the Treasury Department to go retrieve currency, gold or something from the Philippines,” said Bailey. He said that as far as he knew, the 707 arrived in the Philippines, waited a week to collect the goods and left with an empty cargo hold for unexplained reasons.

Sholtz said she’s heard that version and another one where the booty was returned to the US, and everybody profited but her because she’d been swindled. By mid-summer 1998, Sholtz said “Eagle” team members wouldn’t answer her questions, then her calls. It was as if they’d vanished. “I don’t know what happened. Sometimes it depends on the day,” she said. “I thought they’d chosen us to do this great work, and it was so flattering and if you have any narcissism, it’s ‘Oh boy.’ Nobody said it was illegal. Now I’m thinking there has to be a conspiracy.”

No pressure

While it seems likely “Eagle” was little more than a Nigerian-type scam on Sholtz, the fact that RECLAIM money was alleged to have helped finance it infuses it with relevance in analyzing how well authorities have policed cap-and-trades heretofore. There’s also the issue of Washington’s awareness of former — or phony — spies and soldiers portraying themselves as agents on government-sanctioned missions.

For its part, the CIA denied involvement with “Eagle,” and its participants. “These individuals, to my knowledge, neither have, nor have had, any affiliation with the agency,” said agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano. “We’re not part of this tale.”

State Department spokeswoman Laura Tischler said diplomatic officials knew nothing about “Eagle,” either. She did note it’s illegal to claim diplomatic immunity if it’s not officially conferred. The Treasury Department never answered the Weekly’s inquiries. In New York, the UN office of legal affairs found no evidence after searching its records that the organization was affiliated with Sholtz or Gold Ray. A UN official said the organization doesn’t typically approve private charities, and says it’s illegal to misuse the UN’s name.

Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the silence over “Eagle” today is crushing. All three companies allegedly fleeced of their RECLAIM credits to help finance the scheme — Chevron, Mobil and Aera — either refused comment or never returned calls. Edison spokesman Steve Conroy would only say the utility was reviewing the matter after the Weekly’s inquiries.

Despite an ample paper trail and a four-year investigation, the US Attorney’s Office never charged Sholtz, Keller or her other associates with a potential array of felonies stemming from alleged misuse of smog-credit money or the extraction scheme. One natural question that arises is whether the US intelligence community or other federal officials pressed the Justice Department not to prosecute “Eagle” for unstated reasons, and whether that prompted the record-sealing and prosecutorial silence.

Justice Department spokesman Thom Mrozek rejected the notion of external arm-twisting. In fact, his only elaboration on the entire Sholtz matter was that his office “has never been influenced by political pressure” from outside.

EPA officials were disappointed “Eagle” wasn’t prosecuted or fleshed out by the FBI and others. In a statement for this story, the EPA said: “[We] investigated this fraudulent scheme because companies and individuals must legally and accurately trade air pollution credits if cap-and-trade programs are to succeed and air emissions are to be actually reduced.”

The agency had known about the offshore ventures for years. In 2004, Ronald Modjeski, the EPA criminal investigative agent assigned the case, filed an affidavit confirming Sholtz’s deal-making for federal-reserve notes, currency, gold and other financial instruments for “large amounts of money.” The EPA refused to allow Modjeski, who spent nearly 4,000 man-hours investigating Sholtz, to be interviewed.

‘Hooky spooky’

In hindsight, Sholtz said she believes Keller and his associates targeted her all along. She thinks they probably researched that her maternal grandfather, David Sholtz, had been governor of Florida during the 1930s, and decided to appeal to her public-service instinct.

Soon after she fired Keller in 2000, Sholtz said he began placing threatening phone calls describing what she was wearing, her location and how he didn’t plan on any jail time to scare her from testifying about him. In Pasadena in 2002, Sholtz said another “Eagle” participant tried intimidating her, warning, “You know people disappear all the time.” She refused to identify him.

“I told the US attorney during my prosecution that there’s this whole world where people are roped into thinking they are working with the CIA and military personnel or [the National Security Agency] and they didn’t seem interested. I got scammed, but so do a lot of people and they’re too embarrassed to talk about it.”

After “Eagle” fizzled, Sholtz didn’t lose her appetite for currency repatriation. Just months later in February 1999, she set her sights on the western coast of Africa, documents and interviews indicate.

This time, Sholtz hired Dale Toler, a former combat pilot who is now CEO of a Virginia electronics-technology company, to haul back $35 million in US currency supposedly squirreled away in Ghana. The trip began with Toler meeting a man who claimed to be the nation’s security chief at the Golden Tulip hotel in Accra, the capital. The African, it turned out, did not hold the position he boasted, but he knew plenty about the money, and Toler followed him to a fortified compound to inspect it. There, Toler quickly determined it was counterfeit bills or just scraps of paper in shrunk-wrap packages. Toler had to flee afterwards when the Africans driving him back to his hotel turned the wrong direction.

Sholtz estimates she lost more than $125,000 of her own money on the Ghana mission. There’s no indication RECLAIM credits were involved.

Toler in an interview confirmed without giving details that he traveled to Ghana as Sholtz’s agent. He said one of the reasons he agreed to go, despite suspecting beforehand the $35 million was bogus, was that Sholtz herself was planning to make the trip, and that she likely would’ve been either kidnapped for ransom or killed. (Sholtz acknowledged she had intended to go.)

Toler, overall, blamed Keller for whipping up Sholtz, who he described as dishonest and gullible.

“Much of this [currency repatriation] is fantasy,” Toler said. But Sholtz “believed there was money in the Philippines and Ghana, even though she’d been advised by me it didn’t exist. It was her greed. People made a lot of money off her. I’ve seen over the years folks who think the world revolves around a deal.”

Toler said that Keller died in the Bahamas a few years ago; this may explain why the feds have had trouble saying whether they ever charged him.

About five years earlier, in October 1992, a congressional probe into international bank fraud suggested that Toler’s firm, a now-defunct Virginia machine-tool company called RD&D, was part of an alleged clandestine CIA-run effort to arm the Iraqi military and curry favor with Saddam Hussein’s government. A federal prosecutor appearing before a Senate intelligence committee testified that Toler’s company was not a CIA front, but wouldn’t respond when asked if Toler had worked for the US National Security Administration, which conducts global eavesdropping operations.

Whatever his background, Sholtz said she was stunned at Toler’s negative comments about her. Sholtz said that Toler in 2002 tried to locate money she contends that Keller had “stolen” from her. “Toler said we were the victims, and now he’s changing his story,” Sholtz added. “I’m speechless.”

Also involved in the Ghana operation, records and interviews show, was the Jedburgh Group, a Lake Mary, Florida-based firm that provides intelligence, security and financial-services to industry and governments worldwide. Former US intelligence and military officers work for Jedburgh. The best known is probably retired US Major General John Singlaub, a decorated military officer involved with the CIA’s predecessor agency, the Korean War and American counterinsurgency efforts. In the late-1980s, he was connected to the Iran-Contra scandal and anti-communist, ultra-right-wing groups in Central America.

Jedburgh executive David Keith Freeman confirmed his company was a client of Sholtz’s “for a short time a very long time ago,” and said it helped evaluate the mission’s “potential for recovery.” He refused further comment about Ghana and other work the firm provided for Sholtz, citing client-confidentiality rules. Freeman did say the practice of people posing as former or current US intelligence officers in financial scams is fairly widespread and known in the industry as “hooky spooky.”

It comes in and it goes

So why weren’t these activities in the Justice Department’s crosshairs if they wanted to send a message about tainting cap-and-trades as the environmental regulatory shifts toward them? And even if there are legitimate ex-spies and soldiers traveling around the globe on behalf of someone like Sholtz, shouldn’t there be some transparency?

USC law school professor Rebecca Lonergan, who worked in the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles for 16 years, said prosecutors probably made a judgment call based on what they could prove in court, what evidence they could gather overseas, the intricacies of her different schemes and other factors.

“When you have a person like [Sholtz] one of the difficulties is sifting through the mass of seemingly culpatory evidence,” Lonegran said. “You have a person who would make a great movie living as a con artist but you have to find out the individual schemes. Criminal prosecutors simply can’t charge a person with being a fraudster.”

True as that may be, there’s still interest. Larry Neal, deputy Republican staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Congressmen Barton and Walden believe it’s important to remove the secrecy from the Sholtz matter to follow where it leads. “We haven’t seen allegations on currency-repatriation scams, but it is our aim to gather all facts surrounding the Sholtz case, regardless of what they entail,” Neal wrote via email. “… It has been more than a year since the sentencing and there’s still no public justification for all the judicial cloak and dagger. After all, the case was an about an Anne Sholtz cap-and-trade scam, not an al Qaeda terrorism cell.”

For his part, AQMD Executive Director Barry Wallerstein not only refused an interview about Sholtz’s activities, he forbade anyone at the agency from commenting for this story. (His feelings about Sholtz aside, Wallerstein is said to be upset about a book on the iconic Los Angeles smog crisis this writer co-authored with a former AQMD staffer.) But that doesn’t mean he’s not talking.

In a seven-page letter to US Rep. Henry Waxman, the Los Angeles Democrat who chairs the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee, Wallerstein portrayed the district’s smog cap-and-trade as virtually bulletproof to criminality. In this letter, prompted by congressional interest in Sholtz, Wallerstein ticked off the district’s “robust” computer database that checks the availability and ownership of credits, well-scrutinized trade registration forms and a three-person trade-approval team. “The safeguards … have been successful in preventing any fraudulent trades from ever being registered,” Wallerstein concluded.

Yet considering the breadth of Sholtz’s activities, questions about whether RECLAIM bankrolled attempted asset-repatriation ventures, and speculators’ profiteering of the market during the 2001-02 electricity crisis, there are obviously some cracks in the machine. Would stamping the credits with identification numbers and developing ways to police their ownership history in real time have helped?

“What this points up is that there had to have been a failure in the design,” said EPA Senior Counsel Allan Zabel. “It’s ridiculous if people can get away with this sort of stuff. The system must be sufficiently designed so that somebody trying to do it would trigger a red flag that brings in investigative interest.”

In answering some of Barton and Walden’s questions about cap-and-trade fraud, the EPA said its criminal investigative agents meet with AQMD officials weekly. As of June, the EPA reported it had no criminal cases with filed charges involving emissions-trading crimes —anywhere.

The story doesn’t end there, though. Between the time of her arrest and the date of her sentencing, Sholtz tried softening her punishment. In 2005, she testified in the trial of a con man who stole about $4.5 million from an Idaho businessman in a wire fraud case that she was aware of from her financial dealings.

More explosively, she offered to spill about what she knew about more sensitive subjects closer to home.

On April 9, 2005, her lawyer, Richard Callahan, emailed the US Attorney’s Office a two-page letter entitled “Areas of Possible Cooperation for Anne Sholtz.” Callahan wrote that his client would share “credible firsthand information” on four different subjects if it would help Sholtz’s plea agreement. Sholtz, Callahan wrote, knew about a “major US bank” that was engaged in money-laundering, check kiting, manipulation of subpoenaed documents, and even murder. In a direct reference to the “Eagle” scheme and others, Callahan said Sholtz had details about “fraud, money laundering [and] wire fraud by people claiming to work for the US government … in the ‘extraction of assets’ overseas ...”

The last tipoff was a humdinger. Callahan said that Sholtz had knowledge of “repeated and flagrant violations” inside the air district’s RECLAIM program that resulted in retribution — and threats of more of it — against potential whistleblowers, and the release of over one million excess pounds of nitrogen oxide when AQMD personnel knew how to offset it. By 2007, RECLAIM had transacted about 40 million pounds of air pollution credits, reports show, so one million pounds in unauthorized discharges would be no small addition.

Sholtz, Callahan added, also knew about “manipulation of data [or presenting it in a misleading fashion] to choose projects that would lead to personal gain for … (AQMD) Board Members …”

This memo was the only subject in which Sholtz declined comment.

It’s not evident if any of these tips led to any arrests or investigations, because there have been no publicly revealed inquiries into RECLAIM since Sholtz’s arrest. A district spokesperson asked for comment referred back to Wallerstein’s gag order.

If all this seems like a crippling, humiliating and tragic slide for someone who might’ve ascended to eco-legend, Sholtz said she’s largely put it behind her as she moves towards new horizons that she intends to keep private. She’s not sure if she’ll re-approach the cap-and-trade world again if she’s allowed to broker.

“The RECLAIM business was exciting,” Sholtz said, her eyebrows arching. “Being able to do a transaction, solve a problem, make software do new things, help the environment. The money just comes in and it goes.”

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/an_air_of_deceit/7616/

RNC Right-Wing Loyalty Oath Would Reject Reagan, Bush

November 25, 2009

(ChattahBox)—The proposed purity test being floated by RNC committee member Jim Bopp is being subjected to widespread mockery, as the 10-point conservative right-wing loyalty oath would have screened out former Republican hero Ronaldus Magnus from its ranks. The loyalty oath would also reject current Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former President Bush.

Apparently the shrinking “party of no” is purging its moderate members to such an extent, that the only Republicans left standing would be insane extremist teapartiers. In other words, the GOP will soon become, if it isn’t already, the sole Party of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and wacky right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

Ironically, Bopp’s purity test is named after Ronald Reagan. It’s called, the “Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates.” Since Reagan raised taxes, expanded the deficit and also bailed out Social Security, while he was in office, Bopp’s test would not allow the RNC to fund Reagan’s candidacy, if he were running today.

Bush also increased the federal deficit and supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants, so Bush would fail as well. Sen. McCain would also not fare too well under the right-wing loyalty oath, since he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act.

Bopp’s purity resolution also calls for candidates to join in “solidarity in opposition to Obama’s socialist agenda.” Bopp previously pushed a resolution to label President Obama and the Democrats as Socialists, which failed to garner enough support to pass.

GOP candidates would have to agree to at least seven of 10 conservative standards, if they expect to be financially supported by the RNC.

The full text of the loyalty oath can be found here.

http://chattahbox.com/us/2009/11/25/rnc-right-wing-loyalty-oath-would-reject-reagan-bush/

Why Zionists Made Deal with the Nazis

In the face of a Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime early on, the Third Reich and Zionist groups struck a deal to allow Jews out of Germany in exchange for stopping the boycott. By EDWIN BLACK

This article is excerpted with the author’s permission from an one that appeared in the Sept. 28 Jerusalem Post. Visit http://tinyurl.com/ykm9yd2 for the full article or www.transferagreement.com for more details.

Philadelphia: Exhibit Tells the Story of Nazi Persecution of Gays

" ... 'It's shocking,' Thompson said. "Even after liberation, Paragraph 175 was still on the records. Homosexuals were taken from concentration camps and rearrested.' ... After the war, East Germany went back to the original version of Paragraph 175, but West Germany retained the Nazi version until 1969. After 1969, 'watered-down versions' were implemented, Phillips said. It wasn't until Germany's reunification that the law was abolished. ... "

By Olivia Biagi
Philadelphia Inquirer | Nov. 29, 2009

The William Way LGBT Community Center is telling one of the Holocaust's least-known stories - the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.

It's a story of men and women who were arrested and often sentenced to hard labor for what were called indecent acts. The victims were mostly men. Some faced judicial proceedings and criminal charges. Others were simply picked up by SS officers and locked away in concentration camps.

Through Friday, the center is displaying "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals: 1933-1945," a traveling exhibition of 32 large panels featuring reproductions of historic photographs and documents. It is organized and circulated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The exhibit debuted at the museum in November 2002. It has since been on view twice in Los Angeles and once in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta, and nearly two dozen other cities.

Having the exhibit in Philadelphia "has been really rewarding," said Candice Thompson, director of center service at William Way, a nonprofit organization that has been providing advocacy and support services for 30 years.

The panels around the perimeter of the display room, in the center's second-floor ballroom, detail why the Nazis saw homosexuality as a danger to society and how they tried to eliminate it.

It says the Nazis believed homosexuality was a threat to the Aryan race, could be transferred genetically, and was contagious.

The Washington museum contacted various organizations here just over a year ago about hosting the exhibit. The center jumped at the opportunity, Thompson said, seeing an opportunity to educate people both in the LGBT community and outside.

"Education is so important," Thompson said. "We've been a silent minority. We are now able to look at our history, and reflect and understand it better."

One panel details Paragraph 175, a law banning homosexual behavior in Germany. Ted Phillips, the exhibit's curator in Washington, said it had grown from a law in Prussia in the 18th century.

"When Germany unified those states in 1871, it became the law of the German Reich," he said. The law was named Paragraph 175 in 1935 when the Nazis revised it.

The original law, Phillips said, was interpreted narrowly by the courts, and specified "unnatural relations between men." The Nazis rewrote the law in "such a way that Nazi courts interpreted the law extremely broadly," Phillips said. "Any kind of act between men could become criminal. The original law was difficult to prosecute. The new law was very easy."

By 1938, even looks or touching between men could be criminalized.

Phillips said punishment under the original law was up to two years in prison. Punishment under the Nazis ranged from sentences of three or four months to longer sentences, which usually meant hard labor. But some homosexuals were sent to concentration camps without judicial proceedings.

The law did not mention homosexuality between women. Thompson said that was because gay women can still procreate. Lesbians were also seen as less of a threat because women did not have much political power.

The last set of panels discusses the aftermath of the Holocaust.

"It's shocking," Thompson said. "Even after liberation, Paragraph 175 was still on the records. Homosexuals were taken from concentration camps and rearrested."

Phillips said that after the war, East Germany went back to the original version of Paragraph 175, but West Germany retained the Nazi version until 1969. After 1969, "watered-down versions" were implemented, Phillips said. It wasn't until Germany's reunification that the law was abolished.

The number of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis is difficult to pin down, Phillips said. It is estimated that from 5,000 to 15,000 were in concentration camps.

At one point in the war, "men held in penitentiaries were shifted to concentration camps because [the camps] were a major industrial force, labor force," Phillips said. That exact number can't be identified, either.

Thompson said the exhibit had been well-received. More than 200 people attended its opening reception last month.

"One of the surprising parts for me is how many people outside the community were really interested and thankful we have the exhibit," Thompson said.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20091129_Exhibit_tells_the_story_of_Nazi_persecution_of_gays.html

Glenn Beck's Nazi Fans

After an ADL report says Beck may foment violence, I visit racist Web sites to see if their denizens are listening



By Alexander Zaitchik | Salon | Nov 20, 2009

It's been a busy week for Glenn Beck watchers. On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League released a report warning of the paranoia and stridency that increasingly define the conservative grass roots. It echoed an April report issued by the Department of Homeland Security, but unlike the DHS report, the ADL named names, and fingered Beck as the figure most responsible for the unhinging of the right.

"Beck has acted as a 'fearmonger-in-chief,' raising anxiety about and distrust towards the government [which] if it continues to grow in intensity and scope, may result in an increase in anti-government extremists and the potential for a rise of violent anti-government acts," the ADL wrote.

Amazingly, just after the ADL report's release, Sarah Palin responded to a question about a possible Palin-Beck ticket by refusing to rule out Beck as a running mate. She praised him effusively, describing him as "bold, clever, and very, very, very effective."

Effective at what, exactly?

Earlier this week, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post detailed several instances in which Beck has welcomed onto his shows guests with ties to groups that traffic in white supremacy, neo-Confederate secession, and anti-Semitism. Stein's reporting was a good start, but it would take a chalkboard the size of Idaho to fully map out Beck's racially paranoid guest list.

But Beck insists his critics are imagining things, that he does not engage in racial fear-mongering, that a string of guests with ties to hate groups do not form a meaningful pattern, and that he's not a racist. It occurred to me the other day that if you really want to know whether Beck and his guests are blowing racial dog-whistles, it's best to ask a dog.

I decided to reach out to Don Black, the avowed white nationalist who runs the Web site Stormfront.org, the country's leading "Discussion board for pro-White activists and anyone else interested in White survival." But Black hung up on me. I next tried to get in touch with David Duke, the former gubernatorial candidate and current head of the European American Unity and Rights Organization. Duke, too, had little interest in talking to me, likely because of my past association with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of white supremacist groups.

Unable to get through to the highest-profile spokesmen of the racist grass roots, I took a page from the other side and trawled their Web sites for insight. I scanned Davidduke.com and Stormfront.org to see what they had to say, if anything, about Beck. Admittedly, this method is not scientific, and certainly folks on the left don't like it when righties cherry-pick an extreme comment from Daily Kos or the Huffington Post and pretend the whole site can be summed up by such extremism.

On the other hand, Stormfront.org isn't a media organization but a self-described discussion board. And when it comes to Beck, the discussions are fairly positive. On both David Duke's Web site and Stormfront, Beck's July 28 claim that President Obama harbors a "deep-seated hatred of white people, or the white culture" was met with attention and appreciation.

Duke was heartened by the discussion it generated, and placed it in a larger context. "A lot of stuff is happening in the world of race relations and little of it points towards a post-racial society," Duke noted. "Beck is steadily losing advertisers, but his viewers seem to be sticking with him ... White desperation is manifesting itself in various forms."

Beck's charge that the president hates white people sparked a more expansive discussion at Stormfront.org. Some participants saw Beck as an important ally in the White Nationalist cause. Others were skeptical, viewing him as a clueless conservative version of Lenin's "useful idiot." But some of Stormfront's most active members generally agreed that, whether he was fully conscious or not, Beck was nudging his audience toward an embrace of racial consciousness.

"Glen [sic] Beck can be useful," said one frequent Stormfront contributor who posts under the name SS_marching. "When Glen beck said 'Obama Has A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People' he is able to reach a much wider audience than we can. They will [be] predisposed to the idea and the next time Obama pushes an anti-white policy they will see it as such."

Stormfront member PowerCommander agreed. Beck, he wrote:

"seems to have ignited a flame under the asses of some folks with similar ideas by pushing the right buttons. It appears as if the current regime [is] directly blaming GB and fox news for throwing a wrench in their machine. Is Beck's rambling getting America fired up and ready to fight? Has Beck told enough of the truth to start something bigger? Even an engine needs a starter to get fired off and go down the road."

Thor357, a Stormfront sustaining member who has posted on the site more than 3,500 times, had this to say:

"Glenn Beck and Alex Jones [a controversial conservative media figure who believes 9/11 was an inside job] are the front line in the war of Ideals we grapple with, they are far from perfect and are somewhat compromised. But every person in the last 2 years that I have introduced to the WN [White Nationalist] Philosophy have come largely from Alex Jones, Glen Beck and the Scriptures for America founder Pastor Pete Peters ... Baby steps are required for people like these, but the trio Beck, Jones, Peters are the baby food that feeds potential Nationalists… Glenn Beck is not far behind as his Mormon background indicates to me as most Mormons I have met are not friends of Jews like the Church was years ago. Most Mormons I know are arming themselves, with guns, bullets and food."

Later in the same discussion thread, Thor357 added:

"I have talked to 6 people in two days because Glenn Beck woke them up, it's amazing how angry they are. They are pissing fire over Obama, this is a good thing. Now I educate them. If out of 100 of the Glen Beckers I keep 20 then I have won 20 more to cover my back side. I never lost the 80 as they never were."

Carolina Patriot, whose member picture features a kitten aiming an assassin's rifle, was conflicted but admiring:

"Every now and again when an infomercial takes the place of hunting or fishing, I'll turn over to Glenn Beck if he's on and watch his show. Sometimes it is amusing, sometimes it is informed, and sometimes, I think he comes to SF [Stormfront] to steal show idea's"

UstashaNY offered up an analogy to substance abuse, with Beck as the soft-stuff hook:

"Beck, Dobbs etc. are like gateway drugs. If it wakes up one person to learn something about whats really going on and that person does the research, looks deeper and deeper into WHO and WHAT is behind all of this, then its a win for the movement. NOBODY in the msm is reporting the stuff Beck does, let him keep talking. It will wake people up, believe me… He is more of a help to us then you may think. Until we have a REAL voice in the msm, guys like him and Dobbs are a stepping stone right into our laps. Its only a matter of time..."

Even those who don't think Beck understands what he’s doing appreciate his instincts. According to WhiteManMarchesOn88:

"There is no doubt that Beck is not a WN [white nationalist], but I have to agree that he does raise a lot of really good questions that do promote White survival. I'm sure he would go a lot farther with a lot of his questions, but ZOG [Zionist Occupied Government] would more than likely kick him off television if he did."

ZOG or no ZOG, Beck is clearly doing something right from the point of view of the average white nationalist.

"By no means do I think [Beck] is aware of the racial issue, and for the moment that is ok," wrote Stormfront member QHelios. "He is stirring the pot, and I thank him for that."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/11/20/glenn_beck_and_stormfront/

Two Fake Books on the Kennedy Assassination, Ultimate Sacrifice & Legacy of Secrecy, Move the Onus from CIA to Mafia

" ... remarkably unconvincing ... revisionist ... censorship and tortured logic ... nonsense ... fabricated ... outlandish ... not scholarship ... a pretext to do a new spin on a Mob did it book ... "

Legacy of Secrecy
Reviewed by James DiEugenio

Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann wasted little time in writing a sequel to their first book Ultimate Sacrifice. That long and portentous volume was originally published in November of 2005. Some authors take awhile to fill the tank between new entries in assassination research. But not them. Just three years after their original foray they have now come out with a new volume. This one is called Legacy of Secrecy. And, at 864 pages, it is almost as long as the first book. Taken together, the length of the two volumes begins to approach Vincent Bugliosi territory. Which, of course, is a dubious distinction. The authors write that the original length of this book was a little more than three hundred pages. The reason the book clocked in much longer was their desire to include the RFK and MLK cases. What is so odd about their attempt to do so is that, in their discussions of those two cases, they do not come close to relating them to their main thesis about the JFK case.

The reader will recall that this is the concept of C-Day. That is, the so-called plan for a coup in Cuba that was scheduled for December 1, 1963. This was to partly consist of a Cuban exile invasion from the USA organized by the Pentagon and CIA. The plan was to have the so-called "coup leader" — who was acting as a double agent on the island — murder Castro, blame it on the Russians, call a state of emergency, and arrange for a flotilla of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. The Pentagon would wait in the wings in case they were needed. Since the sizeable Russian force remaining in Cuba would hardly take this laying down, they probably were going to be needed. Yet when David Talbot asked Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara if he was aware of the upcoming invasion, McNamara said he never knew about it. And as I mentioned in that earlier review, neither did the other two Cabinet level officers who not only should have known, but had to have known. Namely Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. A truly fantastic state of affairs to present to the reader. But the authors proceeded anyway. Even presenting meetings at which some officials knew about C-Day and some did not.

Who was the so-called "coup leader" who was going to pull off bloody treason in the new socialist state? In the hardcover edition of the book, he was not actually named. But it was very strongly hinted that he was Che Guevara. For reasons I stated in my review, this was topping an incredible scenario with an incredible choice for a double agent. David Talbot also called them on this point in his review in Salon. So on the way to the soft cover edition, aided by Liz Smith, the name was now revealed to be Juan Almeida. But here's the problem. For such a daring and bold plan one needed a coup leader the size and stature of Guevara. If for no other reason, to galvanize the Cuban public into turning on their Russian allies. Which would be no easy feat. Almeida had no such outsize stature. And the possibility exists he would have been rolled over by a combination of the Russians plus the Cubans still loyal to Castro. Which, in light of the objective, would have made things even worse than before.

In this new volume, for the first three parts of the book, the authors essentially discuss the JFK case, with the accent on C-Day again. That is up until about page 470. From there until about page 700 they mainly discuss the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy cases. Here's the problem with their presentation: I could find no credible linkage between the C-Day plotting and the other two cases. And since their argument about the other two cases is remarkably unconvincing, I really do not understand why they included King and RFK. But even the scope of those three epochal cases wasn't enough for these two radical - and insatiable - revisionists. The authors include a closing section on Watergate. Again, I don't know why. But I will make a guess later.

I

Although I have briefly summarized the key concept of Ultimate Sacrifice, I strongly recommend that the reader read the first section of my original review for a more detailed discussion of the concept of C-Day. (That can be read here.) One of the problems the authors have with their thesis is that writers who have since read these documents e.g. Jeff Morley and William Davy, do not agree with the spin Waldron and Hartmann place on them. (After my review came out, Davy told me, "Jim, those are contingency plans, and they are labeled as such.") Not even Peter Dale Scott, who had some praise for aspects of the book, buys into them as C-Day.

But perhaps the most devastating response to the book is by the writer who helped launch Lamar Waldron and his C-Day thesis into the research community. In my previous review, I detailed how Waldron was introduced by none other than Gus Russo at the 1993 Dallas ASK Conference. So one would think that the man who introduced the co-writer of the volume would stand beside the book. One would be wrong. Apparently, Russo got a bit perturbed at the authors for taking credit for revealing the documents to the world for the first time. Which they did on page two of the previous volume. Why did he feel like that? Because Russo discussed them in Live By the Sword eight years earlier.(Russo, pgs 176-179)

In fact, in his conversations with Vincent Bugliosi, Russo goes after the C-Day concept with abandon. Russo actually tackles one of Waldron's prime sources, Harry Williams. Russo questions how Williams could have known about these plans since it is "abundantly clear" that the documents refer to Manuel Artime's "Central American operation and have nothing to do with a December 'coup' or 'C-Day"' as Waldron refers to it." (Reclaiming History, End Notes, p. 762) In fact, parts of the plans actually refer to Artime's group, the MRR, in code. And right below this, Artime himself is also mentioned in code. (CIA record of 6/28/63) Waldron tries to counter this by saying that Williams told the authors that Artime was actually serving under him. But where is the documentary proof of this? Because to anyone who knows anything about Artime's special place in the CIA, it seems ridiculous on its face. This, I believe, is the beginning of a serious questioning of Williams as a source for the authors. It is an issue I will take up later.

Vincent Bugliosi, agreeing with Davy, quotes from parts of the plans to demonstrate their true nature. For instance, the CINCLANT (Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet) OPLANS 312 and 316 were prepared "in case of a revolt in Cuba." (op. cit. Bugliosi, p. 758, italics added) The plans were prepared by the US Army under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and are entitled "State-Defense Contingency Plans for a Coup in Cuba". (ibid) The fact that they are labeled State-Defense makes it even more incredible that neither McNamara nor Rusk knew about the upcoming invasion. But in light of the use of the word "contingency" in the title, that fact is made understandable. In other words, it was never a "go" project. In fact, one draft of the plan, under the above Contingency Plan title, was dated October 21, 1963. Just one month before the assassination. So it must have been clear to everyone what the nature of the project really was by the time of Kennedy's murder. In fact, one of documents even says that no invasion should be contemplated unless there is active aggression by Castro and/or the Soviets "that threaten the peace or security of the Hemisphere." (Undated Army memo to the President by Sterling Cottrell. Record No. 198-10004-10072) Since I have taken a lot of space in criticizing Reclaiming History, I am glad to give Bugliosi credit for this part of the book. Especially when he is backed up by the likes of William Davy.

Now let's get back to the late Harry Williams. Williams first surfaced on the JFK case through the work of William Turner and Warren Hinckle (especially the former) in their fine book The Fish is Red. Turner spent hours interviewing Williams for that book because the volume largely focused on American relations with Cuba during the Kennedy years. But when I talked to Turner about Waldron's thesis he told me that Williams never mentioned anything about the C-Day concept to him in any of their interviews. Further, when Waldron sent him a thank you note with a copy of Ultimate Sacrifice, Turner told me he wanted no thanks for that book. But with Legacy of Secrecy, this situation gets even worse. Because in this installment, Williams now talks about things that are not only not in The Fish is Red, but they are not even in Ultimate Sacrifice. Or at least, I don't recall them. And some of these belated revelations are so bombastic, I am sure I would have.

For instance, as I said, in the hardcover version of Ultimate Sacrifice Juan Almeida was not mentioned as the "coup leader". The emphasis was clearly on Che Guevara. But now, the authors write that Williams told them that Cyrus Vance of the Army was fully aware of Almeida's role. (Legacy of Secrecy, p. 22) Since Vance helped supervise plans that were labeled as "contingency", one might ask: His role in what? There is an incredible passage on page 287 that is supposed to describe a meeting that RFK had with President Johnson after Kennedy's assassination. The subject was C-Day. Since, conveniently, only Johnson and RFK were there, the source for this discussion is Harry Williams, allegedly channeling RFK.

According to the roundabout sourcing LBJ told RFK he was not continuing with the C-Day plans, but he would continue to fund some of RFK's favorite Cuban groups. This paragraph is actually not footnoted at all. But since the authors date other interviews that they did with Williams as taking place in 1992, they had to have known this for the first book. But yet it appears here for the first time. As does the following information (p. 296). RFK made sure that the CIA provided for Almeida's family members after LBJ decided to halt the C-Day plans. (How one can halt a contingency plan remains the authors' secret.) This bit of information comes from 1992 interviews with Williams. Again, it first surfaces here. Finally, through an unnamed RFK aide, Williams kept in contact with RFK all the way up to 1968 - even during the presidential campaign (p. 621). They even met privately during this hectic campaign time. And when they did, amidst all the swirling campaign pressures and furious updates, the subject of Almeida and his family "always came up". (The entire paragraph that contains this information has no footnotes.)

But there is one last bit of belated info from Williams that needs to be noted. In Ultimate Sacrifice, I discussed and criticized the authors' treatment of Oswald in Mexico City. One of the reasons I did so is that the authors seemed to accept the CIA's story that it was Oswald there the entire time. Well, in Legacy of Secrecy they surface a relevant piece of belated information from Williams in that regard. According to Waldron and Hartmann, Harry Williams saw a picture of Oswald entering the Mexico City Cuban Embassy. (p. 234) Somehow, this wasn't deemed important enough to include in their previous discussion of Oswald in Mexico City in 2005. Even though the discussion then was much more detailed than it is here. How did Williams see this photo? Through an unnamed Cuban exile linked to Artime. The reason he showed the photo to Williams is not mentioned. And worse, the authors apparently never were curious enough to ask that question of Williams. What makes it odd is that very, very few people have ever mentioned any picture of Oswald. Or claimed to have seen it. And when they have, it is described as shot from an angle and behind. So the identification is not really probative. The only person who has ever stated that such a photo definitely did exist was Winston Scott, the Mexico City station chief at the time of Oswald's visit. Why he, or anyone else inside the CIA's surveillance operation, would show such a photo to some unnamed Cuban exile escapes me. And why this exile would be allowed to keep such a photo is even more of a mystery. Especially in light of the fact that the CIA, under intense pressure by the investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), could produce no such picture. Which, of course, fed suspicions that Oswald never really entered the Cuban Embassy. But somehow, over lunch or a baseball game, an anonymous exile showed Williams this invaluable photo.

With what the authors have now done to Williams' credibility, plus the near universality of agreement on the true nature of the "C -Day plans," the end should be spelled out for this entire "second invasion" thesis. Because the only other "on the record" source they had for it the first time around was Dean Rusk. Yet Rusk made it clear that he only heard of such a plan after he left office. Which makes me believe that, while in office, the contingency plans were so contingent that they never even made it to the Secretary of State's desk. And with the collapse of the C-Day scenario, their use of it is now seen as what I argued it was before: a pretext to do a new spin on a Mob did it book.

II

Let's return to the frequent and disturbing use of unnamed sources in the book. This kind of sourcing for crucial and controversial pieces of evidence is something that recurs throughout Legacy of Secrecy. For instance, the authors just happened to have an unnamed Naval Intelligence source who was monitoring Oswald. And guess what? This anonymous source also saw this photo of Oswald in Mexico City! (ibid) So, by accident, Waldron and Hartmann have found almost as many people who have seen this photo as are mentioned in the entire Lopez Report. How do the authors know that it was the Mafia that killed JFK? Well, an unnamed top Kennedy aide revealed to them "the leading roles of Marcello, Trafficante, and Roselli in JFK's murder". And guess what? This top Kennedy aide knew all about C-Day. Must be nice to have sources like that.

But its even better to have one like the following. Every serious commentator on the JFK autopsy (e.g. Gary Aguilar, David Mantik) has noted the overwhelming evidence that the military controlled that medical procedure and not the Kennedys. (I used many of these sources in Part Four of my review of Reclaiming History.)

These sources extend to the autopsists themselves, and even to Commander Galloway of the Bethesda Medical Center. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) both did extensive investigations about what happened that night. Every significant witness was talked to at least once. And many were talked to twice. In fact, there is a road map to follow in this regard. The FBI agents on hand, Jim Sibert, and Frank O'Neill, had a list of those people present. But apparently they missed someone. Because the authors have yet another crucial unnamed source who says he was at the autopsy. And, you guessed it, this guy also knew about C-Day. And contrary to dozens of other witnesses, including the autopsists themselves, this mysterious source — who escaped the HSCA and ARRB dragnet — knew that RFK had full knowledge of what happened that night. And further, that RFK probably even directed the autopsy. (p. 184) Hmm. Then why did Bobby Kennedy sign a document that granted "no restrictions" during the procedure? Why did Galloway testify that there were no instructions coming into the autopsy room from the Kennedy suite above? Why did Pierre Finck testify that it was the military that interfered with the autopsy during his famous appearance at the trial of Clay Shaw? But most importantly, in regard to the value of Legacy of Secrecy, why do the authors not mention any of the above proven and pertinent facts? Maybe because it brings into question the information rendered by their unnamed source?

But the prolific use of unnamed sources for crucial information does not end with the JFK case. It also figures importantly in this volume for the King case.

According to the authors, prior to the King assassination, a man named Hugh Spake collected money used in the King plot from workers at an Atlanta auto plant. And further, the authors posit that James Earl Ray called Spake the morning of the assassination. (pgs. 496-498) What is the basis for these rather dramatic revelations? Well if one turns to page 814 in the footnotes, the following sourcing appears:

" ... from confidential interviews conducted from early 1976 (when author Lamar Waldron was briefly employed at the Lakewood General Motors Auto Plant) to 2007."

This does not inspire confidence. Especially in light of the fact that Spake passed away three years ago. Therefore I don't understand the need to shield these sources after the subject is dead. Further, the southern rightwing racist groups the authors say he was associated with have gone into eclipse. Secondly, the author never explains why he was doing an investigation of the King case 34 years ago. I know Waldron says he has been studying the JFK case for a long time. But the King case?

In addition to the ready use of unnamed sources, there is an all too frequent use of unreferenced information in general. It is almost as bad here as it was with Joan Mellen's A Farewell to Justice. The authors have always been desperate to bring Carlos Marcello into the nexus of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. So here they say that some recently declassified files relating to Cuban operations reveal that a certain unnamed case officer was a liaison between the CIA and Marcello. (p. 102) The entire paragraph in which this is revealed lacks footnotes. A few pages later (p. 106), we are informed that three unconfirmed reports place Roselli in Dallas on 11/22/63. This information is also not footnoted. But since the sources they do use also say that a woman drove Roselli and a Miami sharpshooter to the grassy knoll at the far end of Dealey Plaza, we can imagine what the unconfirmed reports are like. In mentioning CIA officer John Whitten and his investigation of Mexico City, the authors write that Richard Helms "knew that Oswald was also linked to his unauthorized Castro assassination operations ... "

This is an extremely puzzling statement. This information does not appear in the Inspector General report on the subject. It also does not appear in the Church Committee volumes. To my knowledge, neither Helms nor the CIA has ever uttered a word to this effect. So from where did the authors garner this? Its almost like they are indulging in posthumous mindreading. (As we shall see, they do this with Helms in another instance.)

It gets worse. According to Legacy of Secrecy, LBJ learned about the C-Day plans in the aftermath of the assassination from Hoover and CIA Director John McCone. (pgs. 171-172) Again, this goes unsourced. And it does not appear in the declassified phone transcripts made available by the ARRB. According to even more secret sources, Naval Intelligence began to shred files from its "tight surveillance" on Oswald on the afternoon of November 24, 1963. ONI also did their own secret investigation of the JFK murder. The authors' anonymous source actually saw the summary report and its "hundreds of supporting documents". (p. 247) And another anonymous source, independently vouched for this report. (ibid) Finally in this unfootnoted, anonymous sourcing field, the authors state that RFK knew about David Ferrie's relationship to Carlos Marcello back in 1963, maybe even earlier (p. 403). Again, this is strange. Not even Jim Garrison knew about this in 1963. And as everyone knows, when Garrison passed the Ferrie lead onto the FBI, they at first dropped it. And they then covered it up for the Warren Commission. But RFK knew about it before all this. But the prize in this regard goes to a paragraph on page 404. This paragraph deals with New Orleans matters. Mainly an alleged connection between Marcello and Dean Andrews, plus Clay Shaw's ties to the CIA. The attached footnote to this information reads as follows:

1994.05.09.10:43:33:16005 (p. 810, footnote 19).

That's right. Just a line of numbers related to nothing. And no one noticed this pre-publication. Maybe because they didn't care?

The continual use of this unscholarly practice — I could have named a dozen other similar instances — is a grievous shortcoming. Especially in a book that is attempting to revise the historical record on a serious subject. It indicates that, unlike with John Newman's JFK and Vietnam, the writers do not have the factual data to fulfill their new paradigm. Probably because the paradigm doesn't exist.

Another sure sign of this lack of a factual basis is their recurrent use of the assumptive mode. When they need something to happen, they just assume it did. As I demonstrated in my earlier review, one of their aims is to shift the cause of the JFK cover-up. It did not occur because Oswald was some kind of intelligence operative. Oh, no. The main reason was fear of exposing C-Day. Now, since Hoover was the mainspring of the cover up, the authors must write that, "over the coming days, Hoover would no doubt learn more about the ... coup plan ... " (p. 171)

They offer no evidence for this and no source I have ever read on Hoover refers to it. After JFK is assassinated, Santo Trafficante is carefree and smiling. Why? Because "Trafficante knew Jack Ruby, and he apparently felt confident that Ruby would be able to take care of silencing Oswald." (p. 180) Yet I could find no evidence in the book to certify Trafficante's arrangement with Ruby in advance.

Why is the tape of the Hoover/LBJ call on November 23rd, at 10:01 AM missing? According to the authors, "one possibility" is that if LBJ had been briefed on C-Day he could have mentioned it in passing to Hoover on this call. (p. 225) Even though, as I said earlier, there is no evidence that Hoover-or LBJ for that matter-ever knew about C-Day. And certainly nothing would indicate that these plans caused the FBI or Warren Commission cover-up. When RFK met with Helms after the 1967 Jack Anderson story first publicly exposed the CIA-Mafia plots, they "probably discussed" not just that subject, but the 1963 C-Day plan and "the current status of Almeida and his family." (p. 419) Even though there is no mention of C-Day in the CIA's Inspector General Report on those plots.

The most objectionable part of this whole fatuous C-Day cover-up story is that it detracts from the real cause of the cover-up. As demonstrated by writers like John Newman and John Armstrong, that would be the fabricated Mexico City tapes that were sent to Washington and Dallas the evening of the assassination. And which were then made to disappear. Why? Because the voice on the tapes was not Oswald's. And that would have exposed the whole charade in Mexico City. And as both Newman and the Lopez Report reveal, the three main culprits in that pre-planned charade were James Angleton, David Phillips, and Anne Goodpasture. Which completely vitiates what the authors write at the end of Chapter 17. Namely, that no evidence exists implicating any CIA official above David Morales in the JFK murder.

They also write that there is no confession to indicate any CIA officer's participation besides Morales' either. They neatly avoid David Phillips' teary-eyed, deathbed confession about being in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Which he himself made to his own brother. (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2003 edition, p. 272) And, if you can believe it, in the entire volume there is not one mention of Richard Case Nagell. In fact, I don't recall his name being in Ultimate Sacrifice either. So in 1,700 pages of writing about the JFK assassination Waldron and Hartmann choose to profusely quote liars like Frank Ragano and Ed Partin. But they couldn't find the space to mention the man who Jim Garrison called, "the most important witness there is".

III

Which brings us to their discussion of Jim Garrison, who was largely avoided in Ultimate Sacrifice. Although they mention aspects of Garrison's inquiry earlier, the main part of this discussion leads off at Chapter 29. Their first page makes for an interesting intro. They try to disarm the reader by saying they have reviewed all the "books, articles, and documents" about the DA and have come to the conclusion that he "emerges as neither devil nor saint". (p. 373) The implication being that after a long and painstaking review, Waldron and Hartmann are going to be fair-minded and objective about a controversial subject. As we shall see, that doesn't happen. They also add that they will focus on things not talked about previously that reveal the Garrison investigation in a new light. Again, that is not done. With the agenda the authors have, how could it?

I should note, the Garrison inquiry is mentioned prior to this chapter and its earlier treatment foreshadows what will come. For instance, the authors try to explain David Ferrie's trip to Texas on the day and night of the assassination as an attempt to retrieve his library card from Oswald. (p. 177) This is odd. It is true that Ferrie was asking for that card from Oswald's former landlady in New Orleans. But as Dick Russell notes in On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Ferrie told his friend Ray Broshears that he was waiting for a phone call at the skating rink concerning flying participants in the plot out of Texas. (Russell, p. 107) Secondly, wouldn't it be kind of stupid for Ferrie to look for that card in Dallas? I mean, was he going to go to Ruth Paine's house and ask her if the police found it yet? Or walk into the Dallas jail and ask Chief Curry if he could have his card back? With those greased eyebrows and that mohair wig?

A second instance prior to Chapter 29 indicates the quality of their scholarship on the Garrison inquiry. They say that in 1964 Garrison called Robert Kennedy to talk to him about some of his ideas on the JFK case. But RFK hung up on him after some desultory conversation. (p. 254) The source for this piece of nonsense? None other than trashy biographer C. David Heymann. The authors never realize that Garrison could not have any theories to discuss with RFK at the time of this call because he was not investigating the JFK case in 1964. As I thoroughly demonstrated in my review of the book Regicide, Heymann cannot be trusted on anything concerning the JFK case. As is likely here, he has been shown to manufacture interviews. (This reliance on untrustworthy writers is another problem with the book that I will address later.)

What is the "new light" that Waldron and Hartmann shed on the Garrison investigation? Well they hint at it early on, before they even discuss Garrison in a systematic way. They say that the FBI backed off the investigation of David Ferrie and Guy Banister not because of their ties to Oswald and Clay Shaw. But because of their links to Marcello. This is bizarre since no one knew about any Banister-Marcello tie until 15 years later. And it wasn't what the authors present it as anyway. As I pointed out in my review of Ultimate Sacrifice, the HSCA stated that Ferrie got Banister some investigative work through Wray Gill, one of Marcello's lawyers. And Waldron and Hartmann shorthanded this into a Banister-Marcello connection. They continue this eccentric characterization here. Yet, as anyone knows who has studied what Garrison called the "Banister Menagerie", Banister did not do investigative work. This was just a front for his Cuban exile/CIA missions and other intelligence work he did e.g. planting infiltrators into college campuses. The people around his office who actually did investigative work were hangers-on like Jack Martin and Bill Nitschke. By this kind of logic, Martin and Nitschke were tied into the Mafia.

Why is it important to note this bizarre interpretation? Because when all is said and done, the "new light" the authors shed on the Garrison inquiry is really a hoary and disproven platitude. By about the middle of Chapter 37 Waldron and Hartmann are merely echoing the likes of their trusted authorities like John Davis, Dan Moldea, and David Scheim. They say that by 1968 Garrison's inquiry and his pursuit of Clay Shaw became a "grotesque sideshow" (p. 466). Why? Because it was a diversion away from the true perpetrators of the crime. Who of course were Marcello, Trafficante and Roselli. (pgs. 405, 421, 465) The origins of this discredited concept actually goes back almost forty years. To the infamous Life magazine hatchet job penned by FBI toady Sandy Smith. (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 162)

One of the strongest indicators of their faulty scholarship about Garrison is their use of some questions that allegedly the New York Times sent to the DA. (p. 370) They say they found a copy of these questions in Garrisons' files. One of the questions was about Ferrie's rumored, at that time, association with Marcello. The questions were dated November 21, 1966. What the authors do with these questions and Garrison's famous airplane trip with Senator Russell Long has to be detailed to understand their agenda on the subject. They actually try and say that because Long allegedly had ties to Marcello, and because Long's trip with Garrison came after the date of the questions, therefore Long convinced Garrison not to go after Marcello. (ibid) This is fevered John Davis propaganda of a virulent strain. And they have nothing of substance to back it except the NY Times questions. And they then cheat on this. How? By moving the Long/Garrison plane ride back to December of 1966. This way Garrison's discussion with Long about the JFK case comes after the alleged letter from the Times. But there is a big problem with it all. They are wrong about the date of the trip. The function that Garrison attended in New York occurred on November 13, 1966. In other words, it was before the date of the letter. (Davy, p. 57) But this is silliness anyway. Garrison had briefly investigated Ferrie back in 1963. And there are indications that he had intermittently started back onto the JFK case prior to the Long conversation. But his primary focus at these early points was on Oswald. And in 1966 and early 1967 it was on Oswald's connections as an agent provocateur being run by Banister. Which Marcello had nothing to do with.

What the authors do with Garrison and Bernardo DeTorres is even worse. De Torres is an incredibly intriguing personage who the HSCA showed a strong interest in. In fact, he was actually questioned in Executive Session. Gaeton Fonzi writes about DeTorres in his fine book, The Last Investigation. Except he conceals his name by calling him by the pseudonym "Carlos". DeTorres had been a military coordinator for the Brigade 2506 part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. (Davy, p. 148) He was strongly suspected of being in Dallas on 11/22/63. And even of having pictures of Kennedy being killed in Dealey Plaza. He had been offered a large sum of money for the photos by Life magazine. (See Probe Vol. 3 No. 6) Further, DeTorres claimed to know that Oswald was not involved in the assassination since he knew who actually was involved. And he knew this because "they were talking about it before it even happened." (Fonzi, p. 239) Later on, DeTorres worked with legendary CIA arms specialist Mitch Werbell, who some suspect of being involved in designing the weaponry used in Dealey Plaza. (See Spooks, by Jim Hougan, pgs 35-36)

What few people knew prior to the ARRB process is that DeTorres first surfaced as a suspect during the Garrison investigation. He was one of the very early infiltrators sent in by the CIA. Allegedly recommended to the DA by a policeman, he told Garrison that he had important information about the murder. He also used Miami DA Richard Gerstein as a reference. (Davy, ibid) Since he was from Miami, Garrison gave him the assignment of questioning Eladio Del Valle, Ferrie's colleague who Cuban G-2 strongly suspected of being part of the JFK plot. Not very long after DeTorres was sent to question him, Del Valle's mutilated corpse was found near the front stairs of DeTorres' Miami apartment. (ibid) This was at the same time that Ferrie was mysteriously found dead in his apartment. The HSCA later developed evidence that DeTorres was filing reports on Garrison for the Miami CIA station JM/WAVE as he was serving as a double agent in his office. By the time he worked with Werbell, the Cuban exile community knew that Bernardo was the man to see if you had a problem. Why? Because he had "contacts on a high level with the CIA in Washington D.C." (ibid)

All of this is absolutely riveting information. And it was not readily available until the time of the ARRB. The backward light it shines on Garrison is nearly blinding. Why? One reason is that Clay Shaw defenders sometimes say that the CIA was "monitoring" Garrison because he was accusing them in the press of being involved in the JFK conspiracy. But the DeTorres penetration occurred before the Garrison inquiry was even made public. And it also occurred before the DA had decided on the CIA as his prime suspect. So before Garrison made any public comments about the CIA, a highly connected Agency plant was sent in and was filing reports with JM/WAVE. And further, DeTorres may have been involved in the setting up of Del Valle because of his association with Ferrie. And it should be noted here that Richard Case Nagell was on the trail of both Ferrie and Del Valle in the spring of 1963 (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2003 edition, p. 182). Which, of course, is months before the assassination.

What Waldron and Hartmann do with all this remarkable information about DeTorres is kind of shocking. (pgs 387-88) They do refer to him as a spy in Garrison's camp. But they never mention him by name! Then, differing with Garrison authority Bill Davy, they say he was recommended to the DA not by the police, but by another Cuban. And finally Del Valle, "Garrison's [unnamed] investigator", and Rolando Masferer (What?) all had ties to Santo Trafficante. So the implication is that the Florida Don had Del Valle killed. Why? Because if he was linked to the JFK assassination, his empire would collapse. That's what they write. (p. 387) How he would be linked to the Kennedy assassination at this point in time is never explained. In fact, I don't think we are supposed to ask. But by concealing DeTorres' name, his background, his ties to JM/WAVE, and the circumstances of Del Valle's murder, it reverses the logical deduction of what happened to Del Valle. In other words, the censorship and tortured logic conceals a CIA operation and deliberately disguises it as Mafia oriented. The exposure of the above information about DeTorres proves this could not have been by accident. So does their concealment of his name. They didn't want you to know his name because then you would find out how tied in with the CIA he was. It's the same thing they did with Edwin Black's work on the Chicago plot. And as before, this had to have been done by design. ( I will return to Black's work later.)

Predictably, the flip side of the coin is also manifest here. If the deluded DA was being led astray, his attacker Walter Sheridan was on the right track. Because, of course, Sheridan suspected the Mafia, especially Carlos Marcello. (p. 465) A lot of their material about Sheridan and Garrison is drawn from David Talbot's book Brothers. In my review of that volume I minutely examined why Talbot was wrong about his depiction of what Sheridan was doing in New Orleans for NBC, and why he was doing it. The idea that Sheridan strongly suspected that Marcello was behind the JFK killing was brought into question by a conversation that Irving Davidson had on the day the HSCA report was issued. Lobbyist Davidson was a lifelong friend of Marcello's who also knew Sheridan. And Sheridan, who is sourced in those HSCA volumes, told Davidson that the HSCA report was a piece of crap. (Bugliosi, op. cit., p. 1175) As I said in my review of Brothers, the question now becomes: What did Sheridan actually believe about the JFK case? And further: Was he deliberately leading the HSCA astray? This is a question that Talbot sidestepped. And so do the present authors.

IV

As in the first book, the authors make some truly unbelievable statements that are almost perverse in their logic and sense. For instance, they write that if the idea behind the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, the conspirators would have kept Oswald alive longer so he would have been the focus of an outcry against Fidel. (p. 239) In reality, the longer Oswald was kept alive, the higher the risk was that he would betray who he really was to the authorities. In fact, this risk was seriously broached while he was being held. First, through his attempted call to Raleigh, North Carolina, and second, when the FBI listened to the Mexico City tapes and discovered the voice on them was not Oswald's. And at this point, Oswald did not even have a lawyer. So the longer he was held, the higher the risk he would declare himself an undercover agent.

Why did suspicion fall upon Oswald after the assassination? Legacy of Secrecy poses a novel approach to that mystery. Waldron and Hartmann posit that it was due to Oswald's friendly relations with minority employees. This created suspicion about him in the aftermath of the crime. (p.121) Of course, they present no evidence for this rather strange and revolutionary theory.

The Tom Tilson story about a man escaping down the railway embankment behind the grassy knoll has been discredited for many years (p. 116), most notably by Canadian author Peter Whitmey. But it gets trotted out here again. And in fact, it gets embellished. They say the man running to a car and throwing something in the back resembled Jack Ruby.

The interpretation that Waldron and Hartmann put on the alleged attempt by Oswald to shoot General Edwin Walker is startling-even for them. It begins with an incredible report that Oswald was in a New Orleans jail around April 1, 1963. (p. 263) Yet, he had not moved there yet. The authors insinuate that this was somehow part of the congressional investigations into the ordering of weapons through the mail. They then imply that somehow the Walker shooting was manipulated by Walker and his allies to divert attention away from themselves and also people like Marcello, Banister and Joseph Milteer. (p. 265) Conveniently left out of how the Walker tale was manipulated are two key elements. The first is Ruth Paine. She produced the note about the escapade allegedly left by Oswald, which had no fingerprints on it. This was turned over to the police on November 30, 1963. So even though the police had searched the Paine residence twice, they did not find it. It was this note that first caused the FBI to look at Oswald as a suspect in the Walker shooting. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 512) Second, it was this note which caused the FBI to switch both the caliber and the color of the bullet the Dallas Police retrieved from the Walker residence to match the ammunition of the Mannlicher Carcano. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 49) Incredibly, the authors do not even mention Ruth Paine's role in this charade and they minimize what the FBI did to transform the bullet. Even though McKnight shows that the FBI knew they were participating in a deception. (ibid pgs 49-50)

In this regard I must note that the authors pay me a backhanded compliment in this book. My review of Ultimate Sacrifice was fairly coruscating and it received some notoriety within the research community. Waldron and Hartmann clearly read it and took it seriously because they try and counteract several of my criticisms. One of the most serious ones was my relating of an anecdote in Richard Helms' autobiography entitled A Look Over my Shoulder. On November 19, 1963 Helms visited Robert Kennedy's office and told him that Castro was shipping a large amount of arms into Venezuela in order to upset their upcoming elections. (Helms, pgs 226-27). Helms has RFK saying nothing. He looks at the evidence the CIA took in—a foreign made submachine gun allegedly retrieved from an arms cache-and told Helms to go see President Kennedy. Helms and his assistant do so and JFK asked a couple of questions about how that large a shipment of weapons got through. They then left and later that day, Helms asked Kennedy's assistant, Ken O'Donnell, for a picture.

Now, in my original critique I posed the question that if C-Day was coming up in 12 days, and if all the principals involved in this episode were knowledgeable about it i.e. RFK, JFK and Helms, why would the CIA Director of Plans even bother to see the Kennedys if he knew we were invading Cuba shortly? This story shot a harpoon into the guts of their whole C-Day scenario. Because the authors maintained that even though McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy did not know about C-Day, Helms did. And it would be impossible for all four not to know. But this story, in Helms' own book, indicates he did not. When they relate this tale in Legacy of Secrecy (p. 36), they leave out the capper. In his book, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (p. 383), CIA analyst Joseph B. Smith mentions this specific arms seizure. And from the reports on it, he deduced that the CIA planted the weapons. So if Helms knew about C-Day, why did he go to the trouble of planting those weapons if he knew we were invading Cuba anyway?

This is their hapless reply to that question: Helms was testing JFK to see if he was getting cold feet about the invasion. But the problem is there is not any indication of this in Helms' book. On anyone's behalf. But further, the authors now contradict themselves in another important way to give their phony spin a pretext in reality. In their first book, they characterized JFK's back channel to Castro through people like Lisa Howard, Jean Daniel, and William Attwood as going nowhere. In my review, I showed this was false. There was progress being made and JFK was very interested in that progress continuing. I postulated that what Helms was actually trying to do with the planted arms cache was to scuttle those talks since he knew that JFK did not want Cuba interfering in Venezuela's elections. Now, sit down before you read the next sentence. Waldron and Hartmann have stolen my explanation and try and make it work for them! Now they say that Helms was doing all this to ensure the invasion against the back channel's imminent success. Without noting that in their previous volume they said there would be no point in doing such a thing since the talks were useless.

To me, the rearranging of facts, recasting of events, and posthumous mindreading into Helms' psyche, all this is not scholarship. Plain and simple, it is CYA.

Another instance where they try and counteract my critique is in regards to their alleged "confession" from Santo Trafficante about his role in the JFK assassination. Using Tony Summers' work (Vanity Fair, 12/94), I showed that the originator of this tall tale, Mafia lawyer Frank Ragano, was almost surely lying. Why? Because Ragano placed Trafficante in Tampa on the day of his phony confession. He could not have been there since 1.) He was undergoing dialysis treatments and was using a colostomy bag, 2.) Summers interviewed two witnesses who placed him in Miami on the day, 3/13/87, he made the ersatz confession in Tampa. 3.) His doctor in Tampa did not see him on the day in question, and 4.) His relatives said he had not been to Tampa in months. In the face of all this, the authors still vouch for Ragano's veracity. (p. 757) But they do not tell the reader about the colostomy bag, which would make the 280 mile drive or flight to Tampa ludicrous. And they leave out the two witnesses who placed him in Miami, and the fact he did not see his doctor while in Tampa.

A third effect of my review is that now the authors properly source Edwin Black's groundbreaking work on the attempt to kill President Kennedy in Chicago. If one recalls, in Ultimate Sacrifice they tried to disguise the proper source of this essay by footnoting that magazine article to a book by one George Black. A book that did not even discuss JFK's assassination. Here, they properly source it but incredibly, they never even note how they failed to do so in the first book. They then indirectly confirm my worst fears about why they did not. On page 787, in the Acknowledgments, they write the following sentence: "The work of the following people was useful in our research, even though at times we may differ with some in our conclusions". The first name listed of people they disagree with in conclusions is Edwin Black's. In other words, they didn't like what Black did with the Chicago plot. So they apparently wanted no one to find his work since it would contradict their own. With no thanks to Waldron and Hartmann, you can read Black's essay here.

What can one say about this kind of scholarship and honesty? Except that in each instance I mention, the evidence indicates that the authors knew about the information that I used. They chose to ignore it. And in the case of Black, they tried to bury it.

V

One of the reasons they desperately hang on to the Ragano/Trafficante fantasy is because they want to ballyhoo this "confessional" motif as evidence that they were right about the actual JFK culprits in Ultimate Sacrifice. That is, the Mafia killed JFK. So they hang on to the specious Ragano declaration because they need it for the Trafficante part of their confessionals. Even though it almost certainly did not happen.

They also use "confessions" by John Martino and David Morales. These are also dubious. In the case of Morales (p. 97), how can you call what he said a "confession"? After raging against what JFK did at the Bay of Pigs, he then said "Well, we took care of that son of a bitch didn't we." (Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, p. 390) As John Simkin, among others, has commented, this can be fairly interpreted as being nothing but cheap braggadocio. Going further than that, I would be willing to wager that you could have heard dozens of remarks by both the Cuban exiles and CIA operators about JFK down through the years. Does that mean they were all involved in his assassination? But further, Morales was a CIA man all the way. So how does this prove their Mob-did-it thesis?

In my review of Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked, I commented on the case of John Martino. The information Martino allegedly conveyed through friends and relatives — which is hard to keep track of since, 35 years later, it keeps on growing — does not connote Martino being part of a plot. To quote myself in my critique of that book, "As summarized above, the information Martino had could have been communicated to him through several of his Cuban exile friends. None of it connotes Martino being part of the plot. And Hancock advances no affirmative evidence to prove that point." And as I noted in that review, the other person Hancock uses, Richard Case Nagell, is a much more valuable witness than Martino. For me, and in practical terms, Nagell is worth ten times what Martino is worth.

Another "confession" Waldron and Hartmann use is allegedly by John Roselli. This one they source to Richard Mahoney's book Sons and Brothers. This is the sum and substance of the "Roselli confession" as it appears on page 229 of that book: "Washington attorney Tom Wadden, a longtime friend and attorney of Roselli's, subsequently confirmed Roselli's role in plotting to kill the president." One natural question in response to this single sentence is: What plotting was he talking about? What exactly did Roselli do? Because if there are no details, there is no confession. But it's actually worse than that. Because Mahoney never even interviewed Wadden. He got this from Bill Hundley, a former Justice Department lawyer under RFK. Wadden is mentioned exactly one other time in Mahoney's book. That is on page 333 along with a group of other Mafia attorneys like Jack Wasserman. Before I read about this "startling confession" I wondered why I did not recall any other author sourcing it in the ten years since the Mahoney book had been published. Now I know.

Obviously, in light of the above, the authors were getting desperate to come up with something of substance. So early on in the book, they foreshadow what will be their "crown jewel" in this regard. (pgs 46-51) That is a confession by Carlos Marcello. They refer to this as the "CAMTEX documents" since Carlos Marcello was in a Texas prison when they originated. And they mischaracterize them at the start. They say that these documents were discovered at the National Archives in 2006 (p. 47) The implication being that no one ever saw them before. Which is false. Ace Archives researcher Peter Vea sent them to me in 1997. Which is ten years before Waldron and Hartmann found them. They also write that the contents are being published in Legacy of Secrecy for the first time. (p. 46) Again, this is misleading. Vincent Bugliosi referred to them in Reclaiming History. (See the End Notes file, pgs. 658-659)

Both of the above shed light on why no one used them before. When Peter sent me the documents, he titled his background work on them as "The Crazy Last Days of Carlos Marcello." Peter had done some work on Marcello's health while he was incarcerated. And between that, and the reports that came out at the time of his 1993 death, he and I concluded that at the time of the CAMTEX documents Marcello was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Today, the accepted gestation period for the disease is about seven years. There is little doubt that by 1988-89 Marcello's Alzheimer's was in full and raging bloom. And at this time period, Marcello's general health was beginning to collapse through a series of strokes. Now, the time period of Marcello's talks with the jailhouse informant who is one of the sources for the CAMTEX documents begins in 1985. So if you do the arithmetic you will see that Marcello's Alzheimer's was very likely well along by then. And later on, when told about the jailhouse informant's accusation that he had Kennedy killed, Marcello replied that this was "crazy talk". (Bugliosi op cit p. 658)

And in fact it is. The CAMTEX documents actually have Marcello meeting with Oswald in person and in public at his brother's restaurant. (p. 50) But that's nothing. According to CAMTEX, Marcello set up Ruby's bar business and Ruby would come to Marcello's estate to report to him! And so after being seen in public with both the main participants, he has the first one kill Kennedy and the second kill Oswald. But yet, the authors are so intent on getting the CAMTEX documents out there that they don't note that these contradict their own conclusion written elsewhere in the same book. Namely that Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy. (p. 121)

VI

This is already too lengthy to go into any long discussion of the parts of the book devoted to the King case, the RFK case, and Watergate. But, in my view, these are even worse than the JFK section of the book. Which is saying something. For instance, they conclude that James Earl Ray killed King. Without telling the reader that the rifle he allegedly used needed to be properly calibrated by machine. And it wasn't. Who put Ray up to it? Well it was Joseph Milteer, with the help of Carlos Marcello. (Talk about the Odd Couple.) What's the evidence for this? Almost all of it is the unnamed sources I noted above. ( In fact, Chapter 52 about Milteer and Spake meeting Ray in Atlanta comes off as near self-parody.)

And what these two do with Grace and Charlie Stephens is simply appalling. They actually smear her and try and rehabilitate him! This is the woman who, when the authorities went to her to get an ID on Ray, refused to sign the papers because the man she saw in the boarding house the day of the murder was smaller and older. She still refused when they offered her a 100,000 dollar reward. Even though she was poor. When they took the same deal to her husband Charles, he readily made the identification. Even though he was falling down drunk at the time of the shooting. When he tried to collect on the money, the offer was withdrawn. He sued and his efforts failed. So this drunk became the witness that got Ray extradited back for his phony trial. Just so his lawyer Percy Foreman could sell him down the river.

And what happened to Grace? She got stashed away in a mental institution for ten years. When Mark Lane finally found her there he asked her if he could talk to her about the King case. She agreed. But she told him she was not going to lie about the man she saw at the boarding house. Lane said that was fine. He just wanted her to tell the truth. She did, and the man she saw was not Ray.

Attempting to rehab Charlie Stephens is like rehabbing Howard Brennan in the JFK case. (All this information on the Stephens matter is reported in Code Name Zorro by Lane and Dick Gregory.) Further, if you can believe it-which you probably can by now-they ignore all the new material generated on the MLK case in the nineties. That is during the attempt by Judge Joe Brown to get the case retried at the time. But yet this is the newest material generated on that case. But it doesn't fit their agenda. So they ignore it.

They also strongly imply that Sirhan shot RFK (p. 686). Yep, hypnotized himself into doing it at the request of the Mafia. (p. 666) And that night at the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan had those drinks to steel himself to kill RFK. (p. 629) See, Sirhan was a compulsive gambler who was losing hundreds of dollars. (p. 626) And ... you get the drift by now, don't you? Incredibly, in the entire section on the RFK case there is not one mention of either MK/Ultra or William J. Bryan. And Bryan is the man who most suspect of programming Sirhan. In fact, there is much evidence to show this is the case. Further, they say it was not Thane Cesar who shot RFK. (p. 641) Even though he was the only person in perfect position to deliver the fatal shot. In fact, any of the RFK shots. Shane O'Sullivan disconnected Michael Wayne from Khaiber Khan in Who Killed Bobby? to minimize that conspiracy angle. Waldron and Hartmann do the opposite: they discount Khan and do not even mention Michael Wayne. (pgs. 660)

What was the reason for the RFK cover-up? According to them one of the reasons was whether or not drug trafficking played a role in the case. (Read it yourself on p. 680) See, the LAPD acted then and now "not as part of a massive orchestrated cover-up, but to avoid embarrassment and scandal for the department." (p. 686) If you read Lisa Pease's review of An Open and Shut Case, you will see that what caused the cover-up. It was the probable 14 shots fired that night when Sirhan's weapon could only fire eight. Further, the acoustics tape indicates the shots came from two directions and therefore from at least two assassins. And Sirhan was not one of the assailants of RFK. Because if he was, they would not have had to substitute the bullet evidence at the Wenke Panel hearings. Which is what the evidence indicates happened. Incredibly, the book does not even mention those proceedings supervised by Judge Wenke. Which would be like discussing the JFK case and never mentioning the HSCA. Further, and perhaps even more shocking, the work done on the newly discovered audio tape of the shooting by sound technician Phil Von Pragg is also never discussed. Even though the cable TV special based on this key discovery was broadcast a year before the book came out.

And how do the authors support the nonsense they write about these two cases? By using authors like Gerald Posner in the King case and Dan Moldea in the RFK case.

Their section on Watergate is just as outlandish. They say that the whole motivation behind the two year scandal was Nixon's attempt to get the Inspector General's Report on the CIA-Mafia plots. When that seems like thin gruel (because Nixon is not in the report), they shift over to the Inspector General's Report on the Bay of Pigs operation. (pgs 716-17) The point of all this thrashing about? The usual. The arrests at the Watergate were not engineered by Helms and the CIA. (p. 720) Even though, as Jim Hougan has proven in Secret Agenda, CIA agents James McCord and Howard Hunt deliberately sabotaged the break-in that night. And there are two sources-one through Hougan and one through Washington lawyer Dan Alcorn— that say Helms was alerted to the arrests as they happened.

I don't want to leave the impression that the book is utterly worthless. It's not quite that horrendous. There are some good tidbits in it. For instance, a CIA agent actually reviewed Edward Epstein's book Inquest when it was published. And this became the model for the famous "Countering the Critics" CIA memorandum prepared for Helms. (p. 380) There is a good description of how LBJ, Earl Warren, and Hoover plotted against the critical movement. (pgs 356-61) The authors note how quickly Johnson shifted the tone and attention in South Vietnam after Kennedy's death. (p. 275) Finally, they show that it was Arlen Specter who actually composed Dave Powers' false affidavit about where the direction of the shots came from in Dealey Plaza. (p. 308)

Unfortunately, that's about it for the positives. Which is a really bad batting average for a book of over 800 pages. Yet none of the travesty listed above stops people like Rex Bradford and John Simkin from having Waldron do interviews on their web sites. Which makes me think the assassinations are really more of a business interest for these two entrepreneurs than a pursuit of historical truth.

Let me conclude with one last point. One which I actually was not going to bring up at all. But I have to. Because, near the end, the authors bring it up themselves. Some of the supporters of Ultimate Sacrifice, like Mark Crispin Miller, have said that I accused Waldron of being some kind of agent in my review of that book. I did not. If you read the review carefully, I was talking about Gus Russo in that regard. And I have analyzed the Russo issue at length in my essay "Who is Gus Russo?" But the authors go out of their way to address this charge by saying that they "want to make it clear that they have never worked for the CIA." (p. 768) This may be technically true. But it is not the whole story. And we know this from the proverbial Horse's Mouth. A few years ago, Hartmann was giving a talk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania about one of his many other books. Two JFK researchers were in attendance, Jerry Policoff and Steve Jones. They were both taken aback by one of his early statements. He admitted quite openly to having past ties to both the CIA and corporate America. The question then becomes: If he was open about that then, why is he being disingenuous about it now? To give Legacy of Secrecy the credibility it does not have on its own? Another question: Does Waldron know about this? Or is he just along for the ride?

http://www.ctka.net/2009/legacy_secrecy.html