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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: Albert Hakim
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aliases:
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- Albert Hakim
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created: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-10-09
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category: "Arms Dealers & Brokers"
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tags:
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- Person
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@ -16,6 +16,17 @@ summary: "Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the Iran-Contra Enterpris
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born: 1930-01-01
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died: 2003-01-01
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location: "San Jose, California"
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relations:
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- type: partner_of
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with: "[[Richard Secord]]"
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role: "equal partner in Stanford Technology Trading Group International; co-directed the Enterprise"
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start: 1983
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fn: 3
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- type: founded
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with: "[[Stanford Technology Trading Group International]]"
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role: "co-founded with Secord in 1983; chairman"
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start: 1983
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fn: 7
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---
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Albert Hakim was an Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the private covert operations network known as the Enterprise with retired Air Force Major General [[Richard Secord]] during the [[Iran-Contra Affair]]. Hakim's Iranian business background and contacts within the Iranian defense community under the Shah made him the Enterprise's primary financial architect and a key negotiator with Iranian officials. He pleaded guilty in November 1989 and cooperated with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation.[^1]
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@ -24,23 +35,39 @@ Albert Hakim was an Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the private cov
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Hakim was born in Iran in the 1930s. He built a substantial business importing and exporting technology and defense-related goods to Iran during the Shah's era, establishing relationships with Iranian military and government procurement officials that would later prove central to the Iran-Contra arms sales. He became a U.S. citizen and settled in California. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution ended his Iran business, Hakim continued in international arms and technology trading, which brought him into contact with Secord.[^1]
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Secord testified that he met Hakim in 1976 or 1977 in Iran, when Hakim was selling electronic intelligence systems to the Iranian Air Force and the Air Force mission recommended discontinuing a 23 million dollar project as redundant to another program; Hakim came to Secord's office to protest.[^2] The congressional report states that Hakim's Iranian operations included an effort to sell electronic intelligence systems to the Iranian government and payoffs to Iranian Air Force and Army generals through "bearer letters" and numbered Swiss accounts.[^3] The Los Angeles Times reported that in a 1983 deposition in Connecticut Hakim admitted using Swiss bank accounts to funnel millions of dollars in payoffs to Iranian military officers.[^4]
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According to CIA files cited in the congressional report, in August 1976 [[Ted Shackley]] tried to arrange for Secord to assist Hakim in obtaining security contracts with the Iranian government in return for Hakim providing intelligence to the CIA, with [[Tom Clines]] to introduce Hakim to Secord; a CIA official rebuffed the proposal in part because Hakim had sold the Iranians "unneeded over sophisticated equipment at exorbitant price[s]." Hakim testified that [[Edwin Wilson]] introduced him to Clines and Shackley and that the meeting never occurred.[^5] In a May 22, 1987 deposition Hakim said that Wilson had infiltrated his organization through his associate [[Frank Terpil]] and that he removed both in 1976 or 1977.[^6]
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Secord testified that in 1980 he gave Hakim's name, among several Iranian names, to U.S. intelligence personnel for vetting and possible use in the operation to rescue the American hostages in Iran, and that Hakim was contacted, vetted and volunteered his services.[^2]
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### Enterprise Financial Structure
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Hakim was the financial architect of the Enterprise. He established Lake Resources S.A., a Swiss financial entity that served as the central account through which Enterprise revenues and disbursements were channeled. The structure was designed to obscure the money's origins and movements from congressional oversight and government auditing. Enterprise funds received markups from weapons sales to Iran, CIA operational funds, and later additional transfers from various sources. Hakim later testified that the Enterprise had generated approximately $48 million in revenues, of which approximately $3.8 million was applied to Contra operations, with the remainder retained by the Enterprise or disbursed to its principals.[^1]
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Hakim and Secord operated Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI) as the nominal business vehicle for Enterprise arms transactions. STTGI purchased weapons from U.S. and Israeli suppliers at government-approved prices and sold them to Iranian buyers at prices substantially above cost, with the markup profit flowing to Lake Resources.[^2]
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Hakim and Secord operated Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI) as the nominal business vehicle for Enterprise arms transactions. In the direct sales of United States weapons to Iran that began early in 1986, Walsh wrote, the Enterprise "acted as agent, a front, for the true owner of the arms, the United States"; in 1986 it received 30.3 million dollars from the sale of that property to Iran and for replacement TOW missiles to Israel, and only 12.2 million dollars was returned to the United States. In the contra sales that began in late 1984 Secord and Hakim acted as brokers, buying weapons from other arms dealers.[^7]
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Hakim tried to recruit Secord in 1983 to revive his security-sales company, Expantrade, by offering security systems to foreign governments; Secord joined him in May 1983 as an equal partner in Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI).[^3] Hakim was STTGI's chairman and Secord its president, and the two wholly controlled it; STTGI was distinct from Stanford Technology Corporation, which Hakim founded in 1974. Walsh wrote that "by 1986, the business of STTGI was the Enterprise."[^7] [[Lake Resources S.A.|Lake Resources Inc.]], "the company controlled by Hakim to launder the Enterprise's money flow," pleaded guilty to the corporate felony of theft of government property; Hakim pleaded guilty on November 21, 1989 to a misdemeanor count of supplementing the salary of North.[^8][^9] In 1985 and 1986 Hakim received 2.06 million dollars from the Enterprise and 550,249 dollars in cash, of which 478,508 dollars went for unknown purposes.[^9] After his plea Hakim agreed to accept 1.7 million dollars of about 9 million dollars frozen in the Swiss accounts and to waive the remainder, and later refused to carry out the agreement; Secord filed a claim in the Swiss courts for the money while the agreement was under negotiation.[^9]
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### Iran Negotiations
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Hakim served as a direct negotiator with Iranian officials. In October 1986 - weeks before the Enterprise was exposed by the Hasenfus shootdown - Hakim met in Geneva with an Iranian representative identified as Mehdi Najjar or "the Relative" (a nephew of Iranian Parliament Speaker [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani|Rafsanjani]]) to negotiate terms for continued arms sales and the potential release of American hostages held in Lebanon. The Nine-Point Plan that Hakim negotiated with Najjar included detailed commitments about future arms deliveries, arrangements for hostage releases, and political terms that exceeded what [[Oliver North]] and other American officials had authorized. The plan was later criticized by North and others as an unauthorized expansion of U.S. commitments to Iran.[^2]
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Hakim served as a direct negotiator with Iranian officials. In October 1986 - weeks before the Enterprise was exposed by the Hasenfus shootdown - Hakim met in Geneva with an Iranian representative identified as Mehdi Najjar or "the Relative" (a nephew of Iranian Parliament Speaker [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani|Rafsanjani]]) to negotiate terms for continued arms sales and the potential release of American hostages held in Lebanon. The Nine-Point Plan that Hakim negotiated with Najjar included detailed commitments about future arms deliveries, arrangements for hostage releases, and political terms that exceeded what [[Oliver North]] and other American officials had authorized. The plan was later criticized by North and others as an unauthorized expansion of U.S. commitments to Iran.[^10]
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### Criminal Proceedings
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The Enterprise was exposed in October 1986 following the shootdown of a Contra resupply aircraft over Nicaragua. Hakim cooperated with the subsequent congressional and independent counsel investigations. In November 1989, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of illegally supplementing the salary of a government employee (specifically, Oliver North, to whom Hakim had provided access to an Enterprise account for personal use). Hakim's cooperation provided detailed documentation of the Enterprise's financial accounts and operations that was central to Walsh's broader reconstruction of Iran-Contra.[^2]
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The Enterprise was exposed in October 1986 following the shootdown of a Contra resupply aircraft over Nicaragua. Hakim cooperated with the subsequent congressional and independent counsel investigations. In November 1989, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of illegally supplementing the salary of a government employee (specifically, Oliver North, to whom Hakim had provided access to an Enterprise account for personal use). Hakim's cooperation provided detailed documentation of the Enterprise's financial accounts and operations that was central to Walsh's broader reconstruction of Iran-Contra.[^10]
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Hakim died in 2003. His cooperation with Walsh, unlike the defiant posture of some other Iran-Contra defendants, was considered a significant contribution to the public record of the affair.[^2]
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Hakim died in 2003. His cooperation with Walsh, unlike the defiant posture of some other Iran-Contra defendants, was considered a significant contribution to the public record of the affair.[^10]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Walsh, Lawrence E. *Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up*. W.W. Norton, 1997, pp. 178-192. Tower Commission Report (President's Special Review Board). *The Tower Commission Report*. Bantam Books/Times Books, 1987.
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[^2]: U.S. Congress, Joint Committees on Iran-Contra. *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair*. 100th Congress, 1st Session, 1987. Walsh, Lawrence E. *Iran-Contra: The Final Report*. Random House, 1994.
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[^2]: Testimony of Richard V. Secord, Iran-Contra Investigation: Joint Hearings, 100th Cong., 1st sess., Hearings 100-1, May 5-8, 1987, p. 47, https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152829_0342.
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[^3]: Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, H. Rept. 100-433 / S. Rept. 100-216 (1987), ch. 21, pp. 326-327, https://archive.org/details/reportofcongress87unit.
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[^4]: Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1987, "Secord: A Specialist in Covert Deals," CIA Reading Room CIA-RDP90-00965R000201700001-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000201700001-4.
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[^5]: H. Rept. 100-433, ch. 21, n. 23 (CIA files C7 147-59; Shackley deposition, Sept. 21, 1987, at 284-300; Hakim deposition, May 31, 1987, at 229-33).
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[^6]: H. Rept. 100-433, ch. 21, n. 20 (Hakim deposition, May 22, 1987, at 28-29, 32).
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[^7]: Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. I, pt. V, ch. 8, pp. 159-172, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_08.htm.
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[^8]: Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, "Executive Summary," pp. xiii ff., https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm.
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[^9]: Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, pt. V, ch. 10, "United States v. Albert Hakim," pp. 179-180, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_10.htm.
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[^10]: U.S. Congress, Joint Committees on Iran-Contra. *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair*. 100th Congress, 1st Session, 1987. Walsh, Lawrence E. *Iran-Contra: The Final Report*. Random House, 1994.
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@ -10,12 +10,12 @@ tags:
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- INSLAW
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- DOJ
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- EOUSA
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summary: "Career Justice Department administrator, acting director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys during the Bua inquiry, whom Bill Hamilton accused of helping deny Judge Bason's reappointment; he told the special counsel he had nothing to do with it."
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summary: "Career Justice Department administrator, acting head of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys during the Bua inquiry, accused by Bill Hamilton of helping deny Judge Bason's reappointment; he denied any part."
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born: 1945-09-04
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died: 2026-06-12
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location: "Fairfax, Virginia"
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-10-09
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---
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Anthony Charles Moscato (September 4, 1945, [[New York City]], to June 12, 2026, Fairfax, [[Virginia]]) spent his career in the administrative offices of the [[Department of Justice]]. Raised in Washington Heights, he took a degree in government at [[Columbia University]] in 1967 and a law degree at [[George Washington University]] in 1970, joined the department's Tax Division as a trial attorney in 1976, and moved the next year to the Justice Management Division as special assistant to the assistant attorney general for administration. Over the following two decades he served as deputy assistant attorney general for administration, acting inspector general of the department, director of the [[Executive Office for United States Attorneys]] and director of the [[Executive Office for Immigration Review]]. In 1999 the attorney general named him a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals, from which he retired in 2006.[^1]
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@ -24,7 +24,10 @@ Anthony Charles Moscato (September 4, 1945, [[New York City]], to June 12, 2026,
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His name entered the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|INSLAW affair]] through [[Bill Hamilton]], who told the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that a former department security officer, [[Garnett Taylor]], knew that "Anthony Moscato, who is now Acting Director of EOUSA, played an affirmative role on behalf of DOJ in denying Judge Bason's reappointment," and asked that Taylor be subpoenaed before a grand jury. [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]], the bankruptcy judge who had found in 1987 that the department took [[INSLAW]]'s [[PROMIS]] software by fraud, was not reappointed by the merit selection panel of the district court chaired by Judge [[Norma H. Johnson]]. Bua's report records Moscato's answer: "he had nothing whatsoever to do with the selection of bankruptcy judges. He convincingly stated that he is not familiar with Judge Norma Johnson, did not know that she chaired a selection panel, and did not even know there was a Merit Selection Panel. He stated that he spoke to no one about Bason's qualifications for reappointment. He cannot explain why his and Garnett Taylor's names would be used in the same sentence as Bankruptcy Judge Bason. Taylor and he are not even social friends, much less confidants." At the time of the 1987 non-reappointment he held other administrative posts in the department; the transcript of Bason's ruling had reached the panel from [[Royce Lamberth]], then chief of the civil division of the [[U.S. Attorney's office]].[^2]
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The report records that Hamilton declined to identify the "senior U.S. Government official" who was the source of the Taylor information, and wrote that the source declined to permit disclosure of his name. The Hamiltons, through their attorney, told Bua's team they would not meet with them, preferring to deal directly with the new Attorney General. Moscato told the investigators that he did not know Johnson, did not know a Merit Selection Panel existed, spoke to no one about Bason's qualifications, could not explain why his and Taylor's names would be used in the same sentence as Bason's, and was not even a social friend of Taylor.[^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: "Anthony (Tony) Charles Moscato," obituary, Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home, June 2026. https://www.fairfaxmemorialfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Anthony-Charles-Moscato?obId=48707990
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[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, pp. 185-186 (the report's own pagination). https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
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[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, pp. 186-187. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
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[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, pp. 186-187. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
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@ -16,16 +16,16 @@ summary: "Judge of the Court of Federal Claims who, as hearing officer on the Se
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born: 1944
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location: "Oakland, California"
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-10-09
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---
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Christine Odell Cook Miller (born 1944, Oakland, [[California]]), who served under the name Christine Cook Nettesheim until September 10, 1994, is a judge of the [[United States Court of Federal Claims]]. She took a degree at [[Stanford University]] in 1966 and a law degree at the University of Utah in 1969, clerked for Judge David T. Lewis of the Tenth Circuit, was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the [[Department of Justice]] from 1970 to 1972 and at the [[Federal Trade Commission]] from 1972 to 1974, practiced in Washington, and served as special counsel to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and assistant general counsel of the U.S. Railway Association. [[Ronald Reagan]] nominated her to the Claims Court on November 23, 1982; the Senate confirmed her on December 10. [[Bill Clinton]] gave her a recess appointment to the same seat on December 10, 1997, and the Senate confirmed her again on February 3, 1998. She took senior status on February 4, 2013, and retired on March 1.[^1]
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### The INSLAW Referral
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In May 1995 the Senate referred [[INSLAW]]'s remaining claims against the government to the Court of Federal Claims for an advisory opinion, after the [[House Committee on the Judiciary]]'s 1992 report had endorsed Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]]'s finding that the department took [[PROMIS]] by fraud and the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] had rejected it in 1993. As hearing officer, Miller ruled on July 31, 1997, that all versions of PROMIS were in the public domain and that the government had always been entitled to use the software as it wished, so that INSLAW was owed no compensation. A three-judge review panel of the court upheld the ruling in August 1998. The Justice Department announced the decision in a press release.[^2]
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On May 3, 1995, by S. Res. 114 of the 104th Congress, the Senate referred S. 740, a bill for the relief of [[INSLAW]] (Senator Orrin Hatch's floor statement is at 141 Cong. Rec. 5910, May 1, 1995), to the Chief Judge of the Court of Federal Claims for an advisory opinion (Cong. Ref. No. 95-338X), after the [[House Committee on the Judiciary]]'s 1992 report had endorsed Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]]'s finding that the department took [[PROMIS]] by fraud and the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] had rejected it in 1993. As hearing officer, Miller ruled on July 31, 1997, that all versions of PROMIS were in the public domain and that the government had always been entitled to use the software as it wished, so that INSLAW was owed no compensation. A three-judge review panel of the court upheld the ruling in a per curiam report dated May 11, 1998. The Justice Department announced the decision in a press release.[^2] In the hearing officer's report Miller described the Justice Department's two inquiries as the "Bua and Dwyer investigations": Nicholas Bua's investigation on behalf of Attorney General [[William Barr]], and a second investigation, in response to INSLAW's criticisms of Bua's report, that Attorney General [[Janet Reno]] asked the Assistant Associate Attorney General to undertake. A footnote in the report quotes [[Bill Hamilton]] on [[Charles Hayes]]: "I said they took him seriously enough that they brought him to Chicago to testify before the Grand Jury, and everything he said is deleted from the [Bua] report."[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Federal Judicial Center, "U.S. Court of Federal Claims: Miller, Christine Odell Cook," Biographical Directory. https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/u.s.-court-federal-claims-miller-christine-odell-cook
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[^2]: See [[INSLAW]] and [[PROMIS Software Scandal]] and the Department of Justice press release of August 1997 cited there.
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[^2]: U.S. Court of Federal Claims, *INSLAW, Inc. v. United States*, Cong. Ref. No. 95-338X, Report of the Hearing Officer, July 31, 1997, 39 Fed. Cl. 307, https://static.case.law/fed-cl/39/cases/0307-01.json; Report of the Review Panel, May 11, 1998, 40 Fed. Cl. 843, https://static.case.law/fed-cl/40/cases/0843-01.json; Department of Justice press release of August 1997.
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@ -65,6 +65,12 @@ relations:
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with: "[[Watergate Special Prosecution Force]]"
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reverse: true
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fn: 2
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- type: participant_in
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with: "[[Office of Technical Service]]"
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start: 1971-07
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end: 1971-08
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role: "technical services supplied a disguise and alias documents as George F. Leonard before the Fielding entry"
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fn: 14
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created: 2026-10-01
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updated: 2026-10-09
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---
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@ -87,57 +93,59 @@ Attorney General Mitchell testified in 1973 that when Liddy was brought to him i
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[[John W. Dean]], testifying in 1973, said that he learned through [[Jack Caulfield]] that Liddy had a falling out with Rossides at Treasury and that [[Egil Krogh]] "waded into the middle of the dispute by hiring Liddy and bringing him into the White House."[^11] The Senate committee's final report stated that the Plumbers unit, under Krogh and David Young, added Liddy and [[Howard Hunt]] in July 1971, both being known to the White House as persons with investigative experience; the court of appeals dated the formation of the unit to the summer of 1971, after publication of the [[Pentagon Papers]].[^12][^13] The court of appeals recorded that Liddy was hired by Krogh with the approval of [[John Ehrlichman]] to investigate leaks of classified information.[^2]
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Before the Fielding entry, Howard Hunt brought Liddy to the CIA's technical services. In July or August 1971 the technical officers secured for him a disguise (a wig and glasses) and alias documents in the name "George F. Leonard," in a set of contacts that Hunt had arranged through an unlisted number.[^14] The House special subcommittee recorded the agency's decision to stop the assistance on August 27, 1971.[^14] The staff report appended to Senator [[Howard Baker]]'s views in the Senate Watergate Committee's final report states that a technician of the Technical Services Division testified that Hunt told him early in August 1971 that he would be introducing a second man, whereas CIA officials had said Hunt introduced Liddy unannounced late in August.[^15]
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After Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. [[Lewis Fielding]], declined to be interviewed by FBI agents, the unit proposed a covert entry into his [[Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills]] office. Hunt traveled to Miami in mid-August 1971 to recruit [[Bernard Barker]], who had worked under him in the [[Bay of Pigs]] operation, and Barker recruited [[Eugenio Martinez]] and [[Felipe de Diego]]. On August 25, 1971 Liddy gained entry to Fielding's office by misrepresenting his identity to a cleaning woman in order to take reconnaissance photographs; he purchased supplies for the operation. Hunt and Liddy met the three Miami men at a Beverly Hills hotel on September 2, 1971. On the night of September 3 Barker, Martinez and de Diego entered the office and forced a file cabinet, and Liddy kept a lookout nearby. The file on Ellsberg was not found.[^2][^13]
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California indicted Liddy on September 4, 1973 for the break-in. At the request of Special Prosecutor [[Leon Jaworski]], and over Liddy's objection, the California prosecution was dismissed on March 11, 1974, four days after a federal grand jury indicted Liddy, Ehrlichman, Barker, Martinez and de Diego on March 7, 1974 for conspiring to violate Fielding's Fourth Amendment rights.[^2][^13] The jury convicted Liddy on July 12, 1974, and on July 31, 1974 Judge [[Gerhard Gesell]] sentenced him to one to three years, to run concurrently with his Watergate sentence. The court of appeals affirmed on May 17, 1976 in an opinion that rejected claims that the indictment was defective, that the California dismissal violated his speedy trial and due process rights, and that the trial court had erred in refusing to enforce two subpoenas duces tecum.[^2]
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On the same day the court of appeals reversed the convictions of Barker and Martinez, who had been sentenced to probation, in a per curiam opinion accompanied by separate opinions of Judges Wilkey and Merhige and a partial dissent by Judge Leventhal.[^14] At a hearing on February 22, 1979, Chief Judge William B. Bryant ruled that the "Barker-Martinez defense," which the court described as reasonable reliance on the authority of superiors, was available to the former FBI officials [[W. Mark Felt]] and [[Edward S. Miller]], who had been indicted in April 1978 on charges of conspiring to deprive relatives and acquaintances of [[Weather Underground]] fugitives of their rights through surreptitious entries; the Justice Department at the time was headed by Attorney General [[Griffin Bell]].[^15]
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On the same day the court of appeals reversed the convictions of Barker and Martinez, who had been sentenced to probation, in a per curiam opinion accompanied by separate opinions of Judges Wilkey and Merhige and a partial dissent by Judge Leventhal.[^16] At a hearing on February 22, 1979, Chief Judge William B. Bryant ruled that the "Barker-Martinez defense," which the court described as reasonable reliance on the authority of superiors, was available to the former FBI officials [[W. Mark Felt]] and [[Edward S. Miller]], who had been indicted in April 1978 on charges of conspiring to deprive relatives and acquaintances of [[Weather Underground]] fugitives of their rights through surreptitious entries; the Justice Department at the time was headed by Attorney General [[Griffin Bell]].[^17]
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### General Counsel to the Reelection Committee
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According to the court of appeals, Liddy was hired by the reelection committee in late 1971 as general counsel; in January 1972 he agreed to organize an intelligence gathering operation; and in March 1972 he moved to the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President as its counsel while continuing the intelligence assignment.[^1] Dean testified that Krogh suggested Liddy for the general counsel post, that Krogh obtained Ehrlichman's approval, and that Dean arranged an interview with Mitchell on November 24, 1971, for which Liddy prepared an agenda. Dean described it as a general job interview with virtually no discussion of intelligence plans; on December 8 [[Jeb Stuart Magruder]] interviewed Liddy briefly and asked him to start work as soon as possible.[^16] Mitchell testified that Krogh brought Liddy to his office on December 8 on a drug abuse law enforcement program, and that he did not then know Liddy worked for Krogh as one of the Plumbers.[^10]
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According to the court of appeals, Liddy was hired by the reelection committee in late 1971 as general counsel; in January 1972 he agreed to organize an intelligence gathering operation; and in March 1972 he moved to the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President as its counsel while continuing the intelligence assignment.[^1] Dean testified that Krogh suggested Liddy for the general counsel post, that Krogh obtained Ehrlichman's approval, and that Dean arranged an interview with Mitchell on November 24, 1971, for which Liddy prepared an agenda. Dean described it as a general job interview with virtually no discussion of intelligence plans; on December 8 [[Jeb Stuart Magruder]] interviewed Liddy briefly and asked him to start work as soon as possible.[^18] Mitchell testified that Krogh brought Liddy to his office on December 8 on a drug abuse law enforcement program, and that he did not then know Liddy worked for Krogh as one of the Plumbers.[^10]
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Magruder testified that during Liddy's first week Liddy told him he had discussed a broad intelligence plan with members of the White House staff, mentioning Dean in particular, and had been told he would have a budget of about $1 million. Dean testified that he had not encouraged Liddy's plans and had told Liddy that he would not discuss them.[^17][^18] Hunt testified that in late November 1971 Liddy told him that Attorney General Mitchell had proposed the establishment of a large-scale intelligence and counterintelligence program with Liddy as its chief, and that he and Liddy designed a budget for it under the code name Gemstone. Hunt added that in April 1972 Liddy told him the Watergate operation would be undertaken as part of Gemstone, on information, from what Hunt understood to be a government agency, that the Cuban government was supplying funds to the [[Democratic Party]] campaign, and that entries were made on May 27 and June 17, 1972.[^19]
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Magruder testified that during Liddy's first week Liddy told him he had discussed a broad intelligence plan with members of the White House staff, mentioning Dean in particular, and had been told he would have a budget of about $1 million. Dean testified that he had not encouraged Liddy's plans and had told Liddy that he would not discuss them.[^19][^20] Hunt testified that in late November 1971 Liddy told him that Attorney General Mitchell had proposed the establishment of a large-scale intelligence and counterintelligence program with Liddy as its chief, and that he and Liddy designed a budget for it under the code name Gemstone. Hunt added that in April 1972 Liddy told him the Watergate operation would be undertaken as part of Gemstone, on information, from what Hunt understood to be a government agency, that the Cuban government was supplying funds to the [[Democratic Party]] campaign, and that entries were made on May 27 and June 17, 1972.[^21]
|
||||
|
||||
Magruder, Dean and Mitchell each testified about the meetings in the Attorney General's office on January 27 and February 4, 1972, at which Liddy presented charts and a plan with a budget of about $1 million, later scaled down. Magruder testified that the projects included wiretapping, photography, the abduction of radical leaders to Mexico during the [[San Diego]] convention, and call girls; Dean testified that the plan also included mugging squads and that Liddy described interception of communications between ground facilities and aircraft; Mitchell testified that he told Liddy "to go burn the charts" and described the presentation as "a complete horror story."[^20][^21][^22] Magruder testified that Mitchell approved a revised $250,000 plan on March 30 at [[Key Biscayne, Florida|Key Biscayne]]; Mitchell denied it and testified that the plan was rejected for the third time. The court of appeals affirming the convictions of Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman summarized the evidence at that trial as showing that Mitchell gave approval on that date.[^23][^24][^25]
|
||||
Magruder, Dean and Mitchell each testified about the meetings in the Attorney General's office on January 27 and February 4, 1972, at which Liddy presented charts and a plan with a budget of about $1 million, later scaled down. Magruder testified that the projects included wiretapping, photography, the abduction of radical leaders to Mexico during the [[San Diego]] convention, and call girls; Dean testified that the plan also included mugging squads and that Liddy described interception of communications between ground facilities and aircraft; Mitchell testified that he told Liddy "to go burn the charts" and described the presentation as "a complete horror story."[^22][^23][^24] Magruder testified that Mitchell approved a revised $250,000 plan on March 30 at [[Key Biscayne, Florida|Key Biscayne]]; Mitchell denied it and testified that the plan was rejected for the third time. The court of appeals affirming the convictions of Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman summarized the evidence at that trial as showing that Mitchell gave approval on that date.[^25][^26][^27]
|
||||
|
||||
Money for the operation passed through the Finance Committee. [[Hugh Sloan]], its treasurer, testified that in April 1972 Liddy consulted him about four checks drawn on a Mexican bank, payable to and endorsed by [[Manuel Ogarrio]], and the two agreed to convert them into cash with the help of Liddy's friends around the country. These checks and a check of $114,000 payable to a member of the finance committee were deposited in a Miami bank account by Barker and Martinez on April 20, 1972, and most of the funds were withdrawn by Barker within two weeks. Liddy returned $111,500 in $100 bills to Sloan, and Sloan testified that he turned over to Liddy a total of $199,000 in cash, mostly in $100 bills, which Liddy gave to [[James McCord]], the committee's security chief. Bills of that denomination were later found in sequence on McCord and the four other men arrested in the [[Democratic National Committee]] offices on June 17.[^1] In his questioning of Mitchell, committee counsel stated that Sloan had testified that Liddy asked for an initial payment of $83,000 on a $250,000 budget.[^26]
|
||||
Money for the operation passed through the Finance Committee. [[Hugh Sloan]], its treasurer, testified that in April 1972 Liddy consulted him about four checks drawn on a Mexican bank, payable to and endorsed by [[Manuel Ogarrio]], and the two agreed to convert them into cash with the help of Liddy's friends around the country. These checks and a check of $114,000 payable to a member of the finance committee were deposited in a Miami bank account by Barker and Martinez on April 20, 1972, and most of the funds were withdrawn by Barker within two weeks. Liddy returned $111,500 in $100 bills to Sloan, and Sloan testified that he turned over to Liddy a total of $199,000 in cash, mostly in $100 bills, which Liddy gave to [[James McCord]], the committee's security chief. Bills of that denomination were later found in sequence on McCord and the four other men arrested in the [[Democratic National Committee]] offices on June 17.[^1] In his questioning of Mitchell, committee counsel stated that Sloan had testified that Liddy asked for an initial payment of $83,000 on a $250,000 budget.[^28]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Arrests and the Silence
|
||||
|
||||
The court of appeals summarized the evidence on the arrests. Liddy telephoned Barker before the Miami men traveled to Washington in May and June 1972; six of the defendants using aliases checked into a Washington hotel on May 22 and rented rooms at the [[Watergate complex|Watergate Hotel]] until May 29; and [[Alfred Baldwin]], a former FBI agent hired by McCord, monitored the Democratic National Committee telephones from rooms 419 and 723 of the [[Howard Johnson Motel]] across the street. Baldwin testified that Hunt and Liddy visited room 419 on May 26 and that the two later surveyed the DNC offices from the balcony of room 723.[^1] On June 17, 1972 Baldwin saw two men leave an alleyway near the building after police arrived, identified one as Hunt and said the other was wearing a suit he recognized as Liddy's. Attorney [[Douglas Caddy]] testified that Hunt telephoned Liddy at about 5 a.m. from Caddy's apartment, and that a few days later Liddy directed Caddy to pay $2,500 of the cash Hunt had given him to the criminal lawyer retained for the five men. Sloan testified that Liddy met him in a hallway that morning and said, "my boys got caught last night; I made a mistake; I used somebody from here which I said I'd never do. I'm afraid I am going to lose my job." Liddy later asked about the committee's largest shredding machine and was seen with a large stack of papers at the shredder.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Richard Kleindienst]], the new Attorney General, testified that on Saturday, June 17, Liddy and [[Powell Moore]] came to the [[Burning Tree Club]], where Kleindienst was playing in a tournament; that Liddy appeared agitated, said that he had been asked to report on the Watergate break-in and that some of those arrested might be employed by the White House or the reelection committee, and (in Kleindienst's less precise recollection) said that Mitchell had asked him to come; that Kleindienst telephoned Assistant Attorney General [[Henry Petersen]] to instruct that those arrested receive no special treatment; and that he told Liddy to leave.[^27] Mitchell testified that from February 4 until June 15, 1972, when Liddy came to his office about a letter to the *[[The Washington Post|Washington Post]]*, he had no conversation with Liddy.[^28]
|
||||
[[Richard Kleindienst]], the new Attorney General, testified that on Saturday, June 17, Liddy and [[Powell Moore]] came to the [[Burning Tree Club]], where Kleindienst was playing in a tournament; that Liddy appeared agitated, said that he had been asked to report on the Watergate break-in and that some of those arrested might be employed by the White House or the reelection committee, and (in Kleindienst's less precise recollection) said that Mitchell had asked him to come; that Kleindienst telephoned Assistant Attorney General [[Henry Petersen]] to instruct that those arrested receive no special treatment; and that he told Liddy to leave.[^29] Mitchell testified that from February 4 until June 15, 1972, when Liddy came to his office about a letter to the *[[The Washington Post|Washington Post]]*, he had no conversation with Liddy.[^30]
|
||||
|
||||
Dean testified that after the arrests he asked Liddy to meet him and that, shortly before noon, they walked down 17th Street toward the [[Corcoran Gallery of Art|Corcoran Gallery]]; Mitchell placed Dean's first debriefing of Liddy on June 19. Dean said Liddy told him the arrested men were his men, that Magruder had pressed him into the operation because the committee was not getting good information from an earlier bug, that Liddy had used McCord because Magruder had cut his budget, that the men were friends of Hunt, and that no one at the White House was involved.[^28][^29] [[Robert Bennett]], Hunt's employer, testified at trial that on July 2 Liddy told him he had lost his job at the committee for failing to cooperate fully with the FBI.[^1]
|
||||
Dean testified that after the arrests he asked Liddy to meet him and that, shortly before noon, they walked down 17th Street toward the [[Corcoran Gallery of Art|Corcoran Gallery]]; Mitchell placed Dean's first debriefing of Liddy on June 19. Dean said Liddy told him the arrested men were his men, that Magruder had pressed him into the operation because the committee was not getting good information from an earlier bug, that Liddy had used McCord because Magruder had cut his budget, that the men were friends of Hunt, and that no one at the White House was involved.[^30][^31] [[Robert Bennett]], Hunt's employer, testified at trial that on July 2 Liddy told him he had lost his job at the committee for failing to cooperate fully with the FBI.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Conviction, Sentence and Refusal to Testify
|
||||
|
||||
On January 8, 1973 jury selection began before Chief Judge [[John Sirica|John J. Sirica]]; five defendants changed their pleas to guilty, and on January 30, 1973 the jury found Liddy and McCord guilty. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, two counts of burglary, and three counts of endeavoring to intercept and intercepting communications. He did not testify. On March 23, 1973 Sirica sentenced him to a total of not less than six years and eight months and not more than 20 years, with a $40,000 fine. The appellate caption lists the alias George F. Leonard. The en banc court of appeals affirmed on November 8, 1974.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Senate Watergate Committee]]'s final report stated that its knowledge of Liddy's activities came from sources other than Liddy, who refused to testify at an executive session on June 4, 1973 even after being instructed to do so upon the conferral of use immunity under a court order. The report stated that Liddy's role in Gemstone was detailed through the testimony of McCord, Magruder, Dean, Mitchell and Hunt.[^30] Dean had testified that he "never understood how the Liddy plan had been approved" and that Magruder had indicated to him that there had been White House pressure to get the plan moving.[^31]
|
||||
The [[Senate Watergate Committee]]'s final report stated that its knowledge of Liddy's activities came from sources other than Liddy, who refused to testify at an executive session on June 4, 1973 even after being instructed to do so upon the conferral of use immunity under a court order. The report stated that Liddy's role in Gemstone was detailed through the testimony of McCord, Magruder, Dean, Mitchell and Hunt.[^32] Dean had testified that he "never understood how the Liddy plan had been approved" and that Magruder had indicated to him that there had been White House pressure to get the plan moving.[^33]
|
||||
|
||||
### Commutation and Release
|
||||
|
||||
On April 12, 1977 President Carter signed an order commuting Liddy's sentence from 20 years to eight years, making him eligible for parole on July 9, 1977 and fixing a mandatory release date, with good time, of September 30, 1980. The order recited that Liddy had begun serving his sentence on January 30, 1973, was confined at the [[Federal Prison Camp, Allenwood|Federal Prison Camp at Allenwood]], Pennsylvania, and had not paid the $40,000 fine, which remained in effect. The order was countersigned by Attorney General Griffin Bell, and the White House announcement stated that the President took the action "in the interest of equity and fairness based on a comparison of Mr. Liddy's sentence with those of all others convicted in Watergate related prosecutions."[^3] The Justice Department official biography of Bell records that he was sworn in as Attorney General on January 26, 1977.[^32] The *[[The New York Times|New York Times]]*, reporting on Liddy's memoir in April 1980, stated that he left prison in September 1977 after serving 52 months, longer than any other Watergate defendant.[^33]
|
||||
On April 12, 1977 President Carter signed an order commuting Liddy's sentence from 20 years to eight years, making him eligible for parole on July 9, 1977 and fixing a mandatory release date, with good time, of September 30, 1980. The order recited that Liddy had begun serving his sentence on January 30, 1973, was confined at the [[Federal Prison Camp, Allenwood|Federal Prison Camp at Allenwood]], Pennsylvania, and had not paid the $40,000 fine, which remained in effect. The order was countersigned by Attorney General Griffin Bell, and the White House announcement stated that the President took the action "in the interest of equity and fairness based on a comparison of Mr. Liddy's sentence with those of all others convicted in Watergate related prosecutions."[^3] The Justice Department official biography of Bell records that he was sworn in as Attorney General on January 26, 1977.[^34] The *[[The New York Times|New York Times]]*, reporting on Liddy's memoir in April 1980, stated that he left prison in September 1977 after serving 52 months, longer than any other Watergate defendant.[^35]
|
||||
|
||||
### Writing, Speaking and Private Security Work
|
||||
|
||||
Liddy published a novel, *Out of Control* ([[St. Martin's Press|St. Martin's]], 1979), reviewed in *[[Newsweek]]* on October 15, 1979, and an autobiography, *Will* (St. Martin's, 1980).[^33][^34] In October 1981 he spoke to a standing-room audience at the [[University of Texas at Austin|University of Texas]] on a national campus tour; the *[[Austin American-Statesman]]* reported that he said the Central Intelligence Agency had been weakened by "illusions" and that the assassination of President [[Anwar Sadat]] earlier that day might have been anticipated by a strong covert intelligence service, and that he told the audience he had been in nine different prisons.[^35] In 1985 the [[United States Tax Court]], in a dispute with the [[Internal Revenue Service]] over more than $150,000 in claimed back taxes and penalties, heard Liddy describe how he spent more than $340,000 as director of covert activities for the 1972 campaign, including $30,000 for a room bugging device, $2,270 for prostitutes at the Miami convention, $500 for [[Donald Segretti]]'s work against Senator [[Edmund Muskie]], and $300 for cartoons of Senator [[Edward Kennedy]] drawn by a CIA artist, according to [[United Press International]]; Judge [[Samuel Sterrett]] accepted Liddy's testimony in part, finding tax due on $45,430 rather than the IRS's $174,800 and rescinding a $51,766 fraud penalty.[^36]
|
||||
Liddy published a novel, *Out of Control* ([[St. Martin's Press|St. Martin's]], 1979), reviewed in *[[Newsweek]]* on October 15, 1979, and an autobiography, *Will* (St. Martin's, 1980).[^35][^36] In October 1981 he spoke to a standing-room audience at the [[University of Texas at Austin|University of Texas]] on a national campus tour; the *[[Austin American-Statesman]]* reported that he said the Central Intelligence Agency had been weakened by "illusions" and that the assassination of President [[Anwar Sadat]] earlier that day might have been anticipated by a strong covert intelligence service, and that he told the audience he had been in nine different prisons.[^37] In 1985 the [[United States Tax Court]], in a dispute with the [[Internal Revenue Service]] over more than $150,000 in claimed back taxes and penalties, heard Liddy describe how he spent more than $340,000 as director of covert activities for the 1972 campaign, including $30,000 for a room bugging device, $2,270 for prostitutes at the Miami convention, $500 for [[Donald Segretti]]'s work against Senator [[Edmund Muskie]], and $300 for cartoons of Senator [[Edward Kennedy]] drawn by a CIA artist, according to [[United Press International]]; Judge [[Samuel Sterrett]] accepted Liddy's testimony in part, finding tax due on $45,430 rather than the IRS's $174,800 and rescinding a $51,766 fraud penalty.[^38]
|
||||
|
||||
On March 18, 1987 the [[Associated Press]] reported from [[Santa Ana, California]] that Liddy had opened a school, the Academy of Corporate Security and Private Investigation, charging $1,500 a week and bringing classes to students, and that he also operated a security company offering drug investigations and detection of illegal surveillance.[^37] In an October 1986 interview with *[[USA Today]]*, according to United Press International, Liddy said he ran the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security in Florida and commanded the "Hurricane Force," a group of professional soldiers "organized to perform extraction missions (in Third World countries) for private parties."[^38]
|
||||
On March 18, 1987 the [[Associated Press]] reported from [[Santa Ana, California]] that Liddy had opened a school, the Academy of Corporate Security and Private Investigation, charging $1,500 a week and bringing classes to students, and that he also operated a security company offering drug investigations and detection of illegal surveillance.[^39] In an October 1986 interview with *[[USA Today]]*, according to United Press International, Liddy said he ran the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security in Florida and commanded the "Hurricane Force," a group of professional soldiers "organized to perform extraction missions (in Third World countries) for private parties."[^40]
|
||||
|
||||
Liddy hosted a syndicated radio program for two decades, with a career at [[Radio America (United States)|Radio America]] that ended with his retirement in 2012, and appeared in television roles including an episode of *[[Miami Vice]]*.[^4][^39]
|
||||
Liddy hosted a syndicated radio program for two decades, with a career at [[Radio America (United States)|Radio America]] that ended with his retirement in 2012, and appeared in television roles including an episode of *[[Miami Vice]]*.[^4][^41]
|
||||
|
||||
### Statements About Plots to Kill Jack Anderson and Howard Hunt
|
||||
|
||||
The *New York Times* reported on April 14, 1980, summarizing excerpts from *Will* published in *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, that Liddy wrote that a plan to kill the columnist [[Jack Anderson]] arose over lunch in Washington with Hunt and a CIA operative, was suggested because an Anderson column had supposedly compromised an American agent abroad, and preceded the Watergate burglary. According to the excerpts, a plan to kill Anderson with LSD was dismissed as impractical, and Liddy then volunteered to kill him on a Washington street but was advised by Hunt to "forget" it. The same report stated that Liddy wrote that he had been prepared to participate in a project to poison Hunt in prison for cooperating with prosecutors and that he had arranged for Hunt's food to be poisoned if a coded message arrived, which, he wrote, never came.[^33]
|
||||
The *New York Times* reported on April 14, 1980, summarizing excerpts from *Will* published in *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, that Liddy wrote that a plan to kill the columnist [[Jack Anderson]] arose over lunch in Washington with Hunt and a CIA operative, was suggested because an Anderson column had supposedly compromised an American agent abroad, and preceded the Watergate burglary. According to the excerpts, a plan to kill Anderson with LSD was dismissed as impractical, and Liddy then volunteered to kill him on a Washington street but was advised by Hunt to "forget" it. The same report stated that Liddy wrote that he had been prepared to participate in a project to poison Hunt in prison for cooperating with prosecutors and that he had arranged for Hunt's food to be poisoned if a coded message arrived, which, he wrote, never came.[^35]
|
||||
|
||||
The New York *Daily News* reported on April 18, 1980 that Liddy said on two network television programs that Anderson was "a pain in the butt" to the Nixon White House and that assassinating him would have been "justifiable homicide," that he had made the recommendation at a White House meeting at which Hunt first suggested drugging Anderson with LSD, and that Anderson's columns had compromised an intelligence agent who was unmasked, tortured and killed. Anderson, meeting Liddy on the program, said that neither Liddy nor anyone else could name a CIA agent tortured or killed as a result of his columns: "It never happened." Liddy answered that he had not said CIA agent. Hunt declined to appear on the second program; the report stated that Hunt said he never discussed with Liddy a need to kill Anderson, that they considered how to discredit Anderson with LSD, and that they dropped the matter when a retired CIA doctor said attempts of that kind overseas had been unsuccessful.[^40]
|
||||
The New York *Daily News* reported on April 18, 1980 that Liddy said on two network television programs that Anderson was "a pain in the butt" to the Nixon White House and that assassinating him would have been "justifiable homicide," that he had made the recommendation at a White House meeting at which Hunt first suggested drugging Anderson with LSD, and that Anderson's columns had compromised an intelligence agent who was unmasked, tortured and killed. Anderson, meeting Liddy on the program, said that neither Liddy nor anyone else could name a CIA agent tortured or killed as a result of his columns: "It never happened." Liddy answered that he had not said CIA agent. Hunt declined to appear on the second program; the report stated that Hunt said he never discussed with Liddy a need to kill Anderson, that they considered how to discredit Anderson with LSD, and that they dropped the matter when a retired CIA doctor said attempts of that kind overseas had been unsuccessful.[^42]
|
||||
|
||||
In an interview recorded for [[Mark Feldstein]]'s 2010 book *Poisoning the Press*, Hunt said before his death that [[Charles Colson]] had ordered him and Liddy to examine Anderson's home from the outside for vulnerabilities, and that Liddy had an idea involving poison wiped on a man's wrist.[^41] Colson's spokeswoman told NBC that Colson "believes everyone has debunked this story a long time ago and he has nothing to add to it."[^41] Feldstein's book also describes a lunch in March 1972 at the [[Hay-Adams Hotel]] with a recently retired CIA poison specialist.[^41]
|
||||
In an interview recorded for [[Mark Feldstein]]'s 2010 book *Poisoning the Press*, Hunt said before his death that [[Charles Colson]] had ordered him and Liddy to examine Anderson's home from the outside for vulnerabilities, and that Liddy had an idea involving poison wiped on a man's wrist.[^43] Colson's spokeswoman told NBC that Colson "believes everyone has debunked this story a long time ago and he has nothing to add to it."[^43] Feldstein's book also describes a lunch in March 1972 at the [[Hay-Adams Hotel]] with a recently retired CIA poison specialist.[^43]
|
||||
|
||||
United Press International reported on October 31, 1986 that Liddy told *USA Today* that he would have killed Anderson and Hunt if ordered to do so, that the decision had to be taken "from a much higher level than I was," that he had been ordered to discuss the Anderson problem with "[[Edward Gunn|Dr. Edward Gunn]] of the CIA," whom he described as "the CIA's assassination expert," and that "it was not until an Anderson column caused the death of one of our intelligence people posted abroad that that thought was even entertained." The report added that published reports in 1975 had said that a senior official in the Nixon White House ordered Anderson killed and the death made to look accidental.[^38]
|
||||
United Press International reported on October 31, 1986 that Liddy told *USA Today* that he would have killed Anderson and Hunt if ordered to do so, that the decision had to be taken "from a much higher level than I was," that he had been ordered to discuss the Anderson problem with "[[Edward Gunn|Dr. Edward Gunn]] of the CIA," whom he described as "the CIA's assassination expert," and that "it was not until an Anderson column caused the death of one of our intelligence people posted abroad that that thought was even entertained." The report added that published reports in 1975 had said that a senior official in the Nixon White House ordered Anderson killed and the death made to look accidental.[^40]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -154,31 +162,33 @@ United Press International reported on October 31, 1986 that Liddy told *USA Tod
|
|||
[^11]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3 (1973), testimony of John W. Dean III, p. 920. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^12]: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, *The Final Report* (1974; Dell paperback edition, *The Senate Watergate Report*), p. 63. https://archive.org/details/senatewatergater01unit
|
||||
[^13]: *United States v. Ehrlichman*, 546 F.2d 910 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (No. 74-1882), decided May 17, 1976, Part I. https://static.case.law/f2d/546/cases/0910-01.json
|
||||
[^14]: *United States v. Barker*, 546 F.2d 940 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (Nos. 74-1883, 74-1884), decided May 17, 1976. https://static.case.law/f2d/546/cases/0940-01.json
|
||||
[^15]: *United States v. Felt*, 491 F. Supp. 179 (D.D.C. 1979) (Crim. No. 78-00179) (Bryant, C.J.), decided December 21, 1979; *Gray v. Bell*, 712 F.2d 490, 493-494 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (indictment of Gray, Felt and Miller, April 1978). https://static.case.law/f-supp/491/cases/0179-01.json and https://static.case.law/f2d/712/cases/0490-01.json
|
||||
[^16]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 927-928. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^17]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2 (1973), testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 786-787. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^18]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 930-931. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^19]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 9 (1973), testimony of E. Howard Hunt, p. 3663. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp09unit
|
||||
[^20]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2, testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 787-788. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^21]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 929-931. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^22]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1610-1611. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^23]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2, testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 794-795. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^24]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1615-1616. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^25]: *United States v. Haldeman*, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc), Part I.A. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/559/559.F2d.31.6.8.12.23.75-1384.html
|
||||
[^26]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, p. 1616 (question of committee counsel Samuel Dash). https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^27]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 9, testimony of Richard G. Kleindienst, August 7, 1973, pp. 3560-3562. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp09unit
|
||||
[^28]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1619-1620. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^29]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, p. 932. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^30]: *The Final Report* (Dell paperback edition, *The Senate Watergate Report*), p. 74, citing Liddy executive session, June 4, 1973. https://archive.org/details/senatewatergater01unit
|
||||
[^31]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, p. 956. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^32]: U.S. Department of Justice, "Griffin Boyette Bell," Attorneys General biographies. https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/bell-griffin-boyette
|
||||
[^33]: "Assassination Plots Described by Liddy," *New York Times*, April 14, 1980, as reproduced in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710021-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710021-5
|
||||
[^34]: Peter S. Prescott, "From Liddy with Love," review of *Out of Control*, *Newsweek*, October 15, 1979, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88-01350R000200160018-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01350r000200160018-8
|
||||
[^35]: "Liddy Says 'Illusions' Weakened Spy Agency," *Austin American-Statesman*, October 7, 1981, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710012-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710012-5
|
||||
[^36]: "Liddy Spills Watergate-Era Tricks to Tax Court," United Press International, August 17, 1985, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710004-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710004-4
|
||||
[^37]: "Liddy Opens School for Private Security," Associated Press, in *New York Times*, March 19, 1987, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710006-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710006-2
|
||||
[^38]: "Liddy Says He Would Have Killed If Ordered," United Press International, October 31, 1986, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710003-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710003-5
|
||||
[^39]: Eddie Scarry, "G. Gordon Liddy Ends 20-year Radio Run," *Adweek*, September 20, 2012. https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/gordon-liddy-retirement-marsha-blackburn/
|
||||
[^40]: Thomas Raftery and Donald Singleton, "Liddy: Murder Was Rx for Our Pain in Papers," *New York Daily News*, April 18, 1980, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710019-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710019-8
|
||||
[^41]: Michael Isikoff, "Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed," NBC News, September 13, 2010, reporting on Mark Feldstein, *Poisoning the Press* (2010), and on an interview with Howard Hunt provided to NBC. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39157420
|
||||
[^14]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence, *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters*, 93rd Cong., statement of Dr. James R. Schlesinger, May 11, 1973, pp. 1-3 (the Hunt narrative is on pp. 2-3), and testimony of General Robert E. Cushman, Jr. https://archive.org/details/InquiryIntoTheAllegedInvolvementOfCIAInTheWatergateAndEllsbergMatters
|
||||
[^15]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 93-981 (June 1974), "Appendix to Views of Senator Baker," pp. 1135-1138. https://archive.org/details/WatergateErvinCommitteeReport
|
||||
[^16]: *United States v. Barker*, 546 F.2d 940 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (Nos. 74-1883, 74-1884), decided May 17, 1976. https://static.case.law/f2d/546/cases/0940-01.json
|
||||
[^17]: *United States v. Felt*, 491 F. Supp. 179 (D.D.C. 1979) (Crim. No. 78-00179) (Bryant, C.J.), decided December 21, 1979; *Gray v. Bell*, 712 F.2d 490, 493-494 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (indictment of Gray, Felt and Miller, April 1978). https://static.case.law/f-supp/491/cases/0179-01.json and https://static.case.law/f2d/712/cases/0490-01.json
|
||||
[^18]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 927-928. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^19]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2 (1973), testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 786-787. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^20]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 930-931. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^21]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 9 (1973), testimony of E. Howard Hunt, p. 3663. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp09unit
|
||||
[^22]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2, testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 787-788. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^23]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, pp. 929-931. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^24]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1610-1611. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^25]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 2, testimony of Jeb Stuart Magruder, pp. 794-795. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp02unit
|
||||
[^26]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1615-1616. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^27]: *United States v. Haldeman*, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc), Part I.A. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/559/559.F2d.31.6.8.12.23.75-1384.html
|
||||
[^28]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, p. 1616 (question of committee counsel Samuel Dash). https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^29]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 9, testimony of Richard G. Kleindienst, August 7, 1973, pp. 3560-3562. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp09unit
|
||||
[^30]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 4, testimony of John N. Mitchell, July 10, 1973, pp. 1619-1620. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp04unit
|
||||
[^31]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, p. 932. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^32]: *The Final Report* (Dell paperback edition, *The Senate Watergate Report*), p. 74, citing Liddy executive session, June 4, 1973. https://archive.org/details/senatewatergater01unit
|
||||
[^33]: Senate Watergate hearings, Book 3, testimony of John W. Dean III, p. 956. https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp03unit
|
||||
[^34]: U.S. Department of Justice, "Griffin Boyette Bell," Attorneys General biographies. https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/bell-griffin-boyette
|
||||
[^35]: "Assassination Plots Described by Liddy," *New York Times*, April 14, 1980, as reproduced in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710021-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710021-5
|
||||
[^36]: Peter S. Prescott, "From Liddy with Love," review of *Out of Control*, *Newsweek*, October 15, 1979, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88-01350R000200160018-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01350r000200160018-8
|
||||
[^37]: "Liddy Says 'Illusions' Weakened Spy Agency," *Austin American-Statesman*, October 7, 1981, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710012-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710012-5
|
||||
[^38]: "Liddy Spills Watergate-Era Tricks to Tax Court," United Press International, August 17, 1985, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710004-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710004-4
|
||||
[^39]: "Liddy Opens School for Private Security," Associated Press, in *New York Times*, March 19, 1987, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710006-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710006-2
|
||||
[^40]: "Liddy Says He Would Have Killed If Ordered," United Press International, October 31, 1986, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710003-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710003-5
|
||||
[^41]: Eddie Scarry, "G. Gordon Liddy Ends 20-year Radio Run," *Adweek*, September 20, 2012. https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/gordon-liddy-retirement-marsha-blackburn/
|
||||
[^42]: Thomas Raftery and Donald Singleton, "Liddy: Murder Was Rx for Our Pain in Papers," *New York Daily News*, April 18, 1980, in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710019-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403710019-8
|
||||
[^43]: Michael Isikoff, "Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed," NBC News, September 13, 2010, reporting on Mark Feldstein, *Poisoning the Press* (2010), and on an interview with Howard Hunt provided to NBC. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39157420
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
title: Howard Hunt
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- E. Howard Hunt
|
||||
|
|
@ -24,6 +24,13 @@ summary: "CIA officer who ran propaganda for the 1954 Guatemala coup and politic
|
|||
born: 1918-10-09
|
||||
died: 2007-01-23
|
||||
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: participant_in
|
||||
with: "[[Office of Technical Service]]"
|
||||
start: 1971-07
|
||||
end: 1971-08
|
||||
role: "the Technical Services Division supplied alias documents, disguise materials, a tape recorder and a Tessina camera; assistance stopped August 27, 1971"
|
||||
fn: 7
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 - January 23, 2007) was a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officer and prolific spy novelist who participated in two of the most significant CIA covert operations of the Cold War era - the 1954 [[Guatemala]]n coup ([[Operation PBSUCCESS]]) and the 1961 [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion - before his involvement in the [[Watergate]] burglary of June 1972 made him one of the most publicly known CIA officers in American history.[^1]
|
||||
|
|
@ -62,13 +69,15 @@ In March 1972, at the direction of [[Charles Colson]], he flew to [[Denver]] in
|
|||
|
||||
By 1971, Hunt had been nominally retired from the CIA and was working as a consultant to the White House under Charles Colson, a senior aide to President [[Richard Nixon]]. Nixon's "plumbers" unit - tasked with plugging information leaks and conducting political intelligence operations - recruited Hunt for various activities, including the burglary of [[Daniel Ellsberg]]'s psychiatrist's office in September 1971.
|
||||
|
||||
In July and August 1971, while working for the White House, Hunt went to the CIA's technical services for help with an operation. On July 22, 1971 he met the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, General [[Robert E. Cushman Jr.]], who directed the technical service to help him. On July 23 he received alias documents in the name "Edward Joseph Warren," a wig, glasses and a speech alteration device. He then obtained a tape recorder in a typewriter case and a Tessina camera disguised in a tobacco pouch. The technical officers became concerned at the escalation of his requests, and on August 27, 1971 Cushman told [[John Ehrlichman]] that further assistance could not be given. The camera was returned that day as unsuitable. The Technical Services Division had no further association with Hunt after August 1971.[^7] The staff report appended to Senator [[Howard Baker]]'s views in the Senate Watergate Committee's final report states that a TSD memorandum of August 27, 1971 showed Hunt's request for a New York telephone answering service about to be implemented, that the CIA kept a file on Hunt's activities entitled "Mr. Edward" outside its normal filing system, and that testimony indicated film the TSD developed for Hunt and Liddy was of Lewis Fielding's office.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
On the night of June 17, 1972, Hunt organized and directed the team that broke into the [[Democratic National Committee]] headquarters at the [[Watergate complex]] in Washington - the burglary that produced five arrests, triggered the Senate investigation and Special Prosecutor investigation, and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.
|
||||
|
||||
Hunt was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping and sentenced to 35 years, subsequently reduced. He served approximately 33 months in federal prison. His wife Dorothy died in a plane crash in December 1972, with some researchers suggesting the crash was not accidental; the official ruling was that it was an accident.[^7]
|
||||
Hunt was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping and sentenced to 35 years, subsequently reduced. He served approximately 33 months in federal prison. His wife Dorothy died in a plane crash in December 1972, with some researchers suggesting the crash was not accidental; the official ruling was that it was an accident.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
The [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] reported to the inspector general on May 22, 1975, for the [[Church Committee]], that in November 1963 Hunt "was assigned to DDP/CA Staff, Office of the Chief, Headquarters; however, apparently Mr. Hunt had collateral duties with DDP/Domestic Operations Division/Facilities Branch," from November 1961 to February 1965, and that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."[^8]
|
||||
The [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] reported to the inspector general on May 22, 1975, for the [[Church Committee]], that in November 1963 Hunt "was assigned to DDP/CA Staff, Office of the Chief, Headquarters; however, apparently Mr. Hunt had collateral duties with DDP/Domestic Operations Division/Facilities Branch," from November 1961 to February 1965, and that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
Helms's secretary [[Elizabeth Dunlevy]] testified in 1974 that Hunt "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter"; the agency's observer noted that Helms had placed the call that produced a loan of about 12,000 dollars.[^9]
|
||||
Helms's secretary [[Elizabeth Dunlevy]] testified in 1974 that Hunt "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter"; the agency's observer noted that Helms had placed the call that produced a loan of about 12,000 dollars.[^11]
|
||||
|
||||
### Kennedy Assassination Statements
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -86,6 +95,8 @@ Hunt died of pneumonia on January 23, 2007, in [[Miami, Florida|Miami]].[^1]
|
|||
[^4]: West, Ashley. "Unknowing Ray Horsch, Episode 1: Youth," *The Rialto Report,* Podcast 171, September 13, 2026, audio at 18:34 to 22:49; Central Intelligence Agency, "Wackenhut Corporation, SF# 493 364," memorandum for the record, July 28, 1975, JFK Assassination Records Collection, record 104-10130-10454.
|
||||
[^5]: "E. Howard Hunt: Utilization by Central Cover Staff," 1970, CIA Reading Room document C00660613; Gahagen, Robert D., "Request for CSA concerning E. Howard Hunt," June 3, 1970, C00297384; "Letter of Recommendation Written by Mr. Helms," July 20, 1973, C00609297.
|
||||
[^6]: House Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence, *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters,* 93rd Cong., 1973; Ruth, Henry S., Jr., letter to John S. Warner, July 26, 1973, C01482382; "Inquiry Regarding Possible ITT Association with CIA and Robert R. Mullen and Company," August 7, 1973, C01367838.
|
||||
[^7]: Summers, Anthony. *The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.* Viking, 2000. Hougan, Jim. *Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA.* Random House, 1984.
|
||||
[^8]: Kane, Charles W., Director of Security. Memorandum for the Inspector General, "Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, Request," May 22, 1975, JFK record 104-10106-10619.
|
||||
[^9]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Legislative Counsel, memorandum for the record, "Select Committee Testimony of 6 February 1974," OLC 74-0197, February 6, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01474420.
|
||||
[^7]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence, *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters*, 93rd Cong., statement of Dr. James R. Schlesinger, May 11, 1973, pp. 1-3 (the Hunt narrative is on pp. 2-3), and testimony of General Robert E. Cushman, Jr. The hearing index also lists Hunt's testimony at p. 471. https://archive.org/details/InquiryIntoTheAllegedInvolvementOfCIAInTheWatergateAndEllsbergMatters
|
||||
[^8]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 93-981 (June 1974), "Appendix to Views of Senator Baker," pp. 1135-1141, and p. 119. https://archive.org/details/WatergateErvinCommitteeReport
|
||||
[^9]: Summers, Anthony. *The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.* Viking, 2000. Hougan, Jim. *Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA.* Random House, 1984.
|
||||
[^10]: Kane, Charles W., Director of Security. Memorandum for the Inspector General, "Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, Request," May 22, 1975, JFK record 104-10106-10619.
|
||||
[^11]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Legislative Counsel, memorandum for the record, "Select Committee Testimony of 6 February 1974," OLC 74-0197, February 6, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01474420.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -9,13 +9,22 @@ tags:
|
|||
summary: "McMahon, along with Norm Everheart, had been involved in psychic spying experiments since the early days of the CIA-sponsored work at SRI."
|
||||
born: 1929-07-03
|
||||
location: "East Norwalk, Connecticut"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: head_of
|
||||
with: "[[Office of Technical Service]]"
|
||||
start: 1973-05
|
||||
end: 1974-07
|
||||
role: "Director of the Office of Technical Service"
|
||||
fn: 2
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[[John McMahon]] was the Deputy Director for Operations at the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]. He also served as the head of the [[Office of Technical Service|Office of Technical Service]] (OTS), indicating his significant role in technical and covert operations, including those involving psychic intelligence.[^1]
|
||||
[[John McMahon]] was the Deputy Director for Operations at the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]].[^1] McMahon was Director of the [[Office of Technical Service]] (OTS) from May 1973 to July 1974, after the Technical Services Division was renamed and moved from the Directorate of Plans to the Directorate of Science and Technology.[^2] As OTS director he signed, with Sayre Stevens, Director of the Office of Research and Development, an undated memorandum to the Deputy Director for Science and Technology (a companion version of DD/S&T 3697-73, which carries an approval block for [[William Colby]] as Director and a December 5, 1973 stamp) recommending that the paranormal perception investigation at Stanford Research Institute be jointly funded by the two offices.[^3] The CIA's history of the office lists him as "Former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Director for Operations and Director of Technical Service," and a later passage calls him "the first OTS Director."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
McMahon, along with [[Norm Everheart]], had been involved in psychic spying experiments since the early days of the CIA-sponsored work at [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]]. They were willing to give remote viewing a try in operational situations. McMahon was the superior of Norm Everheart, who served as the chief coordinator for [[Stargate Project|Grill Flame]] taskings from the CIA's Operations Directorate.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
|
||||
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
|
||||
[^2]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Office of Technical Service: 50 Years Supporting Operations," 2001, CIA Reading Room document 0001225679, "Directors of the Office of Technical Service," the anniversary program and p. 18 (the 1973 reorganization).
|
||||
[^3]: Memorandum, McMahon and Stevens to the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, "Office of Research and Development and Office of Technical Service Paranormal Perception Research Project," CIA-RDP96-00787R000200200031-6 (companion version of DD/S&T 3697-73, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200210003-6).
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-08
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
title: Richard Helms
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Richard McGarrah Helms
|
||||
|
|
@ -43,11 +43,11 @@ When the Warren Commission was established in November 1963 to investigate Kenne
|
|||
|
||||
In August 1967, Helms received President Johnson's instruction to determine whether foreign powers were directing the American antiwar movement. He tasked [[James Jesus Angleton|James Angleton]]'s Counterintelligence Staff with establishing the Special Operations Group that became MHCHAOS. He subsequently expanded the program under President Nixon's administration, approving Project MERRIMAC (domestic infiltration of antiwar organizations) and [[Project RESISTANCE]] (coordination with campus administrators and local police to compile dossiers on student organizations).
|
||||
|
||||
In December 1972, knowing that Watergate-related congressional investigations were expanding, Helms ordered the operational records of MHCHAOS destroyed. A partial cache of budget and administrative documents survived only because it had been misfiled in a different location. In the same period, he ordered the destruction of records related to MKULTRA, the CIA's two-decade human experimentation program using LSD and other substances on unwitting subjects. The Church Committee found that these records destructions had permanently deprived investigators of a complete documentary record of both programs.[^1]
|
||||
In December 1972, knowing that Watergate-related congressional investigations were expanding, Helms ordered the operational records of MHCHAOS destroyed. A partial cache of budget and administrative documents survived only because it had been misfiled in a different location. The records of MKULTRA, the CIA's two-decade human experimentation program using LSD and other substances on unwitting subjects, were destroyed in January 1973. Technical Services Division personnel destroyed them on the verbal orders of [[Sidney Gottlieb]]. Gottlieb testified that he was carrying out a verbal order from Helms in doing so, and Helms confirmed that the order was his.[^3] The Church Committee found that these records destructions had permanently deprived investigators of a complete documentary record of both programs.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Proposing and Protecting MKULTRA
|
||||
|
||||
Helms was the program's originator as much as its protector. On April 3, 1953 he formally proposed to Director [[Allen Dulles]] a program under [[Sidney Gottlieb]] for the "covert use of biological and chemical materials," arguing that "the development of a comprehensive capability in this field gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy's theoretical potential" against "a foe who might not be as restrained ... as we are"; Dulles approved it as MKULTRA ten days later. Helms nurtured Gottlieb as his personal specialist and, bypassing the layers of command between them, dealt with him directly, embodying the conviction he later voiced in Senate testimony, that a clandestine operator "can't count on the honesty of your agent ... unless you own him body and soul." When the program needed a new charter in 1964 he agreed to rename it [[MKSEARCH]] on the condition that its substance remain the same.[^3]
|
||||
Helms was the program's originator as much as its protector. On April 3, 1953 he formally proposed to Director [[Allen Dulles]] a program under Sidney Gottlieb for the "covert use of biological and chemical materials," arguing that "the development of a comprehensive capability in this field gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy's theoretical potential" against "a foe who might not be as restrained ... as we are"; Dulles approved it as MKULTRA ten days later. Helms nurtured Gottlieb as his personal specialist and, bypassing the layers of command between them, dealt with him directly, embodying the conviction he later voiced in Senate testimony, that a clandestine operator "can't count on the honesty of your agent ... unless you own him body and soul." When the program needed a new charter in 1964 he agreed to rename it [[MKSEARCH]] on the condition that its substance remain the same.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### MKULTRA Continuation and Psychic Research
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -65,19 +65,19 @@ In February 1973, when Helms testified before the [[Senate Foreign Relations Com
|
|||
|
||||
### The Israeli estimate and the June 1967 warning
|
||||
|
||||
On May 25, 1967, Helms had the [[Office of National Estimates]] appraise an Israeli intelligence estimate within five hours. The appraisal stated: "We do not believe that the Israeli appreciation . . . was a serious estimate of the sort they would submit to their own high officials. We think it is probably a gambit intended to influence the US to do one or more of the following: (a) provide military supplies, (b) make more public commitments to Israel, (c) approve Israeli military initiatives, and (d) put more pressure on Nasser." [[David S. Robarge]], the CIA's chief historian, describes the Israeli paper as a [[Mossad]] estimate and writes that the Israelis may have been exploiting their special relationship with James Jesus Angleton.[^4][^5]
|
||||
On May 25, 1967, Helms had the [[Office of National Estimates]] appraise an Israeli intelligence estimate within five hours. The appraisal stated: "We do not believe that the Israeli appreciation . . . was a serious estimate of the sort they would submit to their own high officials. We think it is probably a gambit intended to influence the US to do one or more of the following: (a) provide military supplies, (b) make more public commitments to Israel, (c) approve Israeli military initiatives, and (d) put more pressure on Nasser." [[David S. Robarge]], the CIA's chief historian, describes the Israeli paper as a [[Mossad]] estimate and writes that the Israelis may have been exploiting their special relationship with James Jesus Angleton.[^5][^6]
|
||||
|
||||
On June 1, 1967, Helms's deputy, Vice Admiral [[Rufus Taylor]], wrote the memorandum of the conversation between Major General [[Meir Amit]] and Secretary of Defense [[Robert S. McNamara]], captioned "Personal and Eyes Only for the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence."[^6] Robarge writes that Helms met a senior Israeli official on June 1 who hinted that Israel could no longer avoid a decision, that the official left the United States on June 2, and that that morning Helms wrote an "Eyes Only" letter to President Johnson forewarning that Israel probably would start a war within a few days.[^7] Helms was awakened at 3:00 a.m. on June 5 by a call from the CIA Operations Center. He recalled that "in the midst of one meeting" during the war Johnson asked how accurate his intelligence on the progress of the war was, and that he answered: "It's accurate just as long as the Israelis are winning."[^5]
|
||||
On June 1, 1967, Helms's deputy, Vice Admiral [[Rufus Taylor]], wrote the memorandum of the conversation between Major General [[Meir Amit]] and Secretary of Defense [[Robert S. McNamara]], captioned "Personal and Eyes Only for the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence."[^7] Robarge writes that Helms met a senior Israeli official on June 1 who hinted that Israel could no longer avoid a decision, that the official left the United States on June 2, and that that morning Helms wrote an "Eyes Only" letter to President Johnson forewarning that Israel probably would start a war within a few days.[^8] Helms was awakened at 3:00 a.m. on June 5 by a call from the CIA Operations Center. He recalled that "in the midst of one meeting" during the war Johnson asked how accurate his intelligence on the progress of the war was, and that he answered: "It's accurate just as long as the Israelis are winning."[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### NUMEC letter, April 1968
|
||||
|
||||
On April 2, 1968, Helms wrote to Attorney General [[Ramsey Clark]] asking that the FBI "initiate a discreet intelligence investigation of an all source nature of Dr. Shapiro in order to establish the nature and extent of his relationship with the Government of Israel," and asked that the letter be returned to him once the Attorney General had acted, because the subject matter was "so sensitive for obvious reasons." A twelve-line passage before the request remains redacted.[^8] The subject was [[Zalman Mordecai Shapiro]] of the [[Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation]].
|
||||
On April 2, 1968, Helms wrote to Attorney General [[Ramsey Clark]] asking that the FBI "initiate a discreet intelligence investigation of an all source nature of Dr. Shapiro in order to establish the nature and extent of his relationship with the Government of Israel," and asked that the letter be returned to him once the Attorney General had acted, because the subject matter was "so sensitive for obvious reasons." A twelve-line passage before the request remains redacted.[^9] The subject was [[Zalman Mordecai Shapiro]] of the [[Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation]].
|
||||
|
||||
### Israel: The "Open Pipeline" Assessment
|
||||
|
||||
Helms developed a personal conviction, disclosed to his deputies, that Israel was providing American satellite intelligence to the [[Soviet Union]] as part of an undisclosed intelligence exchange - characterizing Israel as "an open pipeline for pumping intelligence to Moscow." He never officially reported this assessment or commissioned a formal investigation, and he took no documented action on it. His reluctance reflected both the sensitivity of accusing an ally and the particular weight of any assessment that ran against the interests managed by Angleton's [[KK MOUNTAIN]] Israeli liaison program.
|
||||
|
||||
When President Johnson sought an intelligence assessment of whether Israel had manufactured nuclear weapons, Helms provided the estimate (four warheads) and then obeyed Johnson's instruction that the finding be buried rather than formally reported. Johnson did not want intelligence conclusions that would require him to act on them politically. Helms's willingness to suppress an accurate intelligence product at presidential direction exemplified the institutional failure the Church Committee later documented.[^9]
|
||||
When President Johnson sought an intelligence assessment of whether Israel had manufactured nuclear weapons, Helms provided the estimate (four warheads) and then obeyed Johnson's instruction that the finding be buried rather than formally reported. Johnson did not want intelligence conclusions that would require him to act on them politically. Helms's willingness to suppress an accurate intelligence product at presidential direction exemplified the institutional failure the Church Committee later documented.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
### Iran, Retirement, and Memoirs
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -89,10 +89,11 @@ He published his memoirs, *A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intell
|
|||
|
||||
[^1]: Powers, Thomas. *The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA.* Knopf, 1979 (the essential biography, based on extensive interviews). Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). Final Report, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976.
|
||||
[^2]: Church Committee. "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders." Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975 (documents ZR/RIFLE and the failure to disclose to Warren Commission). Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown, 2017.
|
||||
[^3]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 1, 4, 12.
|
||||
[^4]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 61, Memorandum from Rostow to President Johnson, May 25, 1967, with attached CIA appraisal. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d61
|
||||
[^5]: Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." *Studies in Intelligence* 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf
|
||||
[^6]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 124, Memorandum for the Record by Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, June 1, 1967 (prepared June 2). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d124
|
||||
[^7]: Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." *Studies in Intelligence* 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf For the June 1 to 2 meeting Robarge relies on published accounts, among them Michael B. Oren's, which rest on Amit's interviews and writings.
|
||||
[^8]: National Security Archive, "The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program?" (November 2, 2016), Document 8, Letter from Richard Helms to Ramsey Clark, April 2, 1968 (ISCAP Appeal No. 2013-062). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program
|
||||
[^9]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Chapters 11, 14, 16.
|
||||
[^3]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, Book I, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, p. 389 (MKULTRA records destroyed January 1973 on Gottlieb's verbal orders; Gottlieb testifying that he carried out Helms's verbal order; Helms confirming).
|
||||
[^4]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 1, 4, 12.
|
||||
[^5]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 61, Memorandum from Rostow to President Johnson, May 25, 1967, with attached CIA appraisal. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d61
|
||||
[^6]: Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." *Studies in Intelligence* 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf
|
||||
[^7]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 124, Memorandum for the Record by Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, June 1, 1967 (prepared June 2). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d124
|
||||
[^8]: Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." *Studies in Intelligence* 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf For the June 1 to 2 meeting Robarge relies on published accounts, among them Michael B. Oren's, which rest on Amit's interviews and writings.
|
||||
[^9]: National Security Archive, "The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program?" (November 2, 2016), Document 8, Letter from Richard Helms to Ramsey Clark, April 2, 1968 (ISCAP Appeal No. 2013-062). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program
|
||||
[^10]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Chapters 11, 14, 16.
|
||||
|
|
|
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|
|
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ born: 1923-06-10
|
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died: 1991-11-05
|
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location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
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created: 2024-04-25
|
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updated: 2026-09-25
|
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updated: 2026-10-09
|
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relations:
|
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- type: founded
|
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with: "[[Pergamon Press]]"
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|
@ -93,29 +93,31 @@ Three pathologists examining the body reached differing conclusions, one favorin
|
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|
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### Intelligence Allegations
|
||||
|
||||
Allegations that Maxwell worked for Israeli intelligence were aired publicly in October 1991, shortly before his death, when [[Seymour Hersh]] discussed his book [[The Samson Option]] at a London press conference, asserting that Maxwell and his Daily Mirror foreign editor [[Nicholas Davies]] had links to Israeli intelligence and that Davies was involved in Israeli arms dealing.[^17] Hersh further alleged that Maxwell had relayed information to the Israeli embassy in London that led to the capture of the nuclear whistleblower [[Mordechai Vanunu]], a claim Maxwell denounced as a total invention.[^17] Labour MP [[George Galloway]] and Conservative MP [[Rupert Allason]] raised the espionage claims in the [[House of Commons]] under parliamentary privilege on October 21, 1991, and Maxwell sued Hersh and his British publisher for libel; after Maxwell's death the action lapsed, and the Mirror Group later apologized to Hersh and paid damages.[^17] The allegations against Davies were also the subject of an Early Day Motion in the Commons, EDM 2134, "Mirror Group Newspapers and Israeli Intelligence."[^18] Galloway used parliamentary privilege again in January 1996, in a debate on [[Saudi Arabia]], to allege that commissions on the [[Al-Yamamah]] arms sales had been paid through middlemen including [[Mark Thatcher]] and the defense contractor [[Douglas Leese]], whom [[Steven Hoffenberg]] later credited with introducing him to Jeffrey Epstein.[^19][^20]
|
||||
Allegations that Maxwell worked for Israeli intelligence were aired publicly in October 1991, shortly before his death, when [[Seymour Hersh]] discussed his book [[The Samson Option]] at a London press conference, asserting that Maxwell and his Daily Mirror foreign editor [[Nicholas Davies]] had links to Israeli intelligence and that Davies was involved in Israeli arms dealing.[^17] Hersh further alleged that Maxwell had relayed information to the Israeli embassy in London that led to the capture of the nuclear whistleblower [[Mordechai Vanunu]], a claim Maxwell denounced as a total invention.[^17] Labour MP [[George Galloway]] and Conservative MP [[Rupert Allason]] raised the espionage claims in the [[House of Commons]] under parliamentary privilege on October 22, 1991, and Maxwell sued Hersh and his British publisher for libel; the Mirror Group later apologized to Hersh and paid damages.[^17] The allegations against Davies were also the subject of an Early Day Motion in the Commons, EDM 2134, "Mirror Group Newspapers and Israeli Intelligence."[^18] Galloway used parliamentary privilege again in January 1996, in a debate on [[Saudi Arabia]], to allege that commissions on the [[Al-Yamamah]] arms sales had been paid through middlemen including [[Mark Thatcher]] and the defense contractor [[Douglas Leese]], whom [[Steven Hoffenberg]] later credited with introducing him to Jeffrey Epstein.[^19][^20]
|
||||
|
||||
The most detailed espionage account came from [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], a self-described former employee of the Israeli [[Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel)|Military Intelligence Directorate]], who claimed in his 1992 book [[Profits of War]] that Maxwell and Davies were long-time [[Mossad]] assets, and that Davies had tipped him to Vanunu's 1986 approach to the [[Sunday Mirror]] over the photographs Vanunu had taken at [[Dimona]], introducing him to Vanunu's intermediary [[Oscar Guerrero]]; Vanunu was subsequently lured from London to [[Rome]], seized by Israeli operatives, and convicted in Israel.[^21][^22]
|
||||
Seymour Hersh's book *The Samson Option* was published in Britain on Monday, October 21, 1991, and on the following day the MPs George Galloway and Rupert Allason repeated its allegations about Maxwell and Nicholas Davies in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege.[^21] On October 23, 1991, Maxwell, then in New York, sought an injunction against distribution of the book, and Mirror Group Newspapers said libel writs were being issued against [[Faber and Faber]]. Maxwell said, "The accusations against me are ludicrous, a total invention."[^22] Newsweek reported on November 4, 1991 that Maxwell had sued, Davies had sued, and Faber and Faber had sued back.[^23] On Thursday, August 18, 1994, Mirror Group Newspapers apologized "unreservedly" in court for a series of October 1991 articles attacking Hersh and Faber and Faber, acknowledged that its attacks were "entirely improper," and agreed to pay Hersh and his publisher "substantial damages and meet their legal costs."[^24]
|
||||
|
||||
The Welsh author Gordon Thomas, in [[Gideon's Spies]] (1999) and the later book Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy (2002), drew partly on Ben-Menashe and on the Israeli operative [[Rafi Eitan]] to allege that Maxwell helped distribute a version of the [[PROMIS]] case-management software that Israeli technicians had fitted with a hidden "trapdoor," enabling Israel to monitor the foreign agencies that bought it, marketing it through the [[Tel Aviv]] firm [[Degem|Degem Computers]].[^7][^23] In these accounts Maxwell received a flat fee of about 8 million dollars plus a percentage of revenues, and the agencies said to have received the software through his network included those of the [[United Kingdom]], Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], [[South Africa]], Jordan, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua, with an abridged version said to have been sold to [[Credit Suisse]] in 1985 and a Soviet sale in the late 1980s facilitated by the lifting of [[IBM]] export restrictions.[^7][^21] [[INSLAW]] separately alleged that Maxwell contributed 600,000 dollars from a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence slush fund to secure the removal of its lead litigation counsel [[Leigh Ratiner]], and that the former senator [[John Tower]] had approached Maxwell in 1984 on behalf of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-connected group to formalize his role as the PROMIS marketing intermediary; the [[Nicholas J. Bua|Bua Report]] found no credible evidence for these claims.[^21][^24]
|
||||
The most detailed espionage account came from [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], a self-described former employee of the Israeli [[Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel)|Military Intelligence Directorate]], who claimed in his 1992 book [[Profits of War]] that Maxwell and Davies were long-time [[Mossad]] assets, and that Davies had tipped him to Vanunu's 1986 approach to the [[Sunday Mirror]] over the photographs Vanunu had taken at [[Dimona]], introducing him to Vanunu's intermediary [[Oscar Guerrero]]; Vanunu was subsequently lured from London to [[Rome]], seized by Israeli operatives, and convicted in Israel.[^25][^26]
|
||||
|
||||
Ben-Menashe's reliability has been repeatedly questioned, including by a 1993 congressional task force, and no declassified record has substantiated the PROMIS-distribution or recruitment allegations; an Israeli prime minister's spokesman dismissed Thomas's claims as "unmitigated drivel."[^7][^25] In February 1994 INSLAW argued that twenty pages the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] had released under the [[Freedom of Information Act]] showed its Albuquerque office had run a foreign counterintelligence investigation of Maxwell and one of his companies, and that this must concern a PROMIS sale to a defense installation in [[New Mexico]]; the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s reviewers, having read the unredacted documents, called the inference "a remarkable leap" and wrote that "none of the documents in question even mentioned INSLAW or PROMIS... In short, there is nothing of which we are aware that links Mr. Maxwell to PROMIS."[^26] Maxwell was also long rumored to have had contacts with British intelligence and, given his Eastern European origins and trading ties, with the Soviet [[KGB]], though these characterizations rest on journalistic sourcing rather than disclosed files, and no archive of any of the three services has been released that confirms a formal agent relationship.[^2][^7]
|
||||
The Welsh author Gordon Thomas, in [[Gideon's Spies]] (1999) and the later book Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy (2002), drew partly on Ben-Menashe and on the Israeli operative [[Rafi Eitan]] to allege that Maxwell helped distribute a version of the [[PROMIS]] case-management software that Israeli technicians had fitted with a hidden "trapdoor," enabling Israel to monitor the foreign agencies that bought it, marketing it through the [[Tel Aviv]] firm [[Degem|Degem Computers]].[^7][^27] In these accounts Maxwell received a flat fee of about 8 million dollars plus a percentage of revenues, and the agencies said to have received the software through his network included those of the [[United Kingdom]], Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], [[South Africa]], Jordan, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua, with an abridged version said to have been sold to [[Credit Suisse]] in 1985 and a Soviet sale in the late 1980s facilitated by the lifting of [[IBM]] export restrictions.[^7][^25] [[INSLAW]] separately alleged that Maxwell contributed 600,000 dollars from a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence slush fund to secure the removal of its lead litigation counsel [[Leigh Ratiner]], and that the former senator [[John Tower]] had approached Maxwell in 1984 on behalf of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-connected group to formalize his role as the PROMIS marketing intermediary; the [[Nicholas J. Bua|Bua Report]] found no credible evidence for these claims.[^25][^28]
|
||||
|
||||
Ben-Menashe's reliability has been repeatedly questioned, including by a 1993 congressional task force, and no declassified record has substantiated the PROMIS-distribution or recruitment allegations; an Israeli prime minister's spokesman dismissed Thomas's claims as "unmitigated drivel."[^7][^29] In February 1994 INSLAW argued that twenty pages the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] had released under the [[Freedom of Information Act]] showed its Albuquerque office had run a foreign counterintelligence investigation of Maxwell and one of his companies, and that this must concern a PROMIS sale to a defense installation in [[New Mexico]]; the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s reviewers, having read the unredacted documents, called the inference "a remarkable leap" and wrote that "none of the documents in question even mentioned INSLAW or PROMIS... In short, there is nothing of which we are aware that links Mr. Maxwell to PROMIS."[^30] Maxwell was also long rumored to have had contacts with British intelligence and, given his Eastern European origins and trading ties, with the Soviet [[KGB]], though these characterizations rest on journalistic sourcing rather than disclosed files, and no archive of any of the three services has been released that confirms a formal agent relationship.[^2][^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Murder Allegations
|
||||
|
||||
Two former Israeli intelligence figures alleged that Maxwell was killed on Mossad orders. The former case officer [[Victor Ostrovsky]], in his 1994 memoir *The Other Side of Deception*, wrote that Maxwell had become a liability once his empire began collapsing and had threatened to expose Mossad operations unless the agency rescued him financially, ending the passage with the line, "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."[^27] Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy* (2002), identified [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi Eitan]] as having overseen an assassination and named the operative they said carried it out only by the pseudonym "Efraim," describing the killing as having occurred on the aft deck of the Lady Ghislaine before the body entered the water.[^23] Maxwell's family and the Spanish judicial finding rejected all foul-play theories, and no official inquiry has substantiated them; the proximity of Maxwell's death to that of the journalist [[Danny Casolaro]] 87 days earlier, whose "[[The Octopus]]" investigation had encompassed the PROMIS distribution network, was noted by INSLAW and congressional investigators.[^7][^24]
|
||||
Two former Israeli intelligence figures alleged that Maxwell was killed on Mossad orders. The former case officer [[Victor Ostrovsky]], in his 1994 memoir *The Other Side of Deception*, wrote that Maxwell had become a liability once his empire began collapsing and had threatened to expose Mossad operations unless the agency rescued him financially, ending the passage with the line, "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."[^31] Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy* (2002), identified [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi Eitan]] as having overseen an assassination and named the operative they said carried it out only by the pseudonym "Efraim," describing the killing as having occurred on the aft deck of the Lady Ghislaine before the body entered the water.[^27] Maxwell's family and the Spanish judicial finding rejected all foul-play theories, and no official inquiry has substantiated them; the proximity of Maxwell's death to that of the journalist [[Danny Casolaro]] 87 days earlier, whose "[[The Octopus]]" investigation had encompassed the PROMIS distribution network, was noted by INSLAW and congressional investigators.[^7][^28]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Allegations in JPMorgan's Files and Epstein's Email
|
||||
|
||||
The Mossad allegations entered the compliance record of [[JPMorgan Chase|JPMorgan]]. On December 6, 2013 the Reputation Risk Committee of the bank's asset management division met in the office of its chair, John Duffy, to review the account of Ghislaine Maxwell, which the summary said had been "originally referred to the PB by Jes Staley," referring to [[Jes Staley]] and the private bank. The summary described her as "the daughter of the late Robert Maxwell," recounted the collapse of his companies and the theft from their pension funds, and stated: "Shortly before Maxwell's death, a former employee of Israel's [[Aman|Military Intelligence Directorate]] intelligence agency Ari Ben-Menashe, had approached a number of news organizations in Britain and the United States with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas [surname omitted in the document] were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that in 1986 Maxwell had told the Israeli Embassy in London that [[Mordecai Vanunu|Mordechai Vanunu]] had given information about Israel's nuclear capability to [[The Sunday Times]], then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for 18 years." Under negative news it listed 2011 reports "alleging Maxwell solicited young girls for then boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein" and noted that Epstein "is currently being exited from the Bank." The committee's decision was "Exit client," for the reason "Negative media."[^28] The summary was filed as an exhibit in the [[United States Virgin Islands]]' 2023 suit against the bank.[^28]
|
||||
The Mossad allegations entered the compliance record of [[JPMorgan Chase|JPMorgan]]. On December 6, 2013 the Reputation Risk Committee of the bank's asset management division met in the office of its chair, John Duffy, to review the account of Ghislaine Maxwell, which the summary said had been "originally referred to the PB by Jes Staley," referring to [[Jes Staley]] and the private bank. The summary described her as "the daughter of the late Robert Maxwell," recounted the collapse of his companies and the theft from their pension funds, and stated: "Shortly before Maxwell's death, a former employee of Israel's [[Aman|Military Intelligence Directorate]] intelligence agency Ari Ben-Menashe, had approached a number of news organizations in Britain and the United States with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas [surname omitted in the document] were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that in 1986 Maxwell had told the Israeli Embassy in London that [[Mordecai Vanunu|Mordechai Vanunu]] had given information about Israel's nuclear capability to [[The Sunday Times]], then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for 18 years." Under negative news it listed 2011 reports "alleging Maxwell solicited young girls for then boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein" and noted that Epstein "is currently being exited from the Bank." The committee's decision was "Exit client," for the reason "Negative media."[^32] The summary was filed as an exhibit in the [[United States Virgin Islands]]' 2023 suit against the bank.[^32]
|
||||
|
||||
On March 15, 2018 Epstein sent an email with the subject line "he was passed away" to a recipient whose name is redacted. It consisted of quoted passages, their source not shown, stating that "Robert Maxwell 'threatened Mossad," that he told the agency "unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them," that "he had free access to [[Margaret Thatcher]]'s Downing Street, to [[Ronald Reagan]]'s [[White House]], to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe," that "Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv," and that "He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc."[^29]
|
||||
On March 15, 2018 Epstein sent an email with the subject line "he was passed away" to a recipient whose name is redacted. It consisted of quoted passages, their source not shown, stating that "Robert Maxwell 'threatened Mossad," that he told the agency "unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them," that "he had free access to [[Margaret Thatcher]]'s Downing Street, to [[Ronald Reagan]]'s [[White House]], to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe," that "Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv," and that "He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc."[^33]
|
||||
|
||||
### Funeral in Jerusalem
|
||||
|
||||
Maxwell's body was flown to Israel, and on November 10, 1991, he was given a state-style funeral and buried on the [[Mount of Olives]] in [[Jerusalem]], one of Judaism's most revered burial grounds.[^30] The ceremony at Jerusalem's convention center drew President [[Chaim Herzog]], Prime Minister [[Yitzhak Shamir]], and much of the Israeli political establishment, with reporting that at least six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence were present.[^7][^30] His friend and longtime attorney [[Samuel Pisar]], a Holocaust survivor, recited the Kaddish.[^1]
|
||||
Maxwell's body was flown to Israel, and on November 10, 1991, he was given a state-style funeral and buried on the [[Mount of Olives]] in [[Jerusalem]], one of Judaism's most revered burial grounds.[^34] The ceremony at Jerusalem's convention center drew President [[Chaim Herzog]], Prime Minister [[Yitzhak Shamir]], and much of the Israeli political establishment, with reporting that at least six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence were present.[^7][^34] His friend and longtime attorney [[Samuel Pisar]], a Holocaust survivor, recited the Kaddish.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Herzog eulogized him with the words, "He scaled the heights of human endeavor. Kings and princes waited on him."[^30] Shamir praised the connections and investment Maxwell had brought to Israel during the 1980s, reportedly saying that Maxwell had done more for Israel than could then be told.[^31] The scale of the official Israeli observance was later cited by writers who argued it reflected an intelligence relationship, though attendance at a prominent Jewish philanthropist's funeral is not itself evidence of espionage, and no Israeli official has confirmed that Maxwell was an agent.[^7][^30]
|
||||
Herzog eulogized him with the words, "He scaled the heights of human endeavor. Kings and princes waited on him."[^34] Shamir praised the connections and investment Maxwell had brought to Israel during the 1980s, reportedly saying that Maxwell had done more for Israel than could then be told.[^35] The scale of the official Israeli observance was later cited by writers who argued it reflected an intelligence relationship, though attendance at a prominent Jewish philanthropist's funeral is not itself evidence of espionage, and no Israeli official has confirmed that Maxwell was an agent.[^7][^34]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -139,14 +141,18 @@ Herzog eulogized him with the words, "He scaled the heights of human endeavor. K
|
|||
[^18]: UK Parliament, Early Day Motion 2134, "Mirror Group Newspapers and Israeli Intelligence." https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/2134/mirror-group-newspapers-and-israeli-intelligence
|
||||
[^19]: House of Commons, *Hansard,* HC Deb 24 January 1996, vol 270, cc453-462, "Saudi Arabia" (George Galloway). https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1996/jan/24/saudi-arabia
|
||||
[^20]: Ward, Vicky. "The Talented Mr. Epstein." *Vanity Fair,* March 2003. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
|
||||
[^21]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992.
|
||||
[^22]: Contemporaneous press reporting on the 1986 Mordechai Vanunu affair and the Sunday Mirror's handling of his Dimona account, on which Ben-Menashe's claims about Nicholas Davies and Oscar Guerrero rest.
|
||||
[^23]: Thomas, Gordon, and Martin Dillon. *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul.* Carroll & Graf, 2002.
|
||||
[^24]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, on the rejection of the Leigh Ratiner and PROMIS-distribution allegations and the proximity of the Casolaro and Maxwell deaths.
|
||||
[^25]: "Probe by House finds no 'October surprise,'" *The Baltimore Sun,* 1993. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-01-13-1993013111-story.html
|
||||
[^26]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* September 27, 1994, section on the INSLAW addendum of February 1994. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
|
||||
[^27]: Ostrovsky, Victor. *The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda.* HarperCollins, 1994, on the alleged Mossad motive to eliminate Maxwell as a collapsing liability.
|
||||
[^28]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02816127, Court Records, Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 22-cv-10904 (S.D.N.Y.), ECF No. 285-12, Exhibit 55, filed August 15, 2023, "AM Reputation Risk Committee Meeting Summary," meeting of December 6, 2013. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/Court%20Records/Government%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Virgin%20Islands%20v.%20JPMorgan%20Chase%20Bank%2C%20N.A.%2C%20No.%20122-cv-10904%20(S.D.N.Y.%202022)/EFTA02816127.pdf
|
||||
[^29]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02507843, DataSet 11, email from Jeffrey Epstein, "he was passed away," March 15, 2018. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02507843.pdf
|
||||
[^30]: "Maxwell, Colossus Even in Death, Laid to Rest on Mount of Olives," *Jewish Telegraphic Agency,* 1991. https://www.jta.org/archive/maxwell-colossus-even-in-death-laid-to-rest-on-mount-of-olives
|
||||
[^31]: "Maxwell buried on Mount of Olives," *UPI,* 1991. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/11/10/Maxwell-buried-on-Mount-of-Olives/4340689749200/
|
||||
[^21]: "Mirrorgate: Spies, Arms Dealers and Secrets," The Sunday Times (London), October 27, 1991, reproduced at https://peterhounam.com/?p=4257.
|
||||
[^22]: United Press International, "Maxwell to seek injunction against book," October 23, 1991, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/10/23/Maxwell-to-seek-injunction-against-book/9254688190400/.
|
||||
[^23]: "One Man, Many Tales," Newsweek, November 4, 1991, https://www.newsweek.com/one-man-many-tales-201744.
|
||||
[^24]: Associated Press, "Writer wins damages, apology in libel suit," Deseret News, August 20, 1994, https://www.deseret.com/1994/8/20/19125977/writer-wins-damages-apology-in-libel-suit.
|
||||
[^25]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992.
|
||||
[^26]: Contemporaneous press reporting on the 1986 Mordechai Vanunu affair and the Sunday Mirror's handling of his Dimona account, on which Ben-Menashe's claims about Nicholas Davies and Oscar Guerrero rest.
|
||||
[^27]: Thomas, Gordon, and Martin Dillon. *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul.* Carroll & Graf, 2002.
|
||||
[^28]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, on the rejection of the Leigh Ratiner and PROMIS-distribution allegations and the proximity of the Casolaro and Maxwell deaths.
|
||||
[^29]: "Probe by House finds no 'October surprise,'" *The Baltimore Sun,* 1993. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-01-13-1993013111-story.html
|
||||
[^30]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* September 27, 1994, section on the INSLAW addendum of February 1994. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
|
||||
[^31]: Ostrovsky, Victor. *The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda.* HarperCollins, 1994, on the alleged Mossad motive to eliminate Maxwell as a collapsing liability.
|
||||
[^32]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02816127, Court Records, Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 22-cv-10904 (S.D.N.Y.), ECF No. 285-12, Exhibit 55, filed August 15, 2023, "AM Reputation Risk Committee Meeting Summary," meeting of December 6, 2013. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/Court%20Records/Government%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Virgin%20Islands%20v.%20JPMorgan%20Chase%20Bank%2C%20N.A.%2C%20No.%20122-cv-10904%20(S.D.N.Y.%202022)/EFTA02816127.pdf
|
||||
[^33]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02507843, DataSet 11, email from Jeffrey Epstein, "he was passed away," March 15, 2018. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02507843.pdf
|
||||
[^34]: "Maxwell, Colossus Even in Death, Laid to Rest on Mount of Olives," *Jewish Telegraphic Agency,* 1991. https://www.jta.org/archive/maxwell-colossus-even-in-death-laid-to-rest-on-mount-of-olives
|
||||
[^35]: "Maxwell buried on Mount of Olives," *UPI,* 1991. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/11/10/Maxwell-buried-on-Mount-of-Olives/4340689749200/
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -11,18 +11,20 @@ tags:
|
|||
- FISACourt
|
||||
- DOJ
|
||||
- Judiciary
|
||||
summary: "Chief of the civil division of the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington who, weeks before taking the federal bench in 1987, delivered Judge Bason's INSLAW ruling to the judge chairing the panel on Bason's reappointment; later presiding judge of the FISA court."
|
||||
summary: "Washington U.S. Attorney's civil chief who, weeks before joining the federal bench in 1987, delivered Judge Bason's INSLAW ruling to the judge chairing the reappointment panel; later presiding judge of the FISA court."
|
||||
born: 1943
|
||||
location: "San Antonio, Texas"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Royce C. Lamberth (born 1943, San Antonio, [[Texas]]) is a judge of the [[United States District Court for the District of Columbia]], appointed by [[Ronald Reagan]] in 1987 after thirteen years in the [[U.S. Attorney's office]] for the District, where from 1978 he was chief of the civil division. He took his law degree at the [[University of Texas School of Law]] in 1967 and served as a captain in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps until 1974. He presided over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002, was chief judge of the district court from 2008 to 2013, and took senior status on July 15, 2013.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Bason Reappointment
|
||||
|
||||
On September 28, 1987, Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]] ruled from the bench that the [[Department of Justice]] had taken [[INSLAW]]'s [[PROMIS]] software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit." Bason's term was then before a merit selection panel of the district court chaired by Judge [[Norma H. Johnson]], which did not recommend his reappointment. Johnson told the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that she had received a transcript of Bason's oral ruling from Lamberth, "who at the time was the Chief of the Civil Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia"; she had at first failed to recall the contact. Bua's report noted that when Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention he was still employed at the U.S. Attorney's office but "had, in fact, already been nominated to the federal bench," Reagan having named him on March 19, 1987, "and was sworn in shortly thereafter, on November 16, 1987." The Senate had confirmed him on November 13. Bua concluded that no Justice Department official had improperly influenced the selection panel, that the contact was the only evidence found of any department contact with the reappointment process, and that the episode did not call Johnson's credibility into doubt.[^1][^2]
|
||||
On September 28, 1987, Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]] ruled from the bench that the [[Department of Justice]] had taken [[INSLAW]]'s [[PROMIS]] software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit." Bason's term was then before a merit selection panel of the district court chaired by Judge [[Norma H. Johnson]], which did not recommend his reappointment. Johnson told the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that she had received a transcript of Bason's oral ruling from Lamberth, "who at the time was the Chief of the Civil Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia." The report states that Johnson first recalled that a different district judge told her to get the transcript, and on contacting that judge found she was mistaken; it was Lamberth. After contacting Lamberth at the investigators' request she recalled that he handed her a copy and said something to the effect of "You ought to see this"; Lamberth could not recall whether he delivered it or referred her to it. Reagan named Lamberth to the district court on March 19, 1987. Bua's report states that he "was confirmed for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on November 13, 1987," and "was not sworn in until November 16, 1987."[^2] The Justice Department's September 27, 1994 review of the report wrote that when Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention he "had, in fact, already been nominated to the federal bench" and "was sworn in shortly thereafter, on November 16, 1987."[^3] Bua concluded that no Justice Department official had improperly influenced the selection panel, that the contact was the only evidence found of any department contact with the reappointment process, and that the episode did not call Johnson's credibility into doubt.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The report states that Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention because he wanted to avoid "blindsiding" the other judges on the committee he imagined would vote on Bason's reappointment; he correctly assumed he would be confirmed and sworn in before a bankruptcy judge was selected and erroneously believed that the district judges would make the selection. He had also asked the Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Patricia Froman]], who handled most bankruptcy cases for the government in the District, for her views of Bason, and she told him the government would be better off if Bason were not reappointed. The report wrote that Lamberth "had every reason to try to influence the selection process to select a bankruptcy judge in whom he had confidence," that his approach to the panel's chair was proper "even if he did so solely as a government attorney interested in opposing the appointment of a judge whom he regarded as unfair to the government," and that his conduct "bespeaks restraint, not a campaign to unseat Bason in retaliation for the Inslaw ruling." The report states that Johnson told the Senate subcommittee that she had no contacts with DOJ regarding Bason and received no negative input from DOJ on the Inslaw case, and that she appeared to have told the House committee the same.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Later Career
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -31,4 +33,5 @@ Lamberth's [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]] service ran from 1995 to
|
|||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Federal Judicial Center, "Lamberth, Royce C.," Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges. https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/lamberth-royce-c
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, pp. 156-157, 165-166 (the report's own pagination). https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, pp. 156-157, 160-165. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
|
||||
[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of the United States Department of Justice on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.* September 27, 1994, pp. 101-102. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -2,21 +2,209 @@
|
|||
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- Journalist
|
||||
- Nuclear
|
||||
- Israel
|
||||
summary: "Hersh conducted extensive research for *The Samson Option*, interviewing many senior American officials, most of whom spoke for the first time about their knowledge of Israel's nuclear arsenal."
|
||||
- Media
|
||||
- Pulitzer
|
||||
- MyLai
|
||||
- OperationCHAOS
|
||||
- Azorian
|
||||
- Holystone
|
||||
- ChurchCommittee
|
||||
- SamsonOption
|
||||
- Chile
|
||||
- AbuGhraib
|
||||
- AriBenMenashe
|
||||
- RobertMaxwell
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Seymour M. Hersh
|
||||
- Sy Hersh
|
||||
- Seymour Hersch
|
||||
summary: "Seymour M. Hersh is an investigative journalist whose reporting on My Lai, CIA domestic surveillance, Israel's nuclear program and Abu Ghraib drew responses from the governments concerned."
|
||||
born: 1937-04-08
|
||||
location: "Chicago, Illinois, USA"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[City News Bureau of Chicago]]"
|
||||
start: 1959
|
||||
end: 1960
|
||||
role: police reporter
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Associated Press]]"
|
||||
start: 1963
|
||||
end: 1967
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Eugene McCarthy]]"
|
||||
start: 1968
|
||||
end: 1968
|
||||
role: press secretary, presidential campaign
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Dispatch News Service]]"
|
||||
start: 1969
|
||||
end: 1970
|
||||
role: reporter, My Lai Massacre
|
||||
fn: 4
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[New York Times]]"
|
||||
start: 1972
|
||||
end: 1979
|
||||
role: Washington and New York reporter
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[The New Yorker]]"
|
||||
start: 1992
|
||||
role: contributor
|
||||
fn: 2
|
||||
- type: subject_of
|
||||
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||
start: 1975
|
||||
end: 1975
|
||||
role: proposed leak inquiry, May-June 1975
|
||||
fn: 24
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[[Seymour Hersh]] is an [[United States|American]] investigative journalist and author. His book, *The [[Samson Option]]: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, published in 1991, details how [[Israel]] secretly became a nuclear power and how this secret was largely ignored or sanctioned by top U.S. officials since the [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] years.[^1][^2]
|
||||
[[Seymour Hersh]] (born April 8, 1937, in [[Chicago, Illinois]]) is an [[United States|American]] investigative journalist and author. He won the 1970 [[Pulitzer Prize]] in International Reporting for his account of the [[My Lai Massacre]], reported for the [[New York Times]] in the 1970s, and has written books on [[Israel]]'s nuclear program, [[Henry A. Kissinger]] and [[John F. Kennedy]]. Several of his stories drew formal responses from the agencies and governments they named, and those responses are recorded in the files described below.
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh conducted extensive research for *The Samson Option*, interviewing many senior American officials, most of whom spoke for the first time about their knowledge of [[Israel]]'s nuclear arsenal. He chose not to conduct research in [[Israel]] due to the country's censorship laws, which require journalists to submit all material to military censors who can make changes or deletions if they perceive a threat to national security.[^2]
|
||||
### Early career
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh's book, along with [[Gary Sick|Gary Sick's]] *October Surprise*, quoted [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] as a prominent source. This led to an intense and prolonged barrage of media attacks seeking to discredit [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe]].[^1]
|
||||
Hersh was a police reporter for the [[City News Bureau of Chicago]] from 1959 to 1960.[^1] He then worked for [[United Press International]], which sent him to [[Pierre, South Dakota]]. In 1963 the [[Associated Press]] hired him in Chicago, and by 1964 he was working for the agency in Washington. He left the AP in 1967.[^1] His first book, *Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal*, was published by [[Bobbs-Merrill]] in 1968.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Robert Maxwell|Maxwell]] and the [[Mirror Newspaper Group]] sued [[Seymour Hersh|Hersh]] and his publishers over the allegations in *The [[Samson Option]]*. However, some of the critical denials in the *Mirror* articles were shown to be false, and [[Seymour Hersh|Hersh]] and his publishers filed a countersuit against [[Robert Maxwell|Maxwell]], [[Nicholas Davies]], and the [[Mirror Newspaper Group]].[^1]
|
||||
In 1968 Hersh was press secretary to Senator [[Eugene McCarthy]] during the antiwar Democrat's presidential primary campaign. He left politics after McCarthy lost the 1968 primaries.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### My Lai and the 1970 Pulitzer Prize
|
||||
|
||||
In November 1969 Hersh published his account of the My Lai Massacre through the [[Dispatch News Service]], a Washington agency that sold stories to newspapers. Under a directive of November 26, 1969, the [[U.S. Army]] had Lieutenant General [[William R. Peers]] investigate the original Army investigation of the events of March 16 to 19, 1968 in Son My Village, [[Quang Ngai Province]]. Peers's final report is dated March 14, 1970.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The 1970 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting went to Hersh, listed under the Dispatch News Service in Washington, for his reporting on My Lai.[^4] [[Random House]] published his books *My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath* in 1970 and *Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4* in 1972.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Indochina reporting and the CIA, 1972
|
||||
|
||||
On July 3, 1972, the New York Times ran Hersh's article reporting that the United States had been secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam, Laos and South Vietnam for military purposes. Government sources, civilian and military, told him the [[U.S. Air Force]] program had most recently been aimed at hindering the movement of North Vietnamese troops. A former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] agent was quoted saying that the agency first used the technique over Hue in about August 1963, when the [[Ngo Dinh Diem|Diem]] regime was facing Buddhist demonstrations.[^5] On July 5, 1972, John Goldsmith of the [[Senate Armed Services Committee]] staff called the CIA's legislative counsel, John M. Maury, to say that the story was attracting considerable interest and would no doubt be the subject of formal inquiry in upcoming Senate deliberations. Goldsmith said he was preparing a note for Chairman [[John Stennis]] suggesting that Stennis be briefed.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On November 30, 1972, Representative [[Lucien Nedzi]], chairman of the House Armed Services intelligence subcommittee, told the CIA's legislative counsel of an earlier conversation that day with Hersh. Nedzi relayed three allegations that he said Hersh had raised: that narcotics were coming out of Indochina on Continental Air Lines flights; that the CIA had conducted surveillance of foreign embassies in the United States, in one instance over the objection of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]; and that the Agency had used pressure to get an American traveling to China to cooperate in supplying information. The memorandum records that the third allegation concerned Nedzi most, and that the legislative counsel offered a briefing on the [[Domestic Contact Service]].[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Chile, 1974
|
||||
|
||||
On September 8, 1974, the New York Times published Hersh's report that [[William Colby]], the Director of Central Intelligence, had told Congress that the Nixon administration authorized more than $8 million in covert activities by the CIA in [[Chile]] between 1970 and 1973 to make it impossible for [[Salvador Allende]] to govern. Colby testified at a top-secret hearing in April 1974 that the aim was to "destabilize" the Marxist government. The article also reported that the agency first intervened against Allende in 1964, when he was a presidential candidate.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Operation CHAOS and the 1975 inquiries
|
||||
|
||||
On December 20, 1974, Colby met Hersh at CIA headquarters. In his memoir, Colby wrote that Hersh told him he had learned from several sources of a "massive" operation against the antiwar movement involving wiretaps, break-ins, mail intercepts and surveillance of American citizens, and that Colby told him the story had merged two separate matters: an operation to determine whether foreign powers were manipulating the antiwar movement, which Colby said had been terminated, and mail intercepts, wiretaps and surveillance that he said had nothing to do with the antiwar movement.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh's article in the New York Times of December 22, 1974, on page one and datelined December 21, reported from "well-placed Government sources" that the CIA had conducted a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups during the Nixon administration. It reported that intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens were kept by a special unit of the CIA reporting directly to [[Richard Helms]], then Ambassador to [[Iran]]. An unnamed official was quoted saying, "This is explosive, it could destroy the agency."[^9] According to the editors of the *Foreign Relations of the United States* volume, the article named [[James Jesus Angleton]] as overseer of the operations and [[Richard Ober]] as the official who assembled a large staff, and reported on mail opening and on surveillance of antiwar activists, journalists and former employees, including [[Victor Marchetti]]. It also reported that a check of CIA files ordered by [[James R. Schlesinger]] had produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities inside the United States beginning in the 1950s.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
The Department of Justice announced on December 23 that it would investigate the charges. Senators [[John Sparkman]] and Stennis and Representative Nedzi announced hearings for January. Colby telephoned President [[Gerald Ford]] aboard Air Force One and told him that nothing comparable to the article's allegations was going on in the Agency. On December 23, Henry A. Kissinger telephoned White House Chief of Staff [[Donald Rumsfeld]], who was in Vail. Kissinger told him, "I do know that Sy Hersh is a son-of-a-bitch," and recommended asking Colby for a written report on the body of fact to which the article referred.[^8] The White House had not been briefed on the catalogue of CIA misdeeds that Schlesinger had commissioned the year before, known as the [[CIA Family Jewels]].[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
CIA records carry the program as [[Operation CHAOS]], MHCHAOS. The first piece of official correspondence in the Agency's chronology is an August 15, 1967 memorandum from [[Thomas Karamessines]], Deputy Director for Plans, to the Chief of the Counter Intelligence Staff, which named Harry Rositzke and Dick Ober as candidates to run it.[^10] The [[Rockefeller Commission 1975|Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States]] reported that the operation compiled some 13,000 different files, including files on 7,200 American citizens, with the names of more than 300,000 persons and organizations entered in a computerized index, and that the Agency terminated it on March 15, 1974.[^11] The [[Church Committee]] reported the same figures and that the program was not terminated until March 1974.[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
In January 1975 the Rockefeller Commission was constituted under Vice President [[Nelson Rockefeller]].[^13] On January 27, 1975, the Senate created the Church Committee, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by [[Frank Church]]. Its final report was issued on April 26, 1976.[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh also appears in the Church Committee's own findings. In 1971 the computer of the Justice Department's Interdivisional Information Unit included data on prominent persons, among them Seymour Hersh, [[Ralph Abernathy]] and [[Cesar Chavez]]; the unit's subject list, when provided to the CIA, contained records of approximately ten to twelve thousand individuals.[^15][^16]
|
||||
|
||||
### Glomar Explorer and Colby's requests to delay
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh had been investigating the [[Hughes Glomar Explorer]], the CIA vessel built to raise a sunken Soviet submarine, since as early as January 1974. A note to the March 19, 1975 memorandum of conversation in the *Foreign Relations of the United States* volume, citing the CIA Executive Registry files, states that Colby urged Hersh to delay publication in conversations on February 1, 1974 and February 10, 1975.[^17] The volume's editorial note states that Colby had held meetings with journalists, including Hersh, to persuade them to delay stories about the operation. Syndicated columnist [[Jack Anderson]] mentioned the ship on his radio program on March 18, 1975. The next day the [[Los Angeles Times]], the [[Washington Post]] and the New York Times published front-page stories on the vessel. Hersh's March 19 article in the New York Times gave the operation's purpose, a cost estimated at more than $250 million, the technology and the results.[^18]
|
||||
|
||||
On March 28, 1975, Colby argued that a second mission was inadvisable after the exposure. The [[40 Committee]] concluded on June 5 that the program should end, and Ford approved that recommendation on June 16. The ship was mothballed on August 30, 1976.[^18]
|
||||
|
||||
### The submarine intercept story and the May 1975 prosecution deliberations
|
||||
|
||||
The prosecution deliberations in the Ford files concern a different Hersh article. The New York Times published it on May 25, 1975, and it described intercept missions by American submarines in Soviet waters, under the codeword Holystone. President Ford convened a meeting on Tuesday, May 27, 1975, from 5:00 to 5:55 p.m. in the Cabinet Room, with Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, Colby, Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State [[Robert Ingersoll]] and [[Brent Scowcroft]]. The memorandum of the meeting records Ford saying, "Somehow someone must be made an example of," and Schlesinger calling the disclosure "a flagrant violation of the law." Schlesinger said he had spoken to the Attorney General the month before, that there was some indication Hersh held files of signals intelligence material, and asked "How about a search warrant to get them?" Colby said a June 1974 New York Times article had been similar but without detail and had seemed to come from the Marchetti book, that the Supreme Court's refusal to review the Marchetti case was good news, and that although publication under Section 798 of the Espionage Act was a crime, there had been only one conviction under it, on a guilty plea. Scowcroft said the real problem was the people leaking the material.[^19]
|
||||
|
||||
Ford said an internal investigation was needed, at least internally and perhaps by the Bureau. Schlesinger suggested that the FBI do it, and the memorandum records, in brackets, "The President decided to go the FBI route." Ford said a communication to Justice ought to ask for action and for recommendations under the law ("prosecution of Hersh and the New York Times"). Rumsfeld proposed formal notice to the New York Times that the matter was being taken seriously. Schlesinger said that if the mission were turned off, a search warrant should be considered, adding that the material "could also be given to a grand jury." Ford closed: "Let's get the best people in Phil's [Buchen's] office and Justice going on it. Also, Justice should look into the alternatives of getting at Hersh and the New York Times."[^19]
|
||||
|
||||
On May 30, 1975, Rumsfeld cabled [[Dick Cheney]] from Brussels asking to be told whether the operation would continue, saying the FBI investigation should begin soon unless it would adversely affect the operation, and directing that it not be initiated if it would.[^20] A memorandum of the same date from [[Robert McFarlane|Bud McFarlane]] of the National Security Council staff to Cheney, marked Holystone, reports the Defense Department position: that the Navy's tentative view was that planning for continuation should go forward, that an investigation was "considered a bad idea" to the extent it could generate publicity leading to a Soviet reaction, and that Schlesinger concurred.[^21] Cheney relayed this to Rumsfeld, recommended that no investigation be launched for the time being, and set out three options: continue the operation and take no action against those responsible for the story; continue it and take limited action such as private discussions with publishers; or discontinue the operation and enforce the laws against unauthorized disclosure.[^22]
|
||||
|
||||
A May 31, 1975 memorandum in the same folder reports a meeting at 11:00 a.m. that Saturday with McFarlane, Colby, Attorney General [[Edward Levi]], Admiral [[Bobby Ray Inman]], the Director of Naval Intelligence, and others. It states that Levi had instructed the Criminal Division and the FBI to prepare a specific proposal for an investigation into possible violations of the criminal code; that the FBI investigation would not begin until the plan was approved; that the Hersh story "has not created any great amount of interest"; and that Levi felt any FBI investigation must have sound legal justification, so that, in the memorandum's words, "we should not have an FBI investigation if there is no intention to prosecute." It adds that the Navy's intelligence director found the story's sources probably were ex-government employees and the Marchetti court file, and that the use of the outdated codename Holystone was a telling indicator.[^23]
|
||||
|
||||
On June 2, 1975, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General wrote to Colby with eleven questions that it said had to be answered to move ahead with the first steps necessary for a prosecution and for a determination whether a prosecution should be undertaken, including which statements in the May 25 article were classified and whether the data came from a specific document.[^24] An undated memorandum to the Attorney General from Assistant Attorney General [[Rex E. Lee]] and Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney of the Criminal Division described the investigative steps for a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sections 793 and 798, for contempt proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia over a protective order in the Marchetti case, and for a civil contempt action. It identified an interview with Hersh as the initial FBI step, noted that a similar article had appeared under the byline of Laurence Stern in the Washington Post on January 4, 1974, and stated that grand jury subpoenas to Hersh and Stern could follow, with a grant of immunity if they invoked the Fifth Amendment.[^25]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Price of Power (1983)
|
||||
|
||||
*The Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House* was published by [[Summit Books]] in 1983. An excerpt ran in the [[Atlantic Monthly]] in December 1982 in two installments under the title "Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile." The second installment opens with a Navy enlisted man assigned as confidential aide and secretary to Rear Admiral [[Rembrandt Robinson|Rembrandt C. Robinson]] on the National Security Council staff in September 1970, and describes the White House handling of its most highly classified documents, including intelligence material, in that office.[^26] In February 1981 the Times ran a front-page article by Hersh headlined "New Evidence Backs Ex-Envoy on His Role in Chile," concerning the former ambassador [[Edward Korry]].[^27]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Samson Option (1991)
|
||||
|
||||
*The [[Samson Option]]: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* was published by Random House in 1991, with a British edition from [[Faber and Faber]]. Hersh wrote that he interviewed many senior American officials, most of whom spoke for the first time about their knowledge of Israel's nuclear arsenal, and that he did not do research in Israel, where journalists must submit material to military censors who can make changes or deletions. The book describes how Israel became a nuclear power in secret and how that secret was shared, sanctioned and at times willfully ignored by top American officials since the [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] years.[^28]
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh's account of Israeli intelligence in the Maxwell and Davies episode rests on [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]. Hersh wrote that Ben-Menashe first contacted him in mid-1990, that interviews began in early 1991, and that Ben-Menashe agreed, in Hersh's words, "as no other Israeli would," to be directly quoted on nuclear issues. Ben-Menashe left the United States for exile in Australia in June 1991. Hersh added that Ben-Menashe's allegations about Iran arms sales had been strongly denied in Washington and Jerusalem and were still under congressional review in the summer of 1991.[^29] Ben-Menashe's account is that the book, together with [[Gary Sick]]'s *October Surprise*, which also quoted him as a prominent source, led to an intense and prolonged barrage of media attacks seeking to discredit him.[^30]
|
||||
|
||||
The book's account of [[Nicholas Davies]], foreign editor of the [[Daily Mirror]], comes from Ben-Menashe. Ben-Menashe is quoted saying that he and Davies had been partners in an arms sales firm, [[Ora Limited]], which operated from Davies's London home from 1983, and that "Davies was my main backup on all the Iran arms sales." He recalled that "Nick had a friend in the Mossad" and a casual meeting in London. Hersh wrote that Davies then accepted an invitation to visit Israel. Hersh also wrote that [[Mordechai Vanunu]] had been compromised to the Israelis by Davies, and that Davies's contact in the matter was Ben-Menashe.[^31] The book cites a 1987 cable to Ayatollah [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]] offering four thousand TOW missiles at $13,800 each, which stated that a British citizen named Nicholas Davies would have authority to sign contracts in Iran on behalf of Ora Limited. Davies, reached by telephone, acknowledged that he knew Ben-Menashe, denied any involvement in arms sales, and said Ben-Menashe was only a news source. Hersh also quoted Davies's second wife, the actress [[Janet Fielding]], as saying she knew Davies was selling arms in partnership with Ben-Menashe while he was foreign editor of the Mirror.[^32]
|
||||
|
||||
The book was published in Britain on Monday, October 21, 1991. Two members of the [[House of Commons]], [[George Galloway]] and [[Rupert Allason]], raised its claims in the chamber the next day under parliamentary privilege.[^33] On October 23, 1991, [[Robert Maxwell]], the proprietor of the Mirror group, who was in New York, sought an injunction against distribution of the book, and the Mirror Group said libel writs were being issued against Faber and Faber. Davies said, "The allegations are a complete and total lie." Maxwell called the accusations "ludicrous, a total invention."[^34]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Newsweek]] reported on November 4, 1991 that Maxwell had sued, Davies had sued, and Faber and Faber had sued back. It reported that Hersh insisted he had independent verification for much of what Ben-Menashe said, that the Mirror had announced an internal investigation into one aspect of Davies's story, and that the former KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, whom Ben-Menashe named as having agreed to write a foreword for a planned book, told the magazine he was not writing anything and had never heard of Ben-Menashe.[^35] The Sunday Times of October 27, 1991 reported that its reporter Peter Hounam, who had handled Vanunu's story in 1986, had himself taken the photograph of Vanunu that Ben-Menashe said was flown from Israel to Davies, and had given it to Vanunu's agent. It reported that Hounam concluded none of Hersh's account of Ben-Menashe's dealings over the Vanunu affair had been verified from any other source, and that Hounam gave his opinion at a meeting with lawyers that Hersh had been hoaxed. Hersh argued that he had checked his facts, and Faber decided to go ahead. The same article quoted [[ABC News]] investigations producer Christopher Isham as saying that on a scale of unreliability from hero to minus eight, Ben-Menashe recorded minus eight or minus seven on every major question in a polygraph examination, and reported that Hersh believed such tests were unreliable.[^33]
|
||||
|
||||
Maxwell died in November 1991.[^36] In Ben-Menashe's account, Hersh and his publishers filed a countersuit against Maxwell, Davies and the Mirror Group, and some of the critical denials in the Mirror articles were shown to be false.[^30] On Thursday, August 18, 1994, [[Mirror Group Newspapers]] apologized "unreservedly" in court for a series of articles in October 1991 that attacked Hersh and Faber and Faber, acknowledged that its attacks had been "entirely improper," and agreed to pay Hersh and his publisher "substantial damages and meet their legal costs." Hersh had sued over suggestions that his book made false allegations about Maxwell and Davies.[^36] In his 2018 memoir *Reporter*, Hersh wrote that the newspaper issued "a very abject apology."[^37]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Dark Side of Camelot (1997)
|
||||
|
||||
*The Dark Side of Camelot* was published by [[Little, Brown]] in 1997. It examines John F. Kennedy's private conduct and his ties to organized crime.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Abu Ghraib
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh published "Torture at Abu Ghraib" in [[The New Yorker]] on May 10, 2004, "Chain of Command" on May 17, and "The Gray Zone" on May 24; [[HarperCollins]] published *Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib* later that year.[^2] "The Gray Zone" attributed the origins of the [[Abu Ghraib]] abuses to a [[Pentagon]] operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words including Copper Green, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved in 2003 for expansion to the interrogation of prisoners. The article named [[Stephen Cambone]], the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Major General [[Geoffrey Miller]], the commander at Guantanamo who was summoned to Baghdad in late August 2003, as central figures. It cited the internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General [[Antonio Taguba]] in February, as showing that Miller urged commanders in Baghdad to place military intelligence in charge of the prison, and quoted the report as saying that "detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation."[^38]
|
||||
|
||||
The former intelligence official quoted in the article said he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or General [[Richard Myers]] knew that atrocities were committed, but that "it was their permission granted to do the sap, generically, and there was enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses." Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesman said, "I will not discuss any covert programs; however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7, 2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere else."[^38]
|
||||
|
||||
The Taguba report records that Lieutenant General [[Ricardo Sanchez]] asked on January 19, 2004 for an investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, citing detainee abuse, escapes and accountability lapses that he said indicated systemic problems.[^39] It describes a team led by Miller that visited the headquarters of Combined Joint Task Force Seven from August 31 to September 9, 2003, using Guantanamo procedures as baselines, and states that its executive summary said detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.[^40] The investigating officer commented that the Miller team's recommendation that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for exploitation of internees would appear to conflict with the recommendations of Major General Donald Ryder's team and Army Regulation 190-8.[^41] Taguba's finding of fact was that between October and December 2003 numerous incidents of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" were inflicted on detainees in Tier 1-A at Abu Ghraib, intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force, and that members of the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion and 205th Military Intelligence Brigade also committed abuses.[^42]
|
||||
|
||||
### The killing of bin Laden and Nord Stream
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh's essay "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" appeared in the [[London Review of Books]] in the issue of May 21, 2015. It names as its major American source a retired senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the initial intelligence on [[Osama bin Laden]] in Abbottabad, with two other American sources who were longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command, and information from inside [[Pakistan]]. It states that bin Laden had been a prisoner of Pakistan's intelligence service at the Abbottabad compound since 2006, and that senior Pakistani military leaders knew of the raid in advance.[^43] On May 11, 2015, White House National Security Council spokesman [[Ned Price|Edward Price]] rejected the account: "This was a US operation through and through," he said, and "The notion that the operation was anything but a unilateral US mission is patently false."[^44]
|
||||
|
||||
On February 8, 2023, Hersh published "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline" on his [[Substack]] page, with the subtitle that the New York Times had called the attack a mystery but that the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret until now.[^45] According to Newsweek's summary, Hersh wrote that President [[Joe Biden]] ordered specialized Navy divers to destroy the pipelines after the national security community debated the plan for nine months. The explosions had occurred on September 26, 2022, in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. White House National Security Council spokesperson [[Adrienne Watson]] said, according to Reuters, "This is utterly false and complete fiction," and spokespeople for the CIA and the State Department also denied the account.[^46]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
|
||||
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991.
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: EBSCO Research Starters, "Seymour M. Hersh," https://ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/seymour-m-hersh.
|
||||
[^2]: Daniel C. Tsang, "Selective Bibliography: Seymour M. Hersh," UC Irvine Libraries, November 13, 2007 (books, including *Chemical and Biological Warfare* (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), *My Lai 4* (Random House, 1970), *Cover-Up* (Random House, 1972), *The Dark Side of Camelot* (Little, Brown, 1997) and *Chain of Command* (HarperCollins, 2004); New Yorker articles of May 10, May 17 and May 24, 2004; New Yorker articles from December 14, 1992).
|
||||
[^3]: Lieutenant General W. R. Peers, transmittal of the final report of investigation, March 14, 1970, in Department of the Army, *Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident*, vol. I, 1970, https://archive.org/details/army-report-on-my-lai. The transmittal states that it follows the directive of November 26, 1969.
|
||||
[^4]: The Pulitzer Prizes, 1970 International Reporting, https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1970.
|
||||
[^5]: Memorandum for the record, OLC 72-0768, "Senate Armed Services Committee Interest in Hersh Story re 'Rainmaking,'" July 5, 1972, with attached copy of Seymour M. Hersh, "Cloud Seeding in Indochina Confirmed," *New York Times*, July 3, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030115-5, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030115-5.
|
||||
[^6]: Memorandum for the record, OLC 72-1162, "Representative Nedzi's Conversation of Today with Seymour Hersh of the New York Times," November 30, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030019-2, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030019-2.
|
||||
[^7]: Seymour M. Hersh, "C.I.A. Chief Tells House of $8-Million Campaign Against Allende in '70-73," *New York Times*, September 8, 1974 (dateline September 7), as reprinted in CIA reading room item CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020130-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp09t00207r001000020130-9.
|
||||
[^8]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Document 17, Editorial Note, quoting William E. Colby and Peter Forbath, *Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA* (Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 389-393, and a December 23, 1974 Kissinger telephone transcript (Department of State, Kissinger Telephone Transcripts), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2/d17.
|
||||
[^9]: Seymour M. Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," *New York Times*, December 22, 1974, p. 1, as reprinted in CIA, *News, Views and Issues*, No. 21, December 27, 1974, CIA-RDP77-00432R000100340001-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp77-00432r000100340001-9.
|
||||
[^10]: CIA, "Chronology of Significant MHCHAOS Correspondence," item 1, approved for release January 18, 2017, CIA reading room document C01481988, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01481988.
|
||||
[^11]: Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, *Report to the President* (June 1975), ch. 11, "Special Operations Group, 'Operation CHAOS,'" pp. 130 and 148.
|
||||
[^12]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 94-755, Book II, "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, pp. 7 and 103.
|
||||
[^13]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Persons list (Rockefeller, Nelson A., Chairman of the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, January-June 1975), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2.
|
||||
[^14]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, S. Rept. 94-755, Book I, "Foreign and Military Intelligence," April 26, 1976, Letter of Transmittal (Senate established the Select Committee on January 27, 1975, by S. Res. 21).
|
||||
[^15]: Church Committee, *Final Report*, Book II, "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, p. 82.
|
||||
[^16]: Church Committee, *Final Report*, Book III, "Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans," April 26, 1976, pp. 503-504 (Justice Department Interdivisional Information Unit, citing Statement of Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman, January 14, 1975).
|
||||
[^17]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXV, Document 197, Memorandum of Conversation, March 19, 1975, editors' note citing CIA, Executive Registry, Job 80M01048A, Box 7, Seymour Hersh, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197.
|
||||
[^18]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXV, Document 183, Editorial Note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d183.
|
||||
[^19]: Memorandum of conversation, May 27, 1975, Ford, Schlesinger, Colby, Rumsfeld, Ingersoll, Scowcroft, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 12, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0314/1553088.pdf, pp. 1-3. The released text is declassified in part.
|
||||
[^20]: Cable from Rumsfeld, Brussels, to Cheney, May 30, 1975, Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 6, folder "Intelligence - New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh (2)," Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
|
||||
[^21]: Memorandum, Bud McFarlane to Dick Cheney, "Holystone," May 30, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
|
||||
[^22]: Memorandum, Cheney to Rumsfeld, May 30, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
|
||||
[^23]: Memorandum of May 31, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf, pp. 1-3.
|
||||
[^24]: Letter, Office of the Deputy Attorney General to W. E. Colby, June 2, 1975, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf.
|
||||
[^25]: Memorandum, Rex E. Lee and John C. Keeney to the Attorney General, "Recent Disclosure of Classified Information in New York Times Article," undated, Cheney Files, Box 6, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf, pp. 1-9.
|
||||
[^26]: Seymour M. Hersh, "Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile," *Atlantic Monthly*, December 1982, second of two installments, CIA reading room item CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402830023-3. Book: *The Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House* (Summit Books, 1983).
|
||||
[^27]: Seymour M. Hersh, "New Evidence Backs Ex-Envoy on His Role in Chile," *New York Times*, February 1981, CIA reading room item CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830047-7, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402830047-7.
|
||||
[^28]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (Random House, 1991), Author's Note, pp. ix-xi.
|
||||
[^29]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), note on Ben-Menashe at p. 260.
|
||||
[^30]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).
|
||||
[^31]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), pp. 309-310.
|
||||
[^32]: Hersh, *The Samson Option* (1991), pp. 310-311.
|
||||
[^33]: "Mirrorgate: Spies, Arms Dealers and Secrets," *The Sunday Times* (London), October 27, 1991, reproduced at https://peterhounam.com/?p=4257.
|
||||
[^34]: United Press International, "Maxwell to seek injunction against book," October 23, 1991, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/10/23/Maxwell-to-seek-injunction-against-book/9254688190400/.
|
||||
[^35]: "One Man, Many Tales," *Newsweek*, November 4, 1991, https://www.newsweek.com/one-man-many-tales-201744.
|
||||
[^36]: Associated Press, "Writer wins damages, apology in libel suit," *Deseret News*, August 20, 1994, https://www.deseret.com/1994/8/20/19125977/writer-wins-damages-apology-in-libel-suit.
|
||||
[^37]: Seymour M. Hersh, *Reporter: A Memoir* (Allen Lane, 2018), as quoted in John Newsinger, review, *Lobster* 76, https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/lob76-reporter-memoir.pdf.
|
||||
[^38]: Seymour M. Hersh, "The Gray Zone," *The New Yorker*, May 24, 2004, pp. 38-44, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/24/the-gray-zone.
|
||||
[^39]: Department of the Army, *Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade* (Taguba report), 2004, Background, para. 1, p. 6, https://hrlibrary.law.umn.edu/OathBetrayed/Taguba-Report.pdf.
|
||||
[^40]: Taguba report, Background, para. 6, p. 7, and Part One, Assessment of DoD Counter-Terrorism Interrogation and Detention Operations in Iraq (MG Miller's Assessment), para. 1, p. 8.
|
||||
[^41]: Taguba report, IO Comments on MG Miller's Assessment, para. 2, p. 9.
|
||||
[^42]: Taguba report, Findings of Fact, para. 5, p. 16.
|
||||
[^43]: Seymour M. Hersh, "The Killing of Osama bin Laden," *London Review of Books*, vol. 37, no. 10, May 21, 2015, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n10/seymour-m.-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden.
|
||||
[^44]: Agence France-Presse, "White House Rebuts Journalist's Claim on OBL Raid," *Defense News*, May 11, 2015, https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2015/05/11/white-house-rebuts-journalist-s-claim-on-obl-raid/.
|
||||
[^45]: Seymour M. Hersh, "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline," Substack, February 8, 2023, https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream.
|
||||
[^46]: Jon Jackson, "Did Biden Order an Attack on Russia's Nord Stream Pipelines? What We Know," *Newsweek*, February 8, 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/0-1779948.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
title: Stanley Levison
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Stanley David Levison
|
||||
|
|
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ tags:
|
|||
- ColdWar
|
||||
- 1960s
|
||||
category: "Activists & Advocates"
|
||||
summary: "Stanley Levison was a New York attorney and businessman who was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest advisors and who had Communist Party USA ties in the early 1950s - providing the FBI's legal justification for wiretapping King and the SCLC beginning in 1962, despite the FBI's own evidence that Levison had severed his Communist Party ties before he became associated with King."
|
||||
summary: "New York attorney and businessman, one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest advisors, whose Communist Party USA ties in the early 1950s were the FBI's stated basis for wiretapping King and the SCLC from 1962."
|
||||
born: 1912-05-02
|
||||
died: 1979-09-12
|
||||
location: "New York, New York"
|
||||
|
|
@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ The FBI's wiretap authorization, granted by Robert Kennedy in October 1963, cove
|
|||
|
||||
The [[Church Committee]] investigated the FBI's surveillance of King and found that the Levison justification was inadequate to support the scope of surveillance actually conducted. The committee found that the FBI had information undermining the claim that Levison remained an active communist by the time the surveillance was authorized, and that the surveillance had extended far beyond any legitimate counterintelligence purpose into pure political harassment and disruption under [[COINTELPRO]].
|
||||
|
||||
The committee documented that [[William Sullivan]], head of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, had personally prepared the anonymous "suicide letter" sent to King - a letter whose contents had nothing to do with any alleged Levison-communist connection and everything to do with destroying King's public reputation.
|
||||
[[William Sullivan]], head of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, testified to the committee on November 1, 1975 that he did not recall ever having seen the anonymous letter to King that the FBI gave the committee, which he said it was "possible" he had something to do with and which he suggested might have been "planted" in his files.[^3] The case study's account of the surveillance of King's "Adviser A" records a microphone in Adviser A's office on March 16, 1962, a wiretap on his office telephone on March 20, 1962 and a wiretap on his home telephone authorized by the Attorney General in November 1962, and states that the information from the continued coverage "appears to have related solely to his advice to Dr. King concerning the civil rights movement and not at all to the alleged Communist Party origins of that advice."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Later Life
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -48,4 +48,6 @@ After King's assassination in April 1968, Levison remained active in civil right
|
|||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Garrow, David. *The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.* Norton, 1981. Levison's FBI file, released under the Freedom of Information Act, documents the surveillance history.
|
||||
[^2]: Church Committee (U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). *Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.* Book II, Senate Report No. 94-755, 1976. Branch, Taylor. *Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963.* Simon & Schuster, 1988.
|
||||
[^2]: Church Committee (U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). *Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.* Book III, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study," pp. 81 to 184, Senate Report No. 94-755, 1976. Branch, Taylor. *Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963.* Simon & Schuster, 1988.
|
||||
[^3]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, Book III, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study," pp. 158 to 161 (Sullivan, November 1, 1975).
|
||||
[^4]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, Book III, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study," pp. 81 to 184, at pp. 88 to 89 (Adviser A surveillance).
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -5,12 +5,12 @@ tags:
|
|||
- CIA
|
||||
- BlackPrograms
|
||||
- Whistleblower
|
||||
summary: "Former CIA special assistant who co-authored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book ever censored by the US government, and revealed that mind control black programs continued after the 1977 congressional ban, only better hidden."
|
||||
summary: "Former CIA special assistant who co-authored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book censored by the US government, and said mind control black programs continued after the 1977 congressional ban."
|
||||
born: 1929-12-23
|
||||
died: 2018-10-19
|
||||
location: Ashburn, Virginia
|
||||
created: 2026-06-03
|
||||
updated: 2026-06-03
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-09
|
||||
---
|
||||
Victor Marchetti was born December 23, 1929, in [[Hazleton]], [[Pennsylvania]], and joined the [[CIA]] in October 1955. He served as an analyst in the Office of Research and Reports and the Office of National Estimates before moving to the Office of Planning, Programming, and Budgeting in 1966. From July 1968 to 1969, Marchetti served as special assistant to CIA Deputy Director [[Rufus Taylor]], giving him access to the agency's highest-level operations and budget allocations. He resigned from the CIA in September 1969, disillusioned with the agency's culture of secrecy and extralegal activities.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -18,6 +18,8 @@ Victor Marchetti was born December 23, 1929, in [[Hazleton]], [[Pennsylvania]],
|
|||
|
||||
In 1974, Marchetti co-authored *[[The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence]]* with [[John D. Marks]], a former State Department intelligence officer. The book was the first manuscript ever subjected to prior review and censorship by the [[United States]] government under the intelligence employment secrecy agreement. The CIA initially demanded deletion of 339 passages; after legal proceedings, 168 deletions were enforced. The published book, with its prominent blank spaces where censored material had been removed, became a symbol of government overreach on secrecy and actually drew more attention to the redacted material than the original text would have. The legal fight established important precedents for government employees' First Amendment rights and the public's right to know about intelligence operations.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Hersh's December 22, 1974 New York Times article on CIA domestic activities listed Marchetti among the former employees placed under surveillance.[^3] When Hersh's New York Times article of May 25, 1975 described American submarine intercept operations, the Department of Justice, the CIA and the White House examined whether its content came from papers filed with the court in the *Marchetti* case. A May 31, 1975 memorandum in the Cheney files states, "We believe the Hersh story of May 25 is based on papers filed with the court in the Marchetti case." An undated memorandum from Assistant Attorney General [[Rex E. Lee]] and Acting Assistant Attorney General [[John C. Keeney]] set out a possible criminal contempt proceeding in the Eastern District of Virginia over a protective order in the case, and recorded that a document quoted in the article had been available to plaintiffs Marchetti and John Marks, their counsel and their expert witness [[Morton Halperin]].[^4] At the May 27, 1975 meeting President [[Gerald Ford]] and his advisers discussed the Supreme Court's refusal to review the case, and William Colby said the Agency had taken up with Justice that day the possibility of a contempt citation against the Marchetti lawyers.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Revelations About Continuing Black Programs
|
||||
|
||||
Marchetti revealed that despite the 1977 congressional ban on mind control research imposed after the [[Church Committee]] investigations, so-called "black programs" working with mind control still existed, only now they were better hidden. His disclosure was significant because it came from an insider with direct knowledge of the agency's operations and budget structures, contradicting the official narrative that all [[MKULTRA]]-related behavioral modification programs had been terminated. Marchetti's understanding of the CIA's budget and planning apparatus gave his claims particular weight, as he understood how programs could be concealed within opaque funding streams.[^1]
|
||||
|
|
@ -34,3 +36,6 @@ Marchetti continued to write and speak about intelligence community abuses. He p
|
|||
|
||||
[^1]: Curt Rowlett, "Project Mind Kontrol: Did the U.S. Government Actually Create Programmed Assassins?," Steamshovel Press #16, 1998.
|
||||
[^2]: Marchetti, Victor, and John D. Marks. *The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence*. Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. (First book censored by the U.S. government prior to publication; 168 passages excised by court order); "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence," First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/the-cia-and-the-cult-of-intelligence/
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[^3]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Document 17, Editorial Note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2/d17.
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[^4]: Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 6, folder "Intelligence - New York Times Articles by Seymour Hersh (2)," Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7288231.pdf (memorandum of May 31, 1975, para. 6; Lee and Keeney memorandum, pp. 1 and 6).
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[^5]: Memorandum of conversation, May 27, 1975, Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 12, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0314/1553088.pdf, p. 2.
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