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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Iran-Israel Joint Committee.md
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@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ The [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] was established in the fall of 1980 by [[Men
The rationale for helping the [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini|Khomeini]] government was that if the Iranians fought the Iraqis, their soldiers would be killed instead of Israeli soldiers. Additionally, the war diverted [[Arab]] attention away from Israel and drained [[Arab countries]] of money. From the [[Likud Party|Likud's]] perspective, the rise of Khomeini was beneficial as he was radical, anti-[[United States|American]], and anti-Arab, aligning with Israel's national security interest to support him.[^1]
The initial members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee included [[David Kimche]], [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], [[Moshe Hebroni]], and [[Rafi]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] was appointed to the committee on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out the committee's initiatives due to his fluency in Farsi and personal contacts in Iran.[^1]
The initial members of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee included [[David Kimche]], [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], [[Moshe Hebroni]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] was appointed to the committee on November 28, 1980, as the youngest member, responsible for carrying out the committee's initiatives due to his fluency in Farsi and personal contacts in Iran.[^1]
By March 1981, the Iran-Israel Joint Committee had established mechanisms for handling secret arms sales to Iran, as promised in the October [[Paris Summit Meeting]]. Israel operated under a general agreement of cooperation secretly reached in principle between Prime Minister Begin and [[William J. Casey]] in August 1980. David Kimche dealt directly with [[Robert Gates]] on the implementation of these sales. In early 1981, Gates approved the sale of unsophisticated weapons to Iran.[^1]

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/LAKAM.md
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@ -17,11 +17,11 @@ In the early 1980s, LAKAM was widely known by its Hebrew acronym. [[Rafael Eitan
### U.S. Spy Network Operations
[[Rafi]]'s operation to build a spy network in the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists was funded from [[LAKAM|LAKAM's]] budget. [[Iris]], a [[LAKAM]] representative in [[Washington, D.C.]], served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]], [[Jonathan Pollard]], and [[Rafi]].[^1]
[[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]'s operation to build a spy network in the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists was funded from [[LAKAM|LAKAM's]] budget. [[Iris]], a [[LAKAM]] representative in [[Washington, D.C.]], served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]], [[Jonathan Pollard]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]].[^1]
### Political Control and Funding
[[LAKAM]] was later controlled by [[Rafi]] after [[Shimon Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, and its huge slush fund, which had once financed [[Labor Party|Labor]] projects, was then controlled by [[Rafi|Eitan]].[^1]
[[LAKAM]] was later controlled by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] after [[Shimon Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, and its huge slush fund, which had once financed [[Labor Party|Labor]] projects, was then controlled by [[Rafael Eitan|Eitan]].[^1]
### PROMIS Software Operation

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Mossad.md
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@ -1,28 +1,166 @@
---
aliases:
- Mossad
- The Mossad
- HaMossad
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments
- Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks
- Israeli Secret Intelligence Service
- Israeli intelligence
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
title: Mossad
tags:
- organization
- intelligence
- international
description: Mossad is the national intelligence agency of Israel.
- Organization
- Intelligence
- Israel
- CIA
- KKMountain
- Nuclear
- Dimona
- SamsonOption
- Eichmann
- Vanunu
- IranIsraelArms
- PROMIS
- Lebanon
description: Mossad is the foreign intelligence agency of Israel, reporting to the prime minister.
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "Mossad is Israel's national foreign intelligence agency, whose extensive relationship with the CIA - including 28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s and the KK MOUNTAIN financial subsidy program - is a central subject of this vault."
summary: "Israel's foreign intelligence service, whose liaison with the CIA, funded off the books through KK MOUNTAIN, runs through the Dimona, Eichmann, Phalangist, Vanunu and Iran arms episodes in this vault's record."
start: 1949
location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Reuven Shiloah]]"
reverse: true
start: 1949
end: 1952
role: "first head"
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Isser Harel]]"
reverse: true
start: 1952
end: 1963
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Meir Amit]]"
reverse: true
start: 1963
end: 1968
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Zvi Zamir]]"
reverse: true
start: 1968
end: 1974
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Yitzhak Hofi]]"
reverse: true
start: 1974
end: 1982
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[Nachum Admoni]]"
reverse: true
start: 1982
end: 1989
role: "deputy head before September 12, 1982"
fn: 1
- type: funded
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
reverse: true
start: 1960
end: 1969
role: "KK MOUNTAIN cash payments from the director's contingency fund"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
start: 1950
role: "28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence by 1979, with James Jesus Angleton responsible for liaison"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Phalangists]]"
start: 1982
end: 1982
role: "the Mossad was made responsible for the link with the Phalangist leadership"
fn: 10
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Kahan Commission]]"
start: 1982-09
end: 1983-02-08
fn: 11
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]"
start: 1980
role: "joint committee with military intelligence for arms supply to Iran, according to Ari Ben-Menashe"
fn: 13
---
The Mossad (the Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments, in the words of the 1983 [[Kahan Commission]]) is the foreign intelligence service of [[Israel]]. Its own website carries a directive of [[David Ben-Gurion]] on its creation and lists twelve directors from [[Reuven Shiloah]] in 1949 to [[Yossi Cohen]], who left in 2021: Shiloah (1949 to 1952), [[Isser Harel]] (1952 to 1963), [[Meir Amit]] (1963 to 1968), [[Zvi Zamir]] (1968 to 1974), [[Yitzhak Hofi]] (1974 to 1982), [[Nachum Admoni]] (1982 to 1989), [[Shabtai Shavit]] (1989 to 1996), [[Danny Yatom]] (1996 to 1998), [[Efraim Halevy]] (1998 to 2002), [[Meir Dagan]] (2002 to 2011), [[Tamir Pardo]] (2011 to 2016) and Cohen (2016 to 2021).[^1] The record below follows the service where it touches the American intelligence services, the nuclear program at [[Dimona]], and the Lebanon, Iran and computer-software episodes that run through this vault.[^2]
[[Mossad]] is the national intelligence agency of [[Israel]]. Its relationship with the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] was extensive, involving 28 formal cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s. Many of these arrangements were financed off-the-books through a special contingency fund maintained by the Director of Central Intelligence. One such operation, code-named KK MOUNTAIN, provided millions in annual cash payments to Mossad, in return for which Mossad agents acted as American surrogates in North Africa and other regions. Other agreements financed Israeli operations in [[Syria]] and the [[Soviet Union]], where the CIA found it difficult to operate.[^2]
### Liaison with the CIA and KK MOUNTAIN
In 1977, [[Stansfield Turner]], then Director of Central Intelligence, abruptly cut back intelligence liaison with [[Israel]], leading to a sharp reduction in the flow of intelligence from [[Israel]] to [[Washington, D.C.]]. However, the CIA's "embarrassingly inept reporting on [[Iran]]", particularly their failure to anticipate the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, forced the American leadership to turn back to Israeli help in anticipating world events. This contributed to the March 1979 [[KH-11]] agreement, which granted [[Israel]] access to high-tech satellite imagery.[^2]
[[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that the March 1979 agreement giving Israel access to [[KH-11]] satellite imagery was "no less than the twenty-eighth in a series of formal Israeli-American cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s"; that nothing about them has been officially disclosed; and that many were financed "off-the-books," from "a special contingency fund personally maintained by the director of central intelligence." Through the 1960s, he wrote, one of the most sensitive operations in the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] was code-named [[KK MOUNTAIN]] ("kk" being the CIA digraph for documents dealing with Israel), which "provided for untold millions in annual cash payments to Mossad"; in return, Mossad agents acted "in essence, as American surrogates" in North Africa and in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and the Congo. Other agreements financed Israeli operations in [[Syria]] and inside the [[Soviet Union]], and part of the Soviet work was financed by disbursements cleared through the congressional oversight committees.[^3]
[[Yitzhak Hofi]], the director of Mossad, opposed the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]] in June 1981, primarily because there was no evidence that [[Iraq]] was yet capable of building a bomb.[^2]
Hersh wrote that in 1977 the Director of Central Intelligence [[Stansfield Turner]] abruptly cut back intelligence liaison with Israel and other friendly services, that the Israelis answered by sharply reducing what they sent to Washington, and that the CIA rejected a 1978 analysis by the former ambassador to Iran Uri Lubrani that the Shah would not survive; in the Israeli view, he wrote, the 1979 KH-11 agreement was made inevitable by the CIA's failure to anticipate Soviet pressure on Afghanistan and the upheavals in [[Iran]], where "Mossad's information was far superior," Hersh noting that there were large Jewish communities in both countries. Lubrani was attached to the Israeli delegation that negotiated the KH-11 agreement.[^3] Hersh also wrote that some American intelligence officials suspected that President [[Jimmy Carter]]'s decision was a reward for [[Menachem Begin]]'s success at the [[Camp David summit]].[^3]
In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, [[Uri Geller]] claimed to have worked with Mossad officials, along with Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet. He stated that he was tested by these agencies and began to work for them, performing tasks such as clairvoyantly viewing intelligence targets and predicting troop deployments.[^1]
On the American side, Hersh wrote, [[James Jesus Angleton]], the CIA's director of counterintelligence, "also was responsible for liaison with Israel"; former Agency officials who criticized his counterintelligence methods acknowledged that he had handled Israel "correctly and proficiently"; and one of his closest colleagues was the Israeli intelligence official Meir (Meme) Deshalit, who was posted to Washington in 1948 and was the older brother of the physicist Amos Deshalit. Angleton had worked with the Jewish resistance in Italy while in the [[Office of Strategic Services]].[^4]
However, Geller later chose to pursue a high-profile career as a stage performer rather than a psychic operative for Israel. Mossad officials, along with other Israeli intelligence, also visited [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] to assess Geller's abilities, seeking to determine if his psychic talents were genuine and how valuable he could be as an intelligence asset.[^1]
### Eichmann, 1960
The CIA's Directorate of Operations name file on [[Adolf Eichmann]], released in 2005 under the [[Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act]] and posted by the National Security Archive, records that the CIA was surprised by the capture of Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina on May 2, 1960 and that the Director of Central Intelligence immediately asked operatives with contacts in the Israeli service to gather "all possible details." In one exchange recorded in volume 1, document 49, a CIA officer congratulated his Israeli counterpart "on the final accomplishment of what appeared to be a magnificent job" and noted that captured Nazi war documents might interest him. To strengthen ties with the Israeli services, the editors wrote, Angleton's Counterintelligence Staff searched archives and submitted names of other German officers mentioned in the Eichmann documents; the review found that some of Eichmann's associates, including [[Otto von Bolschwing]], described there as Eichmann's "tutor on Zionism and the politics of Zionism in the mid-1930s," had been assets of the [[Gehlen Organization]] and the CIA; the posting quotes the historian Timothy Naftali that Bolschwing contacted a former CIA handler in panic after the capture.[^5] Hersh wrote that [[Rafael Eitan]] "had participated in the 1960 kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires" and later resigned from Mossad.[^6]
### The spring of 1963 and the German scientists
A National Security Archive posting records that in the spring of 1963 "some top officials in Israel, primarily Mossad chief Isser Harel with the support of Foreign Minister [[Golda Meir]]," began through leaks to the Israeli press a public campaign about German scientists in Egypt developing ballistic missiles and radiological weapons, "possibly even nuclear weapons"; that the State Department intelligence chief Thomas Hughes asked the Director of Central Intelligence [[John McCone]] for a special estimate on advanced weapons programs in the United Arab Republic and Israel; and that the estimate of May 8, 1963 concluded that Israel "will attempt to produce a weapon sometime in the next several years" unless deterred, while the United Arab Republic did not have "the capability of producing a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future."[^7] The same posting dates the correspondence between [[John F. Kennedy]] and Ben-Gurion over Dimona inspections to those months; Mossad's own list ends Harel's term in 1963.[^1][^7]
### Plumbat, 1968
Hersh wrote that Mossad wanted uranium ore of which "hundreds of tons" sat in a warehouse near Antwerp, controlled by Euratom, and that Dimona, "ostensibly a twenty-four-megawatt reactor capable of consuming no more than twenty-four tons of ore in a year," could not openly buy an eight-year supply. In March 1968, he wrote, Mossad approached one of its agents in West Germany to buy the ore for $4 million, allegedly for an Italian chemical company in Milan; Euratom approved the sale in October; the uranium left Antwerp aboard a vessel renamed the Scheersberg A, "purchased, with Mossad funds, by another Israeli agent-in-place in Turkey"; and at sea the ore was transferred to an Israeli freighter guarded by gunboats. The disappearance was known to Euratom within months, American and European agencies reported internally that Israel was involved, and it took nine years for the press to report it; Hersh cited published accounts "confirmed by Israeli officials" and a 1978 book, *The Plumbat Affair*.[^8]
### Osirak and the Lebanon war
Hersh wrote that Hofi, "the director of Mossad," and the chief of military intelligence [[Yehoshua Saguy]] opposed the 1981 attack on [[Osirak bombing|Osirak]] "primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb," and that two weeks after the raid Hofi gave an interview, identified only by title under censorship, complaining about politicians who compromised secret intelligence, which in Hersh's account left "no doubt in the Israeli intelligence community" that Begin was the politician meant; Hersh added that Hofi was also a critic of [[Ariel Sharon]].[^9]
The Kahan Commission, reporting on the Sabra and Shatila massacres, wrote that Israel had extended aid to the Christian armed forces, that "the Mossad was made responsible for the link with the Phalangists," and that its representatives "maintained a rather close connection with the Phalangist leadership"; that the Mossad "to a not inconsiderable extent under the influence of constant and close contact with the Phalangist elite" favored strengthening the relationship while military intelligence emphasized the Phalangists' unreliability; and that the Mossad's head, in testimony of December 27, 1982, accepted that "subjective, and not only objective, relations also emerged." In the view prevailing among the Mossad agents before the war, the commission wrote, the Phalangists' atrocities were a thing of the past, although in meetings with the heads of the Mossad [[Bashir Gemayel]] had said things that "left no room for doubt" of his intention to eliminate the Palestinian problem in Lebanon even by "aberrant methods."[^10] In cables of September 15 the Mossad representative in Beirut reported the meetings of the chief of staff and the defense minister with the Phalangist leadership and that the Phalangists would enter West Beirut after the Israeli Defense Forces; a cable of September 16 at noon reported a coordination meeting to prepare the Phalangists "for operations to clear the city of terrorists," and another that they would start work at the Burj el-Barajneh camp. The head of the Mossad, who had assumed the post on September 12, 1982 after serving as deputy, learned of the decision to send the Phalangists into the camps only at the cabinet meeting of Thursday evening, did not give an assessment of their entry or express reservations, and was found by the commission to have shown an inaction that "should not be considered serious," and the commission considered it sufficient to determine responsibility without further recommendation.[^11]
### Iran, 1980 and 1981
[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] wrote that in the fall of 1980 Begin ordered the military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Sagi]] and the Mossad's "acting director" Nachum Admoni to create an Iran-Israel Joint Committee of military intelligence and Mossad to supply arms to Iran; that [[David Kimche]], whom he called head of Tevel, was its senior member; and that after [[Yitzhak Shamir]] became prime minister members including Kimche were forced out and Eitan ran the committee.[^12][^13] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for these passages. The Mossad's own list gives Hofi as head from 1974 to 1982 and Admoni from 1982, and the Kahan Commission describes Admoni as deputy head until September 12, 1982.[^1][^10] The House October Surprise Task Force wrote that Eitan and Saguy had told the Israeli government they never met Ben-Menashe and that his Israeli military file showed work as a translator; Ben-Menashe was acquitted in New York in November 1990.[^14] See [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].
### PROMIS, according to Ben-Menashe
Ben-Menashe wrote that Eitan, as counterterrorism adviser to Begin and then to Shamir, took an interest in the software program [[PROMIS]]; that in 1982 [[Earl Brian]] approached Eitan about selling it to foreign intelligence agencies; that Eitan decided to have a "trap door" installed to give Israeli agents access to the computers of any service that bought it; that Ben-Menashe recruited his childhood friend [[Yehuda Ben-Hanan]], of Software and Engineering Consultants in California, to build the external access; that Eitan selected Jordan to test it and that Brian sold it through his company [[Hadron]]; and that [[Robert Maxwell]] "made a fortune out of it" through his companies.[^15] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for these passages. See [[PROMIS Software Scandal]].
### Vanunu and the Mirror Group, 1986
Hersh wrote that copies of the photographs [[Mordecai Vanunu]] took inside Dimona were made available in London, before the Sunday Times published, to an Israeli intelligence agent masquerading as an American reporter; that they were sent by courier to the office of Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]], who ordered Mossad to get Vanunu out of London and into Israeli custody; that "no kidnapping could take place in England for diplomatic reasons"; and that Vanunu was enticed by a Mossad agent named Cindy Hanin Bentov (a pseudonym; see [[Cindy Hanin Bentov]]) to leave for Rome a few days before publication, where, according to Vanunu's account to relatives, he was drugged and returned to Israel by ship.[^16]
Ben-Menashe told Hersh that after Vanunu's photographs reached the Israeli leadership he and others were told that "Peres said, 'Let's make him an example'" rather than assassinating him; that the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror, [[Nicholas Davies]], "provided the framework" for the Sunday Mirror's hostile story of September 28, which went to Maxwell, publisher of the Mirror Group; and that Maxwell told him "I know what has to happen. I have already spoken to your bosses."[^17] The Sunday Mirror's reporters Tony Frost and Mark Souster were ordered by their editor to take the photographs to the Israeli embassy; the senior deputy editor John C. Parker understood that Maxwell had given the order; the news editor Peter J. Miller said that "the line we were instructed to take cost the Sunday Mirror a world-beating exclusive"; and the editor Michael Malloy acknowledged discussing the story with Maxwell, said there was "nothing sinister or strange" in it, and recalled that Maxwell ordered the photographs shown to the Israelis.[^17] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for his own account of the meeting with Maxwell and of the instructions; the Mirror staff statements are those of the persons named.
### Uri Geller
[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that, according to Geller, [[Moshe Dayan]] asked [[Uri Geller]] "Now, what can you do for Israel?"; that "so the story goes" Geller then met the military intelligence chief [[Aharon Yariv]] and officials of Mossad and [[Shin Bet]], was tested by them and began to work for them, viewing targets in Syria and elsewhere; and that Yariv, in an interview with the science writer John Wilhelm in the mid-1970s, denied ever meeting or consulting with Geller. Schnabel wrote that Geller says he later met secretly in hotel rooms in the United States with Israeli officials to brief them on his experiences at [[Stanford Research Institute]] and was warned "not to do certain things" there; that in one of Geller's stories a tape recorder started to play by itself at a meeting with Mossad officers; and that among the "wild surmises" in the air when CIA officials asked Puthoff about Geller was that he was "part of some Mossad disinformation project, designed to spook the Arabs into believing that Israel possessed a paranormal superman," or that Israeli intelligence wanted to infiltrate SRI. Several Israeli officials came to SRI in the summer of 1973; [[Hal Puthoff|Harold Puthoff]] "had the impression that they were from Israeli military intelligence," and they said that Geller had done "surprisingly good work for them against Middle Eastern military targets" and asked whether it was luck or verifiable psychic ability.[^18]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991.
[^1]: Mossad, "History," mossad.gov.il (directive of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion on the establishment of the Mossad; list of the heads of the Mossad, 1949 to 2021). https://mossad.gov.il/en/history
[^2]: Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, Report, February 8, 1983, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Historical Documents, vol. 8: 1982-1984, document 104. https://syriaaccountability.org/content/images/wordpress/ISRAELMFA_Commission-Inquiry-Beirut_1983_EN.pdf
[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement," pp. 3-6. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option
[^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 11, "Playing the Game," pp. 143-145.
[^5]: Feinstein, Tamara, ed., "The CIA Names File on Adolf Eichmann," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 150, March 24, 2005, citing the CIA Directorate of Operations file, vol. 1, document 49, and vol. 2, document 7. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB150/index.htm
[^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 21, "Israel's Nuclear Spy," pp. 288-289.
[^7]: Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, eds., "The Battle of the Letters, 1963," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 671, May 2, 2019, documents 17 and 22. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-05-02/battle-letters-1963-john-f-kennedy-david-ben-gurion-levi-eshkol-us-inspections-dimona
[^8]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 13, "An Israeli Decision," pp. 180-181.
[^9]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 1, pp. 9-11; chapter 21, p. 294 footnote (Hofi and Sharon).
[^10]: Kahan Commission Report, sections on the Phalangists and the Mossad, on the Phalangists' entry into the camps, and on the head of the Mossad (note 2).
[^11]: Kahan Commission Report (note 2), recommendations on the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the head of the Mossad.
[^12]: Ben-Menashe, Ari, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*, TrineDay, 2015 reprint of the 1992 edition, passages on the Joint Committee for Iran-Israel Relations, Tevel and the Mossad directorship. https://archive.org/details/profits-of-war-1992-ari-ben-menashe
[^13]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, passage on Begin's order to Sagi and Admoni in the fall of 1980.
[^14]: U.S. House of Representatives, *Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980*, H. Rept. 102-1102, January 3, 1993, section on Ben-Menashe (p. 97). https://archive.org/details/14148-h.rp.-1102 ; Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19, p. 260 footnote (acquittal in November 1990).
[^15]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, chapter on PROMIS.
[^16]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 15, "The Tunnel," pp. 197-198.
[^17]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 22, "An Israeli Asset," pp. 311-315.
[^18]: Schnabel, Jim, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies*, Dell, 1997, chapter 9, "The Trickster." Full text read at https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Rafi.md
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@ -1,22 +1,85 @@
---
aliases:
- Rafi
- Rafi Party
- Rafi (political party)
- Rafi (Israel Workers' List)
- Israel Workers' List
- Israeli Workers List
- Reshimat Poalei Yisrael
- Israel Labor List
- Rafi-State List
- State List
- Reshima Mamlachtit
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
tags:
- Organization
- Political Party
- PoliticalParty
- Israel
- Nuclear
- Dimona
- Mapai
- BenGurion
category: "Foreign Government"
summary: "Rafi (Israel Workers' List) was an Israeli political party founded in June 1965 by David Ben-Gurion after his resignation from Mapai, with Shimon Peres as its power broker and Moshe Dayan as a prominent member."
summary: "Israeli opposition party formed by David Ben-Gurion in 1965 after leaving Mapai, whose campaign against Prime Minister Eshkol turned partly on Dimona; it won ten Knesset seats and merged into Labor in 1968."
start: 1965
end: 1968
location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
relations:
- type: founded
with: "[[David Ben-Gurion]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
role: "led the list in the 1965 elections"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Shimon Peres]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
end: 1968
role: "power broker under Ben-Gurion"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Moshe Dayan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
end: 1968
role: "joined after resigning as agriculture minister; defense minister from June 1967"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[Ernst David Bergmann]]"
reverse: true
start: 1965
role: "founding member"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Gahal]]"
start: 1965
end: 1967
role: "opposition cooperation until the national unity government of June 1967"
fn: 1
---
Rafi (an acronym for the Israel Workers' List) was a new political party created by [[David Ben-Gurion]] in June 1965, after he dramatically resigned from the [[Mapai Party]]. He was joined by [[Shimon Peres]], who became Rafi's power broker, and [[Moshe Dayan]]. Ben-Gurion's hope was that Rafi could capture a significant number of seats in the Knesset and emerge as a major power broker in Israeli politics.[^1]
Rafi (an acronym of Reshimat Poalei Yisrael, the Israel Workers' List) was a political party formed in 1965 by [[David Ben-Gurion]] and a group of his associates after they left the [[Mapai Party]].[^1][^2]
Rafi became an opposition party, playing a role traditionally belonging to right-wing groups. While Ben-Gurion's immediate reason for splitting with Mapai leadership was his continued anger over the [[Lavon Affair]], the Rafi Party, under Peres's leadership, advocated for a more aggressive position across defense issues, particularly on nuclear weapons. [[Ernst David Bergmann]] was another founding member of Rafi and continued to influence Ben-Gurion regarding the dangers of not initiating the production of a nuclear arsenal.[^1]
### Founding
The issue of nuclear weapons emerged as a dominant one in the 1965 elections, often discussed in coded language in Israeli newspapers. Rafi leaders criticized [[Levi Eshkol]]'s "big mistake," which was understood by many inside [[Israel]] as referring to Eshkol's hesitations about opening a nuclear weapons assembly line at [[Dimona]].[^1]
The Israel Democracy Institute records that the split came from Ben-Gurion's fight to reopen the investigation of the [[Lavon Affair]], his opposition to a joint Mapai list with Ahdut HaAvoda, and his concerns about the leadership of [[Levi Eshkol]]; that most of Rafi's members were the young generation of Mapai, including [[Moshe Dayan]], [[Shimon Peres]] and [[Yitzhak Navon]]; that its platform did not mention socialism and stressed a change in the election system; and that on foreign policy and security it was "more hawkish than Mapai."[^1] The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry states that seven Mapai Knesset members, later joined by Dayan, formed the new list in July 1965.[^2] [[Seymour Hersh]] dated Ben-Gurion's resignation from Mapai to June 1965, "talking darkly of Eshkol's 'endangering the nation's security'"; he wrote that Peres joined "reluctant but loyal" and became Rafi's "power broker," that Dayan, who had recently resigned as agriculture minister, joined as well, and that Ben-Gurion hoped for as many as twenty-five of the 120 Knesset seats.[^3]
However, Rafi and Ben-Gurion were disappointed by the election results, winning only ten seats in the Knesset, which was insufficient to provide Ben-Gurion with a power base. The election was interpreted as a brutal referendum on his dream of returning to power and marked the end of his role in the public policy of [[Israel]].[^1]
### The nuclear issue in the 1965 campaign
Hersh wrote that Eshkol's decision to hold the nuclear question at the research stage, taken at the Midrasha conference, "enraged" Ben-Gurion, who compared him to Neville Chamberlain; that Rafi under Peres took "a more aggressive position across the spectrum of defense issues, and especially on nuclear weapons"; and that [[Ernst David Bergmann]] was a founding member who "once again had Ben-Gurion's ear": "Ben-Gurion was quoting Bergmann all the time," an Israeli recalled, about the dangers of not producing a nuclear arsenal.[^3] According to Hersh the issue was "played out in code language" in the 1965 election. The Israeli newspapers carried criticism by Peres and Ben-Gurion of what was called in Hebrew "the sensitive topic" or "a lament for generations," and Rafi leaders constantly attacked what they called Eshkol's "big mistake," language that many in Israel understood as referring to his hesitations about opening a nuclear weapons assembly line at [[Dimona]]. Hersh wrote that American and other newspapers did not report it and that "neither did the American intelligence community" understand it.[^3] He added that a prominent lawyer close to [[Golda Meir]] publicly called Ben-Gurion a "coward" and Rafi a "neo-Fascist group," and that for Ben-Gurion's critics the election was a contest between a state that relied on "science, objective knowledge" and one that relied on dedicated volunteers.[^3]
The party played, in Hersh's phrase, "the role that had traditionally belonged to right-wing groups"; the Israel Democracy Institute records that because Rafi did not join the coalition it "acted in cooperation with" [[Gahal]].[^1][^3]
### Results, the Six-Day War and the merger
Rafi received 95,328 votes, 7.9 percent, and ten of the 120 seats in the November 1965 Knesset election, after winning 12 percent of the vote in the Histadrut elections of September.[^1][^2] Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion and Rafi "were sorely disappointed by the election," that it amounted to "a brutal referendum on his dream of returning to power, and the end of his role in the public policy of Israel," and that Eshkol took it as a referendum on his handling of the nuclear issue, after which Dimona "would remain a standby operation."[^3] The party's founding convention in May 1966 represented about 23,000 members and adopted a program of electoral reform, defense self-sufficiency, national health insurance, free secondary education and economic modernization with an emphasis on science.[^2]
On the eve of the Six-Day War of June 1967 Rafi and Gahal pressed for Dayan's appointment as defense minister; both joined the national unity government of Eshkol, and Dayan became minister of defense.[^1] On January 21, 1968 Rafi, Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda formed the Israel Labor Party, Rafi receiving 21.5 percent of the places on its governing bodies; Ben-Gurion's separate State List, "composed largely of Rafi supporters," won four seats in the 1969 elections, was renamed the Rafi-State List in February 1971 and in 1973 ran as part of the [[Likud Party]] bloc.[^2] See [[Labor Party]].
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 9.
[^1]: Israel Democracy Institute, "Rafi (The Israeli Workers List)," Elections and Parties (founding, leaders, 1965 result, Six-Day War cabinet). https://en.idi.org.il/israeli-elections-and-parties/parties/rafi
[^2]: Louvish, Misha, "Rafi," *Encyclopaedia Judaica*, on Encyclopedia.com (July 1965 list, Histadrut and Knesset results, May 1966 convention, State List, merger of January 21, 1968). https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rafi
[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 10, "The Samson Option," pp. 138-141. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/LASD Major Violators.md
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@ -1,31 +1,105 @@
---
title: LASD Major Violators
aliases:
- LASD Major Violators
- Major Violators
- Majors
- Majors I
- Majors II
- Majors III
- Major Violators Team II
- LASD Majors
- Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Major Violators
- Sheriff's Major Violators
category: "U.S. Government"
tags:
- Organization
- Organization/Law_Enforcement
- United_States
- Los_Angeles
- LawEnforcement
- LosAngeles
- Narcotics
- DarkAlliance
- BigSpender
- ContraCocaine
- 1980s
- Dark_Alliance_Investigation
summary: Elite narcotics units of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that investigated the Blandon-Ross cocaine network and were considered among the best drug detectives in the nation.
summary: "Narcotics detective squads of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that searched the Blandon organization on October 27, 1986, and whose deputies were convicted in the 1990 Big Spender corruption trial."
location: "Los Angeles County, California"
relations:
- type: investigated
with: "[[Danilo Blandon]]"
start: 1986-09
end: 1986-10
role: "Majors II surveillance and October 27, 1986 search warrants against the Blandon organization"
fn: 2
- type: investigated
with: "[[Ronald Lister]]"
start: 1986-10
role: "searched Lister's residence on October 27, 1986"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Operation Big Spender]]"
start: 1990-02
end: 1990-12
role: "former Majors II deputies indicted, tried and convicted for stealing seized cash"
fn: 5
- type: member_of
with: "[[Thomas Gordon]]"
reverse: true
role: "Majors II deputy who swore the October 23, 1986 search warrant affidavit"
fn: 2
- type: member_of
with: "[[Edward Huffman]]"
reverse: true
role: "sergeant leading the Blandon investigation"
fn: 2
created: 2025-08-05
updated: 2026-10-05
---
The [[Los Angeles]] County Sheriff's Department (LASD) Major Violators squads (Majors I, II, and III) were elite narcotics investigation units considered some of the best drug detectives in the nation during the 1980s. They investigated the [[Danilo Blandon|Blandón]]-[[Ricky Ross|Ross]] cocaine network, the largest crack distribution operation uncovered in Los Angeles up to that time.[^1]
The Major Violators squads of the [[Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department]] (LASD), known as Majors I, II and III, were narcotics investigation units that [[Gary Webb]] described as considered some of the best drug detectives in the nation during the 1980s.[^1] Majors II investigated the [[Danilo Blandon|Blandón]] organization in 1986 and executed the search warrants of October 27, 1986, whose seized papers, informant statements and aftermath were later examined by the CIA Inspector General, the Justice Department Inspector General and the Sheriff's own 1996 review.[^2][^3] Several deputies of the squad were afterwards indicted, tried and convicted of stealing cash seized from narcotics suspects, in the prosecutions known as Big Spender.[^4][^5]
### Structure and Resources
### Structure and reputation
The squads worked out of trailers at the Whittier and Lennox stations, each team of seven or eight detectives commanded by a sergeant. Majors II was headed by Sergeant Edward Huffman. Former lieutenant Mike Fossey served as unit supervisor and intelligence officer. "The Majors were hot shit," said Bell PD detective [[Jerry Guzzetta]]. "They had all the resources, they had the funding, they had the manpower, they had the surveillance equipment, the night vision stuff, the helicopters, the overtime. They had everything." Any cop with ambition lusted for assignment to the Majors. They got the biggest cases, seized the largest amounts of cash and cocaine, and worked virtually unsupervised.[^1]
According to Webb, the squads worked out of trailers at the Whittier and Lennox stations, each team of seven or eight detectives commanded by a sergeant. Majors II was headed by Sergeant [[Edward Huffman]], and former lieutenant Mike Fossey was the unit's supervisor and intelligence officer. Webb quoted Bell police detective [[Jerry Guzzetta]]: "The Majors were hot shit. They had all the resources, they had the funding, they had the manpower, they had the surveillance equipment, the night vision stuff, the helicopters, the overtime." In Webb's account any cop with ambition wanted assignment to the Majors, who got the biggest cases, seized the largest amounts of cash and cocaine and worked virtually unsupervised. He quoted the Los Angeles defense attorney Jay Lichtman describing them as "really the cream of the crop, the elite, the top officers of the Sheriff's Department," and wrote that since 1982 they had tangled with the Mexican mafia, street gangs, [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín cartel]] cells and international money launderers.[^1]
L.A. defense attorney Jay Lichtman described them as "really the cream of the crop, the elite, the top officers of the Sheriff's Department." Since 1982 they had tangled with the Mexican mafia, street gangs, [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín cartel]] cells, and international money launderers.[^1]
Webb also recorded the squads' off-duty reputation: a drunken crew member who pulled a pistol in a restaurant to hurry a waiter, and Deputy Daniel Garner, whom Webb called the department's best drug detective, urinating on the pants leg of an aspiring narcotics officer he judged unworthy of joining the Majors.[^1]
### Culture
### The Blandon investigation, 1986
The squads also won notoriety for boozy off-duty carousing. A drunken crew member once pulled out a pistol at a restaurant to hurry along a lazy waiter. Deputy Daniel Garner, regarded as the best drug detective in the department, relieved himself on the pants leg of an aspiring narcotics officer he deemed unworthy of joining the Majors.[^1]
The Justice Department Inspector General dated the investigation to an [[Internal Revenue Service]] inquiry into a Colombian money-laundering operation in Bell, [[California]]. On August 9, 1986, Guzzetta used that information to obtain search warrants that produced a substantial seizure of drugs and currency and an informant who described three Colombian organizations and a fourth dealer, Danilo Blandón, a "peripheral" supplier of the "black cocaine market" led by "Rick" and "Ollie" ([[Ricky Ross]] and Ollie Newell), who worked with an ex-Laguna Beach police officer, "Ronnie" ([[Ronald Lister]]). In early September 1986 Guzzetta passed the information to Deputy Sheriff [[Thomas Gordon]] of Major Violators Team II, and a team led by Sergeant Huffman began surveillance and informant work. Webb wrote that the squad analysed intelligence from the [[Torres Brothers|Torres brothers]] and concluded that the Los Angeles crack market was more disciplined than anyone had thought, with a direct pipeline through Ross and Newell to the Colombian cartels.[^1][^2]
### The Blandon-Ross Investigation
[[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agent Aukland and [[Drug Enforcement Administration|DEA]] agent Schrettner, who were running their own cases, learned in September 1986 of the Sheriff's inquiry, shared informant information with its deputies, and in mid-October helped with surveillance of Blandón's businesses, Guerra Auto Sales and the Nicamex Taco restaurant.[^2]
When Bell PD detective Jerry Guzzetta realized his "[[Project Sahara]]" investigation exceeded his capacity, his chief arranged for him to team with Majors II. Guzzetta's reports landed on the desk of Detective [[Thomas Gordon]], a sixteen-year veteran. The squad analyzed the [[Torres Brothers|Torres brothers]]' intelligence and reached the conclusion that the L.A. crack market was far more disciplined than anyone had imagined. Through two Black dealers named Rick and Ollie, the gangs had established a direct pipeline to the Colombian cartels, with access to unlimited cocaine. The Majors now had names and addresses of everyone at the top of the distribution chain - from Colombian importers to Nicaraguan middlemen to Black wholesalers controlling the [[South Central Los Angeles|South Central]] marketplace.[^1]
On October 23, 1986, Gordon applied for search warrants for fourteen locations tied to Blandón, Lister, Roberto Aguilar, Ivan Torres and Aparicio Moreno, and Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Glennette Blackwell signed them. The affidavit cited four sources: Guzzetta, Deputy Sheriff Richard Wenig, Aukland and Schrettner. It recited a Wenig informant's statement that Blandón was a [[Contras|Contra]] sympathizer and a founder of the [[FDN]] and that "the money and arms generated by this organization comes thru the sales of cocaine," and the informant's list of about one hundred Nicaraguan or Contra-sympathizing people said to be involved in cocaine distribution. Wenig told the LASD in 1996 and the Inspector General that he doubted he had supplied that informant.[^2]
The deputies searched thirteen residences and businesses on October 27, 1986, and arrested Blandón on the strength of a small amount of cocaine the deputies said they found in his house, which he said was planted. The Inspector General recorded the following disputes about the day:
Obstruction. Deputies recalled hearing, perhaps at the October 24 briefing, that federal agents did not want the LASD to proceed. Huffman's chronology, written soon after the search, states "FBI Riverside asks Majors II to hold back investigation." Aukland told the Inspector General that he and the DEA preferred no warrants be served while their own cases were developing but assisted once Gordon decided to go ahead; Huffman confirmed that the FBI and DEA cooperated. The Inspector General found no evidence of obstruction once the LASD decided to proceed.[^2]
Foreknowledge. Some local officers speculated that federal agents "burned" the raids. Blandón told federal prosecutors in 1992 and the Inspector General that he had learned from his associate Carlos Rocha that FBI agents had been asking about him, had noticed he was followed, and had "cleaned everything" from his house about a month before. Lister said a former neighbor warned him a week before. The DEA agent Hector Berrellez told the Inspector General that the occupants of Aguilar's house said they were expecting the police. The Inspector General found that Blandón and others knew they were under surveillance but found no one who intentionally tipped them off.[^2] Blandón told the CIA Inspector General that no government agency warned him.[^3]
The CIA. The LASD Report found, and the Inspector General found likely, that Lister told the searching deputies he had ties to the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], as he routinely told others. Some deputies recalled Lister phoning a CIA contact, "Mr. Weekly." The Inspector General found no evidence that Lister worked for the CIA or the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] or that the CIA intervened. Huffman recorded that Blandón's attorney Bradley Brunon telephoned on October 27 and said he thought the "CIA winked at this sort of thing" in raising funds for the Contras; Aukland repeated the remark in a November 17, 1986 teletype to FBI headquarters. Brunon told the LASD in 1996 that he did not think he made the statement, and Blandón told the CIA Inspector General that he never told his lawyer of a CIA connection.[^2][^3]
Documents. Federal agents of the FBI, DEA and IRS copied the seized documents at the LASD on October 31 and November 3, 1986; a later report counted 1,112 pages. Many originals were later released to Blandón's and Lister's attorneys, others retained or destroyed under LASD guidelines. The Inspector General concluded no evidence was removed from LASD custody, but could not locate the copies in FBI files, in the files of the Los Angeles [[United States Attorney]], or at DEA, which agents said had seen them in the U.S. Attorney's office in 1990. A box of more than 1,000 pages survived in IRS files, from the agent Laura Hillhouse.[^2]
Charges. The LASD dropped the possession charges against Blandón and his wife. Huffman told the Inspector General the department chose not to pursue minor state charges and transferred the evidence to federal authorities with greater resources, and that no one pressured the LASD; his chronology records "No case filed to protect on going investigation & informants" and "Very small amount of cocaine found @ 1 of 14 locations."[^2]
### Operation Big Spender, 1989 to 1990
On the Inspector General's account, deputies were alleged to have routinely stolen money when arresting people or serving search warrants, and to have used excessive force, committed perjury and planted drugs. A federal grand jury in February 1990 indicted ten deputies, including the head of a narcotics unit, on charges they stole $1.4 million in confiscated cash and spent it on vacations, boats, houses, luxury cars and electronics.[^4][^2] In December 1990 a federal jury convicted six deputies, all formerly of an elite narcotics squad, of stealing $48,000 in seized money and convicted a seventh of circumventing bank reporting requirements; the Associated Press reported possible prison terms of up to 53 years, and Sheriff [[Sherman Block]], who had initiated the investigation, called it a betrayal.[^4] The prosecutor in the first case was Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Eglash.[^2]
The Inspector General found that several of the deputies who executed the Blandón warrants were among those later accused. Deputy Gordon, who swore the affidavit, was convicted in 1990 of federal tax charges in the Big Spender trial and declined interviews. Deputy John Hurtado admitted to LASD investigators that he took about $50,000 in cash from a briefcase in a bedroom of Blandón's house, while Deputy Daniel Garner said he found one bindle of cocaine in the house that Blandón may have left behind; no deputy admitted planting drugs.[^2]
In the first Big Spender trial the defense attorney [[Harland Braun]] raised an allegation of CIA involvement in laundering drug money to the Contras and Iran, and the defense filed a motion built on documents seized from Lister's house, which it said included films of military operations in Central America, military hardware and communications manuals, and "numerous documents indicating that drug money was being used to purchase military equipment for Central America." The government obtained a motion in limine barring the subject; Eglash called it one in a series of "fantastic claims," and the trial judge said of Braun's filing that he suspected it was made "in bad faith" to reach the media. The [[San Jose Mercury News]] later wrote that a sealed ten-page document in that file "may hold the key" to the CIA, Contra and crack connection.[^2] [[Ricky Ross]] later testified as a government witness in the Big Spender prosecutions, which the Inspector General recorded among the grounds of Ross's later claim that he was targeted for his cooperation.[^2]
### The 1996 LASD review
After the San Jose Mercury News published Webb's "[[Dark Alliance]]" series and a follow-up headed "Affidavit: Cops Knew of Drug Ring," Sheriff Block on October 3, 1996 ordered an inquiry into whether the department knew of "alleged CIA/Contra (FDN) involvement in cocaine sales in the south central area of Los Angeles" and ignored or mishandled cases because of it. The CIA Inspector General summarized the resulting 3,600-page report, summarized by the LASD in December 1996: Lister and Blandón were Contra sympathizers, but the inquiry did not support the assertion that the FDN obtained money and arms through cocaine sales, while some supporters of the "Southern Front" (ARDE) were possibly involved in cocaine sales. It found that the CIA answered an FBI request after the warrant with background on [[Norwin Meneses]] and Orlando Murillo and no information on others, and that for each seized item there was a consistent paper trail and "no property was taken by any federal agents," an allegation it attributed to secondhand rumor among narcotics team personnel.[^3]
The [[Los Angeles Police Department]] Inspector General reported to the City Council in October 1996 that its inquiry had not substantiated any LAPD knowledge of CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking.[^3]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 14: "It's bigger than I can handle"
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 14, "It's bigger than I can handle." Sole source for the passages so cited (trailers, staffing, Fossey, the Guzzetta, Lichtman and Garner anecdotes).
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions* (December 1997), chapter II.E, "Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Investigation of Blandon"; chapter on Lister; and chapter IV on the Big Spender cases. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p2.htm (text copy at https://archive.org/details/crack-oigreport).
[^3]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, *Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States* (96-0143-IG), Volume I, "The California Story," January 29, 1998, paragraphs 83 to 88 and 222 to 224. https://archive.org/details/ciaig-contra-crack-vols
[^4]: "Scandals Damage LA Sheriff's Department," Associated Press, in *The Seattle Times*, December 16, 1990. https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19901216/1109823/scandals-damage-la-sheriffs-department
[^5]: Same sources as notes 2 and 4 for the February 1990 indictment of ten deputies and the December 1990 convictions.

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@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ In April 1980, El Al was involved in the transport of tires sold to [[Iran]], wi
In October 1980, El Al was used to transport [[Israel|Israeli]] personnel from [[Tel Aviv]] to [[Orly Airport]] in [[Paris]] for a top-secret meeting concerning the hostage release and arms deals. Later, electronic equipment acquired through a New York operation was usually flown by the [[Israel|IDF]]'s weekly Boeing 707 flight from [[New York City]] to [[Tel Aviv]], or by El Al cargo, before being transferred to [[Tehran]] via Argentinean charters.[^1]
In 1986, El Al was the target of a "black" propaganda operation orchestrated by [[Rafi]] to discredit [[Syria]]. [[Nezar Hindawi]] was tasked with planting explosives on an El Al plane, with the intention of causing a public incident. The plot was foiled by [[Israel|Israeli]] security. Hindawi's girlfriend, Ann-Marie Murphy, was unwittingly used in the plot, and an [[Israel|Israeli]] security man, disguised as a cleaner, passed her the parcel containing the explosives in the [[Heathrow Airport|El Al]] departure lounge.[^1]
In 1986, El Al was the target of a "black" propaganda operation orchestrated by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] to discredit [[Syria]]. [[Nezar Hindawi]] was tasked with planting explosives on an El Al plane, with the intention of causing a public incident. The plot was foiled by [[Israel|Israeli]] security. Hindawi's girlfriend, Ann-Marie Murphy, was unwittingly used in the plot, and an [[Israel|Israeli]] security man, disguised as a cleaner, passed her the parcel containing the explosives in the [[Heathrow Airport|El Al]] departure lounge.[^1]
In 1988, El Al's first-class lounge at [[Heathrow Airport]] was the meeting place for [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] and [[David Ivry]], director general of [[Israel|Israel]]'s Ministry of Defense, to discuss the sale of C-130s to [[Iran]].[^1]

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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ tags:
category: "Private Organization"
summary: "Esquire is an American magazine whose October 1991 article by Craig Unger repeated Ari Ben-Menashe's allegations that Robert McFarlane was recruited by Rafi Eitan and identified McFarlane as 'Mr. X' in the Jonathan Pollard case."
---
*[[Esquire]]* is an [[United States|American]] magazine. In October 1991, it published an article by [[Craig Unger]] that repeated [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe's]] allegations that [[Robert McFarlane]] had been recruited by [[Rafi]] and named [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] as "Mr. X" in the [[Jonathan Pollard]] case. [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] subsequently sued the magazine, but the suit was dismissed in June 1994.[^1]
*[[Esquire]]* is an [[United States|American]] magazine. In October 1991, it published an article by [[Craig Unger]] that repeated [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe's]] allegations that [[Robert McFarlane]] had been recruited by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] and named [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] as "Mr. X" in the [[Jonathan Pollard]] case. [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] subsequently sued the magazine, but the suit was dismissed in June 1994.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Los Angeles Times.md
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@ -1,29 +1,92 @@
---
aliases:
- The Los Angeles Times
- Los Angeles Times
- L.A. Times
- LA Times
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1881
location: "Los Angeles, California, USA"
tags:
- Organization
- Media
- United_States
- 1990s
- Dark_Alliance_Investigation
summary: Largest newspaper in the western United States that published the 1996 attack on the Dark Alliance series, led by Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus who had previously spread a 1984 CIA leak falsely accusing Sandinista officials of drug trafficking.
- Newspaper
- TimesMirror
- CIAMediaRelations
- GlomarExplorer
- DarkAlliance
- ContraWar
summary: "Los Angeles newspaper that first published the Glomar Explorer story in 1975, ran a 1984 story on Sandinista cocaine trafficking drawn from officials, and in October 1996 published a three-day rebuttal of Dark Alliance."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Doyle McManus]]"
reverse: true
role: "Washington bureau chief"
fn: 10
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Jesse Katz]]"
reverse: true
role: "reporter"
fn: 13
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Project Azorian]]"
role: "published the first press account of the Hughes Glomar Explorer project, February 1975"
start: 1975-02-07
fn: 4
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Dark Alliance]]"
role: "published the three-part rebuttal of October 20 to 22, 1996"
start: 1996-10-20
fn: 12
---
The Los Angeles Times is the largest newspaper in the western [[United States]], based in [[Los Angeles]]. It published a three-day series in October 1996 attacking the [[Dark Alliance]] investigation.[^1]
The [[Los Angeles Times]] appears in records of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] as the paper of the 1975 first press leak on [[Project Azorian]], as the paper that carried a July 1984 account of Nicaraguan officials and cocaine from United States intelligence sources, and as one of three national papers that answered the [[San Jose Mercury News]] "[[Dark Alliance]]" series in October 1996. Its parent, the [[Times Mirror]] company, had as its chairman one of the original members of President [[Richard Nixon]]'s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
### Coverage of Ricky Ross
### Times Mirror and the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Reporter [[Jesse Katz]] spent months interviewing [[Ricky Ross]] in 1994 and produced extensive coverage of the L.A. crack trade, repeatedly describing Ross as the first and biggest crack dealer in South Central. After the Dark Alliance series, Katz reversed his earlier reporting and described Ross as a minor figure who had little impact on the crack explosion.[^1]
A [[Congressional Research Service]] history of the [[President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board]] lists the initial appointments of President Nixon under [[Executive Order 11460]] of March 20, 1969: General [[Maxwell Taylor]], Admiral [[George W. Anderson]], [[William O. Baker]] of [[Bell Telephone Laboratories|Bell Laboratories]], [[Gordon Gray]], [[Edwin Land]] of [[Polaroid Corporation|Polaroid]], [[Franklin B. Lincoln, Jr.]], [[Robert D. Murphy]], [[Franklin Pace, Jr.]], [[Nelson Rockefeller]] and "[[Franklin D. Murphy]], chairman of the Board, Times-Mirror Corporation." The same document lists [[James Killian]], president of the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], as the Board's first chairman in 1956.[^1]
### Attack on Dark Alliance
### Jack Nelson, Hoover and the Media burglary
Washington bureau chief [[Doyle McManus]] wrote the L.A. Times' story absolving the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] of involvement with [[Danilo Blandon|Blandón]] and [[Norwin Meneses|Meneses]], relying on unnamed sources including former CIA director Robert Gates and former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro. The story declared "no solid evidence has emerged" of Contra drug money contributions after 1984, ignoring the 1986 sheriff's affidavit and DEA reports. [[Rafael Cornejo]] scoffed at the Times' unnamed-source claim that only $50,000 to $60,000 went to the Contras: "Sixty thousand? You can raise that in an afternoon."[^1]
A review essay by [[Aryeh Neier]] in the *New York Review of Books* states that [[Jack Nelson]], who became the Times's Washington bureau chief, published several articles critical of the FBI, that [[J. Edgar Hoover]] claimed Nelson was a drunkard and attempted to have the Times fire him, and that Nelson told the essayist that Hoover met with the Times's publisher [[Otis Chandler]] to demand it, which Chandler rebuffed. The same essay states that the copies of the documents from the 1971 [[Media FBI Office Break-In|Media, Pennsylvania FBI burglary]] that were sent to Nelson "were apparently diverted and never reached him"; the [[Washington Post]] reporter [[Betty Medsger]] was the only recipient to pursue the story.[^2]
### 1984 CIA Leak
Carl Bernstein's 1977 [[Rolling Stone]] article stated that [[Robert Scheer]] of the Los Angeles Times first disclosed some findings of [[CBS]] News president [[Richard Salant]]'s 1976 in-house investigation of the network's dealings with the CIA, and quoted [[Stuart Loory]], "former Los Angeles Times correspondent," in the *[[Columbia Journalism Review]]* on press cards held by informants.[^3]
In 1984, McManus played a central role in spreading a CIA leak falsely accusing Nicaraguan government officials of cocaine trafficking, timed to support Reagan's Contra aid request. The story was later proven to be a hoax.[^1]
### The Glomar Explorer leak, 1975
The CIA's internal history states that "the original press leak had occurred in the Los Angeles Times in February 1975"; that the Times story "was unspecific, and wrong in important facts, but it gradually developed into a widespread security problem for the program"; and that the leak "resulted from an improbable series of events following a break-in and robbery in June 1974 at [[Summa Corporation]] headquarters in Los Angeles," after which several persons involved in the investigation had to be briefed to protect a document that might have been among those stolen. It adds that "the source of the leak was never identified" and that "extraordinary efforts by DCI Colby and others were able to contain the spread of the story for a time."[^4] The history also records that the U.S. Government acknowledged in court "the actions of senior CIA officials in 1975 to attempt to persuade members of the media not to broadcast or publish reports concerning the project."[^5]
The State Department's Foreign Relations series records that on March 19, 1975, the day after the columnist [[Jack Anderson]] mentioned the vessel on his radio show, the Times, the [[Washington Post]] and the [[New York Times]] published front-page accounts, and that Nelson reported on March 20 that [[William Colby]], who had cancelled an interview, said: "at this point I have to stop talking. Honestly, we can have international problems and I have to be careful."[^6]
### The Agency's contacts with the paper
A note of November 4, 1982 from the Agency's Acting Director of External Affairs to the Director of Central Intelligence records that [[Robert Toth]] of the Times had renewed a request to interview the Director for an article on him and the Agency, that the Director had agreed to speak to the Times's Washington bureau at breakfast on November 17, and that in principle "we should stand down for a while."[^7] An undated memorandum to the Director from [[George V. Lauder]], suggests an off-the-record session with the Times editorial board "because the paper is respected and has been critical of the Administration's and our role in [[Central America]]," at which "I hope you will enlighten and disabuse them appropriately."[^8]
### The July 1984 Sandinista cocaine story
A CIA Office of Legislative Liaison memorandum of July 26, 1984 records that the staff director of the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]], [[Thomas K. Latimer]], had asked whether the CIA was "indeed involved" in a Times article of July 18, 1984 headed "U.S. Officials Link Sandinista Chiefs to Cocaine Traffic," and attaches the Times article of July 19, "3 Held, 3 Sought in Cocaine Case," by [[Ronald J. Ostrow]]. The July 19 article reported, from unnamed "U.S. officials," that [[DEA|Drug Enforcement Administration]] agents had arrested three people in Miami and obtained warrants for three others, including an aide to [[Interior Minister]] [[Tomas Borge]], that the investigation began after the CIA provided information, and that intelligence sources had obtained a photograph of Borge beside [[Pablo Escobar]] at the Managua airport. It stated that the officials "refused to release or show the photograph," and noted that evidence of Nicaraguan involvement "could become a significant factor in the Reagan Administration's attempts to win new funding" for the Contras. The memorandum shows the Agency's own congressional liaison office asking other components to check "the validity of the articles."[^9]
[[Gary Webb]] wrote that the July 18 article was by [[Doyle McManus]], that [[Oliver North]]'s notebooks recorded McManus calling the [[White House]], and that "no such photograph has ever surfaced"; he described the story as "a hoax" and McManus as "a willing participant or a dupe." The Kerry subcommittee's 1988 report gave a different account of the same episode: that the DEA informant [[Barry Seal]] had photographed [[Federico Vaughn]], whom United States authorities identified as a Nicaraguan government official, with Escobar loading drugs, that the operation "was disclosed prematurely by an administration official who leaked to the press evidence supposedly collected by Seal in an effort to influence a pending Congressional vote on Contra aid," and that law enforcement officials "were furious that their undercover operation was revealed and agents' lives jeopardized because one individual in the U.S. government, Lt. Col. Oliver North, decided to play politics with the issue." The report added that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime found the telephone number Vaughn used in calls to Seal to be one controlled by the United States Embassy since 1985, and that the State Department's 1988 narcotics report said there was "no evidence" of drug shipments through Nicaragua "since the allegations made in 1984."[^10]
Webb wrote that in early 1987 McManus and Ostrow wrote a front-page Times article headed "No Supporting Evidence, DEA Says" on the Senate committee's inquiry into Contra drug reports, that the Contra courier [[Carlos Cabezas]] wrote McManus from prison on February 27, 1987 that there was "indeed 'supporting evidence,' hidden by the government," and that McManus replied asking for documents and "any further information about Sandinista drug trafficking."[^11]
### Dark Alliance, 1996 to 1998
The [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s Office of the Inspector General recorded that the Times ran its own three-part investigation of October 20 to 22, 1996 after assigning "three editors and fourteen reporters," and that it found the evidence failed "to support any of those allegations."[^12] According to Webb, the first part was written by [[Jesse Katz]], who had referred to [[Ricky Ross]] since 1994 as the first and biggest crack dealer in South Central, "the master marketer whose activities were 'key'" to the spread of crack, and who now described Ross as of little importance; that the second day's story absolved the CIA of any connection with [[Danilo Blandon]] and [[Norwin Meneses]] on the word of former CIA director [[Robert Gates]], former CIA official [[Vincent Cannistraro]] and Director [[John Deutch]], and that the columnist [[Molly Ivins]] wrote: "Like good little boys and girls, the Times, the Washington Post et al., toddled off to the CIA and asked the agency if it had ever done such a thing. When the CIA said 'no' the papers solemnly printed it, just as though the CIA hadn't previously denied any number of illegal operations in which it was later caught red-handed"; that the story stated "no solid evidence has emerged that either Meneses or Blandon contributed any money to the rebels after 1984"; that unnamed sources put the amount at $50,000 or $60,000, which the Meneses distributor [[Rafael Cornejo]] answered: "Sixty thousand? You can raise that in an afternoon"; and that the story was bylined by McManus. Webb also wrote that the Times "printed nothing" when the New York Times reported the CIA Inspector General's second volume in July 1998.[^13]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 27: "A very difficult decision"
[^1]: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, "The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: An Historical Perspective (1955-1975)," 1975, sections on the Kennedy and Nixon boards, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP02T06251R000900290008-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp02t06251r000900290008-0
[^2]: Neier, Aryeh. "The Burglars Who Exposed the FBI," review of Betty Medsger, *The Burglary*, *The New York Review of Books*, October 23, 2014, and its note 3 citing Jack Nelson, *Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter* (University Press of Mississippi, 2013). https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/23/burglars-who-exposed-fbi/
[^3]: Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media," *Rolling Stone*, October 20, 1977, sections on CBS and on the "gray" cases (https://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php; read through the Internet Archive capture, https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php).
[^4]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Project AZORIAN: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer," *Studies in Intelligence*, Fall 1985, CIA Reading Room document 0005301269 (declassified January 4, 2010), introductory summary. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005301269
[^5]: Same document as note 4, note on information acknowledged in court.
[^6]: U.S. Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976*, vol. XXXV, document 197, editorial notes 2 and 3 (Jack Nelson, "Administration Won't Talk About Sub Raised by CIA," *Los Angeles Times*, March 20, 1975, pp. A1, A14-A16). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197
[^7]: CIA, Acting Director, Office of External Affairs, note for the Director of Central Intelligence, November 4, 1982, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP84B00148R000100370026-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp84b00148r000100370026-8
[^8]: Lauder, George V., memorandum for the DCI, "Meeting with the Los Angeles Times," undated, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00845R000100660002-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00845r000100660002-3
[^9]: CIA Office of Legislative Liaison, OLL 84-2588/1, July 26, 1984, with attached Los Angeles Times articles of July 18 and 19, 1984, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90B01370R000400620011-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90b01370r000400620011-8
[^10]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 27 (https://archive.org/details/dark-alliance-the-cia-the-con-gary-webb); U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (December 1988), sections "Barry Seal and the Cartel" and the Nicaragua chapter (https://archive.org/details/KerryCommitteeReport). Webb's characterization of the story as a hoax is his own; the Kerry report does not use the word.
[^11]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27 (same source as note 10). Sole source for the Cabezas letter and McManus's reply.
[^12]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), chapter 1. https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
[^13]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27 and epilogue (same source as note 10). Sole source for the passages so cited on Katz's earlier reporting, the named sources, Cornejo's remark and the 1998 coverage.

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Massachusetts Institute of Technology.md
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---
aliases:
- MIT
- M.I.T.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1861
location: "Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA"
tags:
- Organization
- Academic
- USA
category: "Private Organization"
summary: "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a prestigious research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose professor Jack P. Ruina directed its Defense and Arms Control Studies Program and chaired the expert panel that analyzed the 1979 VELA satellite data from the suspected South Atlantic nuclear explosion."
start: 1861
location: "Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA"
- University
- CENIS
- MKULTRA
- InstrumentationLaboratory
- LincolnLaboratory
- VelaIncident
- JeffreyEpstein
summary: "Cambridge university whose Center for International Studies appears in MKULTRA Subproject 90 and 1953 CIA UFO planning, which divested the Draper laboratory in 1973 and took Jeffrey Epstein's money after 2008."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
role: "Center for International Studies, MKULTRA Subproject 90"
start: 1958-11
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Jack P. Ruina]]"
reverse: true
role: "professor of electrical engineering; chairman of the 1979 to 1980 Vela panel"
fn: 11
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Seth Lloyd]]"
reverse: true
role: "professor of mechanical engineering"
fn: 14
- type: head_of
with: "[[James Killian]]"
reverse: true
role: "president; first chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board"
fn: 10
- type: funded
with: "[[Jeffrey Epstein]]"
reverse: true
role: "ten donations totaling 850,000 dollars, 2002 to 2017"
start: 2002
end: 2017
fn: 14
---
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a prestigious research university in [[Cambridge]], [[Massachusetts]]. [[Jack P. Ruina]] was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT and a director of its Defense and Arms Control Studies Program. In late 1979, Ruina was involved in the preparation of a federally funded MIT report that assessed the foreign availability of critical components for the assembly of short-range ballistic missiles.[^1]
The [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] is a private university in [[Cambridge]], [[Massachusetts]]. Its name appears in CIA records through the [[Center for International Studies]] (CENIS), in [[Project MKUltra]], in the Agency's 1952 and 1953 planning for a scientific panel on unidentified flying objects, and through the [[Instrumentation Laboratory]] and [[Lincoln Laboratory]]; in the 1979 to 1980 [[VELA Satellite]] panel chaired by [[Jack P. Ruina]]; and in the 2020 report on [[Jeffrey Epstein]]'s donations.
### The 1953 CIA approach on unidentified flying objects
In the Agency's account of its role in the study of unidentified flying objects, [[Gerald K. Haines]] wrote that [[H. Marshall Chadwell]] "urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs," and the notes to the account cite a memorandum for the record by [[Philip G. Strong]] of the [[Office of Scientific Intelligence]], "Meeting with Dr. [[Julius A. Stratton]], Executive Vice President and Provost, MIT and Dr. [[Max Millikan]], Director of CENIS," in which "Strong believed that in order to undertake such a review they would need the full backing and support of DCI Smith." The notes also cite a letter from Chadwell to Stratton of January 27, 1953. The panel that met in January 1953 was the [[Robertson Panel]], chaired by [[H. P. Robertson]] of the [[California Institute of Technology]].[^1]
### The Center for International Studies
Hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Internal Security Subcommittee on [[State Department]] passport regulations include testimony by [[Andreas Lowenfeld]] of the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser that he had been connected with the Center for International Studies at MIT in 1951 and 1952 and that "they had some kind of contract with the CIA," though "I never formally worked for them." Asked by the subcommittee's counsel, Sourwine, whether he knew that the Center "was a CIA operation," Lowenfeld answered: "I was never formally told, but it became apparent." Asked whether [[Walt Rostow]] was in charge, he said: "He was acting, I guess, and then Mr. Millikan came."[^2]
A draft speech by the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence for delivery at Harvard in February 1986 stated that Max Millikan, an "MIT economist," had "organized the economic intelligence effort" of the Agency, as part of its account of academic recruitment from 1941 onward.[^3] Haines's account of the 1952 and 1953 UFO planning names Millikan as director of the Center in 1953.
### MKULTRA Subproject 90
A CIA notification list of institutions connected with MKULTRA subprojects carries the entry "Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, Cambridge, Mass. 02139" with the notation "Subproject 90." The list reproduces a statement MIT asked to be supplied to persons receiving notice: "The activity conducted at MIT involved a study of the scientist in the" (country name redacted) "to produce a descriptive model of the type likely to come in contact with Americans. The project was conducted by a guest of MIT and neither administered nor funded through MIT."[^4]
The released file on MKULTRA Subproject 90 consists of nineteen documents dated from October 1958 to November 1960. A memorandum of September 17, 1958 (SR/6-58-541) from a requesting component asked the Technical Services Staff's Chemical Division to undertake research on a prototype of a male scientist aged 35 to 45, a "professional 'comer'" who in youth had been "an idealist" who became "critically disillusioned" in his early twenties and who "has repressed and rationalized his doubts and opposition sentiments," and for guidance on "the most effective way or ways in which repressed and rationalized anti-regime motivations may be aroused or, more properly, re-activated." A second part of the request asked what criteria could be developed for spotting and assessing persons who are "inner emigration" or "alienated" as "potential agent recruits" and how their development should be conducted. A memorandum for the record on the subproject, titled "A Study of the Scientist in the" (country name redacted), states that its purposes were "(a) to produce a descriptive model of scientists who are likely to come into contact with Americans, and (b) to specify methods and strategies for evaluating and influencing such scientists." A grant from a foundation cutout (name redacted) was to be made to "an independent investigator," with cover that the grant was for "interest in the psychological, sociological, cultural, and political determinants of individuals occupying critical roles within various societies"; accounting for the funds was to follow the procedures established for "grants to unwitting agents." The cost for a year from November 1, 1958 was $12,000, obligated on November 18, 1958.[^5]
The file contains a foundation's letters of 1958 and 1959 on payments to a fellowship holder, a letter of September 19, 1960 noting that the final payment of $9,500 had been made a year earlier and that the promised report was overdue, and an accounting dated November 18, 1960 of disbursements of $8,803.36 against $9,500, including a ten-month fellowship of $6,500.[^6] The released documents redact the name of the investigator and of the foundation.
### MIT's 1979 committee report
An Interim Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on MIT and the Intelligence Agencies, chaired by [[Kenneth Hoffman]] and published in *[[Tech Talk]]* in 1979, stated that "we do not think that any member of the MIT community should (knowingly) act as an agent for an intelligence organization," and discussed gray areas of briefing, recruitment and surveillance of foreign members of the community. The editors of the newsletter that reprinted excerpts, in a note preserved in CIA files, wrote that CIA Director [[Stansfield Turner]] "has made it clear that the CIA will not honor the standards set up by a university," a statement they connected to Harvard's earlier guidelines.[^7]
### The special laboratories
The Instrumentation Laboratory, founded by [[Charles Stark Draper]], and Lincoln Laboratory developed missile guidance and air defense systems. In November 1968 graduate students formed the [[Science Action Coordinating Committee]], which planned a protest at [[Kresge Auditorium]] for March 4, 1969, with a call for a research stoppage; its poster noted that MIT was "the country's 14th largest military contractor for research, development and testing," singled out the "special labs," and stated that Lincoln Laboratory and the Instrumentation Laboratory accounted for more than half of MIT's budget. About 50 faculty members formed the [[Union of Concerned Scientists]], and MIT President [[Howard Johnson]] appointed the [[Pounds Panel]] to review both laboratories. Johnson announced in 1970 that MIT would divest the Instrumentation Laboratory, renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, no later than July 1, 1973, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. was formed as an independent nonprofit on July 1, 1973. According to MIT's alumni magazine, after the divestment MIT also set up an executive committee to review the operation of the laboratories and moved all classified research off campus to Lincoln Laboratory.[^8]
The CIA's reading room holds a Lincoln Laboratory Technical Memorandum, No. 35 of July 30, 1953, by [[F. A. Rodgers]] on the sensitivities of pre- and post-detection integrators, marked restricted and declassified in 2014.[^9]
### Advisory boards
The [[Congressional Research Service]] history of the [[President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board]] lists James R. Killian Jr., president of MIT, as the board's chairman from early 1956 until 1958 and again among the members appointed in 1961, when he was identified as chairman of the MIT Corporation.[^10]
### The Vela panel
The Ad Hoc Panel Report on the September 22 Event of 1980 was prepared by a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy panel chaired by Ruina, "an MIT professor," according to the [[National Security Archive]].[^11] [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote in *The Samson Option* that in late 1979 Ruina, a professor of electrical engineering and director of MIT's Defense and Arms Control Studies Program, was involved in preparing a federally funded MIT report assessing the foreign availability of components for short-range ballistic missiles.[^12] The National Security Archive's posting of the papers of [[Gerard C. Smith]] lists State Department telegrams of February 1980 that "dismissed information from MIT professor Jack Ruina, gained from an Israeli visiting fellow at MIT, concerning a possible Israeli connection to the 22 September event."[^13]
### Epstein donations, 2002 to 2020
The report of the law firm [[Goodwin Procter]] to the [[Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation]], dated January 10, 2020, found that between 2002 and 2017 Epstein made ten donations to MIT totaling $850,000, nine of them after his 2008 conviction, totaling $750,000, to support the [[MIT Media Lab]] ($525,000) or Professor [[Seth Lloyd]] ($225,000); that Lloyd received a personal gift of $60,000 in about 2005 or 2006 not recorded by MIT, and "purposefully failed to inform MIT that Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was the source" of $100,000 in 2012; that in 2013 General Counsel [[R. Gregory Morgan]], Vice President for Resource Development [[Jeffrey Newton]] and Executive Vice President [[Israel Ruiz]] approved accepting Epstein's donations to support [[Joi Ito]] and the Media Lab on condition that they remain small and unpublicized; that Epstein made at least nine campus visits between 2013 and 2017 unknown to President [[L. Rafael Reif]]; and that the decision was "the result of collective and significant errors in judgment." Ito resigned on September 7, 2019.[^14]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20.
[^1]: Haines, Gerald K. "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90," *Studies in Intelligence* (1997), sections "Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52" and "The Robertson Panel, 1952-53," text and notes 24, 25 and 36. https://sgp.fas.org/library/ciaufo.html
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Internal Security Subcommittee, hearings on State Department security and passport regulations, part 3, testimony of Andreas F. Lowenfeld (p. 331), extracts in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP75-00149R000400560007-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00149r000400560007-3
[^3]: CIA, memorandum for the record, "DDI Speech on CIA and the University," February 1986, with draft speech ("Harvard speech" of February 3, 1986), CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88G01332R000800990018-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88g01332r000800990018-7
[^4]: Central Intelligence Agency, "MKULTRA Institution Notifications," list of institutions and subproject numbers, CIA Reading Room document 00020476 (also posted at https://archive.org/details/brief-summaries-of-cia-mkultra-subprojects), page listing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, and the statement MIT requested.
[^5]: CIA, "MKULTRA Subproject 90," memorandum of November 18, 1958 approving the subproject, memorandum for the record on the project's purposes, and memorandum SR/6-58-541 of September 17, 1958, "Requirement for Research Support," CIA Reading Room document 00017493. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00017493
[^6]: Same document as note 5 (foundation letters of November 17, 1958, March 2, 1959 and September 1, 1959; letter of September 19, 1960; accounting of November 18, 1960).
[^7]: "The CIA on American Campuses: Massachusetts Institute of Technology," editor's note and excerpts from the Interim Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on MIT and the Intelligence Agencies (*Tech Talk*, vol. 23, no. 30, 1979), reprinted in a Center for National Security Studies newsletter of May 1979, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88-01315R000300550015-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000300550015-6
[^8]: Draper Laboratory, "Origins of Charles Stark Draper and His Laboratory" (https://www.draper.com/media-center/featured-stories/detail/25851/origins-of-charles-stark-draper-and-his-laboratory); "A Slight Rebellion off Mass Ave.," *MIT Technology Review*, August 19, 2014 (https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/08/19/171719/slight-rebellion-off-mass-ave/amp/).
[^9]: Rodgers, F. A. "The Relative Sensitivities of Pre- and Post-Detection Integrators," MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technical Memorandum No. 35, July 30, 1953, CIA-RDP67B00341R000400080001-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp67b00341r000400080001-8
[^10]: Congressional Research Service, "The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: An Historical Perspective (1955-1975)," 1975, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP02T06251R000900290008-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp02t06251r000900290008-0
[^11]: Richelson, Jeffrey, ed., "The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, December 8, 2016. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test
[^12]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, chapter 20. Sole source for the passages so cited on the MIT missile-components report.
[^13]: Same briefing book as note 12, item list for the Gerard C. Smith papers.
[^14]: Goodwin Procter LLP. *Report Concerning Jeffrey Epstein's Interactions with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.* January 10, 2020, Introduction, Executive Summary and Findings 1 to 5. https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/20200121GoodwinProcterReport.pdf

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Miami Herald.md
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@ -1,20 +1,89 @@
---
aliases:
- The Miami Herald
- Miami Herald
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1903
location: "Miami, Florida, USA"
tags:
- organization
- media
- contra-war
summary: The Miami Herald was the Florida newspaper that reported on Contra activities and Norwin Meneses's drug trafficking operations based in the Miami area.
- Organization
- Media
- Newspaper
- Miami
- KnightRidder
- CIAMediaRelations
- IranContra
- JeffreyEpstein
- Wackenhut
summary: "Miami newspaper named by Carl Bernstein as a CIA cover arrangement made by the Miami station, which published Alfonso Chardy's 1986 North network story and Julie K. Brown's 2018 Epstein series."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Julie K. Brown]]"
reverse: true
role: "investigative reporter"
fn: 12
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Hank Messick]]"
reverse: true
role: "contract rackets writer"
end: 1966-12-13
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Alfonso Chardy]]"
reverse: true
role: "reporter"
fn: 9
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Epstein non-prosecution agreement]]"
role: "published the November 28, 2018 series that led to the Justice Department review of the agreement"
start: 2018-11-28
fn: 12
---
The Miami Herald was the [[Florida]] newspaper that reported on [[Contras|Contra]] activities and [[Norwin Meneses]]'s drug trafficking operations based in the [[Miami]] area. The Herald covered the overlapping worlds of Contra politics and drug trafficking in South Florida during the 1980s.[^1]
The [[Miami Herald]] is a daily of [[Miami]] that [[Gary Webb]] described in 1998 as the flagship paper of [[Knight-Ridder]], the owner of the [[San Jose Mercury News]]. Its name appears in CIA files in connection with the Agency's Miami station and with a 1974 letter from [[William Colby]] to [[Bernard Barker]]; in the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]'s Wackenhut file; in the Senate record on the Contra supply network; and in the 2018 reporting on the [[Epstein non-prosecution agreement]].
### Coverage of Contra Activities
### Cover arrangements at the Miami station
The Herald documented the Contra support network's operations in Miami, where [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] and other Contra-connected figures maintained businesses and political organizations. The newspaper reported on [[Aristides Sanchez|Aristides Sánchez]]'s activities in Miami, including his role in buying supplies and delivering weapons for the [[FDN]]. The Herald's reporting from Miami provided a local perspective on the national story of Contra-connected drug trafficking, complementing the West Coast coverage that later appeared in the [[Dark Alliance]] series.[^2]
[[Carl Bernstein]] listed the Herald in [[Rolling Stone]] on October 20, 1977 among news organizations with which, "according to Agency officials, CIA files document additional cover arrangements," and wrote that "cover arrangements with the Herald, according to CIA officials, were unusual in that they were made 'on the ground by the CIA station in Miami, not from CIA headquarters.'" Earlier in the article he had included the Herald in a list of organizations that cooperated with the Agency, and quoted a former CIA official that the list was "just a small part."[^1] The [[Church Committee]] stated in 1976 that the Agency had about 50 relationships with American journalists or media employees and that more than a dozen American news organizations and publishing houses "formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad," without naming them.[^2]
Webb wrote in a note to *Dark Alliance* that after the Mercury News series he learned that Knight-Ridder "has a history of collaborating with the CIA," citing the December 26, 1977 [[New York Times]] series, and that his colleague [[Georg Hodel]] "discovered a CIA cable in a Miami court file suggesting that a longtime editor on the Latin American desk of Knight-Ridder's flagship paper, The Miami Herald, had an operational relationship with the CIA during the 1960s." Webb did not name the editor or reproduce the cable.[^3]
A CIA letter of March 28, 1974, signed by Colby as Director, thanks Barker, one of the [[Watergate]] burglars, for his statement of March 16, 1974 "to the Miami Herald" and for "the favorable references you made to this Agency and to [[Richard Helms|Ambassador Helms]]," and adds: "We are distressed that the incident which called for our apology occurred, and we appreciate your understanding of the matter." The letter was originated by [[John F. Blake]], Acting Director of Security, on March 21, 1974. The incident is not described.[^4]
### Hank Messick and Wackenhut
An [[FBI]] memorandum written after the January 9, 1967 newspaper reports that Florida Governor [[Claude Kirk]] had appointed the [[Wackenhut Corporation]] as a private force for his "war on crime" records that the Bureau had "made available lead information to [[Hank Messick]], veteran crime reporter of the 'Miami Herald,' whose articles on organized crime and corruption have brought about various grand jury probes in [[Dade and Broward Counties]] resulting in indictments of the sheriffs of these counties in 1966." The memorandum instructed that the Miami office be cautioned not to become involved with the venture.[^5] Messick, a contract rackets writer for the Herald, resigned on December 13, 1966 to join Wackenhut and later resigned from it, stating: "I have reluctantly concluded a cruel hoax is being perpetrated upon the people of Florida."[^6]
### Castle Bank, 1980
On April 19, 1980 the Herald reported under the headline "CIA May Have Ended Nassau Bank Probe" that, according to sources, the CIA "may have forced federal investigators in Miami to abandon" an inquiry, code-named [[Project Haven]], into [[Castle Bank and Trust]] of Nassau, which "may have laundered CIA funds for the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of Cuba" and moved CIA money for other Latin American operations. A former IRS investigator was quoted: "I've had suspicions for a long time that the CIA was involved." The article identified the Miami lawyer [[Paul Helliwell]], who died in 1976 and represented the bank, as "a key link to the theory of CIA involvement."[^7] A clipping of the article is in the CIA's own reading-room files.
### The Contra supply network, 1985 to 1987
The chronology in the 1988 report of the Senate subcommittee chaired by [[John Kerry]] cites the Herald repeatedly. On July 21, 1985 the Herald quoted the mercenaries [[Steven Carr]] and [[Peter Glibbery]], who said they had flown weapons from [[Fort Lauderdale]] to the Contras; on July 28, 1985 FBI agent [[Kevin Currier]] opened a [[Neutrality Act]] investigation "on basis of reading July 21, 1985 article in Miami Herald." After the Herald wrote about the April 1986 embassy episode involving prosecutor [[Jeffrey Feldman]] in [[Costa Rica]], an embassy official named Kotula told reporters that Feldman had lied. The chronology lists Herald articles of April 30, 1986 (that [[Oliver North]]'s fundraising may have violated the [[Boland Amendment]]), May 14, 1986 (that Kerry's staff was examining charges of gunrunning and drug smuggling), and June 1, 1986, which quoted a [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] official that the FBI and [[DEA]] had "run down each and every one" of the allegations and found "no credible or substantive evidence," and that congressional efforts "smacked of McCarthyism."[^8]
On June 8, 1986 the Herald ran a front-page story by [[Alfonso Chardy]] reporting that the [[National Security Council]] and the CIA had managed the Contras during the Boland Amendment period through a network overseen by North, citing [[Robert Owen]] and [[John Singlaub]] among those who helped him and naming [[John Hull]] as one of Owen's contacts. The [[Associated Press]] story of [[Robert Parry]] and [[Brian Barger]] making similar allegations followed on June 10.[^9]
The Kerry report also cites the Herald's articles headed "America's Cocaine Connection" of November 29 and December 2, 1987 on the [[Medellin Cartel]], including the description of the Ochoa family ranch as "so huge it encompasses several towns inside its borders."[^10]
Webb's notes to *Dark Alliance* cite Herald articles of 1984 to 1991 on Contra fundraising, the [[La Parrilla]] restaurant frequented by Contra supporters, and a Florida bank closed by state regulators in 1987, among them the Herald's 1993 obituary of [[Aristides Sanchez]], which stated that he "became one of the Contras' top political and military strategists, plotting logistics, buying supplies and delivering weapons."[^11]
### Epstein, 2018 to 2019
On November 28, 2018 Julie K. Brown published "Perversion of Justice" in the Herald on the 2007 agreement between [[Jeffrey Epstein]] and the [[U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida]] under [[Alexander Acosta]]. The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility later summarized the series as reporting that Acosta "entered into an 'extraordinary' deal" that permitted Epstein to avoid federal prosecution, immunized co-conspirators and concealed the terms from victims, and that the report, which included interviews of eight victims and public documents, "painted a portrait of federal and state prosecutors who had ignored serious criminal conduct by a wealthy man with powerful and politically connected friends." On December 3, 2018 Senator [[Ben Sasse]] wrote to the office citing the Herald report and asking it to open an investigation; on February 6, 2019 the department told Sasse that it had.[^12]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 5.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 5.
[^1]: Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media," *Rolling Stone*, October 20, 1977 (https://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php; read through the Internet Archive capture, https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php). Bernstein attributes the statements to unnamed CIA officials.
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence*, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, section "Covert Relationships with the United States Media." https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, notes to chapter 27 ("Whether similar pressures were applied to Ceppos"). https://archive.org/details/dark-alliance-the-cia-the-con-gary-webb Sole source for the passages so cited on the cable and the Latin American desk editor.
[^4]: Colby, W. E., letter to Bernard L. Barker, ER 74-1109, March 28, 1974, CIA Reading Room document C01482054 (released January 18, 2017). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01482054
[^5]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Wackenhut Corporation," headquarters file, memorandum on the Florida "war on crime," January 1967, in the FBI file posted at https://archive.org/details/WackenhutCorporation (Wackenhut Corp.-HQ-1).
[^6]: "Wackenhut Aide Quits; 'Cruel Hoax,'" Associated Press, in the FBI Tampa file on Wackenhut (Wackenhut Corp.-Tampa-1), same archive item as note 5.
[^7]: "CIA May Have Ended Nassau Bank Probe," *The Miami Herald*, April 19, 1980, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP90-00806R000100200024-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00806r000100200024-2
[^8]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (December 1988), chronology entries for July 8 and 21 and 28, 1985, April 3, April 30, May 14 and June 1, 1986. https://archive.org/details/KerryCommitteeReport
[^9]: Kerry report chronology entries for June 8 and June 10, 1986 (same source as note 8).
[^10]: Kerry report, chapter on the Medellin cartel and notes 17 and 19 (same source as note 8).
[^11]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 5 and notes (Marques Gonzalez, "Aristides Sanchez Dies," *Miami Herald*, 1993, and the other Herald articles listed there; Barry Cladden's 1987 remark to a Herald reporter). Same source as note 3.
[^12]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, "Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and Its Interactions with Victims during the Investigation," Executive Summary, November 2020, pp. i-vi and n. 3. https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl

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---
aliases:
- The New York Times
- New York Times
- NYT
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1851
location: "New York City, USA"
tags:
- organization
- media
- contra-war
summary: The New York Times initially ignored Contra drug trafficking stories in the 1980s, then attacked the Dark Alliance series in 1996, before ultimately confirming key elements of the CIA-Contra drug connection in 1998.
- Organization
- Media
- Newspaper
- CIAMediaRelations
- ChurchCommittee
- OperationCHAOS
- DarkAlliance
- IranContra
- GlomarExplorer
- AATIP
summary: "New York newspaper that CIA files and Carl Bernstein name as a cover provider (1950 to 1966), which published Hersh's 1974 CHAOS story, the 1996 Dark Alliance rebuttals and the 2017 AATIP report."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Seymour Hersh]]"
reverse: true
role: "reporter"
fn: 12
- type: head_of
with: "[[Arthur Hays Sulzberger]]"
reverse: true
role: "publisher"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Project Azorian]]"
role: "published the March 19, 1975 account of the Glomar Explorer recovery"
start: 1975-03-19
fn: 14
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Dark Alliance]]"
role: "published the October 20 and 21, 1996 rebuttals and the July 17, 1998 report on the CIA Inspector General's second volume"
start: 1996-10-20
fn: 18
- type: participant_in
with: "[[December 2017 New York Times AATIP Report]]"
role: "publisher of the article"
start: 2017-12-16
fn: 24
---
[[The New York Times]] initially ignored Contra drug trafficking stories in the 1980s, then attacked the [[Dark Alliance]] series in 1996, before ultimately confirming key elements of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]-[[Contras|Contra]] drug connection in 1998. The paper's shifting coverage reflected the broader pattern of mainstream media resistance to the Contra-drug story.[^1]
The [[New York Times]] appears in the record of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] in four capacities: as a provider of press credentials to Agency employees abroad between 1950 and 1966, as the paper in which [[Seymour Hersh]] published the first account of [[Operation CHAOS]] on December 22, 1974, as one of the three national papers that answered the [[San Jose Mercury News]] "[[Dark Alliance]]" series in October 1996, and as the publisher of the December 16, 2017 article that disclosed the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]].
### The 1980s
### Credentials for CIA employees, 1950 to 1966
In May 1986, Senator James Eastland's office planted a false story in the New York Times stating that the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] had "cleared" the Contras of any involvement in gun running and drug smuggling, a statement the Justice Department was later forced to recant. The New York Times, along with the [[Washington Post]] and [[Los Angeles Times]], had confidently reported throughout the 1980s that there was no truth to claims of Contra drug trafficking.[^2]
The [[Church Committee]] reported in 1976 that until February 1976 the CIA maintained covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of American media organizations, that about half were paid, and that "more than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad," a few of them unwittingly. The committee did not name the organizations.[^1]
### Attacking Dark Alliance
[[Carl Bernstein]] named the Times in his October 20, 1977 [[Rolling Stone]] article, which carried the subtitle that the Church Committee "covered it up." Bernstein wrote that, according to CIA officials, the Agency's relationship with the Times "was by far its most valuable among newspapers"; that from 1950 to 1966 about ten CIA employees were given Times cover under arrangements approved by the publisher [[Arthur Hays Sulzberger]]; and that the cover arrangements were part of a Times policy, set by Sulzberger, of assisting the Agency. A senior CIA official who, Bernstein wrote, reviewed part of the Agency's files on journalists for two hours on September 15, 1977 found documentation of five instances between 1954 and 1962 in which the Times had provided cover. The documents, Bernstein wrote, carried standard language "showing that this had been checked out at higher levels of the New York Times" and did not mention Sulzberger by name. According to Bernstein, the credentialed employees posed as stringers or worked in clerical staffs of Times foreign bureaus, and the cooperation included passing on information and "spotting" prospective agents among foreigners.[^2]
On October 20, 1996, the New York Times ran a long story attacking [[Gary Webb]]'s reporting, taking the same tack as the Washington Post: admitting that the basic facts were true and then arguing they did not prove CIA complicity. When Mercury News editor [[Jerry Ceppos]] published his May 1997 column acknowledging "shortcomings" in the series, the New York Times, which had ignored the original series, splashed Ceppos's apology on its front page. An editorial lauded Ceppos for his "courage."[^3]
Bernstein reported that Arthur Hays Sulzberger signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA in the 1950s, a fact confirmed by his nephew [[C. L. Sulzberger]], who said it was a pledge not to disclose classified information given to the publisher; other Agency officials, Bernstein wrote, said it covered the Times's dealings with the CIA, including cover. Bernstein described C. L. Sulzberger, then a Times foreign-affairs columnist, as one of a dozen or so "known assets" whose CIA files "contain reports of specific tasks," and quoted a senior CIA official on his access in Europe: "He was very eager, he loved to cooperate." [[Turner Catledge]], managing editor from 1951 to 1964, had written in 1974 to the reporter [[Stuart Loory]] that "the CIA and other hush-hush agencies sought to make arrangements for 'cooperation' even with Times management" and "we always resisted." Bernstein also reported that [[Allen Dulles]] and Sulzberger were close and that the arrangements were left to subordinates so that the principals had "plausible deniability."[^3]
### 1998 Vindication
A clipping of a Times article by [[John M. Crewdson]] dated January 30 carried the headline "C.I.A. Tried in 50's to Recruit Times Man." It reported, from CIA documents the Times had obtained, that in 1952 a CIA representative named [[Richard S. Suter]] approached the Times reporter [[Wayne Phillips]], then also a student at the Russian Institute of [[Columbia University]], about serving as an undercover operative abroad; Phillips, who said he never worked for the Agency, said the contact was broken off in the summer of 1953 after he wrote to [[Allen Dulles]] asking about Suter's credentials, and that Suter then told him he had "gone in the front door" by writing to Dulles "when they were trying to get me in the back door." The article also quoted an unnamed former Times correspondent who said he had been advised before going abroad in the late 1940s by Arthur Hays Sulzberger that the CIA might ask him to supply Times credentials to individuals going abroad for other purposes, that he was not "under any obligation" to agree, and that the publisher would be "happier" if he refused; the correspondent said he rebuffed every request.[^4]
A notable exception to the media's continued silence came when the New York Times was leaked conclusions from the CIA's then-classified investigation by Inspector General [[Fred Hitz]]. On July 17, 1998, it reported on its front page that the Agency had working relationships with dozens of suspected drug traffickers during the Nicaraguan conflict and that CIA higher-ups knew it. The report confirmed central elements of what Webb had alleged two years earlier.[^4]
On February 10, 1976 the [[Washington Star]] reported that CIA Director [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]] had met the previous week with Times publisher [[Arthur Ochs Sulzberger]], editorial page editor [[John Oakes]] and vice president [[Sydney Gruson]], and separately with executives of CBS, to ask for support in keeping secret the names of journalists who had worked for the Agency. The Star, citing the [[Washington Post]], reported that officials of both organizations had offered general support; Sulzberger said the subject of disclosing names to the Senate committee "never arose," and managing editor [[A. M. Rosenthal]] said that he and the Times supported "complete disclosure" of the names of any of its own correspondents who had cooperated with the CIA.[^5] After Bernstein's article, the Star reported that the Times said it had "absolutely no information" to add to a statement Arthur Ochs Sulzberger had issued the previous year, in which he said he had never heard of the Times being approached.[^6]
The Times published its own survey in December 1977. Crewdson and [[Joseph B. Treaster]], in an article dated December 26, 1977 that the Times called the first of a series, wrote that a three-month inquiry by a team of Times reporters indicated that the CIA had counted a number of American journalists among its paid agents but that, "with a few notable exceptions," they did not appear to have been part of its propaganda campaign, which instead ran through a network of news organizations that the Agency owned, subsidized or influenced, most of them overseas.[^7] Earlier, on May 3, 1966, a CIA memorandum had commented paragraph by paragraph on the articles of April 25 and 26, 1966 in a Times series on the Agency, describing one passage on a 1950s appropriation request as "totally incorrect in its implications."[^8]
### Hersh and the Agency, 1972 to 1975
CIA records place Hersh in contact with the Agency's congressional liaison two years before the CHAOS story. On July 5, 1972 the [[Senate Armed Services Committee]] staff told the Agency's legislative counsel that Hersh's July 3 Times article confirming cloud seeding over Indochina would draw formal inquiry.[^9] On November 30, 1972 a memorandum recorded that Representative [[Lucien Nedzi]] had told the Agency that Hersh had raised allegations of narcotics moving from Indochina on [[Continental Airlines]] flights and of Agency pressure on an American traveling to China. A second Agency document of the same period, "Comments on Allegations made to Chairman Nedzi," answered Hersh's reported allegation that the CIA conducted surveillance in 35 or 40 cities with the word "Completely false."[^10]
Minutes of the Director's morning meetings, included among the attachments to the [[CIA Family Jewels]] compilation, record the Agency's handling of Times inquiries that winter. On November 15, 1972 the Deputy Director for Plans reported that a Times reporter named Harper was working on a story linking the Agency to Cuban emigres, the break-in at the [[Chilean Embassy]], action against [[Daniel Ellsberg]] and Watergate, and concluded that such a story "could have no basis in fact" and that it would be inadvisable to try to straighten out the reporter. On December 29, 1972 the minutes record that Hersh, preparing a story on Watergate, had asked whether [[Eugenio Martinez]] had been employed by the Agency, and that the Acting Director recommended that the Agency "not assist Mr. Hersh's efforts." On January 18, 1973 Nedzi briefed Agency officials on his November conversation with Hersh, including allegations "that we are engaged in extensive domestic operations," and the Director said the Agency should assemble a senior team to outline for Nedzi "what we do and do not do in the United States."[^11]
Hersh's front-page article of December 22, 1974 (datelined December 21) reported, from "well-placed Government sources," that the CIA had conducted "a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups," that files on at least 10,000 American citizens were kept by a special unit reporting to [[Richard Helms]], and that a check of the Agency's domestic files ordered by [[James R. Schlesinger]] had produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities. The article said Colby had been informed the previous week of the Times inquiry and quoted him at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting: "I think family skeletons are best left where they are, in the closet." The clipping survives in the Agency's own internal press digest of December 27, 1974.[^12]
### The Glomar Explorer
The CIA's internal history of [[Project Azorian]] records that the first press leak was in the [[Los Angeles Times]] in February 1975 and that "extraordinary efforts by DCI Colby and others were able to contain the spread of the story for a time."[^13] A note in the State Department's Foreign Relations series, citing CIA Executive Registry files, states that Colby urged Hersh to delay publication in conversations on February 1, 1974 and February 10, 1975, and that on March 19, 1975, the day after [[Jack Anderson]] broadcast the story, the Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post published front-page accounts.[^14] Hersh's March 19 Times article reported the project's purpose, cost and results; at a [[White House]] meeting that morning Colby told [[Gerald Ford]], "I go back to the U-2," in arguing against official confirmation.[^15]
### Contra drug trafficking coverage
The record compiled by the Senate subcommittee chaired by [[John Kerry]] places the Times in the 1985 and 1986 press chronology of the Contra supply network. It lists Times reports on July 8, 1985 (the statements of the mercenaries [[Steven Carr]] and [[Peter Glibbery]] that they had flown weapons to the Contras), on August 8, 1985 (a front-page report that [[National Security Council]] aides were helping the Contras raise money from private sources), and on August 25, 1985 (on [[John Hull]] as the FDN contact in [[Costa Rica]]). It lists a May 6, 1986 Times report on page A6 quoting a [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] spokesman that charges regarding gunrunning were false and that "all leads have been completely exhausted." The same chronology records that at a meeting that day with Kerry's staff a Justice Department official said the department's public statements to the contrary were "inaccurate," and that [[Leon Kellner]], the United States Attorney in Miami, later testified that he told the spokesman, [[Pat Korten]], that his statements to the Times had not been correct. On June 12, 1986 the Times carried Hersh's front-page article on Panama's General [[Manuel Noriega]].[^16]
[[Gary Webb]] wrote in *Dark Alliance* that in May 1986 the Justice Department spokesman [[Terry Eastland]] had "planted a false story in the New York Times" that the department had cleared the Contras, and that the Washington Post and the Times "decided in 1986 that there was no story here."[^17]
The Times's two articles on the Mercury News series appeared on October 20 and 21, 1996, according to the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General, which also recorded that the Times concluded, from unnamed sources, that there was "no evidence" that [[Norwin Meneses]] or [[Danilo Blandon]] had ties to the CIA or held official positions with the Contras.[^18] Webb wrote that the Times and the Los Angeles Times "took the same tack" as the Post, admitting the basic facts and arguing that they did not prove what the series had not claimed.[^19] On May 11, 1997 the Mercury News editor [[Jerry Ceppos]] published a column acknowledging shortcomings in the series; Webb wrote that the Times, "which hadn't found the original series newsworthy enough to mention," carried the column on its front page and praised Ceppos's courage in an editorial.[^20]
On July 17, 1998 the Times reported on its front page, under the headline "C.I.A. Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie," that the Agency "continued to work with about two dozen Nicaraguan rebels and their supporters during the 1980s despite allegations that they were trafficking in drugs." Representative [[Maxine Waters]] read the headline and sentence into the [[Congressional Record]] that day and stated that the report appeared to come from a leak of the still classified review by Inspector General [[Fred Hitz]].[^21] Webb wrote that the article reported the decision to keep the paid agents "was made by top officials at headquarters," and that the Los Angeles Times and the Post did not take it up.[^22]
### Inslaw
On October 21, 1991 the Times op-ed page carried "A High-Tech Watergate" by former Attorney General [[Elliot Richardson]], counsel to [[INSLAW]]. The article stated that former Justice Department employees had told Richardson that [[Earl Brian]] was "linked to a scheme to take Inslaw's stolen software" for a $250 million Justice Department contract, cited claims by [[Michael Riconosciuto]], "an out-of-fiction character believed by many knowledgeable sources to have C.I.A. connections," that the software had been taken as a payoff connected to the [[October Surprise]], and described the death of the freelance journalist [[Danny Casolaro]], whom Richardson said had been murdered although authorities concluded suicide. Brian sued; on November 29, 1995 the New York Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Titone, held the article to be nonactionable opinion.[^23]
### The 2017 AATIP article
The Times published "[[December 2017 New York Times AATIP Report|Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program]]" on December 16, 2017 under the bylines of [[Helene Cooper]], [[Ralph Blumenthal]] and [[Leslie Kean]]. It stated that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was run by [[Luis Elizondo]], that it began in 2007 and was "largely funded at the request of [[Harry Reid]]," and that most of the money went to a company run by [[Robert Bigelow]]; it discussed a video of a 2004 encounter between Navy jets and an unidentified object.[^24] [[Bryan Bender]] reported in [[Politico]] that [[Christopher Mellon]], by then a paid adviser to [[To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science]], had acted as Elizondo's "unofficial public relations manager" and "started dangling the story to the New York Times, POLITICO and several other mainstream outlets," that the Times "was granted permission to broadcast the videos," and that Politico was shown the videos but not given copies. Both papers published on December 16, 2017.[^25]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
[^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. Epilogue.
[^1]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence*, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, section "Covert Relationships with the United States Media." https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf
[^2]: Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media," *Rolling Stone*, October 20, 1977, section on the New York Times (reprinted at carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php; read through the Internet Archive capture, https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php). Bernstein attributes the account to unnamed CIA officials.
[^3]: Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media," passages on the secrecy agreement, C. L. Sulzberger, Turner Catledge's 1974 letter to Stuart Loory, and Dulles. Same capture as note 2.
[^4]: Crewdson, John M. "C.I.A. Tried in 50's to Recruit Times Man," *The New York Times*, January 30, clipping in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP89B00236R000500090011-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp89b00236r000500090011-8
[^5]: Kempster, Norman. "Bush Urges Secrecy on Reporters List," *The Washington Star*, February 10, 1976, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP99-00498R000100040124-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp99-00498r000100040124-3
[^6]: Gay, Lance. "Did Senate Unit Help Minimize CIA's Press Aid?" *The Washington Star*, September 12, 1977, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP99-00498R000100050080-1. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp99-00498r000100050080-1
[^7]: Crewdson, John M., and Joseph B. Treaster. "The Worldwide C.I.A.: A Secret Shaper of Public Opinion," *The New York Times*, December 26, 1977, p. 1 (date as cited in Webb, *Dark Alliance*, notes to chapter 27), clipping in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP88-01314R000300240002-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01314r000300240002-5
[^8]: CIA memorandum, "New York Times Series," May 3, 1966, CIA Reading Room document C06878474. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06878474
[^9]: Maury, John M. Memorandum for the record, "Senate Armed Services Committee Interest in Hersh Story re 'Rainmaking,'" OLC 72-0768, July 5, 1972, with Seymour M. Hersh, "Cloud Seeding in Indochina Confirmed," *The New York Times*, July 3, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030115-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030115-5
[^10]: Memorandum for the record, "Representative Nedzi's Conversation of Today with Seymour Hersh of the New York Times," OLC 72-1162, November 30, 1972, CIA-RDP75B00380R000100030019-2 (https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000100030019-2); CIA, "Comments on Allegations made to Chairman Nedzi, Intelligence Subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee, by Seymour Hersh," CIA-RDP75B00380R000200050121-5 (https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75b00380r000200050121-5).
[^11]: CIA, Director's morning meeting minutes, entries of November 15, 1972, December 29, 1972, January 18, 1973 and February 20, 1973, in the "Family Jewels" compilation, CIA Reading Room document 0001451843, minutes pp. 00302 to 00303 and following. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001451843
[^12]: Hersh, Seymour M. "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," *The New York Times*, December 22, 1974, 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
[^13]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Project AZORIAN: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer," *Studies in Intelligence*, Fall 1985, CIA Reading Room document 0005301269 (declassified January 4, 2010). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005301269
[^14]: U.S. Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976*, vol. XXXV, National Security, 1973-1976, document 197 (Memorandum of Conversation, March 19, 1975), editorial notes 2 and 3. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197
[^15]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976*, vol. XXXV, document 183 (editorial note on the Hersh article of March 19, 1975) and document 197 (Colby: "I go back to the U-2."). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d183
[^16]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (Kerry Committee report), December 1988, chronology entries for July 8, 1985, August 8 and 25, 1985, May 6, 1986 and June 12, 1986, and Kellner deposition of November 8, 1988 (Korten). https://archive.org/details/KerryCommitteeReport
[^17]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 27 and notes ("Eastland had a history," citing Joel Millman, "Narco-terrorism: A Tale of Two Stories," *Columbia Journalism Review*, September/October 1986). https://archive.org/details/dark-alliance-the-cia-the-con-gary-webb
[^18]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions* (December 1997), chapter 1. https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
[^19]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27.
[^20]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27 (Ceppos column of May 11, 1997).
[^21]: *Congressional Record*, House of Representatives, July 17, 1998, p. H5847 (remarks of Rep. Maxine Waters, "CIA Admits Ties to Contra Drug Dealers"). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1998_cr/h980717-cia.htm
[^22]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, epilogue.
[^23]: Richardson, Elliot L. "A High-Tech Watergate," *The New York Times*, October 21, 1991, as described in *Brian v. Richardson*, 87 N.Y.2d 46, 660 N.E.2d 1126 (N.Y. Court of Appeals, November 29, 1995). https://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I95_0246.htm
[^24]: Cooper, Helene, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean. "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," *The New York Times*, December 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html (Internet Archive capture, https://web.archive.org/web/2023id_/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html)
[^25]: Bender, Bryan. "The Hidden History of How Washington Embraced UFOs," *Politico Magazine*, May 28, 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/28/ufos-secret-history-government-washington-dc-487900 (Internet Archive capture). Mellon's role is as characterized by Bender.

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@ -1,38 +1,107 @@
---
title: Spartacus International
aliases:
- Spartacus International
- Spartacus International Gay Guide
- Spartacus Gay Guide
- Spartacus Guide
- Spartacus Club
- Club Spartacus
- Euro-Spartacus
- Spartacus (Amsterdam)
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Private Organization"
tags:
- Organization
- International
- Pedophile_Network
- Child_Trafficking
- Publishing
- Amsterdam
- JohnStamford
- ElmGuestHouse
- ChildSexTourism
- PedophileNetworks
- 1970s
- 1980s
- 1990s
- Amsterdam
- John_Stamford
category: "Private Organization"
summary: "Spartacus International was founded by John Stamford, a British foreign-national and defrocked Anglican priest who fled to Amsterdam in 1972 after being charged with operating a child pornography service through the mail."
summary: "Amsterdam publisher of the Spartacus International Gay Guide and Spartacus Club, run by John D. Stamford, whose Manila portfolios were examined in a 1986 Sunday Times inquiry and named in 1984 Senate testimony."
location: "Amsterdam, Netherlands"
relations:
- type: founded
with: "[[John Stamford]]"
reverse: true
role: "editor and director of Spartacus; founder of the Spartacus Club"
fn: 4
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Peter Glencross]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981
role: "Business Manager"
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Laurie Page]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981
role: "Data Processing Manager"
fn: 5
- type: owned
with: "[[Bruno Gmunder Verlag]]"
reverse: true
start: 1987
role: "later publisher of the Spartacus International Gay Guide"
fn: 8
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Elm Guest House]]"
start: 1981-08
end: 1982-06
role: "guide listing, advertising and Spartacus Club discount scheme"
fn: 5
---
Spartacus International was founded by [[John Stamford]], a British foreign-national and defrocked Anglican priest who fled to Amsterdam in 1972 after being charged with operating a child pornography service through the mail. From Amsterdam through the late 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, Stamford operated a child sex tourism business under the guise of an international homosexual travel guide, which also sponsored boy brothels under the franchise [[Spartacus Club]]. To skirt child sex trafficking laws, Stamford had inverted the process, delivering pedophiles to children in countries such as the Philippines and Thailand. Spartacus International functioned as both a publishing operation and international pedophile network, officially described as "general publishers of trade and business directories, periodicals, newspapers and journals," but in reality published homosexual literature including books for pederasts.[^1]
Spartacus International was the Amsterdam-based publisher of the *Spartacus International Gay Guide* (in its thirteenth edition in 1983, edited by [[John Stamford]]) and of the Spartacus Club, a membership scheme that supplied guide copies, discounts and "Holiday Help Portfolios." In 1986 the *[[The Sunday Times|Sunday Times]]* reported that the Club's Manila portfolio led its reporters to boys for hire, and the organisation had been named in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 1984; the British writer S. Dovey has since assigned it a larger role in a network of brothels, concierges and film production, an account whose sole source is Dovey's own book.[^1][^2][^3]
### Business Operations and International Network
### Publisher and club
Spartacus International operated through multiple interconnected business ventures. Club Spartacus was used to attract members to the underground pedophile network, with reported 25,000 British members. The organization functioned through "host pedophiles" around the world who acted as concierges for visiting members, similar to how [[Clarence Henry Osborne]] operated in Australia. The network extended globally with documented operations in Australia, where Clarence Henry Osborne acted as a concierge for Spartacus members visiting Australia, with Brisbane boys appearing in Spartacus publications. In Thailand and the Philippines, the organization ran child sex tourism operations where boys could be purchased for "a few hundred dollars." According to Marie-France Botte, both the "Spartacus" guide and "Paedo Alert News" magazine were visible in most hotels in Thailand that made children available to customers.[^1]
A Spartacus brochure for the thirteenth edition of the guide (1983) names the editor as "John D Stamford" and gives the publisher's address as P.O. Box 3496, 1001 AG Amsterdam, with text in English, German, French and Spanish. It offers an annual membership of the Spartacus Club that includes the guide free; a membership card to introduce members to private gay clubs; discounts; and "Spartacus Club Services": "Holiday Help Portfolios," described as "very comprehensive, frequently up-dated studies of specific popular gay locations, mostly outside of Europe" and "available only to club members," and "Holiday Introductions," by which "a local Spartacus friend ('Holiday Introduction') meet you and show you the local scene." The same brochure sells stationery made from photographs of "Alex, a Spartacus friend in The Philippines," designed by Stamford.[^4]
The organization also had direct connections to the [[Elm Guest House]] in London. The guest house displayed a sign reading "Spartacus, Club - Welcome" when it was raided by police in June 1982. Two men named Terry Dwyer and John Rowe persuaded owner Carole Kasir to renovate the townhouse into a spa and sauna facility for Club Spartacus members in 1979. [[Peter Glencross]], a close associate of John Stamford, acted as the commercial agent for Spartacus International and was instrumental in setting up the Elm Guest House as a Spartacus venue. Letter correspondence from Spartacus International addressed to the Elm Guest House dated from 1981 exists, and the guest house placed advertisements in the gay press offering "10% Discount to Spartacus Club Members" - a coded reference that pedophiles would understand.[^1]
Spartacus letterhead of 1981 carries the motto "Towards a better world for gays" and the same Amsterdam box number and telephone (020) 950 950.[^5]
### Publishing Operations and Criminal Activities
### Elm Guest House
Between 1979 and 1985, Stamford published PAN ([[PAN Magazine]]): A self described "magazine about boy-love." The first edition was published in 1979 through a publishing house owned by Stamford. [[Francis Shelden]], who fled Michigan in 1976, started this newsletter under the penname "[[Frank Torey]]" in Amsterdam. The publication was used to platform Spartacus International's European operations. The [[The Sunday Times|Sunday Times]] exposed Spartacus in 1986, with undercover reporters being offered two boys in Manila, aged 8 and 14. Stamford was quoted as saying: "If you are discreet, I can guarantee you will get as many boys as you want in the Philippines. Our chaps there will fix it up, and all it will cost you is a meal for the guides, and just the equivalent of a pound or so for the kid per night."[^1]
On August 25, 1981 Laurie Page, Data Processing Manager, wrote on Stamford's behalf, as "Director," to the manager of the Elm Guest House, 27 Rocks Lane, Barnes, London SW13, that Spartacus had noticed the house in *Gay News*, was entering it in the 1982 guide with a free standard listing, and invited it to advertise through "our Business Manager, Mr Peter Glencross," and to join "our highly successful new venture, THE SPARTACUS CLUB," at no charge. On October 23, 1981 Glencross sent Harry Kasir a "formal invoice" for what the letter assumed would be camera-ready artwork. An advertisement for the house in the gay press read "10% Discount to Spartacus Club Members."[^5]
Key associates in the Spartacus network included Peter Glencross, a South African based in Holland who served as commercial manager and was responsible for creating a network of venues for Spartacus members across Europe. Glencross disappeared without trace after 1989. Another associate was [[Russell Tricker]], who operated a coach service called "[[Toff's Travel]]" across the English Channel used to smuggle boys into Amsterdam. Tricker was a known associate of Spartacus International's Peter Glencross. The network also included [[Warwick Spinks]], the notorious British pedophile who was friends with Russell Tricker and operated a similar concierge service for pedophiles in European child sex hotspots.[^1]
The Metropolitan Police raided the house on the night of June 19, 1982 after a surveillance operation that began when an individual told Richmond police station in late 1981 of concern about a 10-year-old boy; twenty people were arrested, and Harry and [[Carole Kasir]] were later convicted of running a disorderly house. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recorded that the investigation identified evidence of abuse of only the one child and that no prominent individuals were observed or found there.[^6] Dovey wrote that a sign reading "Spartacus, Club - Welcome" hung at the house during the raid, that Terry Dwyer and John Rowe persuaded Carole Kasir in 1979 to convert the townhouse into a spa for Club members, and that Peter Glencross was instrumental in establishing it as a Spartacus venue.[^3]
### Legal Troubles and Downfall
### Scotland Yard, 1984
When authorities cracked down on his operation in Amsterdam, Stamford fled to Germany and transferred control of Spartacus International to [[Bruno Gmunder Verlag]]. He then fell under investigation by German authorities and fled to Belgium, where he was finally charged with "incitement to the sexual exploitation of children" in 1993. Stamford died of a heart attack in prison in Belgium in December 1995 at age 56, just before he was due to stand trial on child sex charges. His death came while facing a maximum sentence of only 1 year. A German tabloid reported in 1992 that Scotland Yard suspected Stamford of having trafficked in snuff films: "Stamford filmed 20 boys dying after sex orgies in England. On these perverse films: after the children have been repeatedly raped by men, they have been strangled, suffocated, strangled. The videos were sold for around 1,500 marks per strip." A former associate testified at Stamford's trial about a video where "a Filipino child is tortured and put to death" with "his body buried under a house under construction."[^1]
*Capital Gay* reported on February 17, 1984 that Scotland Yard had that week "refused to comment on reports that they are seeking the extradition from Amsterdam of Spartacus publisher John Stamford," and quoted an unofficial remark to the paper: "You'll never get a comment on extradition enquiries. If word gets back there's always a chance that the person will go missing."[^7]
Stamford's network was linked to multiple major investigations including [[Operation Framework]] (1992-93), a joint Dutch/Scotland Yard investigation into snuff pornography with links to Stamford's Spartacus Network. Belgian police were alert to a possible British connection since Stamford's arrest, and Stamford's operation extended to the United States in affiliation with [[NAMBLA]]. The Spartacus International network represented one of the most extensive international pedophile operations of its time, using publishing and travel guides as fronts for a global child trafficking and exploitation network that operated with apparent impunity for nearly two decades.[^1]
### Senate testimony, 1984
At hearings of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on November 29 and 30, 1984, Defense for Children International (DCI) told the subcommittee that it had found in a 1982 study that child sex package tours were being offered from the Netherlands, West Germany, Japan and the United States to Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Philippines, with guides to negotiate prices, hotels, and ways to circumvent local laws and officials. "The leading magazine in this field," the statement said, "is called Spartacus," with a West German firm, ERO Tours, as "merely one example" of the organizations involved.[^2]
### The Sunday Times inquiry, 1986
The *Sunday Times* of August 3, 1986 ran Mazher Mahmood's "Scandal of Britons who buy young boys for £3 a night" in its Insight section. It reported that the Philippine government would ask [[Margaret Thatcher]] for help against British paedophiles visiting the islands, and that an Insight investigation "infiltrated the organisation, called the Spartacus Club, which is run by John Stamford, a 47-year-old homosexual paedophile and former Sunday school teacher from Lancashire," who operated from a "luxurious home-cum-office in the Baarn suburb of Amsterdam aided by seven colleagues and a computer." The paper said the Club claimed more than 25,000 British subscribers, that members could buy "Holiday Help Portfolios" with "detailed information about where to find young boys, how much to pay them, the risks involved, and how to avoid being arrested," and that the Manila portfolio listed resident couriers. A Filipino called Robert, one of six men acting as Spartacus guides in Manila, introduced the reporter to boys, among them Edwin Artogi, 8, and Rani Dinyege, 14. Stamford was quoted: "If you are discreet I can guarantee you will get as many boys as you want in the Philippines. Our chaps there will fix it up and all it'll cost you is a meal for the guides, and just the equivalent of a pound or so for the kid per night."[^1]
The same article reported that Stamford said he had been "forced to flee Britain" because the British "are too pig-headed and can't understand the quality of sexual relationships between men and boys," that he left for Holland "shortly after being convicted for sending obscene literature through the post in 1972," that Spartacus International was a British-registered company described as "general publishers of trade and business directories, periodicals, newspapers and journals" whose publishing was in fact "confined to a host of homosexual literature including books for pederasts, and Paedo Alert News, described as 'a magazine about boy love,'" and that Club membership cost £28. Superintendent Iain Donaldson of Scotland Yard's obscene publications squad told the paper: "We are aware of the Spartacus gay guide, but have not heard of Stamford's club catering for paedophiles. Since the gay guide itself does not contravene the law we have not been able to take any action." The Philippine social services minister, Mita Pardo de Tavera, asked Britain to furnish the names of suspected exploiters.[^1]
### Dovey's account of the network
S. Dovey wrote that Stamford was a defrocked Anglican priest who fled to Amsterdam in 1972 after being charged with running a child pornography service through the mail, and that from Amsterdam through the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s he operated a child sex tourism business "under the guise of an international homosexual travel guide," which also sponsored boy brothels under the franchise Spartacus Club; that Stamford inverted the usual trafficking route by delivering paedophiles to children in the Philippines and Thailand; and that the Club had 25,000 British members and relied on "host pedophiles" around the world who acted as concierges, such as [[Clarence Henry Osborne]] in Australia, where Brisbane boys appeared in Spartacus publications. Dovey quoted Marie-France Botte as saying the "Spartacus" guide and "Paedo Alert News" were visible in most Thai hotels that made children available.[^3]
Dovey wrote that between 1979 and 1985 Stamford published *PAN* ([[PAN Magazine]]), "a magazine about boy-love," through a publishing house he owned, that [[Francis Shelden]] (who fled Michigan in 1976) started the newsletter under the pen name [[Frank Torey]] in Amsterdam, and that Peter Glencross, a South African based in Holland, served as commercial manager and built a network of venues across Europe before disappearing without trace after 1989. Dovey named [[Russell Tricker]], operator of the coach service "[[Toff's Travel]]" across the Channel, as an associate of Glencross who used it to smuggle boys into Amsterdam, and [[Warwick Spinks]] as a friend of Tricker who ran a similar concierge service.[^3]
Dovey wrote that when authorities cracked down in Amsterdam Stamford fled to Germany and transferred control of Spartacus International to [[Bruno Gmunder Verlag]], fell under German investigation, fled to Belgium, and was charged there in 1993 with "incitement to the sexual exploitation of children"; and that he died of a heart attack in prison in Belgium in December 1995, aged 56, just before trial, facing a maximum sentence of one year. Dovey reproduced a 1992 German tabloid report that Scotland Yard suspected Stamford of trafficking in snuff films ("Stamford filmed 20 boys dying after sex orgies in England"; the videos sold "for around 1,500 marks per strip"), and wrote that a former associate testified at his trial about a video in which "a Filipino child is tortured and put to death." Dovey tied the network to [[Operation Framework]] (1992-93), a joint Dutch and Scotland Yard investigation of snuff pornography, and to the American organization [[NAMBLA]].[^3]
### Ownership after 1986
Bruno Gmünder Verlag of Berlin published the guide from 1987 and credited it to "Bruno Gmünder & John D. Stamford" through the 1993/94 edition, according to library catalogue records of those editions; the vault page [[Bruno Gmunder Verlag]] records the later history of the publishing house.[^8]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar.
[^1]: Mahmood, Mazher. "Scandal of Britons who buy young boys for £3 a night," *The Sunday Times* (London), August 3, 1986 (Insight), photographic copy at https://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/scandal-of-britons-who-buy-young-boys-for-3-a-night-3-8-86/
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, *Child Pornography and Pedophilia*, hearings, 98th Cong., 2d sess., part 1, November 29 and 30, 1984, statement of Defense for Children International. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/98673NCJRS.pdf
[^3]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. Sole source for the passages so cited, including the account of the Elm Guest House sign, of Stamford's 1972 charge and clerical status, of the Belgian charge and his death, and of snuff-film and Operation Framework links.
[^4]: Spartacus International Gay Guide, 13th edition, 1983, order brochure ("Spartacus Club," "Holiday Help Portfolios," "Holiday Introductions," "Alex writing paper"), published by Spartacus, P.O. Box 3496, Amsterdam. https://fighting-words.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/spartacus1983ocr.pdf
[^5]: Letters from Spartacus, Amsterdam, to the Elm Guest House: Laurie Page for John D. Stamford, Director, August 25, 1981; Peter Glencross, Business Manager, to Harry Kasir, October 23, 1981; and advertisement, "Elm Guest House ... 10% Discount to Spartacus Club Members." https://archive.org/details/elm-guest-house-spartacus
[^6]: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, *Westminster* investigation report, part D, chapter D.7, "Allegations connected to Elm Guest House," paragraphs 71 to 72. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/westminster/part-d-police-responses-allegations-westminster-child-sexual-abuse/d7-allegations-connected-elm-guest-house.html
[^7]: "Police silent over Spartacus chief," *Capital Gay*, February 17, 1984, photographic copy at https://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/police-silent-over-spartacus-chief-17-2-84/
[^8]: Library catalogue records of *Spartacus International Gay Guide*, '91/92, '92/93 and '93/94 editions ("editors-in-chief Bruno Gmünder & John D. Stamford"), Southern Methodist University catalogue. https://smu.vufind.net/smu/Record/a20041399

13
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford Research Institute.md
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@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ tags:
- AugmentationResearchCenter
- MenloPark
- RemoteViewing
summary: "Stanford Research Institute is the Menlo Park research institute, founded in 1946 and independent since 1970, that produced Douglas Engelbart's 1968 'Mother of All Demos,' the second ARPANET node, and the U.S. government's classified remote-viewing program under Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ."
summary: "Stanford Research Institute is the Menlo Park research institute, founded in 1946 and independent since 1970, home of Engelbart's 1968 demo, the second ARPANET node and the Puthoff and Targ remote-viewing program."
start: 1946
location: "Menlo Park, California"
created: 2025-07-22
@ -47,13 +47,13 @@ SRI's role in the early network extended past the first connection. From 1972 th
### The 1970 Separation and Later Work
During the [[Vietnam War]], student activists at Stanford protested the university's ties to SRI, whose contracts included classified military and counterinsurgency research, arguing that the relationship made the university part of the military-industrial complex. After demonstrations in the spring of 1969, including a sit-in at the SRI building and tear-gassing of protesters near the site in May 1969, the Stanford trustees voted to sever the institute, and SRI became a fully independent nonprofit in 1970, taking the name SRI International in 1977.[^1][^2] Its Artificial Intelligence Center, founded in 1966, built Shakey, the first mobile robot able to reason about its own actions, between 1966 and 1972; decades later the center's DARPA-funded CALO project spun off the company Siri in 2007, which Apple acquired in 2010.[^2]
During the [[Vietnam War]], student activists at Stanford protested the university's ties to SRI, whose contracts included classified military and counterinsurgency research, arguing that the relationship made the university part of the military-industrial complex. After demonstrations in the spring of 1969, including the nine-day occupation of the Applied Electronics Laboratory from April 8 and the occupation of Encina Hall cleared by police on May 1, the Stanford trustees met in mid-May 1969 (students held a rally on May 13, the eve of the meeting) to decide the separation of SRI from the university. A protest at SRI on May 16, 1969 followed the decision. SRI became a fully independent nonprofit in 1970, taking the name SRI International in 1977.[^1][^2][^7] Its Artificial Intelligence Center, founded in 1966, built Shakey, the first mobile robot able to reason about its own actions, between 1966 and 1972; decades later the center's DARPA-funded CALO project spun off the company Siri in 2007, which Apple acquired in 2010.[^2]
### The Remote-Viewing Program
From 1972 to about 1995 SRI hosted a classified, government-funded parapsychology research program investigating "[[remote viewing]]," the claimed ability to perceive distant or hidden targets by extrasensory means, conducted for clients including the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]]. The physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff ran the SRI experiments, working with subjects such as the artist [[Ingo Swann]], the former police officer [[Pat Price]], and the celebrity psychic [[Uri Geller]], and the program was one strand of the broader military and intelligence effort later consolidated under the name [[Stargate Project]].[^7][^8]
From 1972 to about 1995 SRI hosted a classified, government-funded parapsychology research program investigating "[[remote viewing]]," the claimed ability to perceive distant or hidden targets by extrasensory means, conducted for clients including the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]]. The physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff ran the SRI experiments, working with subjects such as the artist [[Ingo Swann]], the former police officer [[Pat Price]], and the celebrity psychic [[Uri Geller]], and the program was one strand of the broader military and intelligence effort later consolidated under the name [[Stargate Project]].[^8][^9]
SRI developed several of the core techniques of the field, including [[Coordinate Remote Viewing]] (CRV) and the use of outbounder teams sent to randomly chosen locations for a viewer to describe. The institute's prestige and its heavy reliance on classified government contracts made it a fitting home for the sensitive work, and Puthoff and Targ published some of their results in reputable scientific journals, lending the field a measure of credibility that helped persuade parts of the intelligence community that remote viewing might serve as an intelligence-gathering tool.[^8]
SRI developed several of the core techniques of the field, including [[Coordinate Remote Viewing]] (CRV) and the use of outbounder teams sent to randomly chosen locations for a viewer to describe. The institute's prestige and its heavy reliance on classified government contracts made it a fitting home for the sensitive work, and Puthoff and Targ published some of their results in reputable scientific journals, lending the field a measure of credibility that helped persuade parts of the intelligence community that remote viewing might serve as an intelligence-gathering tool.[^9]
### Footnotes
@ -63,5 +63,6 @@ SRI developed several of the core techniques of the field, including [[Coordinat
[^4]: Markoff, John, and contemporary accounts of the Augmentation Research Center, on Bill English building the first mouse prototype and the lineage from NLS to Xerox PARC and the graphical user interface; and "How Douglas Engelbart Invented the Future," Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/douglas-engelbart-invented-future-180967498/
[^5]: "The Mother of All Demos," accounts of the December 9, 1968 demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, the mouse, hypertext, video conferencing, and shared-screen editing, and Stewart Brand's role in staging and filming it; "Net@50," Computer History Museum. https://computerhistory.org/blog/net-50-did-engelbart-s-mother-of-all-demos-launch-the-connected-world/
[^6]: "Charley Kline Sends the First Message Over the ARPANET," History of Information, on SRI as the second ARPANET node, the October 29, 1969 transmission of "lo," and the crash; and "Elizabeth J. Feinler," on her direction of SRI's Network Information Center for the ARPANET from the early 1970s until 1989 and her maintenance of the host table and early registries. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=1108
[^7]: Standard accounts of the SRI remote-viewing program, 1972 to about 1995, funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and run by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff with subjects including Ingo Swann and Pat Price, as one strand of the program later known as Project Stargate. See the vault pages on Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, and Project Stargate.
[^8]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, on the SRI psychic-research program, the subjects including Ingo Swann, Pat Price, and Uri Geller, the development of Coordinate Remote Viewing and outbounder protocols, and the publication of results in scientific journals.
[^7]: Lyman, Richard W. "At the Hands of the Radicals," *Stanford* magazine, January/February 2009 (excerpt from *Stanford in Turmoil*), https://stanfordmag.org/contents/at-the-hands-of-the-radicals ; Stanford University News Service releases of April 4 to May 1, 1969, April Third Movement Historical Archive, https://a3mreunion.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_stanford_releases/68-69_stanford_releases.html ; "May 16 Protest at SRI," same archive, 1968-1969.
[^8]: Standard accounts of the SRI remote-viewing program, 1972 to about 1995, funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and run by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff with subjects including Ingo Swann and Pat Price, as one strand of the program later known as Project Stargate. See the vault pages on Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, and Project Stargate.
[^9]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, on the SRI psychic-research program, the subjects including Ingo Swann, Pat Price, and Uri Geller, the development of Coordinate Remote Viewing and outbounder protocols, and the publication of results in scientific journals.

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford University.md
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@ -1,15 +1,108 @@
---
aliases:
- Stanford
- Leland Stanford Junior University
- Stanford School of Medicine
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1885
location: "Stanford, California"
tags:
- Organization
- Academic
- USA
category: "Private Organization"
summary: "Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, California, whose Linear Accelerator Center physicist Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky served on the expert panel that analyzed VELA satellite data from the suspected 1979 South Atlantic nuclear explosion."
start: 1885
location: "Stanford, California"
- University
- StanfordResearchInstitute
- RemoteViewing
- MKULTRA
- VelaIncident
- Palantir
summary: "California university that founded the Stanford Research Institute in 1946 and separated from it in 1970, whose School of Medicine appears in MKULTRA subprojects and whose physicists figure in SRI psychic research."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: founded
with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]"
start: 1946
end: 1970
role: "wholly owned subsidiary until separation"
fn: 1
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
role: "School of Medicine, Neurology Division, MKULTRA Subprojects 2, 71 and 86"
start: 1953
fn: 11
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Arthur Hebard]]"
reverse: true
role: "physicist who designed the quark-detector magnetometer used with Ingo Swann"
fn: 5
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky]]"
reverse: true
role: "physicist; member of the 1979 to 1980 Vela panel"
fn: 15
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Lincoln Moses]]"
reverse: true
role: "emeritus professor of statistics; statistical adviser to the 1995 AIR evaluation"
fn: 14
---
Stanford University is a private research university in [[Stanford]], [[California]]. Its Linear Accelerator Center was home to [[Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky]], a physicist who was a key colleague of [[Jack P. Ruina]] on an ad hoc panel of distinguished scientists tasked with studying the [[VELA Satellite]] data related to a probable nuclear explosion in the South Indian Ocean in 1979.[^1]
[[Stanford University]] is a private university in [[Stanford]], [[California]]. Its name appears in the history of the [[Stanford Research Institute]], which it founded and later separated from; in the work of its physicists on the SRI psychic research and the 1979 [[VELA Satellite]] panel; in CIA documents of 1953 to 1960 on its School of Medicine under [[Project MKUltra]]; and among the founders and officers of [[Palantir Technologies]].
### The Stanford Research Institute, 1946 to 1970
A history of the period in *Stanford* magazine states that the Stanford Research Institute was formed in 1946 "as a wholly owned subsidiary of the University," conceived as an innovation center for the economic development of the West Coast; that in the mid-1960s it received much of its funding from the [[Department of Defense]]; and that its contracts included work on chemical and biological agents with potential military applications. According to critics quoted in the account, $6.2 million of the institute's 1968 support related directly to Southeast Asia and $404,000 to chemical and biological warfare; almost half of its support in 1968 came from the Department of Defense. The account states that by the late 1960s the university's ties to the institute had become "gossamer-thin," consisting of Stanford trustees who also sat on the SRI board and a few faculty with individual ties.[^1]
In fall 1968 the administration established an SRI Study Committee. A Stanford News Service release of April 4, 1969 recorded that students meeting on April 3 had voted to ask the trustees, meeting on April 8, to end classified research, research in chemical-biological warfare and counterinsurgency, and studies used against the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Students occupied the [[Applied Electronics Laboratory]] from the night of April 8; President [[Kenneth Pitzer]] gave written notice that they were violating university policy, and Provost [[Richard Lyman]] announced on April 13 that faculty and staff would begin identifying protestors. On May 1, 1969 the university reported that demonstrators had left [[Encina Hall]] shortly after 125 police officers arrived.[^2] The students' own literature included a list of "CBW and Counter Insurgency research projects at SRI" and a booklet on the role of Stanford and SRI in chemical-biological and counterinsurgency research; the [[Palo Alto Times]] of April 12, 1969 editorialized that Stanford should "cut cord to SRI," and the [[Stanford Daily]] of April 19 that it should keep it.[^3]
The *Stanford* account states that the Board of Trustees met in mid-May 1969 "at which separation of SRI from the University would be decided," and that the day before the meeting students held a carnival in [[White Plaza]] at which they practiced breaking windows. The institute became independent in 1970 and was renamed SRI International in 1977.[^4]
### SRI's psychic research and the Stanford physics laboratory
[[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]], the physicists who ran the SRI research, worked in [[Menlo Park]], but the experiments with [[Ingo Swann]] used equipment on the Stanford campus. The British weekly *[[New Scientist]]* reported on October 17, 1974 that Puthoff took Swann to "the quark detector at Stanford University early in 1973," a "highly sensitive magnetometer which works by looking at the decay of a magnetic field"; that Puthoff and Swann "independently told me roughly similar stories" in which Swann described the interior of the detector and then, without approaching the equipment, increased and decreased the period of the signal; and that [[Arthur Hebard]], who designed the equipment and suggested the visit, "dismisses" the description as "poetic" but "is convinced, however, that Swann did perturb the output without touching the recorder." The writer, a skeptic, added that such perturbations often occur when other users share the helium supply and that Swann had stood close to the chart recorder in a room with several people.[^5]
A CIA Office of Technical Service chronology records an earlier date for the Agency's first contact: "4/72 ORD/OTS are contacted by Targ and Puthoff of SRI. Demonstrations by Ingo Swann appear to show ESP has useful/practical intel application (Swann apparently caused a magnetometer to fluctuate)."[^6]
### The CIA's Office of Technical Service chronology, 1972 to 1975
The chronology, prepared for a November 16, 1977 briefing of staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence by [[David Brandwein]], the Office's director, records: in August 1972 an OTS/ORD contract with SRI for a demonstration of using ESP to describe hidden objects, with results "so good" that SRI was asked for a fuller research plan; in October 1972 a contract to explore two subjects whose results were inconsistent; in February 1973 renewed Agency interest; in March 1973 the discovery of "a third 'sensitive' (Pat Price) with apparent ability for 'remote viewing'"; in April 1973 a new contract forwarded from OTS/ORD to the Deputy Director for Operations, [[William Colby]], and referred to the [[Executive Management Committee]] "because of its sensitivity"; and in May 1973, "the contract is finally sent to the DCI (Schlesinger) who decides to allow the existing contract to be completed without a follow-on. OTS is told this work is too sensitive and potentially embarrassing. At this time OTS is in the midst of an investigation regarding its role in the Watergate affair." In August 1973 an "informal" SRI experiment with an [[Office of Scientific Intelligence]] scientist "uncovers classified information" and, in the chronology's words, convinces "the new DCI (Colby) to renew work on ESP," and a joint OTS/ORD project was funded in February 1974. The chronology later records that the OTS and ORD managements "both decide not to continue the project," and that OTS kept "a very limited interest," with an OTS psychologist told to give the work no more than two percent of his time.[^7]
An earlier memorandum of the Office of Research and Development of January 24, 1973 records that on January 23 Targ and Puthoff showed a film of their experiments with [[Uri Geller]], and that "the SRI work with Geller has been supported by [[Edgar Mitchell]]'s foundation, by something with a name like [[Mind Science Institute of Los Angeles]], and by TSD," the CIA's Technical Services Division.[^8] On February 20, 1976 Brandwein wrote to the Director of Research and Development that he had "directed that OTS support of this effort be terminated" and that "if ORD desires to pick it up, be my guest."[^9]
### The School of Medicine and MKULTRA
An undated CIA list of institutions notified in connection with MKULTRA subprojects carries the entry "Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305" with Subprojects 70, 71, 86, 85 and 2. Three of those subprojects are documented in released draft memoranda, all concerning the Department of Medicine, Neurology Division, of the School of Medicine.[^10]
Subproject 2, a draft memorandum of May 1, 1953, was "set up to provide a secure and efficient means to exploit" a practicing psychiatrist and Stanford Medical School faculty member (name redacted) "in regard to the MKULTRA program." The memorandum describes him as an "overall advisor and consultant" in the field who had been of value "in contacting individuals" and "in setting up projects," proposes his services "as a contact and cut-out for projects in the MKULTRA field," and caps the cost at $4,650 for one year.[^11]
Subproject 86, a draft of June 17, 1958, provided funds to the Department of Medicine, Neurology Division, of the Stanford University School of Medicine "to support Phase II of the research program on polygraph equipment and procedures undertaken by TSS/CD for the [[Office of Security]]." The first phase had designed a miniature recording unit for the sensing units used by the Office of Security; the third phase "envisions the production" of a unit incorporating "more reliable estimates of the stress reaction in human beings." A clinical professor of medicine (neurology), cleared through Top Secret, was principal investigator. The cost was $43,734.08, and a foundation (name redacted) served "as cutout and cover" under the cover title "Quantitative Evaluation of Physiological Responses in Man."[^12]
Subproject 71, continued by a memorandum of June 1960 (draft downgraded in June 1977), enabled the Technical Services Division's Research Branch to continue using the same neurologist at the School of Medicine for "clinical testing and evaluation of selected drugs and preparations in order to select one that will fulfill existing operational requirements in the area of anti-interrogation," for participation in testing drugs "evolving within other projects," for development of "a miniaturized multi-channel recording physiological measurement device," and for review of "overt Chinese and Japanese pharmacological and physiological literature." The annual cost was $9,600.[^13]
### Statisticians, physicists and the Vela panel
The [[American Institutes for Research]] report of September 29, 1995 for the CIA, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," states that "Dr. [[Lincoln Moses]], an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, provided statistical advice" to a panel that included the two outside reviewers [[Jessica Utts]] and [[Ray Hyman]].[^14]
In its 2016 posting on the [[Vela Incident]], the [[National Security Archive]] wrote that [[Richard Garwin|Garwin]] had proposed [[Richard Muller|Muller]], Panofsky, Alvarez and [[Burton Richter]] of Stanford as "skeptical critical experts," that the White House panel chaired by [[Jack P. Ruina]] of the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] included Garwin, Muller, [[Luis Alvarez]] and [[Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky|Wolfgang Panofsky]] of Stanford, and that Panofsky later called the panel's finding that the signal was "probably not from a nuclear event" a "scotch verdict," that is, that a nuclear event was not proven.[^15]
### Palantir and its founders
The 2020 registration statement of [[Palantir Technologies]] lists its chairman since 2003, [[Peter Thiel]], as holding a B.A. in philosophy and a J.D. from Stanford; its chief executive [[Alex Karp]] as holding a J.D. from Stanford; its co-founder [[Stephen Cohen]] a B.S. in computer science from Stanford; and its director [[Alexander Moore]] a B.A. in economics from Stanford.[^16]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20.
[^1]: Lyman, Richard W. "At the Hands of the Radicals," *Stanford* magazine, January/February 2009 (excerpt from Lyman, *Stanford in Turmoil*). https://stanfordmag.org/contents/at-the-hands-of-the-radicals
[^2]: April Third Movement, Historical Archive, 1968-1969, "Press Releases from Stanford University News Service," releases of April 4, April 10, April 13 and May 1, 1969. https://a3mreunion.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_stanford_releases/68-69_stanford_releases.html
[^3]: April Third Movement, Historical Archive, 1968-1969, "SRI" page, listing documents of October 1968 to April 1969. https://a3mreunion.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_sri/68-69_sri.html
[^4]: "At the Hands of the Radicals" (see note 1); *Stanford* magazine timeline, "World Events," https://stanfordmag.org/contents/a-mad-mad-mad-world . The timeline dates the trustees' vote May 13 and a demonstration at SRI three days later.
[^5]: "Uri Geller and Science," *New Scientist*, October 17, 1974, vol. 64, no. 919, copy in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000700110020-3
[^6]: CIA Office of Technical Service, "OTS Involvement in ESP Research," chronology attached to OTS/BAB Memo #287-77, November 17, 1977, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP79-00999A000400050014-1. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000400050014-1
[^7]: Same document as note 6, chronology entries for 8/72 through 1975.
[^8]: CIA Office of Research and Development, ORD-413-73, "Briefing by Stanford Research Institute," January 24, 1973, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070029-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000400070029-2
[^9]: Brandwein, David S., Director, Office of Technical Service, memorandum for the Director of Research and Development, "Stanford Research Institute Parapsychology Research," February 20, 1976, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020001-9. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000200020001-9
[^10]: Central Intelligence Agency, "MKULTRA Institution Notifications," list of institutions and subproject numbers, CIA Reading Room document 00020476 (also posted at https://archive.org/details/brief-summaries-of-cia-mkultra-subprojects), page listing "Stanford University School of Medicine."
[^11]: CIA, draft memorandum for the record, "Project MKULTRA, Subproject 2," May 1, 1953, CIA Reading Room document 00319488. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319488
[^12]: CIA, draft memorandum for the record, "MKULTRA Subproject 86," June 17, 1958, CIA Reading Room document 00319543. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319543
[^13]: CIA, memorandum for the record, "Continuation of MKULTRA, Subproject 71," draft downgraded June 1977, project year commencing June 1, 1960, CIA Reading Room document 00319534. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319534
[^14]: Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose and David A. Goslin, *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications*, American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, executive summary and review procedure, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00791r000200180006-4
[^15]: Richelson, Jeffrey, ed., "The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, December 8, 2016, text and note 17. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test
[^16]: Palantir Technologies Inc., Form S-1 registration statement, September 2020, "Management," executive officers and directors. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm

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---
aliases:
- "The Washington Post"
- The Washington Post
- Washington Post
- "The Post"
category: "Private Organization"
start: 1877
location: "Washington, D.C."
tags:
- Organization
- Media
- United_States
- 1990s
- Dark_Alliance_Investigation
summary: Major national newspaper whose national security reporter Walter Pincus, a former CIA operative, led the first major media attack on the Dark Alliance series.
start: 1877
location: "Washington, D.C."
- Newspaper
- CIAMediaRelations
- Newsweek
- FamilyJewels
- MediaBurglary
- DarkAlliance
- IranContra
summary: "Washington newspaper whose reporters the CIA surveilled in 1971 and 1972, which published the 1971 FBI burglary documents, the 1996 Dark Alliance rebuttal and the 1977 Parade item behind a House briefing on psychic research."
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Katharine Graham]]"
reverse: true
role: "publisher"
fn: 2
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Walter Pincus]]"
reverse: true
role: "national security reporter"
fn: 9
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Media FBI Office Break-In]]"
role: "published the first account of the stolen FBI documents, March 24, 1971"
start: 1971-03-24
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Dark Alliance]]"
role: "published the October 2 and 4, 1996 rebuttals"
start: 1996-10-04
fn: 15
---
[[The Washington Post]] is a major national newspaper based in [[Washington, D.C.]] In October 1996, it published the first major media attack on the [[Dark Alliance]] series, written by [[Walter Pincus]] and Roberto Suro.[^1]
The [[Washington Post]] appears in records of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] as the paper of [[Philip Graham]] and [[Katharine Graham]], whose [[Newsweek]] subsidiary the Agency used for cover; as the employer of reporters the CIA placed under physical surveillance in 1971 and 1972; as the only recipient of the 1971 Media, Pennsylvania FBI documents to publish them; and as the paper in which [[Walter Pincus]] and [[Roberto Suro]] published the first of the major rebuttals of the [[San Jose Mercury News]] "[[Dark Alliance]]" series.
### Attack on Dark Alliance
### Newsweek, Frank Wisner and the Grahams
The Post's story, headlined "The CIA and Crack: Evidence is Lacking of Alleged Plot," falsely claimed the series alleged a CIA conspiracy to target black communities. Despite [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]]'s testimony about selling 200 to 300 kilos of [[Cocaine]] for the Contras, the Post quoted unnamed officials minimizing the volume to "$30,000 to $60,000 worth of cocaine in two transactions." The story buried the admission that "the CIA knew about some of these activities and did little or nothing to stop them."[[^1]
[[Carl Bernstein]], formerly of the Post, wrote in [[Rolling Stone]] on October 20, 1977 that when the Washington Post Company bought Newsweek, publisher Philip L. Graham "was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources." A former CIA deputy director was quoted: "It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from. Frank Wisner dealt with him." Bernstein described [[Frank Wisner]] as the Agency's "premier orchestrator of 'black' operations" with a propaganda apparatus he called his "mighty Wurlitzer," and wrote that Graham "probably Wisner's closest friend" while apparently knowing "little of the specifics of any cover arrangements with Newsweek." Bernstein reported that in 1965 and 1966 an accredited Newsweek stringer in the [[Far East]] was a CIA contract employee at an annual salary of $10,000, according to [[Robert T. Wood]], then a CIA officer in the [[Hong Kong]] station.[^1]
### Pincus's CIA Background
On the Post itself Bernstein wrote that information about Agency dealings with the newspaper "is extremely sketchy," that according to CIA officials some Post stringers had been CIA employees but the officials did not know whether Post management was aware, and that all editors-in-chief and managing editors of the Post since 1950 said they knew of no formal Agency relationship with stringers or staff. Katharine Graham told him she had never been informed of any such relationships; in November 1973 she telephoned Director [[William Colby]] to ask whether any Post stringers or staff members were associated with the CIA, and Colby assured her that no staff members were employed by the Agency but declined to discuss stringers.[^2]
Pincus had been a CIA operative in the late 1950s and early 1960s, traveling to international conferences to spy on both foreign and American students. He was later selected by the [[New York Times]] to review ex-CIA officer Philip Agee's expose, without disclosure of his prior CIA ties. Columnist Molly Ivins observed: "Like good little boys and girls, the Times, the Washington Post et al., toddled off to the CIA and asked the agency if it had ever done such a thing. When the CIA said 'no' the papers solemnly printed it."[^1]
The [[Church Committee]] stated in 1976 that the CIA maintained about 50 relationships with American journalists or media employees, and did not name the organizations.[^3]
### Suppression of Ceppos Letter
### Surveillance of Post reporters, 1971 and 1972
[[Jerry Ceppos]] fired off a blistering letter to the Post pointing out factual errors. The Post held the letter for weeks, ordered Ceppos to rewrite it, and then refused to print it.[^1]
The CIA Office of Security's submission of May 16, 1973 for the [[CIA Family Jewels]] compilation describes an operation named CELOTEX I. "At the direction of the DCI, a surveillance was conducted of [[Michael Getler]] of the Washington Post" on October 6 to 9, October 27 to December 10, 1971 and January 3, 1972, with an observation post in the [[Statler Hilton|Statler Hilton Hotel]] "where observation could be maintained of the building housing his office." The surveillance "was designed to determine Getler's sources of classified information of interest to the Agency which had appeared in a number of his columns." CELOTEX II, from February 15 to April 12, 1972, covered [[Jack Anderson]] and his assistants [[Britt Hume]], [[Leslie Whitten]] and [[Joseph Spear]] from a post opposite Anderson's office.[^4]
The minutes of the Director's morning meetings in the same compilation record the Agency's reading of the Post. On August 6, 1971 the Director called attention to a Getler article, "CIA Patrols Into China Said Halted," and directed that the Legislative Counsel write to Senator [[John Stennis]] stating that Senator [[Clifford Case]] had been briefed and "obviously leaked it." On November 10, 1971 the Director remarked that it was "leak day" in the Post and listed three articles. On November 20, 1972 the Deputy Director for Intelligence noted Anderson's column in that day's Post quoting an Agency report "on a famous singer," and the Director, who had a brief conversation with Anderson, said the Director of Security was looking into the matter. A memorandum in the same file on the Agency's contact with the mobster [[John Roselli]] identified Anderson, who had published Roselli's account, as "also Editor of the Washington Bureau of the Washington Post, Sunday supplemental '[[Parade]].'"[^5]
### The 1971 FBI documents
On March 24, 1971 the Post published on its front page, under the headline "Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities," the first account of documents taken in the [[Media FBI Office Break-In|burglary of the FBI's resident agency in Media, Pennsylvania]]. According to a review of [[Betty Medsger]]'s book by [[David J. Garrow]] in the Post, five sets of 14 memoranda were mailed by "[[Liberty Publications]]" to two members of Congress and to writers at three national newspapers; "four of the recipients quickly handed the packages over to the FBI. Only Medsger chose differently." Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] telephoned Post editors and Katharine Graham to ask that the story not run, and Graham approved publication. A review essay by [[Aryeh Neier]] in the *[[New York Review of Books]]* stated that the copies sent to [[Jack Nelson]] of the [[Los Angeles Times]] were apparently diverted and never reached him, and that Medsger was the only recipient to pursue the story.[^6]
### Glomar Explorer, 1975
The State Department's Foreign Relations series records that on March 19, 1975, the day after Anderson's broadcast, the Post, the [[New York Times]] and the Los Angeles Times published front-page accounts of the [[Project Azorian]] recovery vessel. The CIA's own history states that "senior CIA officials in 1975" had attempted to persuade members of the media not to broadcast or publish reports concerning the project.[^7]
### Bush, the Post and the press executives, 1976
The [[Washington Star]] reported on February 10, 1976 that, according to the Post, officials of the New York Times and [[CBS]] had offered general support to Director [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]]'s appeal to keep secret the names of journalists who had worked for the Agency, and that the [[Church Committee|Senate Intelligence Committee]] had been informed that one news executive told Bush: "We protect our (news) sources. You protect yours." The Star reported that CBS's [[Walter Cronkite]] believed the names should be put on the table.[^8]
### Pincus, Woodward and Iran-Contra
[[Gary Webb]] wrote that after the Mercury News series, he obtained a Mercury News clipping of February 18, 1967 headed "How I Traveled Abroad on CIA Subsidy" by Walter Pincus of the Post, in which, Webb wrote, Pincus described traveling to international youth conferences in the late 1950s and early 1960s while "gathering information for the CIA" and "smuggling in anti-Communist propaganda," after a CIA recruiter approached him. Webb quoted Pincus: "I had been briefed in Washington on each of them. None was remotely aware of CIA's interest." Webb also wrote that Pincus reviewed [[Philip Agee]]'s *Inside the Company* for the *New York Times Book Review* on August 3, 1975 and that the review identified him only as a Washington journalist; and that on the *[[MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour]]* on May 12, 1986 Pincus said the Post goes to the administration with what it has on a story, "listen[s] to what their arguments are," and has "withheld a great deal of information."[^9]
A CIA memorandum of November 3, 1987 records that on November 2 [[Bob Woodward]] told the Agency that he and Pincus were writing an article to precede the report of the Iran-Contra committees, that Senator [[David Boren]] had told him he was convinced the late Director [[William Casey]] had "cooked the books," and that one of Woodward's key sources was a Senate staff member "deeply involved in the preparation of the Iran-contra report."[^10] [[Lawrence Walsh]], the Iran-Contra independent counsel, wrote in *Firewall* that Pincus had published a "false report that we were considering indicting the nation's still admired former president," that he suspected the story had come from [[C. Boyden Gray]], counsel to President Bush, who "had been known to float stories through persons close to the publisher of the Washington Post," and that he "had no proof."[^11]
### ITT, Letelier and the 1977 psychic-research item
In November 1976 the Post reported that the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] had charged [[Hal Hendrix]], described as a former [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning newsman who lived in Miami, with withholding information from a Senate subcommittee investigating [[International Telephone and Telegraph]] and the CIA in [[Chile]]. An [[Associated Press]] report carried by the same paper stated that at the November 30, 1976 hearing in Miami, at which Hendrix pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, a Justice Department lawyer said the CIA had been told of his intention to withhold from the committee that he had been in contact with the Agency, and that the court record "makes clear" that CIA cables revealed his information "came from the CIA station chief [in] Santiago and to some extent from the American ambassador himself."[^12] A Post article of November 1, 1976 on the [[Orlando Letelier]] investigation reported that the CIA believed the Chilean military did not take part in the killing, and that Bush had expressed this view to Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]].[^13]
A CIA Office of Technical Service memorandum of November 17, 1977 records that the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]]'s interest in the Agency's research on extrasensory perception "was occasioned by the article 'Psychic Spying' which appeared in the Parade Section of the Washington Post on 7 August 1977." Committee staff were briefed on November 16, 1977 by [[David Brandwein]] and left with "a brief article on Mr. [[Pat Price]]," the [[Stanford Research Institute]] subject.[^14]
### Dark Alliance, 1996 to 1998
The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General recorded two Post articles: "Running with the CIA Story: Reporter Says Series Didn't Go as Far as Readers Took It" on October 2, 1996, and, on October 4, 1996, "The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Alleged Plot," by Pincus and Suro, which concluded that the evidence did not support the claim that the Contras "played a major role" in crack's spread.[^15] Webb wrote that Mercury News editor [[Jerry Ceppos]] told him by telephone that the Post piece did not say any of the facts were wrong, "they just don't agree with our conclusions," and that its evidence was "a lot of unnamed sources, mainly." Webb described the article as admitting the basic facts, quoting unnamed law enforcement officials that [[Danilo Blandon]] sold "$30,000 to $60,000 worth of cocaine in two transactions," and burying the sentence that "the CIA knew about some of these activities and did little or nothing to stop them"; he wrote that the Post "falsely claimed" the series had made a "racially charged allegation" that the Contras targeted the black community. Webb wrote that Ceppos sent the Post a letter pointing to factual errors and that "the Post held Ceppos's letter for weeks, ordered him to rewrite it, and then refused to print it."[^16]
Webb wrote that when the New York Times reported the leaked conclusions of the CIA Inspector General's second volume on July 17, 1998, "the Los Angeles Times found nothing newsworthy about it and the Washington Post concurred."[^17]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 27: "A very difficult decision"
[^1]: Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media," *Rolling Stone*, October 20, 1977, section on Newsweek and the Washington Post Company (https://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php; read through the Internet Archive capture, https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php). Bernstein attributes the statements to unnamed CIA sources except Wood.
[^2]: Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media," passage on the Washington Post. Same capture as note 1.
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence*, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, section "Covert Relationships with the United States Media." https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf
[^4]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels," memorandum of Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security, May 16, 1973, section on CELOTEX I and II, CIA Reading Room document 0001451843, p. 00026 of the compilation. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001451843
[^5]: CIA Director's morning meeting minutes of August 6, 1971, November 10, 1971 and November 20, 1972, and memorandum on Roselli, in the "Family Jewels" compilation, CIA Reading Room document 0001451843. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001451843
[^6]: Garrow, David J. "Meet the Burglars Who Outsmarted Hoover's FBI," *The Washington Post*, January 26, 2014, p. B1 (review of Betty Medsger, *The Burglary*), copy at https://www.davidgarrow.com/File/DJG2014WaPoMedsgerFBI.pdf ; Neier, Aryeh, "The Burglars Who Exposed the FBI," *The New York Review of Books*, October 23, 2014, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/23/burglars-who-exposed-fbi/
[^7]: U.S. Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976*, vol. XXXV, document 197, editorial note 2 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v35/d197); Central Intelligence Agency, "Project AZORIAN: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer," *Studies in Intelligence*, Fall 1985, CIA Reading Room document 0005301269, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0005301269
[^8]: Kempster, Norman. "Bush Urges Secrecy on Reporters List," *The Washington Star*, February 10, 1976, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP99-00498R000100040124-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp99-00498r000100040124-3
[^9]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 27 and notes. https://archive.org/details/dark-alliance-the-cia-the-con-gary-webb Sole source for the passages so cited on Pincus's 1967 article, the 1975 review and the 1986 broadcast.
[^10]: CIA, "Media Contact with Bob Woodward," memorandum for the record, November 3, 1987, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP89T00142R000700920007-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp89t00142r000700920007-5
[^11]: Walsh, Lawrence E. *Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up.* W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 421-422, as quoted in Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27 (see note 9).
[^12]: Robinson, Timothy S. "ITT Ex-Official Charged With Withholding Data," *The Washington Post*, November 1976 (clipping in CIA-RDP09T00207R001000030036-3, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp09t00207r001000030036-3); Associated Press, "CIA Knew of False Testimony," CIA-RDP09T00207R001000030035-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp09t00207r001000030035-4. The AP item reports the November 30, 1976 proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
[^13]: "No New Leads Uncovered by Letelier Probe," *The Washington Post*, November 1, 1976, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP99-00498R000100020097-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp99-00498r000100020097-6
[^14]: CIA Office of Technical Service, OTS/BAB Memo #287-77, "Briefing for House Permanent Select Committee re OTS Involvement in ESP Research," November 17, 1977, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP79-00999A000400050014-1. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000400050014-1
[^15]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), chapter 1. https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
[^16]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 27 (see note 9). Sole source for Ceppos's telephone remarks and the handling of his letter.
[^17]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, epilogue (see note 9).