vault backup: 2026-09-22 22:51:38
This commit is contained in:
parent
d4b588b218
commit
4dd04a9dab
108 changed files with 2308 additions and 1071 deletions
|
|
@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ aliases:
|
|||
- Dark Alliance series
|
||||
- Dark Alliance investigation
|
||||
created: 2026-05-17
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-17
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
category: "Intelligence Scandal"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Event
|
||||
|
|
@ -34,6 +34,8 @@ The [[Washington Post]] struck first on October 4, 1996, under the headline "The
|
|||
|
||||
On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a column acknowledging "shortcomings" in the series, a move the New York Times splashed on its front page. Ceppos killed all follow-up stories and transferred Webb to a suburban bureau. Webb resigned from the newspaper in November 1997. In March 1998, CIA Inspector General [[Fred Hitz]] testified before Congress that the CIA had maintained relationships with dozens of suspected drug traffickers during the Contra war and had failed to cut off those relationships. [[The New York Times]] reported on July 17, 1998, that CIA higher-ups knew about the drug connections, confirming central elements of the series.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On May 11, 2000, the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] released a unanimously adopted report, having reviewed the CIA and [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] inspector general reports and raw CIA files and held two town hall meetings in South Central Los Angeles, which concluded that the evidence did not support the implication "that the CIA was responsible for the crack epidemic in Los Angeles or anywhere else in the [[United States]] to further the cause of the Contra war in [[Central America]]."[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue.
|
||||
|
|
@ -41,3 +43,4 @@ On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a column acknowledging "shortcomings" in the s
|
|||
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
|
||||
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
|
||||
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Epilogue.
|
||||
[^6]: U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. *Report on the Central Intelligence Agency's Alleged Involvement in Crack Cocaine Trafficking in the Los Angeles Area,* committee print, 106th Cong., February 2000; HPSCI press statement, May 11, 2000, quoted in *Survey of Activities of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence During the 106th Congress,* H. Rept. 106-1054, 2001. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-106hrpt1054/html/CRPT-106hrpt1054.htm
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -3,13 +3,14 @@ tags:
|
|||
- Event
|
||||
- Murder
|
||||
- Texas
|
||||
- Child_Trafficking
|
||||
- ChildTrafficking
|
||||
- 1970s
|
||||
category: "Crime Investigation"
|
||||
summary: "Mass murder of 28 young men in Houston, Texas (1970-1973) that uncovered connections to organized child trafficking and pornography networks with apparent institutional protection."
|
||||
start: 1970
|
||||
end: 1973
|
||||
location: "Houston, Texas"
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
### Overview
|
||||
|
|
@ -18,7 +19,7 @@ The Dean Corll Murders represent one of the most horrifying mass killings of you
|
|||
|
||||
### The Discovery and Confessions
|
||||
|
||||
The case broke on the morning of August 8, 1973, when seventeen-year-old [[Elmer Wayne Henley]] called Pasadena police to report he had shot and killed [[Dean Corll]] inside his Pasadena bungalow. Henley and two other teenagers, Timothy Cordell Kerley and Rhonda Louise Williams, had been tied up by Corll after a paint-sniffing party. Henley managed to free himself, grab a gun, and shoot Corll before calling the authorities. Inside the home, police discovered a plywood torture board fitted with handcuffs, ropes, and various sex toys and torture devices. Henley soon confessed to helping torture, kill, and bury several victims, and he implicated an eighteen-year-old friend named [[David Owen Brooks]] as a third accomplice who had introduced him to Corll two years earlier. Both teenagers confessed to having lived on and off with Corll, procuring victims for him, and progressively participating in the murders themselves.[^1]
|
||||
The case broke on the morning of August 8, 1973, when seventeen-year-old [[Elmer Wayne Henley]] called Pasadena police to report he had shot and killed Dean Corll inside his Pasadena bungalow. Henley and two other teenagers, [[Timothy Cordell Kerley]] and [[Rhonda Louise Williams]], had been tied up by Corll after a paint-sniffing party. Henley managed to free himself, grab a gun, and shoot Corll before calling the authorities. Inside the home, police discovered a plywood torture board fitted with handcuffs, ropes, and various sex toys and torture devices. Henley soon confessed to helping torture, kill, and bury several victims, and he implicated an eighteen-year-old friend named [[David Owen Brooks]] as a third accomplice who had introduced him to Corll two years earlier. Both teenagers confessed to having lived on and off with Corll, procuring victims for him, and progressively participating in the murders themselves.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
### The Dallas Organisation
|
||||
|
|
@ -33,8 +34,10 @@ The investigation soon intersected with the world of commercial child pornograph
|
|||
|
||||
### Interstate Networks and Abandoned Leads
|
||||
|
||||
The Dean Corll investigation also overlapped with the bust of an interstate boy trafficking operation in Dallas known as the [[Odyssey Network]], run by [[John David Norman]]. Within days of the Houston mass grave discovery, Dallas police raided Norman's apartment and found thousands of index cards with client names, along with photographs of missing boys stamped with the word "kill." The client cards were handed over to [[Henry Kissinger]]'s State Department and subsequently destroyed. Meanwhile, in California, vice detectives arrested a child pornographer named Guy Strait who was in business with a wealthy Houston oil heir named William Byars Jr. Strait admitted knowing both John Norman and Roy Ames. David Brooks had stated that "the first few that Dean killed were supposed to have been sent off somewhere in California." A grand jury later lambasted Houston police for abandoning the investigation around September 1, 1973, leaving unexplored the possible involvement of others. The vice detective who busted the Chicano ring later relayed rumours of a snuff film featuring one of Corll's victims.[^1]
|
||||
The Dean Corll investigation also overlapped with the Dallas investigation of an interstate boy prostitution operation, the "[[Odyssey Foundation]]" ([[Odyssey Network]]), run by [[John David Norman]]. Lieutenant Harold Hancock of the Dallas police had arrested Norman in March 1973, five months before Corll's death, and seized more than 30,000 index cards listing clients around the country, some of them prominent people and some federal employees in Washington; the Dallas police were investigating Norman as a possible solicitor of boys among the 27 found murdered in Texas.[^2][^3] The Dallas police notified the [[State Department]] on August 17, 1973, that the Odyssey Foundation provided young males to people answering its solicitations, including for international travel. A review of the card files found two people who appeared to have State Department affiliation, one in the department and one formerly assigned to the embassy in [[Mexico City]]; the department examined their security files but opened no formal investigation. On December 12, 1974, the Dallas police turned over three cartons of several thousand cards; they were sent to the department's [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] on January 2, 1975, stored without thorough review, and destroyed after a Privacy Act review begun on September 27, 1975, as not relevant to any passport fraud case, during the tenure of Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]]. Matthew Nimetz, the department's counselor, could not explain why the cards had been examined only for passport irregularities or why they had not been given to the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] or postal inspectors.[^2][^3] Photographs of missing boys stamped with the word "kill" were reported among the seized material.[^1] Meanwhile, in California, vice detectives arrested a child pornographer named Guy Strait who was in business with a wealthy Houston oil heir named William Byars Jr. Strait admitted knowing both John Norman and Roy Ames. David Brooks had stated that "the first few that Dean killed were supposed to have been sent off somewhere in California." A grand jury later lambasted Houston police for abandoning the investigation around September 1, 1973, leaving unexplored the possible involvement of others. The vice detective who busted the Chicano ring later relayed rumours of a snuff film featuring one of Corll's victims.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Dovey S 2023 'Eye of the Chickenhawk' United States Thehotstar.
|
||||
[^1]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. It dates the Dallas raid to within days of the August 1973 Houston discovery, contradicted by the hearing record's March 1973.
|
||||
[^2]: Moseley, Ray, with Michael Sneed and George Bliss. "Chicago Is Center of National Child Porno Ring." *Chicago Tribune,* May 16, 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime. *Sexual Exploitation of Children,* hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977, pp. 433-435. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041
|
||||
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. *Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation,* hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, 1977: testimony of Michael Sneed, Chicago, May 27, 1977, and letter of Douglas J. Bennett Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, to Senator John C. Culver. https://archive.org/details/protectionofchil00unit
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Event
|
||||
- Child_Trafficking
|
||||
- ChildTrafficking
|
||||
- Illinois
|
||||
- 1970s
|
||||
category: "Crime Investigation"
|
||||
|
|
@ -9,14 +9,18 @@ summary: "Investigation into John David Norman's Delta Project, a boy traffickin
|
|||
start: 1976
|
||||
end: 1978
|
||||
location: "Chicago, Illinois"
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
From inside Cook County jail, [[John David Norman]] was inexplicably granted access to the publishing, printing, and mailing facilities required to produce and distribute literature for his [[Odyssey Network]] under its new name The Delta Project. This was nothing but a fresh coat of paint given to the same boy trafficking scheme he had deployed through the mail for years. As reported by the Chicago Tribune in a retrospective article from 1977, the Cook County state's attorney's office and Chicago police stated that Norman's Delta Project was born in Cook County Jail while he was awaiting trial, and unknown to jail officials Norman used jail printing facilities to send out three newsletters about the project to homosexual clients throughout the country and to those who answered his advertisements in pornographic publications.
|
||||
|
||||
Assisting Norman with The Delta Project was a young inmate named [[Phillip Paske]]. A tall slimly built twenty-something transvestite with long blond hair, serving time for accessory to murder he had plead down to theft. Norman's young accomplice Phillip Paske was paroled in January 1976 and started helping Norman run The Delta Project, and for a time even became its custodian while Norman was in prison. In February 1976 a boy named [[Kenneth Hellstrom]] who testified against Norman was viciously stabbed to death on his way home from work. Given the circumstances, and with Norman in prison, Phillip Paske naturally became the prime suspect.
|
||||
Assisting Norman with The Delta Project was a young inmate named [[Phillip Paske]]. A tall slimly built twenty-something transvestite with long blond hair, serving time for accessory to murder he had plead down to theft. Norman's young accomplice Phillip Paske was released on probation in 1976, in July according to Chicago police, and helped Norman run The Delta Project, and for a time even became its custodian while Norman was in prison.[^1] In February 1976 a boy named [[Kenneth Hellstrom]] who testified against Norman was viciously stabbed to death on his way home from work. Given the circumstances, and with Norman in prison, Phillip Paske naturally became the prime suspect.
|
||||
|
||||
Then in May 1977 a judge inexplicably ordered Norman's early release and he moved with Phillip Paske into a basement apartment on W. Wrightwood Avenue in Chicago, just a short twenty-minute drive from where soon the bodies of twenty-nine teenaged boys would be exhumed from the crawlspace of [[John Wayne Gacy]]. Norman and Paske set the apartment up as a photography studio with blacked out windows and started recruiting local area Chicago boys for pornography and prostitution. The apartment was raided in June 1978 after a boy named [[Michael Salcido]] reported Norman to Chicago police for sexual assault. Inside the apartment police seized thousands of index cards listing details of Norman's extensive network of clientele, now sponsoring boys through an organisation called The Creative Corps. Norman was sent back to prison and Phillip Paske, found living with Norman at the address, was released without charge.
|
||||
|
||||
After John Norman went back to prison in June 1978, Phillip Paske lost his job as a children's supervisor at a public swimming pool, and as records show, went on to work at John Wayne Gacy's construction company, Painting Decorating Maintenance. Receipts for three payslips made out to Phillip Paske from PDM, dated September 1978, were found in the archives of the company's financial records from that period. These receipts corroborated claims made by Gacy just prior to his execution in the early 1990s. Gacy said he had known Phillip Paske, who worked for him and frequented his house in the months just prior to the discovery there of the largest mass grave of murdered boys since the excavation of [[Dean Corll]]'s boat shed in 1973.
|
||||
|
||||
Gacy said he was introduced to Phillip Paske through [[David Cram]], describing Paske as a dangerous child pimp who procured boys for sex and movies. Gacy said David Cram, [[Michael Rossi]], and Phillip Paske all had keys to his house and frequently used it during periods he had been out of town. When John Gacy named Phillip Paske and John Norman as accomplices in his 1992 media interviews, he stated that Phillip Paske and John
|
||||
Gacy said he was introduced to Phillip Paske through [[David Cram]], describing Paske as a dangerous child pimp who procured boys for sex and movies. Gacy said David Cram, [[Michael Rossi]], and Phillip Paske all had keys to his house and frequently used it during periods he had been out of town. When John Gacy named Phillip Paske and John Norman as accomplices in his 1992 media interviews, he stated that Phillip Paske and John
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: *Chicago Tribune,* May 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime. *Sexual Exploitation of Children,* hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977, which describes Paske, 25, as "a convicted murderer and thief" on probation "since last July" (that is, July 1976) and carrying on the Delta Project in Norman's absence; it gives no January 1976 parole. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -6,27 +6,33 @@ tags:
|
|||
- CoverUp
|
||||
- 1983
|
||||
category: "Historical Phenomenon"
|
||||
summary: "1983 head-on collision in Yosemite National Park foothills involving a Secret Service vehicle scouting Queen Elizabeth II's motorcade route, killing three agents and revealing allegations of cover-up and corruption."
|
||||
summary: "Collision on Route 132 in Mariposa County on March 5, 1983, between a sheriff's patrol car and a Secret Service convoy assigned to Queen Elizabeth's Yosemite visit, killing three agents."
|
||||
date: 1983-03-05
|
||||
location: "Mariposa County, California"
|
||||
location: "Route 132, Mariposa County, California"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: participant_in
|
||||
with: "[[Roderick Sinclair]]"
|
||||
reverse: true
|
||||
role: "driver of the patrol car"
|
||||
fn: 2
|
||||
created: 2025-08-05
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
The [[Queen's Accident]] refers to a head-on collision that occurred on March 5, 1983, in the Yosemite National Park foothills, involving a Mariposa County Sheriff's vehicle and a Secret Service car. The accident took place while scouting Queen Elizabeth II's motorcade route, approximately 25 minutes ahead of her motorcade. Three Secret Service agents, [[George P. LaBarge]], [[Donald Robinson]], and [[Donald A. Bejcek]], were killed in the collision. Mariposa County Sheriff's Sergeant [[Roderick Sinclair]], who was driving, sustained broken ribs and a fractured knee, while his partner, Deputy [[Rod McKean]], was also present.[^1]
|
||||
On March 5, 1983, a Mariposa County sheriff's patrol car driven by Sgt. [[Roderick Sinclair]], with Deputy [[Rod McKean]], collided on a winding stretch of Route 132 with the middle car of a three-car convoy of off-duty Secret Service agents in California to protect Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Yosemite National Park. Agents [[George P. LaBarge]], [[Donald Robinson|Donald W. Robinson]] and [[Donald A. Bejcek]] were killed; they were not wearing seat belts. Sinclair and McKean were injured. The convoy was preceding the royal motorcade, which passed the site a short time later; the Queen and Prince Philip detoured around it and saw the wreckage.[^2][^3] President [[Ronald Reagan]] issued a statement on the deaths.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Circumstances and Cover-up Allegations
|
||||
### The Investigations
|
||||
|
||||
Allegations surfaced that [[Roderick Sinclair]] had been heavily drugged on the day of the accident, receiving large daily doses of Demerol prescribed by [[Dr. Arthur Dahlem]]. Nurses at Fremont Hospital, where Sinclair was initially treated, and some former deputies corroborated this. Assistant [[United States Attorney|U.S. Attorney]] [[James White]] in Fresno attempted to investigate Sinclair's drug use, ordering Dahlem's files seized. However, [[United States District Court|U.S. District Court]] Judge [[Robert E. Coyle]] intervened, ordering White to drop the criminal investigation, claiming Sinclair's drug problem was irrelevant and drug records inadmissible because no blood tests were taken at the hospital. Despite this, blood tests had been taken but later disappeared.[^1]
|
||||
A 178-page report of the Central Division of the [[California Highway Patrol]], issued March 29, 1983, blamed Sinclair's speed, estimated at 76 to 80 miles an hour and later revised to 72, and recommended that he be prosecuted. The Mariposa County District Attorney, J. [[Bruce Eckerson]], resisted CHP pressure to file charges for six months and engaged a retired CHP lieutenant, Bob Kovach, whose review disputed the skid-mark evidence; Sinclair's lawyer, David Linn, said the CHP had reached "a predetermined conclusion." The CHP stood by its report.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
In the subsequent civil trial, Judge [[Robert E. Coyle]] ruled both Sinclair and the deceased Secret Service agents at fault, ordering Mariposa County to pay 70 percent of the claim. Ironically, Sinclair was later promoted to Commander of the Mariposa Sheriff's Department. The original [[California Highway Patrol|CHP]] report on the accident was reportedly sent to the [[California Attorney General's Office|State Attorney General's office]] ([[John Van de Kamp]]), who allegedly ordered it "discarded." [[Bruce Eckerson]], the Mariposa County District Attorney who owned stock in [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] Entertainment Corporation, was then appointed to submit a new report. All [[California Highway Patrol|CHP]] officers involved in the original investigation either resigned, were transferred, or fired, as did [[James White]] himself after the alleged cover-up.[^1]
|
||||
The survivors of the three agents sued Mariposa County and Sinclair and settled for a total of 4 million dollars. The county then sued the [[United States]] for contribution, arguing that the federal drivers, Agent LaBarge and Agent Max Phillips in the car ahead, had driven negligently. The district court found that the collision occurred on a blind curve, that Sinclair was driving at 64 miles an hour in a 35-mile zone, 6 miles an hour below the critical speed for the curve, that both federal cars were halfway across the center line into his lane, and that their presence caused him to brake and skid; it found Sinclair 70 percent at fault and ordered the United States to pay 30 percent of the settlement, 1.2 million dollars. On August 26, 1986, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the United States, as an employer covered by workers' compensation, could not be sued for contribution.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Deputy [[Rod Cusic]] stated he was "told by [[Roderick Sinclair]] to lie to a Grand Jury" about Sinclair's drug addiction and the accident, a disclosure he made to the Fresno [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]. Cusic also witnessed a booby-trapped incendiary device explode at Sinclair's home. A 1984 civil trial revealed Sinclair's vehicle contained "a myriad of automatic weapons including a booby-trapped bomb" at the time of the collision.[^1]
|
||||
### Drug and Cover-up Allegations
|
||||
|
||||
### Subsequent Investigations and Connections
|
||||
Sinclair was said to have been receiving large daily doses of Demerol prescribed by [[Dr. Arthur Dahlem]], as nurses at Fremont Hospital and former deputies were said to have confirmed. Assistant U.S. Attorney [[James White]] in Fresno was said to have ordered Dahlem's files seized, and Judge [[Robert E. Coyle]] to have ordered him to drop the criminal investigation on the ground that no blood tests had been taken, although tests had been taken and later disappeared. The CHP report was said to have been sent to the office of Attorney General [[John Van de Kamp]], who told an assistant to "discard" it; Eckerson was said to have held stock in [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]], and the CHP officers on the original investigation and White himself to have resigned or been transferred or fired. Deputy [[Rod Cusic]] told the Fresno office of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] that Sinclair had told him "to lie to a Grand Jury," and said he had seen a booby-trapped incendiary device explode at Sinclair's home; a 1984 civil trial was said to have heard that Sinclair's car carried automatic weapons and a booby-trapped bomb. Sinclair was later promoted to commander. A Secret Service agent, [[Ron Williams]], whose friend was killed, and a CBS executive asked [[Cheri Seymour]] to investigate, and [[Don Thrasher]] of ABC's *20/20* examined Sinclair's background. The case figured in the reporting of [[Jerry Goldberg]] for *Capitol News Service* and the work of [[D.I.G. (Decency in Government)|D.I.G.]][^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Years later, a CBS television executive and [[Ron Williams]], a Secret Service agent whose best friend was killed in the accident, sought [[Cheri Seymour]]'s help to investigate the incident. [[Don Thrasher]], a producer for ABC News 20/20, also investigated, corroborating details about [[Roderick Sinclair]]'s background, including his father's military service under [[Douglas MacArthur]] and Sinclair's own alleged work in Army C.I.D.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Queen's Accident]] became a key element in the broader investigation into corruption in Mariposa County, as highlighted by [[Jerry Goldberg]]'s reporting for *Capitol News Service* and the efforts of [[D.I.G. (Decency in Government)|D.I.G.]].[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
|
||||
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited. It describes Judge Coyle as ordering Mariposa County to pay 70 percent of the claim and Eckerson as appointed to write a replacement report; the court record places the 70 percent finding in the county's contribution suit against the United States, which was reversed, and contemporaneous reporting shows Eckerson as the elected district attorney resisting the CHP's call for prosecution.
|
||||
[^2]: *LaBarge v. County of Mariposa,* 798 F.2d 364 (9th Cir. 1986). The caption spells the sergeant's name Roderic B. Sinclair; the opinion, Roderick.
|
||||
[^3]: "Highway Patrol's Crash investigation questioned." United Press International, September 25, 1983. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/09/25/Highway-Patrols-Crash-investigation-questioned/7300433310400/
|
||||
[^4]: Reagan, Ronald. "Statement on the Death of Three Secret Service Agents in California," March 5, 1983. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-death-three-secret-service-agents-california
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ tags:
|
|||
alias:
|
||||
- PROMIS in Canada
|
||||
- RCMP PROMIS investigation
|
||||
summary: "The RCMP's 1999-2000 national security inquiry, run by Sean McDade, into whether a trap-doored PROMIS ran in Canadian agencies, disclosed by the Toronto Star in August 2000, nine years after a CWARC inventory error had first set INSLAW and the House Judiciary Committee on the Canadian trail."
|
||||
summary: "RCMP national security inquiry of 1999 and 2000, run by Sean McDade, into whether a trap-doored PROMIS ran in Canadian agencies; the RCMP said in 2024 that no records exist."
|
||||
start: 1990-11
|
||||
end: 2000-09
|
||||
location: "Ottawa"
|
||||
|
|
@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ The Canadian trail began with a survey. On November 5, 1990, Marc Valois of the
|
|||
|
||||
### The 2000 Investigation
|
||||
|
||||
McDade's inquiry, authorized at the top of the force, took him secretly into the [[United States]] in February 2000, to [[Cheri Seymour]] and the Hercules, California, detective [[Sue Todd]], to the files behind Seymour's book on [[Danny Casolaro]], and to former investigators of the PROMIS and Cabazon matters, and back to a "war room" in Ottawa; the account of the investigation from his side is on his page. The Star's reports of August 2000 quoted the RCMP spokesman Sergeant Marc Richer ("I cannot either confirm or deny what you're looking into"); Louis Buffardi, Riconosciuto's lawyer, who said RCMP officers had interviewed his client "eight or nine months" earlier and were "probing a possible breach of Canada's national security"; the former Justice Department PROMIS project manager [[C. Madison Brewer]], who called the allegations "fantasy"; and McDade: "I kind of get a chuckle out of how something so small has been blown out of proportion." [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] told the paper that Canadian authorities had questioned him about PROMIS seven years earlier, during the security screening for his citizenship. On August 26 the Star reported, from unnamed sources, that the inquiry also concerned allegations that [[Robert Maxwell]] "may have acted as a middleman in selling the rigged software to Canada," and that a second former Israeli spy, "now living in New York," had been interviewed. [[Bill Hamilton]] said he had spoken with the chief investigator "probably dozens" of times and that his sources put the sale to Canada at 31 million dollars in 1983. After the closure Hamilton said McDade had earlier told him that the RCMP acquired PROMIS "from a company in Massachusetts" and that it "was modified by a Toronto firm," and Seymour told the Star: "(McDade) said that they had a paper trail on the Promis software being purchased by the RCMP. He told me that." The Star described McDade as "an Ottawa-Carleton regional police officer on secondment to the RCMP" who had refused its requests for an interview.[^2] [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s affidavit of March 21, 1991, had sworn that "some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS)," and that "the proprietary version of PROMIS, as modified by me, was, in fact, implemented in both"; the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] had found him "totally unreliable." A second Canadian witness, the former Nesbitt Thomson broker [[John A. Belton]], told the department's 1994 reviewers that CSIS had bought 10 to 12 million dollars of PROMIS in 1984 and that [[Earl Brian]] had sold it to the Bank of Montreal for 2 million dollars in May 1987, without producing any document; they found him "unbelievable." Fourteen months after the Star's disclosure, on October 16, 2001, Fox News reported that "Canada has actually investigated potential tampering with its Promis programs" as a live example in its story on [[Robert Hanssen]] and Osama bin Laden. The Canadian government's Access to Information index lists a request for RCMP records "mentioning 'PROMIS,' 'INSLAW,' 'PROJECT ABBREVIATION,' or 'PROMIS software' and by RCMP investigator Sean McDade" from 1991 to 2001.[^1][^4][^5]
|
||||
McDade's inquiry, authorized at the top of the force, took him secretly into the [[United States]] in February 2000, to [[Cheri Seymour]] and the Hercules, California, detective [[Sue Todd]], to the files behind Seymour's book on [[Danny Casolaro]], and to former investigators of the PROMIS and Cabazon matters, and back to a "war room" in Ottawa; the account of the investigation from his side is on his page. The Star's reports of August 2000 quoted the RCMP spokesman Sergeant Marc Richer ("I cannot either confirm or deny what you're looking into"); Louis Buffardi, Riconosciuto's lawyer, who said RCMP officers had interviewed his client "eight or nine months" earlier and were "probing a possible breach of Canada's national security"; the former Justice Department PROMIS project manager [[C. Madison Brewer]], who called the allegations "fantasy"; and McDade: "I kind of get a chuckle out of how something so small has been blown out of proportion." [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] told the paper that Canadian authorities had questioned him about PROMIS seven years earlier, during the security screening for his citizenship. On August 26 the Star reported, from unnamed sources, that the inquiry also concerned allegations that [[Robert Maxwell]] "may have acted as a middleman in selling the rigged software to Canada," and that a second former Israeli spy, "now living in New York," had been interviewed. [[Bill Hamilton]] said he had spoken with the chief investigator "probably dozens" of times and that his sources put the sale to Canada at 31 million dollars in 1983. After the closure Hamilton said McDade had earlier told him that the RCMP acquired PROMIS "from a company in Massachusetts" and that it "was modified by a Toronto firm," and Seymour told the Star: "(McDade) said that they had a paper trail on the Promis software being purchased by the RCMP. He told me that." The Star described McDade as "an Ottawa-Carleton regional police officer on secondment to the RCMP" who had refused its requests for an interview.[^2] [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s affidavit of March 21, 1991, had sworn that "some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS)," and that "the proprietary version of PROMIS, as modified by me, was, in fact, implemented in both"; the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] had found him "totally unreliable." A second Canadian witness, the former Nesbitt Thomson broker [[John A. Belton]], told the department's 1994 reviewers that CSIS had bought 10 to 12 million dollars of PROMIS in 1984 and that [[Earl Brian]] had sold it to the Bank of Montreal for 2 million dollars in May 1987, without producing any document; they found him "unbelievable." Fourteen months after the Star's disclosure, on October 16, 2001, Fox News reported that "Canada has actually investigated potential tampering with its Promis programs" as a live example in its story on [[Robert Hanssen]] and Osama bin Laden.[^1][^4][^5] To a request for any documents from 1991 to 2001 "mentioning the following terms: 'PROMIS' 'INSLAW' 'PROJECT ABBREVIATION' or 'PROMIS software' and by RCMP investigator Sean McDad[e] at RCMP National Division," the RCMP answered in May 2024, under request number A-2023-17635, that no records exist.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -43,4 +43,5 @@ McDade's inquiry, authorized at the top of the force, took him secretly into the
|
|||
[^2]: Lawton, Valerie, and Allan Thompson, "Spy computer 'trap' probed," *Toronto Star,* August 25, 2000; Thompson, Allan, and Valerie Lawton, "RCMP admit they're investigating 'trap'," *Toronto Star,* August 26, 2000; Lawton, Valerie, "American claims pirated software sold to Canada," *Toronto Star,* August 27, 2000; Lawton, Valerie, and Allan Thompson, "Mounties end probe of Promis," *Toronto Star,* September 16, 2000; texts as forwarded to the CTRL mailing list, https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg49408.html, msg49544.html and msg50988.html. Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay, 2010, for McDade's side.
|
||||
[^3]: Hamilton, Patricia C., affidavit, February 1991, Exhibit 1, *INSLAW, Inc. v. United States,* Adv. Proc. No. 86-0069 (Bankr. D.D.C.), archive.org item "INSLAW-Canada"; House Judiciary Committee investigative file "INSLAW - Canada (HOUSE)," memorandum of Ned M. Friece and interviews of March 23, 1991, archive.org item "INSLAW-CanadaHOUSE" (the House report gives the interview date as March 22).
|
||||
[^4]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992, section on Canada; U.S. Department of Justice, *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report,* September 27, 1994, "The Alleged Distribution of Enhanced PROMIS to Canada" and the Belton interview.
|
||||
[^5]: Riconosciuto's affidavit as reproduced in U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua,* March 1993, pp. 44-45; Fox News, *Special Report with Brit Hume,* October 16, 2001, Carl Cameron segment, transcript as reproduced at Boing Boing, October 17, 2001; Government of Canada, Open Government, Access to Information summary d596fa1b822b7eed3421bcabd4cf9fd5 (not opened).
|
||||
[^5]: Riconosciuto's affidavit as reproduced in U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua,* March 1993, pp. 44-45; Fox News, *Special Report with Brit Hume,* October 16, 2001, Carl Cameron segment, transcript as reproduced at Boing Boing, October 17, 2001.
|
||||
[^6]: Government of Canada, Completed Access to Information Requests, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, request A-2023-17635, May 2024, disposition "No records exist," 0 pages. https://search.open.canada.ca/ati/record/rcmp-grc,2024,5,A-2023-17635
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -9,9 +9,17 @@ tags:
|
|||
- FamilyJewels
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Rockefeller Commission
|
||||
summary: "The Rockefeller Commission (officially the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States) was convened by President Ford in 1975 under Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate CIA domestic abuses, but its membership was stacked with individuals who had participated in or benefited from the programs under review."
|
||||
summary: "Presidential commission on CIA activities within the United States, chaired by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller from January to June 1975; the White House removed its assassination section before publication."
|
||||
created: 2026-06-05
|
||||
updated: 2026-06-05
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: head_of
|
||||
with: "[[Nelson Rockefeller]]"
|
||||
reverse: true
|
||||
role: "chairman"
|
||||
start: 1975-01-04
|
||||
end: 1975-06-10
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (commonly called the Rockefeller Commission after its chair, Vice President [[Nelson Rockefeller]]) was established by President [[Gerald Ford]] on January 4, 1975 to investigate CIA domestic abuses, in the context of investigative reporting by [[Seymour Hersh]] in the New York Times and the parallel congressional investigations of the [[Church Committee]] and [[Pike Committee]]. Critics immediately noted that Rockefeller, as chairman of the [[NSC Special Group]] under Eisenhower, had personally overseen and approved at least one [[MKULTRA]] project, making his chairing of the commission to investigate the same programs a direct conflict of interest. The commission's membership was stacked with individuals connected to the [[Rockefeller family]] network or to the programs under review.
|
||||
|
|
@ -42,13 +50,13 @@ The composition of the commission drew criticism for the conflicts of interest a
|
|||
|
||||
### Scope and Limits
|
||||
|
||||
The commission held 26 sessions over approximately six months. Its investigation covered CIA mail-opening programs, MKULTRA, domestic surveillance of political activists, and CIA relationships with police departments. CIA Director William Colby provided the commission with access to the Family Jewels documents, the same compendium he had provided to the [[Justice Department]] and subsequently shared with the Church Committee and Pike Committee.
|
||||
The commission held 26 sessions over approximately six months. Its investigation covered CIA mail-opening programs, the testing of drugs on unsuspecting subjects, domestic surveillance of political activists, and CIA relationships with police departments. CIA Director William Colby provided the commission with access to the Family Jewels documents, the same compendium he had provided to the [[Justice Department]] and subsequently shared with the Church Committee and Pike Committee.
|
||||
|
||||
The commission's findings on Operation CHAOS were among the most specific it produced. Operation CHAOS, run under Angleton and overseen by [[Richard Ober]], had by the time of its termination on March 15, 1974, accumulated files on approximately 7,200 Americans and a computerized index of 300,000 names of civilians and approximately 1,000 organizations.[^13] The commission's report, released on June 10, 1975, confirmed this as a violation of the CIA's charter.
|
||||
|
||||
On the CIA's mail-opening program, the commission found that HTLINGUAL, which intercepted mail between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1952 to 1973, had resulted in the examination of more than 215,000 pieces of correspondence. The program operated through CIA facilities in New York City and Los Angeles. The commission characterized this as unlawful.[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
The commission's report on MKULTRA confirmed the CIA's program of behavioral modification research, including experiments on unwitting subjects using [[LSD]] and related compounds, conducted during the 1950s and 1960s through the Technical Services Division. The commission publicized MKULTRA's existence to a general audience for the first time, though the full scope of the program was not revealed until the Church Committee's subsequent investigation surfaced additional documents in 1977.
|
||||
The report did not use the cryptonym MKULTRA. Under "The Testing of Behavior-Influencing Drugs on Unsuspecting Subjects Within the United States," it found that the CIA had begun studying drugs such as [[LSD]] in the late 1940s as part of "a much larger CIA program to study possible means for controlling human behavior," including radiation and electric shock; that tests on unsuspecting subjects "in normal social situations" began in 1955 under "an informal arrangement with the Federal Bureau of Drug Abuse Control," on the West Coast and from 1961 on the East Coast; that all records of the program, 152 files, had been ordered destroyed in 1973; and that in 1953 an unnamed employee of the Department of the Army, given LSD without his knowledge at a meeting with CIA personnel, jumped from a tenth-floor window in New York several days later. It called the testing "clearly illegal" and recorded that drug projects ended in 1967.[^24] The 1977 Senate hearing on MKULTRA, which identified the man as [[Frank Olson]], found that the notes the commission had called reprimands were, in the words of the Deputy Director's covering instruction, "not reprimands."[^25]
|
||||
|
||||
### Suppression of Assassination Findings
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -64,7 +72,7 @@ The commission had also encountered obstruction in its attempts to investigate C
|
|||
|
||||
### Rockefeller's Position
|
||||
|
||||
Nelson Rockefeller had been CIA Director Allen Dulles's point of contact in the NSC when Dulles gave the Family Jewels briefing in 1955. As chairman of the NSC Special Group, Rockefeller had approved at least one major MKULTRA project involving a research hospital. His chairing of a commission to investigate the CIA programs he had helped authorize and oversee represented a direct conflict of interest that contemporary critics noted. Rockefeller initially opposed even permitting the commission to investigate assassination plots, and it was only Belin's persistence and the threat of adverse publicity that extended the commission's mandate into that territory.[^20]
|
||||
In 1955, as special assistant to the president, Nelson Rockefeller chaired the [[Planning Coordination Group]], set up under [[NSC 5412]] as the channel for policy approval of CIA covert operations. In May 1955 [[Charles Geschickter]] asked the CIA to contribute $375,000 toward a research building at Georgetown University Hospital, one-sixth of whose beds were to be reserved for the CIA along with cover for three CIA scientists and "human patients and volunteers for experimental use." [[Allen Dulles]] was said to have put the project to Rockefeller as chairman, who asked only whether Geschickter could offer "a reasonable expectation" of the promised space and gave his approval. The 1977 Senate hearing took testimony on the CIA's use of hospital construction money without naming him. Rockefeller initially opposed even permitting the commission to investigate assassination plots, and it was only Belin's persistence and the threat of adverse publicity that extended the commission's mandate into that territory.[^20]
|
||||
|
||||
### Report Structure and Outcome
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -93,7 +101,9 @@ The commission's records, totaling approximately 41 cubic feet (82,000 pages), a
|
|||
[^17]: National Security Archive, NSAEBB Document 4: Richard Cheney, handwritten comments on draft Rockefeller Commission report, circa June 1975. Cheney served as deputy assistant to the president under Rumsfeld at the time of these edits.
|
||||
[^18]: Church Committee, "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders," Senate Report 94-465, released November 20, 1975. Ford's suppression request sent October 31, 1975; Church's rejection November 4, 1975; Senate vote November 20, 1975.
|
||||
[^19]: National Security Archive, NSAEBB Document 10: Mason Cargill to File, "CIA denial of access to records of Special Group Augmented re Cuba," April 30, 1975.
|
||||
[^20]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 18, 44.
|
||||
[^20]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 18, 44, and Ch. 18 n. 32, citing MKULTRA Subproject 35-10, May 16, 1955. Sole source for Rockefeller's approval of the Georgetown project; the book calls the body he chaired the "Special Group." For the Planning Coordination Group, its membership and its role as the "normal channel for giving policy approval" to covert operations: Rowland Hughes memorandum to Eisenhower, March 3, 1955, *FRUS 1950-1955, The Intelligence Community,* Document 210, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950-55Intel/d210. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification,* joint hearing, August 3, 1977, testimony of Adm. Stansfield Turner and exchange with Sen. Richard Schweiker, https://archive.org/details/project-mkultra-the-cias-program-of-research-in-behavioral-modification
|
||||
[^21]: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Topic Guide, "Rockefeller Commission Report, June 1975." FRUS 1969-76, Vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Document 46, Memorandum on implementation of Rockefeller Commission recommendations, August 9, 1975.
|
||||
[^22]: FRUS 1969-76, Vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Document 46, August 9, 1975, Kissinger, Buchen, and Lynn to Ford on implementation of Rockefeller Commission recommendations.
|
||||
[^23]: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Finding Aid, "U.S. President's Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States Files," collection extent approximately 41 cubic feet.
|
||||
[^24]: Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States. *Report to the President.* Government Printing Office, June 1975, summary of findings and pp. 226-228. https://archive.org/details/reporttopresiden01unit
|
||||
[^25]: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification,* joint hearing, August 3, 1977, appendix, on the death of Dr. Olson. https://archive.org/details/project-mkultra-the-cias-program-of-research-in-behavioral-modification
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ The Vietnam War followed the French defeat at [[Dienbienphu]] and the division o
|
|||
|
||||
### Behavioral Science
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Rand Corporation]]'s Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study, commissioned by [[Advanced Research Projects Agency|ARPA]] in the mid-1960s, produced about 2,371 interviews, more than 60,000 pages, conducted at some forty sites in South Vietnam, including detention centers; Rand's own history later confirmed that its analyst Leon Gouré had promoted the air war with findings the interviews did not support.[^6] The Army's [[4th Psychological Operations Group]] developed leaflet and loudspeaker equipment; in March 1969 alone 713 million leaflets were dropped over Vietnam, the main channel for the [[Chieu Hoi]] defection program.[^7] In Senate testimony [[Sidney Gottlieb]] said that in those years the military had been "considering the use of [[LSD]] on a fairly large scale."[^8]
|
||||
The [[Rand Corporation]]'s Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study, commissioned by [[Advanced Research Projects Agency|ARPA]] in the mid-1960s, produced about 2,371 interviews, more than 60,000 pages, conducted at some forty sites in South Vietnam, including detention centers; Rand's own history later confirmed that its analyst Leon Gouré had promoted the air war with findings the interviews did not support.[^6] The Army's [[4th Psychological Operations Group]] developed leaflet and loudspeaker equipment; in March 1969 alone 713 million leaflets were dropped over Vietnam, the main channel for the [[Chieu Hoi]] defection program.[^7] In Top Secret testimony to the Church Committee in October 1975, [[Sidney Gottlieb]] said that during the war the military had been "considering the use of [[LSD]] on a fairly large scale."[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
### Opposition
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -35,6 +35,6 @@ The [[Rand Corporation]]'s Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study, commissioned b
|
|||
[^5]: As cited on the Richard Secord page.
|
||||
[^6]: Elliott, Mai. *RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era.* RAND CP-564, 2010; Watson, Peter. *War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology.* Basic Books, 1978, pp. 388-394.
|
||||
[^7]: Watson, pp. 403-416.
|
||||
[^8]: U.S. Senate, "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification," S. Hrg. 95-37, August 3, 1977, as cited on the Operation DERBY HAT page, which places the remark in the context of Gottlieb's 1975 Church Committee testimony (National Security Archive, "Top Secret Testimony of CIA's MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years Later," October 30, 2025).
|
||||
[^8]: National Security Archive. "Top Secret Testimony of CIA's MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years Later." October 30, 2025, documents 1-4.
|
||||
[^9]: Garrow, David. *Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.* William Morrow, 1986.
|
||||
[^10]: Aust, Stefan. *The Baader-Meinhof Complex.* Bodley Head, 2008.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Add table
Add a link
Reference in a new issue