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+++ b/META/CHANGELOG.md
@ -1,9 +1,65 @@
- 2026-10-05T1807 · [[Washington Post]]
+- 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Stanford Research Institute]]
- 2026-10-05T1806 · [[David Ben-Gurion]]
+- 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Media FBI Office Break-In]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Project Azorian]]
 - 2026-10-05T1822 · [[Pat Price]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Stanford University]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Los Angeles Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Miami Herald]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Washington Post]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[New York Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[_NOTES_B5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[New York Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Miami Herald]]
 - 2026-10-05T1821 · [[Stanford University]]
 - 2026-10-05T1820 · [[Los Angeles Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1820 · [[Washington Post]]
 - 2026-10-05T1817 · [[_FOIA_B5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Rafi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Mossad]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Menachem Begin]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[David Ben-Gurion]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Ernst David Bergmann]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Rafi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Syrian Embassy in London]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Achille Lauro]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Esquire]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[El Al]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[LAKAM]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[John Tower]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Craig Unger]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Yitzhak Shamir]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Anthony Pearson]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Amiram Nir]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Abu Nidal]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Wilma Hall]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Nezar Hindawi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Manfred Herrmann]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Iris]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Baldur K. Kleine]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Ann-Marie Murphy]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Yekutiel Adam]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Yehuda Ben-Hanan]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]]
 - 2026-10-05T1814 · [[Abul Abbas]]
 - 2026-10-05T1813 · [[_FOIA_B4]]
 - 2026-10-05T1813 · [[_NOTES_B4]]
 - 2026-10-05T1813 · [[Menachem Begin]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[David Ben-Gurion]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[Ernst David Bergmann]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[LASD Major Violators]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[Spartacus International]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[Cheri Seymour]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[Richard Bissell]]
 - 2026-10-05T1812 · [[Psi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1811 · [[Mossad]]
 - 2026-10-05T1811 · [[_FOIA_B6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1811 · [[_NOTES_B6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1810 · [[Spartacus International]]
 - 2026-10-05T1806 · [[Cheri Seymour]]
 - 2026-10-05T1805 · [[New York Times]]
 - 2026-10-05T1805 · [[Psi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1804 · [[Ernst David Bergmann]]
 - 2026-10-05T1803 · [[Richard Bissell]]
 - 2026-10-05T1803 · [[Sandinistas]]
 - 2026-10-05T1803 · [[Manuel Noriega]]
@ -42,59 +98,3 @@
 - 2026-10-05T1753 · [[Danilo Blandon]]
 - 2026-10-05T1753 · [[_FOIA_B1]]
 - 2026-10-05T1753 · [[_NOTES_B1]]
 - 2026-10-05T1752 · [[Eden Pastora]]
 - 2026-10-05T1750 · [[Carlos Cabezas]]
 - 2026-10-05T1749 · [[Enrique Bermudez]]
 - 2026-10-05T1749 · [[Norwin Meneses]]
 - 2026-10-05T1741 · [[Saddam Hussein]]
 - 2026-10-05T1741 · [[_QUEUE]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[Atomic Energy Commission]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[Director of Central Intelligence]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[KGB]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[NSA]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[Yehoshua Sagi]]
 - 2026-10-05T1740 · [[Richard Babayan]]
 - 2026-10-05T1739 · [[_FOIA_A1]]
 - 2026-10-05T1739 · [[Norwood Park]]
 - 2026-10-05T1739 · [[Jefferson Caffery]]
 - 2026-10-05T1739 · [[_NOTES_A1]]
 - 2026-10-05T1738 · [[Iraq]]
 - 2026-10-05T1738 · [[David Kimche]]
 - 2026-10-05T1738 · [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]]
 - 2026-10-05T1737 · [[Atomic Energy Commission]]
 - 2026-10-05T1737 · [[KGB]]
 - 2026-10-05T1737 · [[NSA]]
 - 2026-10-05T1737 · [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]]
 - 2026-10-05T1737 · [[Director of Central Intelligence]]
 - 2026-10-05T1736 · [[Annie Jacobsen]]
 - 2026-10-05T1736 · [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]]
 - 2026-10-05T1736 · [[Psychokinesis]]
 - 2026-10-05T1736 · [[Richard Ober]]
 - 2026-10-05T1735 · [[Ingo Swann]]
 - 2026-10-05T1735 · [[Hal Puthoff]]
 - 2026-10-05T1735 · [[Operation CHAOS]]
 - 2026-10-05T1734 · [[_FOIA_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1734 · [[_NOTES_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1734 · [[Medellin Cartel]]
 - 2026-10-05T1733 · [[_NOTES_A3]]
 - 2026-10-05T1733 · [[Medellin Cartel]]
 - 2026-10-05T1733 · [[_FIX_Norwood Park_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1733 · [[_FIX_Iraq_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1732 · [[_FIX_Saddam Hussein_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1731 · [[_FIX_Yehoshua Sagi_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1731 · [[_FIX_David Kimche_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1730 · [[_FIX_Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1729 · [[_FIX_Richard Babayan_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1729 · [[_FIX_Jefferson Caffery_A6]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Oliver North]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Thomas Gates]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[John F. Kennedy]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Ronald Reagan]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[George Otis]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[_FOIA_A5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[_NOTES_A5]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Gambino Crime Family]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Cocaine]]
 - 2026-10-05T1727 · [[Jose Santacruz Londono]]
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Abul
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Abul
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ location: "Yarmouk Camp, Syria"
 [[Abul Abbas]] was a Palestinian terrorist. He was involved in the 1985 [[Achille Lauro]] attack, which was an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" propaganda operation designed to show the world the perceived brutality of Palestinians.[^1]
-[[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] received orders from [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], who was relaying instructions from [[Rafi]]. He was reportedly receiving millions from [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. [[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] gathered a team to attack the cruise ship, with instructions to make the attack severe to highlight Palestinian demands.[^1]
+[[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] received orders from [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], who was relaying instructions from [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]. He was reportedly receiving millions from [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. [[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] gathered a team to attack the cruise ship, with instructions to make the attack severe to highlight Palestinian demands.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/David
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/David
@ -1,35 +1,129 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - David Ben-Gurion
  - Ben-Gurion
  - Ben Gurion
  - David Ben Gurion
  - Prime Minister Ben-Gurion
  - Prime Minister Ben Gurion
  - the Old Man
 created: 2025-01-09
 updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Political Figure"
 tags:
  - KeyFigure
  - Person
-  - Nuclear
+  - KeyFigure
  - Israel
-summary: "David Ben-Gurion, often referred to as the 'Old Man,' was a central figure in the establishment of Israel and served as its first Prime Minister and Defense Minister from 1948 to 1963, with one brief interlude."
+  - Nuclear
  - Dimona
  - Mapai
  - Rafi
  - Mossad
  - Kennedy
  - SamsonOption
 summary: "Israel's first prime minister and defense minister, who started the Dimona project, described it to Washington as peaceful, and resigned on June 16, 1963, the day an American inspection ultimatum was to reach him."
 born: 1886-10-16
 died: 1973-12-01
 location: "Płońsk, Poland (then Russian Empire)"
 relations:
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Israel]]"
    start: 1948
    end: 1963-06-16
    role: "prime minister and defense minister, with an interval from December 1953 to February 1955"
    fn: 1
  - type: founded
    with: "[[Mossad]]"
    start: 1949
    role: "directed the creation of the central coordinating institute under Reuven Shiloah"
    fn: 17
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Shimon Peres]]"
    start: 1953
    role: "director general of the Ministry of Defense"
    fn: 1
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Moshe Sharett]]"
    start: 1953
    role: "prime minister during his retirement at Sdeh Boker"
    fn: 4
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Moshe Dayan]]"
    start: 1953
    role: "army chief of staff"
    fn: 4
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Pinhas Lavon]]"
    start: 1953
    role: "defense minister"
    fn: 4
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Mapai Party]]"
    start: 1953
    end: 1965-06
    role: "retained control of the party from Sdeh Boker; resigned from it in June 1965"
    fn: 4
  - type: founded
    with: "[[Rafi]]"
    start: 1965
    end: 1968
    role: "led the list in the 1965 elections"
    fn: 13
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Dimona]]"
    start: 1955
    end: 1963-06-16
    role: "approved the French agreement and the cover story; correspondent of John F. Kennedy on inspections"
    fn: 6
 ---
 David Ben-Gurion (born October 16, 1886 in Płońsk; died December 1, 1973) led the Israeli government as prime minister and minister of defense from 1948 to June 1963 with one interval of retirement, and was the principal sponsor of the nuclear complex at [[Dimona]]. The American record of that project consists of his public assurances of peaceful purposes, the discovery of the site in 1960, and a 1963 exchange of letters with President [[John F. Kennedy]] that ended with his resignation.[^1][^2][^3]
-David Ben-Gurion, often referred to as the "Old Man," was a central figure in the establishment of [[Israel]] and served as its first Prime Minister and Defense Minister from 1948 to 1963, with one brief interlude. He was a strong advocate for [[Israel]]'s self-defense and self-reliance, driven by a private nightmare of a second Holocaust at the hands of the Arabs. He believed that [[Israel]]'s security would come through its own capabilities, repeatedly linking the nation's security to its progress in science.[^1]
+### Retirement and return, 1953 to 1955
-Ben-Gurion was a key proponent of [[Israel]] developing its own atomic reactor, utilizing indigenous natural uranium and locally manufactured heavy water. He publicly stated that nuclear energy would soon produce electricity and desalinated water to make the [[Negev Desert|Negev]] desert bloom. However, his primary goal was the development of a nuclear bomb, with the public statements serving as a cover. He oversaw this effort with the aid of his protégé, [[Shimon Peres]], and [[Ernst David Bergmann]], who headed the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission under the direct jurisdiction of the defense ministry.[^1]
+[[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that Ben-Gurion, "white-maned" and known as the Old Man, repeatedly told visitors in the early 1950s that Israel would build its own reactor from native uranium and locally made heavy water and that nuclear energy would make the Negev bloom; that he oversaw the effort through [[Shimon Peres]], whom he made director general of the defense ministry in late 1953 at age thirty, and [[Ernst David Bergmann]]; and that the three accepted from the beginning that the project would have to be privately financed by wealthy American and European Jews.[^1] Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion had unsuccessfully sought for years to be included under an American nuclear umbrella, that he secretly offered Israeli troops to the [[United Nations]] forces in the [[Korean War]], which President [[Harry S. Truman]] declined apparently from fear of a security arrangement, and that most senior members of the [[Mapai Party]] regarded an Israeli bomb as suicidal, too expensive and too reminiscent of the Holocaust.[^1][^2]
-Ben-Gurion, Peres, and Bergmann sought international allies and private financing from wealthy American and European Jews to fund the secret nuclear program, believing any other approach would compromise its secrecy.[^1]
+In late 1953 he retired to the kibbutz at [[Sdeh Boker]] in the [[Negev Desert]], near the future site of Dimona, while retaining what Hersh called total control of Mapai. He divided his two offices, appointing [[Moshe Sharett]] prime minister and [[Pinhas Lavon]] defense minister, and arranged for [[Moshe Dayan]] to become chief of staff; Peres stayed at the defense ministry.[^4] Hersh wrote that when the Egyptian arrest of an Israeli sabotage ring in mid-1954 produced the [[Lavon Affair]], Sharett accepted Lavon's resignation in January 1955 and Ben-Gurion was recalled from retirement as defense minister; that six days after his return, on February 28, 1955, he authorized a retaliation against an Egyptian camp at [[Gaza Strip|Gaza]] led by Lieutenant Colonel [[Ariel Sharon]], which killed thirty-six Egyptians and Palestinians and ended the secret contacts between Sharett and [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]]; and that Lavon, whom a cabinet committee exonerated, accused Ben-Gurion, Peres and Dayan of undermining civilian control of the military.[^4][^5] In Hersh's account, Ben-Gurion refused Lavon's request for exoneration, resigned once again and demanded a judicial inquiry; Sharett's diaries, which Hersh cites, convinced him that Dayan was involved in the original operations.[^4][^5]
-Despite publicly supporting the American position in the [[Korean War]], Ben-Gurion's attempts to secure a regional security pact or inclusion under the American nuclear umbrella were unsuccessful. He even offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside [[United Nations]] forces in South Korea, an offer declined by President [[Harry S. Truman]] due to fears of backing into a security arrangement with [[Israel]]. Throughout [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]]'s presidency, [[United States|America]] maintained an embargo on arms sales to [[Israel]], further solidifying Ben-Gurion's conviction that [[Israel]] needed an independent nuclear arsenal.[^1]
+### France and the reactor, 1955 to 1960
-Ben-Gurion's vision for [[Israel]]'s nuclear program was not without internal opposition. Many senior members of the ruling [[Mapai Party]] viewed an Israeli bomb as suicidal, too expensive, and too reminiscent of the horrors of the Holocaust. However, Ben-Gurion held firm, especially regarding the French-Israeli nuclear cooperation. He believed that [[Israel]]'s needs coincided perfectly with [[France]]'s, particularly in the early 1950s when both nations lacked the technical capacity to build a bomb independently.[^1]
+[[Avner Cohen]] and [[William Burr]] wrote that in 1955, soon after Ben-Gurion returned as prime minister and defense minister, he launched a secret feasibility initiative and delegated it to Peres, and that by 1958 France was to be the supplier, Norway the source of heavy water, and the United States the source of a small "Atoms for Peace" reactor "that could serve as the camouflage for the whole project."[^6] Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion had picked a site for the first Israeli reactor in the basement of an abandoned winery at [[Rishon LeZion]] near the [[Weizmann Institute of Science]], and that in mid-September 1956, six weeks before the [[Suez Crisis]] war, he sent Peres with Bergmann to [[Paris]] to ask the government of [[Guy Mollet]] for a reactor.[^7] Cohen and Burr wrote that Peres signed the Dimona agreement in Paris in October 1957.[^6]
-In late 1953, a disillusioned Ben-Gurion retired to his desert kibbutz at Sdeh Boker, near the future site of [[Dimona]]. He believed he could revive the pioneering spirit of Israeli society by resettling in the desert. His political control over the [[Mapai Party]] remained absolute, and he decreed that his jointly held positions of prime minister and defense minister be separated and filled by his chosen successors, [[Moshe Sharett]] as the new prime minister and [[Pinhas Lavon]] as defense minister. Ben-Gurion also arranged for [[Moshe Dayan]] to become the new army chief of staff, ensuring that Sharett's dovish policies would not go unchallenged.[^2]
+In May 1960, Hersh wrote, French foreign minister [[Maurice Couve de Murville]] told the Israeli ambassador that France wanted a public announcement of the reactor and inspection like that at Nahal Soreq, or it would withhold uranium; Ben-Gurion flew to Paris to meet President [[Charles de Gaulle]]. From the notes of [[Bertrand Goldschmidt]], Hersh reported that de Gaulle feared the international scandal of being the only country helping Israel, wanted French help on the underground reprocessing plant to stop, and offered more fighter aircraft; de Gaulle's memoirs say that he ordered the work near Beersheba halted, and Hersh wrote that the order was ignored, [[Saint-Gobain]]'s work was delayed more than two years until a new French contractor finished it in 1962, and that Peres arranged a compromise in which Israel assured the French that it would not make a bomb or reprocess plutonium and would announce the reactor. Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion "did nothing to change the status quo at Dimona" and that French firms stayed until 1966.[^8]
-Ben-Gurion's immediate public mission after returning to office in 1955 was to restore the army's morale and public confidence. He was more convinced than ever that a policy of military reprisal was essential. Six days after taking office, on February 28, 1955, he authorized a large-scale retaliation against an Egyptian military camp at [[Gaza]], led by [[Ariel Sharon]], in response to a cross-border attack by Palestinian guerrillas. This raid escalated tensions and ended secret contacts between Sharett and [[Gamal Abdel Nasser|Nasser]].[^2]
+### The cover story, December 1960 to January 1961
-In late 1955, Ben-Gurion once again served as both defense minister and prime minister. With no international protest over the Canadian reactor sale, he decided in mid-September to formally seek French help for the Israeli bomb. He had already picked a location for the Israeli reactor in the basement of an old deserted winery at Rishon LeZion. He sent [[Shimon Peres]] with [[Ernst David Bergmann]] to [[Paris]] to negotiate for a reactor.[^2]
+The documents published by Cohen and Burr show Ben-Gurion's public line after the American discovery. In the Knesset on December 21, 1960 he said that Dimona was "exclusively for peaceful purposes."[^9] On December 24, 1960 Ambassador [[Ogden Reid]] reported a long conversation in which Ben-Gurion, "plainly irritated," asked "Why in [the] States is everything being told everybody?", justified the secrecy by the Arab boycott, said the reactor would not produce power but was for research and training, and said that on plutonium safeguards Israel was "three or four years" away from the problem and "we won't be behind any power in the world in respect to safeguards."[^9] An embassy telegram of December 23 recorded an unidentified official "close to" Ben-Gurion telling the Canadian ambassador that the secrecy was "a stupid mistake on the part of Israel."[^9] In early January 1961, according to a State Department chronology, Ben-Gurion told Reid that Israel "has no plans for producing nuclear weapons," would not accept [[International Atomic Energy Agency]] inspection "until all reactors are treated as equals," would permit visits by "friendly powers," and had no plan for a third reactor; the department's telegram of December 31, 1960 had called his earlier explanations "evasive" and the "lack of candor" hard to reconcile with traditional confidence.[^9][^10]
-Ben-Gurion was pleased with [[Charles de Gaulle]]'s promises of continued military aid, but he was not willing to trade an Israeli bomb for French warplanes. He did nothing to change the status quo at [[Dimona]] after his meeting with de Gaulle, and privately owned French construction firms continued their vigorous presence at [[Dimona]] until 1966.[^2]
+Hersh wrote that the [[Knesset]] "was only too eager to accept any government statement denying the intent to produce nuclear weapons," and that Bergmann's categorical public denial was accepted although his involvement was widely known.[^11] In the May 30, 1961 meeting in New York, Cohen and Burr wrote, Ben-Gurion gave Kennedy the same account: the project was for the development of the Negev, and he assured Kennedy that the program was for peaceful purposes.[^9][^12]
 ### The letters of 1963
 The National Security Archive's 2019 posting records the confrontation. In April 1963 Kennedy asked through Ambassador [[Walworth Barbour]] for semiannual American visits to Dimona; Ben-Gurion on April 2 asked to postpone the discussion until after Passover.[^12] On April 17, 1963 [[Egypt]], [[Syria]] and [[Iraq]] signed the Arab Federation Proclamation, and on April 26 Ben-Gurion wrote to Kennedy proposing a joint United States and Soviet guarantee for the Middle East while ignoring the inspection request; on May 12 he sent a nine-page personal letter that compared Nasser to [[Adolf Hitler]] ("knowing them I am convinced that they are capable of following the Nazi example") and asked for a bilateral security agreement and arms equal to those the Arabs received; the diplomat [[Gideon Rafael]] advised against sending it because it "looks sick," and Cohen and Burr suggested that the letter was Ben-Gurion's indirect statement of why Israel needed Dimona.[^12] A [[Central Intelligence Agency]] digest of May 7 reported his statement that "neither a guarantee nor any alliance is sufficient for Israel's protection without adequate independent strength"; on May 14, according to a summary, he asked Barbour whether semiannual visits would be made to Egyptian sites and observed that it was to Israel's advantage if the Arab governments were "worried rather than reassured on Israeli nuclear program."[^12] Kennedy's letter of May 17 warned that American "commitment to and support of Israel" would be "seriously jeopardized" if the government could not obtain "reliable information" on the character of Israel's nuclear effort, and his letter of June 15, setting out conditions for visits, was to be delivered by Barbour on June 16, the day Ben-Gurion announced his resignation; it was held and sent instead to [[Levi Eshkol]], who took more than six weeks to reply.[^12] At the White House on April 2, 1963 Peres told Kennedy "we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first," a formula Cohen and Burr said was consistent with what Ben-Gurion had already told Israeli newspaper editors.[^12]
 ### Rafi and Sdeh Boker
 Hersh wrote that Eshkol's deferral of the nuclear decision in return for American offensive arms "enraged" Ben-Gurion, who compared him to [[Neville Chamberlain]], and that in June 1965 he resigned from Mapai and formed [[Rafi]] (the Judaica entry dates the new list to July 1965) with a "reluctant but loyal" Peres and Dayan, hoping for as many as twenty-five Knesset seats.[^13] Rafi won ten seats in November 1965; Rafi joined [[Mapai Party|Mapai]] and Ahdut HaAvoda in the merger that created the [[Labor Party]] on January 21, 1968, and the State List, led by Ben-Gurion and composed largely of Rafi supporters, won four seats in 1969.[^14][^15] Hersh noted that [[Myer Feldman]], waiting with [[Teddy Kollek]] while Ben-Gurion wrote in his notebook in his last years, asked what he was doing and was told by Kollek, "Oh, he's falsifying history."[^16]
 ### Intelligence services
 The official site of the [[Mossad]] carries an image of Ben-Gurion's directive on the creation of the institute and lists [[Reuven Shiloah]] as its head from 1949 to 1952 and [[Isser Harel]] from 1952 to 1963; the National Security Archive records that in the spring of 1963 Harel, with the support of Foreign Minister [[Golda Meir]], led a campaign of leaks to the Israeli press about German scientists working on missiles and radiological weapons in Egypt.[^17]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2.
+[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 2, "The Scientist," pp. 19-21. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option
-[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 3.
+[^2]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 2, pp. 21-22 and 27 (Korea, Mapai opposition).
 [^3]: Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, eds., "The Battle of the Letters, 1963," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 671, May 2, 2019. 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
 [^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 3, "The French Connection," pp. 33-35.
 [^5]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 9, "Years of Pressure," pp. 121-122 (the Lavon Affair and the cabinet committee).
 [^6]: Cohen, Avner, and William Burr, "The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona: March 1958-January 1961," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 510, April 15, 2015. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb510/
 [^7]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 3, pp. 35-40.
 [^8]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 5, "Internal Wars," pp. 68-70 (the June 1960 meeting with de Gaulle).
 [^9]: Cohen and Burr, EBB No. 510: the introduction (Knesset statement of December 21, 1960) and documents 15 (Embassy Tel Aviv telegram 574, December 23, 1960) and 16 (Embassy Israel telegram 577, December 24, 1960).
 [^10]: Cohen and Burr, EBB No. 510, documents 21 (State Department telegram 502, December 31, 1960) and 22 (summary of Embassy Tel Aviv telegram 625, January 4, 1961, in the chronology enclosed with Benjamin Read to McGeorge Bundy, March 18, 1964, EBB No. 432, document 9).
 [^11]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 6, "Going Public," p. 78.
 [^12]: Burr and Cohen, EBB No. 671, introduction and documents 15, 16, 19 through 21, 23, 25, 26 and 28.
 [^13]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 10, "The Samson Option," pp. 138-139.
 [^14]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 10, "The Samson Option," pp. 139-141; Israel Democracy Institute, "Rafi," election results for 1965 (95,328 votes, ten seats). https://en.idi.org.il/israeli-elections-and-parties/parties/rafi
 [^15]: "Rafi," Encyclopaedia Judaica (entry by Misha Louvish), on Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rafi
 [^16]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 10, p. 140 (footnote on Ben-Gurion's diaries; Feldman's account).
 [^17]: Mossad, "History," mossad.gov.il. https://mossad.gov.il/en/history ; Burr and Cohen, EBB No. 671, document 17 (the Isser Harel campaign of spring 1963).
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ernst
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ernst
@ -1,35 +1,112 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - Ernst David Bergmann
  - Ernst Bergmann
  - David Bergmann
  - David Ernst Bergmann
  - David Ernest Bergmann
  - Ernst D. Bergmann
  - E. D. Bergmann
  - Professor Bergmann
  - Bergmann
 created: 2025-01-09
 updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Scientists & Researchers"
 tags:
  - KeyFigure
  - Person
-  - WW2
+  - KeyFigure
-  - Nazi
+  - Israel
-summary: "Ernst David Bergmann was a German-born Israeli organic chemist, widely considered the scientific father of the Israeli nuclear bomb."
+  - Nuclear
  - Dimona
  - Chemist
  - AtomsForPeace
  - WeizmannInstitute
  - Rafi
 summary: "German-born organic chemist, founding director of the Sieff Institute at Rehovot and chairman of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1966, called the scientific father of the Israeli bomb in the American record."
 born: 1903-10-18
 died: 1975-04-06
 location: "Karlsruhe, Germany"
 relations:
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Weizmann Institute of Science]]"
    start: 1934-01-01
    end: 1951
    role: "founding director of the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot; scientific director of the Weizmann Institute from 1949"
    fn: 1
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Israel Atomic Energy Commission]]"
    start: 1952
    end: 1966
    role: "chairman, sole remaining member by the late 1950s"
    fn: 2
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Israel Ministry of Defense]]"
    start: 1948
    end: 1966
    role: "head of the first defense research institute; scientific adviser to the minister and director of research and planning"
    fn: 2
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]]"
    start: 1952
    role: "professor of organic chemistry"
    fn: 1
  - type: reported_to
    with: "[[Shimon Peres]]"
    start: 1953
    end: 1966
    role: "the Atomic Energy Commission stood under the jurisdiction of the director general of the Defense Ministry"
    fn: 2
  - type: member_of
    with: "[[Rafi]]"
    start: 1965
    role: "founding member"
    fn: 8
 ---
 Ernst David Bergmann (born October 18, 1903 in Karlsruhe; died April 6, 1975 in Jerusalem) was an organic chemist who directed the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot, chaired the [[Israel Atomic Energy Commission]] from its creation in 1952 until 1966, and held two defense posts under [[David Ben-Gurion]] and [[Shimon Peres]]. [[Seymour Hersh]] called him "the scientific father of the Israeli bomb, its J. Robert Oppenheimer"; the American documents published by [[Avner Cohen]] and [[William Burr]] record that Peres kept Bergmann and his commission largely outside the negotiations for [[Dimona]].[^1][^2][^3]
-Ernst David Bergmann was a German-born Israeli organic chemist, widely considered the scientific father of the Israeli nuclear bomb. A refugee from Nazi Germany, he became director of the chemistry division at the [[Weizmann Institute of Science]] after [[Israel]]'s War of Independence in 1948. He was also chairman of [[Israel]]'s Atomic Energy Commission, established in 1952, and publicly advocated for nuclear research for peaceful purposes.[^1]
+### Berlin, Rehovot and the war years
-Bergmann's dream of nuclear power plants served as an effective cover for his drive to develop nuclear weapons. He worked closely with [[David Ben-Gurion]], then Prime Minister and Defense Minister, and [[Shimon Peres]], director general of the ministry of defense. Bergmann's Israeli Atomic Energy Commission was under the direct jurisdiction of Peres and the defense ministry, indicating its true purpose was not solely peaceful.[^1]
+Bergmann began doctoral research in chemistry at the University of Berlin in 1924 under Wilhelm Schlenk, took the doctorate in 1927 and became a Privatdozent in 1928; the Nazi civil service law of April 7, 1933 ended his teaching rights.[^1] Hersh wrote that he had been introduced to nuclear research as a student at the Emil Fischer Institute, that [[Herman F. Mark]] was a colleague with whom he published joint papers on the chemical structure of rubber, paint and adhesives, and that his father, a rabbi in Berlin, was a close friend of [[Chaim Weizmann]], who arranged a place for him at Manchester University in England.[^2] He reached Palestine on January 1, 1934 as founding director of the Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovot, the body that became the [[Weizmann Institute of Science]].[^1] Hersh, citing a Weizmann biography, wrote that in 1936 the [[Haganah]] asked Weizmann for a chemist to develop a high explosive, that Weizmann assigned Bergmann, who then joined the Haganah's technical committee, and that in 1939 Bergmann carried his findings to Paris for the French.[^2]
-In the early 1950s, Bergmann also held the portfolios of scientific adviser to the minister of defense and director of research and planning for the defense ministry. These roles positioned him as a key advocate for nuclear weapons, directly contributing to [[Israel]]'s status as a nuclear-weapons state by the end of the 1960s, in collaboration with the French.[^1]
+Two accounts exist of the war years. The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography places him in London from 1939 on war work for the Ministry of Supply, studying Weizmann's "catarole process" for aromatic compounds at the Manchester Oil Refinery, then in the United States from 1942 with Commercial Solvents at Terre Haute, Indiana, on fermentation isoprene for synthetic rubber, returning to the Sieff Institute in 1946.[^1] Hersh wrote that Bergmann left England shortly after the invasion of Poland for a chemistry laboratory in Philadelphia that "didn't work out," and that Herman Mark took him to the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where Weizmann also stayed.[^2]
-Bergmann's early exposure to atomic science came as a student at the Emil Fischer Institute of the University of Berlin in the 1920s. He was part of a circle of eminent scientists, including [[Herman F. Mark]], who were at the forefront of nuclear fission research. In 1933, due to Nazi decrees, [[Chaim Weizmann]] arranged for Bergmann to join the faculty at Manchester University in England. He later moved to Philadelphia and then Brooklyn, continuing his research and maintaining connections with scientists involved in nuclear fission.[^1]
+The Dictionary records his appointment as scientific director of the new Weizmann Institute in 1949, his departure in 1951, a professorship at the [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]] in 1952, and his marriage that year to Hani Itin.[^1] Hersh wrote that Weizmann's wife Vera objected to Bergmann as institute director because of his long relationship with her husband's private secretary Hani, whom he eventually married, and that he was made head of the organic chemistry division; that Bergmann moved at Ben-Gurion's request after 1948 to the [[Israel Ministry of Defense]] to establish the first defense research institute; and that more than forty years later Peres told an Israeli reporter that Bergmann was speaking of a missile capability in 1948: "I might be ready to tell the full truth about him in one hundred years, maybe."[^2] The Dictionary adds that from 1952 Bergmann also contributed to chemical and biological research under the [[Institute for Biological Research]].[^1]
-After the defeat of Hitler, Bergmann migrated to Palestine to help establish the [[Weizmann Institute of Science]]. At [[David Ben-Gurion]]'s request, after [[Israel]]'s Independence in 1948, he moved to the ministry of defense, where he established the nation's first institute for defense research under [[Shimon Peres]]. Peres later stated that Bergmann was constantly speaking about a missile capability for [[Israel]] even in 1948.[^1]
+### The Atomic Energy Commission
-According to [[Herman F. Mark]], Bergmann was central to the development of the Israeli bomb, completely understanding nuclear fission and explaining it to others. Mark, who served on planning boards for the [[Weizmann Institute]], shared Bergmann's view on the inevitability of Israeli nuclear weapons research, believing that nuclear energy, whether for desalination, power, or a bomb, still involved fission.[^1]
+According to the Dictionary, Ben-Gurion founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952 "on Bergmann's recommendation," with Bergmann as first director; Bergmann wanted a French-style, state-sponsored, project-oriented program.[^1] Hersh wrote that Bergmann told friends by 1947 that the Negev phosphate fields held recoverable traces of uranium, that a department of isotope research was set up at the Weizmann Institute within two years, that Weizmann researchers had devised a heavy water process by 1953, and that he announced the commission in a radio address in November 1954, two years after its creation, without saying that it stood under the jurisdiction of Peres and the defense ministry.[^2] According to the businessman [[Abraham Feinberg]], in New York in the fall of 1947 Bergmann said over dinner "There's uranium in the desert"; Feinberg told Hersh he "shushed him up."[^2] Hersh also reported that [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]]'s papers show a visit to Israel in May 1958 for the opening of the Institute of Nuclear Science at Rehovot and a military flight with Bergmann and Peres to Eilat, while Israeli officials who worked at Dimona in 1958 recalled no visit by him.[^2]
-Bergmann's role in developing [[Israel]]'s nuclear arsenal remains a state secret. After his death, he became a virtual nonperson due to stringent Israeli security and self-censorship. Despite this, [[Shimon Peres]] eulogized him as one of the seven founders of the State of [[Israel]] in a 1979 book, though without mentioning nuclear weapons.[^1]
+The American record of Bergmann's own requests is documentary. Cohen and Burr wrote that after the July 12, 1955 "Atoms for Peace" agreement Bergmann tried in 1955 and 1956 to obtain from the United States a ten-megawatt natural uranium and heavy water reactor and ten tons of heavy water; that his formal request was a letter of July 1956 to the Atomic Energy Commission chairman [[Lewis L. Strauss]]; that in September the Commission replied that it could be done only under a new power agreement with stricter safeguards because of "plutonium production capabilities"; and that Israel dropped the probe. They wrote that Bergmann pressed the Israeli government from 1955 for twenty tons of heavy water, wrote in August 1956 to his friend [[Gunnar Randers]], director of the Norwegian Institute for Atomic Energy, asking for ten tons, and that Israel and [[Norway]] exchanged documents on the sale on February 25, 1959.[^3] Hersh wrote that in mid-September 1956 Peres and Bergmann went to [[Paris]] to ask for a reactor, and that on September 17 they dined with Francis Perrin and Pierre Guillaumat at the home of the Israeli ambassador Jacob Tzur; Bertrand Goldschmidt told Hersh that the decision to help was taken in those mid-September meetings.[^4]
-By mid-1960, when rumors of a possible French pullout from [[Dimona]] circulated, many Israelis, including Bergmann, were ready for the French to leave, believing they could complete the project themselves. Bergmann was a founding member of the Rafi party, and continued to influence [[David Ben-Gurion]] regarding the dangers of not initiating the production of a nuclear arsenal.[^2]
+### Peres, the commission and the bypass
-By the spring of 1966, Bergmann resigned under pressure as director of the commissionerless Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, as well as from his two high-level defense science posts. Many in the [[Levi Eshkol]] cabinet viewed his departure as long overdue. A pouting Bergmann retreated, with the aid of [[Lewis L. Strauss]], to the Institute of Advanced Studies at [[Princeton University]].[^2]
+Cohen and Burr wrote that Peres "decided to compartmentalize and bypass Bergmann and the IAEC almost entirely" in the Dimona negotiations with France; that in February 1958 all seven members of the commission except Bergmann resigned, in an episode "obscure" but possibly a protest against the exclusion; that there was a time when Bergmann was not allowed to visit the site; and that Bergmann was "known among Israelis as being loose on secrecy."[^3] Hersh wrote that the six other members had left by the mid-1950s, that scholars and American files had cited the departures as evidence of disagreement over Bergmann's plans "for the most part" wrongly, and that the members moved to the Weizmann Institute's physics department because ministers hostile to nuclear development, [[Levi Eshkol]] and [[Pinhas Lavon]], refused to allocate research funds, leaving Bergmann "chairman and sole member" of a commission with no commissioners.[^5] Hersh cited the diary of [[Moshe Sharett]], which records Sharett writing Bergmann off as "a chemist sunk in research and teaching with no ability to oversee the 'problem,'" whose lack of administrative skills would "limit and disrupt the horizons of the 'Enterprise.'"[^6]
 On April 15, 1958 Bergmann met the American embassy's second secretary Lewis Townsend in Tel Aviv. He said that the French foreign minister "did not know what he was talking about" in saying that France supplied Israel's uranium, acknowledged an exchange agreement with France limited to unpublished reports and students, and said that a decision to build a power reactor "had already been taken" and that an "experimental nuclear reactor" was contemplated within two or two and a half years. The post-mortem on the National Intelligence Estimate of December 1960 listed that remark among the hints the American intelligence community had missed; Cohen and Burr wrote that Bergmann made no mention of the secret French agreement signed in Paris in October 1957 and that it was unclear how much he knew.[^3] In November 1960 the University of Michigan nuclear engineer Henry Gomberg, a guest of the commission, reported that in his last meeting with Bergmann, pressed about unnamed activities, Bergmann acknowledged that the Beersheba facility was to have been announced later in 1961 but that Ben-Gurion would make an announcement in about three weeks; the debriefing memorandum notes that a "personal friend of Ben-Gurion" who told Gomberg of the coming announcement "probably" meant Bergmann.[^3]
 A memorandum of February 13, 1963 by the embassy's science attache Robert Webber, based on conversations between the Atomic Energy Commission official Abraham Friedman and members and staff of the Israeli commission including Bergmann, was summarized by the National Security Archive editors with the observation that the commission was "largely excluded from the Dimona project," so that much of the report concerned the commission's own plans for power reactors.[^7]
 ### Rafi, resignation and Princeton
 Hersh wrote that Bergmann was a founding member of [[Rafi]] in 1965 and that "Ben-Gurion was quoting Bergmann all the time," according to an Israeli, about the dangers of not producing a nuclear arsenal.[^8] By the spring of 1966, he wrote, Bergmann resigned under pressure from the commission and his two defense science posts; a Defense Ministry official came to his apartment within the hour to retrieve his government car; Eshkol moved responsibility for the commission to the prime minister's staff and became its chairman; and Bergmann gave an interview to the newspaper Maariv, of which the New York Times reported that he spoke of the Eshkol government's lack of funds for research and "the risk of dependence on foreign sources." In that interview Bergmann said: "It's very important to understand that by developing atomic energy for peaceful uses, you reach the nuclear option. There are no two atomic energies."[^8][^9]
 Hersh wrote that in the fall of 1966 Strauss used his influence at the Institute for Advanced Study at [[Princeton University]] to obtain for Bergmann a two-month visiting fellowship, although the institute rarely took chemists; that the institute's new director [[Carl Kaysen]] recalled that Strauss "had nudged me about Bergmann" and that Bergmann "was working on [the Israeli nuclear] weapons program. He was very relaxed about it"; and that neither Strauss's biographer nor his son knew the two had met.[^10] In 1968, Hersh wrote, Bergmann spoke at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg on "the move toward international collaboration," saying of Israel and South Africa that "neither of us has neighbors to whom we can speak."[^11]
 ### After his death
 Hersh wrote that Peres eulogized Bergmann in a 1979 book as one of the seven founders of the State of [[Israel]], reporting that Weizmann saw in him "a future candidate for the presidency," without mentioning nuclear weapons; that Matti Golan's 1982 biography of Peres does not cite him and Michael Bar-Zohar's biography of Ben-Gurion does not mention him in its English edition; and that Mark said without Bergmann "there would have been no Israeli bomb": "He was in charge of every kind of nuclear activity in Israel."[^12] Mark, the "sole known survivor" of the Berlin and Brooklyn circle, told Hersh that Bergmann "was anxious, rightly so, that there shouldn't be too much talk. It was super-secret, just like the Manhattan Project."[^12]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2.
+[^1]: "Bergmann, Ernst David," Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008 (Encyclopedia.com). http://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/bergmann-ernst-david
-[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 5.
+[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 2, "The Scientist," pp. 19-27. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option
 [^3]: Cohen, Avner, and William Burr, "The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona: March 1958-January 1961," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 510, April 15, 2015, introduction and notes 9 to 11, documents 1A-B (embassy despatch 652, April 16, 1958), 6A-C (Gomberg). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb510/
 [^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 3, "The French Connection," pp. 38-40.
 [^5]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 6, "Going Public," p. 78.
 [^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 3, pp. 33-34, citing Sharett's personal diaries, then unpublished in full in English.
 [^7]: Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, eds., "The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 671, May 2, 2019, document 07 (U.S. Embassy Israel Airgram A-517, February 13, 1963). 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 10, "The Samson Option," pp. 139-142.
 [^9]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 2, p. 26 (the 1966 interview).
 [^10]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 7, "Dual Loyalty," pp. 85-86 (the Princeton appointment and Kaysen's account).
 [^11]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19, "The Carter Malaise," p. 264 (the Johannesburg speech of 1968).
 [^12]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 2, pp. 26-27; chapter 3, pp. 44-45.
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Menachem
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Menachem
@ -1,32 +1,138 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - Menachem Begin
  - Menahem Begin
  - Begin
  - Prime Minister Begin
  - Menachem Wolfovitch Begin
 created: 2025-01-09
 updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Political Figure"
 tags:
  - KeyFigure
  - Person
-  - Nuclear
+  - KeyFigure
  - Israel
-summary: "Menachem Begin was the 6th Prime Minister of Israel, serving from 1977 to 1983."
+  - Nuclear
  - Likud
  - Irgun
  - Osirak
  - CampDavid
  - IranIsraelArms
  - OctoberSurprise
  - SamsonOption
 summary: "Irgun leader and Herut chairman who became prime minister in 1977, shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, ordered the 1981 Osirak raid, and appears in the American record of 1980 Israeli arms offers to Iran."
 born: 1913-08-16
 died: 1992-03-09
 location: "Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire (now Brest, Belarus)"
 relations:
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Israel]]"
    start: 1977
    end: 1983
    role: "prime minister"
    fn: 2
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Likud Party]]"
    start: 1977
    role: "leader of the list that won the May 1977 elections"
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[King David Hotel bombing]]"
    start: 1946-07
    role: "Irgun leader"
    fn: 2
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Ezer Weizman]]"
    start: 1977
    role: "minister of defense"
    fn: 7
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Ariel Sharon]]"
    start: 1981
    role: "minister of defense"
    fn: 10
  - type: appointed
    with: "[[Rafael Eitan]]"
    start: 1981
    role: "special assistant for counterterrorism; also head of LAKAM"
    fn: 18
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Camp David summit]]"
    start: 1978
    role: "negotiated the Israel-Egypt accords with Anwar Sadat; Nobel Peace Prize 1978"
    fn: 1
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Osirak bombing]]"
    start: 1981-06-07
    role: "ordered and announced the raid"
    fn: 15
  - type: subject_of
    with: "[[Kahan Commission]]"
    start: 1982-09
    end: 1983-02-08
    role: "found to bear 'a certain degree of responsibility' for lack of interest in the Phalangists' actions at Sabra and Shatila"
    fn: 19
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]"
    start: 1980
    role: "alleged by Ari Ben-Menashe to have ordered its creation in the fall of 1980"
    fn: 12
 ---
 Menachem Begin (born August 16, 1913 in Brest-Litovsk; died March 9, 1992 in Tel Aviv) led the [[Irgun]] underground before 1948, led the [[Herut]] party in opposition for the first twenty-nine years of the state, and was prime minister of [[Israel]] from the 1977 election until 1983. He shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with [[Anwar Sadat]] "for jointly having negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978."[^1] The record of his government that bears on this vault consists of the American intelligence and diplomatic documents on the Osirak raid, the House task force's account of the 1980 Israeli arms offers to Iran, the report of the Kahan Commission, and passages in [[Seymour Hersh]]'s and [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]'s books on nuclear targeting, South Africa and Iran.[^2]
-Menachem Begin was the 6th Prime Minister of [[Israel]], serving from 1977 to 1983. His surprising victory in the May 1977 national elections ended twenty-nine years of [[Mapai Party|Mapai]] and [[Labor Party]] domination of the political process in [[Israel]]. This brought to power a government even more committed than Labor to the [[Samson Option]] and the necessity of an Israeli nuclear arsenal. Begin and his political followers represented a populist-nationalist view of a greater [[Israel]] with a right to permanent control of the [[West Bank]].[^1]
+### Irgun, Herut and the Labor establishment
-Begin's successful [[Camp David Accords|Camp David summit]] with Egyptian President [[Anwar Sadat]] in 1978 was seen by some American intelligence officials as a reason for [[Jimmy Carter]]'s decision to provide [[Israel]] with access to [[KH-11]] satellite photographs.[^1]
+Hersh wrote that as a leader of the Irgun Begin was involved in the July 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in [[Jerusalem]], headquarters of the British military; that the explosion killed eighty-two people, "including forty Arabs and seventeen Jews"; and that after the British hanged three suspected Irgun members a week later, Begin ordered the execution of two British sergeants held captive, whose bodies were booby-trapped and left hanging.[^2] He wrote that Begin and his family fled to eastern [[Poland]] in 1939, were arrested by Soviet troops and expelled to a Siberian camp, and were released in 1941 into a Polish contingent of the Red Army after the German invasion.[^2]
-Begin's decision to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]] in June 1981 was a significant event. Despite opposition from some within the Israeli intelligence community, including [[Yitzhak Hofi]], the director of [[Mossad]], and Major General [[Yehoshua Saguy]], chief of military intelligence, Begin proceeded with the attack. He unilaterally announced the successful bombing, stunning his colleagues, and defended the operation by stating that another Holocaust would have occurred if the reactor had not been destroyed.[^1]
+In the 1950s the labor establishment treated his party as an opponent. Hersh wrote that in the mid-1950s the most hawkish factions in military policy were those of [[Moshe Dayan]] and [[Shimon Peres]], Ahdut HaAvoda and Herut; that Herut under Begin held that Israel's primary task was the redemption of biblical lands and a Greater Israel; and that [[David Ben-Gurion]], Dayan and Peres were "adamantly opposed to the fundamentalist views of Begin and his Herut Party." Herut's gains in the 1955 election came at the expense of [[Mapai Party]]; the General Zionists merged with Herut in 1966 to form Gahal, which merged in 1973 with three other right-wing factions to create the [[Likud Party]].[^3] According to Hersh, Ben-Gurion and Peres treated Begin "with contempt and ridicule throughout his career," and in 1977 Begin would not approach Peres directly about what Peres had arranged in South Africa.[^4]
-Following the Osirak bombing, Begin made a controversial statement at a British diplomatic reception, claiming that the Israeli planes had also destroyed a secret facility buried forty meters below the reactor at Osirak, which was intended for the assembly of Iraqi nuclear bombs. Israeli officials knew this description was not of a facility in [[Iraq]], but rather of a secret underground facility in [[Israel]] at [[Dimona]]. They attempted to downplay his remarks by stating he had misspoken and that the facility was only four meters deep.[^1]
+### The 1977 election and the nuclear establishment
-In August 1981, the newly reelected Begin government appointed [[Ariel Sharon]] as defense minister. Begin and Sharon traveled to [[Washington, D.C.]] in September to advocate for a U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation against the [[Soviet Union]].[^1]
+Hersh wrote that Likud's victory in May 1977 ended twenty-nine years of Mapai and [[Labor Party]] control and "brought to power a government that was even more committed than Labor to the Samson Option and the necessity of an Israeli nuclear arsenal," and that Begin's followers viewed the mainstream Zionists as having fought three wars without a grand strategy.[^2] By all accounts, he wrote, Begin had never visited [[Dimona]] before becoming prime minister and was not well informed about it, and his first briefings on national security were given by the outgoing prime minister [[Yitzhak Rabin]].[^2] In his chapter on Osirak Hersh wrote that Begin had since visited the underground facility at Dimona at least once and, according to Israeli officials, received a detailed memorandum on it in the days before the raid.[^5]
-Unlike many Israelis who had immigrated from Eastern Europe, Begin had a strong hatred of Communism and the [[Soviet Union]]. He and his family had fled to eastern [[Poland]] after the 1939 German blitzkrieg and, like many Zionists, were arrested by Soviet troops and expelled to a Siberian gulag, only to be released into a hastily assembled Polish contingent of the Red Army after the 1941 Nazi invasion of [[Russia]].[^1]
+Ben-Menashe, a civilian official in the External Relations Department of the Israeli defense ministry from 1977 to 1987 whom Hersh quoted, said that Begin "strongly endorsed Dimona's plans for the nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union" and "gave orders to target more Soviet cities"; in his own book Ben-Menashe wrote that one of Begin's first orders after taking office from Rabin was to target southern [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] cities including [[Yerevan]] and [[Baku]], and that Begin, who regarded [[South Africa]] as a pariah, sent [[Ezer Weizman]] to Pretoria in 1978.[^6] Hersh quoted Ben-Menashe that Weizman came back and said "We've promised these guys nuclear warheads," and that Begin answered in effect "Yes. Do it!"; another unnamed Israeli with access to defense ministry files said that Weizman signed an agreement before the 1979 tests for the sale to South Africa of technology for 175mm and 203mm nuclear artillery shells.[^7] Ben-Menashe is the only named source for the passages so cited on Begin's orders. Hersh also wrote, citing Israeli officials, that when Sadat met Begin in Jerusalem in November 1977 his first questions concerned the Israeli arsenal, that he sought a pledge of non-use against Egypt in a treaty, and that Begin did not reply.[^8]
-By all accounts, Begin had never visited [[Dimona]] before becoming prime minister, nor was he especially well informed about it. His initial briefings on sensitive national security matters were provided by the outgoing prime minister, [[Yitzhak Rabin]]. [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], a former Israeli signals intelligence expert, recalled that Begin strongly endorsed [[Dimona]]'s plans for the nuclear targeting of the [[Soviet Union]]. Begin went a step further, according to Ben-Menashe, by giving orders to target more Soviet cities. This increased targeting created a heightened demand for American satellite intelligence.[^1]
+### Camp David, the KH-11 and Washington
---
+Hersh wrote that in March 1979 President [[Jimmy Carter]] decided to give Israel access to [[KH-11]] satellite photographs, and that some American intelligence officials suspected it was a reward for Begin's success at the [[Camp David summit]] with Sadat; he also wrote that in the Israeli view the agreement was made inevitable by the failure of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] to anticipate the fall of the Shah, and that it was the twenty-eighth in a series of formal Israeli and American intelligence ventures since the 1950s.[^9] In September 1981, Hersh wrote, Begin brought [[Ariel Sharon]] to the White House, where, according to Ambassador [[Samuel W. Lewis]], Begin proposed a formal alliance to President [[Ronald Reagan]], who said yes, to the shock of [[Alexander Haig]], [[Richard V. Allen]] and [[Caspar Weinberger]]; Sharon's plan included formal access to the KH-11, which Hersh wrote Israel wanted for its nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union, and the negotiation led by Weinberger "turned out a mouse."[^10]
 ### Iran, 1978 to 1981
 The House October Surprise Task Force report of January 3, 1993 records the American-side documents on Israeli arms offers to Iran. On April 13, 1980 a high-level Israeli official told Carter in Washington that Israel had contacts in Iran that could help with the hostages if it were allowed to sell certain military equipment; Carter rejected the offer and obtained an assurance that Israel would observe the embargo, with Israel to advise the United States before changing its policy. On October 22, 1980 the Israelis told Ambassador Lewis that a deal for 200 tires for F-4 aircraft had been negotiated, and the State Department instructed the embassy to convey a message to Begin that the American government "recognize[d] the long-term significance" of an Israeli relationship with Iran but that Western allies prohibited exports to Iran while hostages were held. The Israeli government's own report to the task force stated that Begin raised the arms question with Carter and Secretary of State [[Edmund Muskie]] during his visit to the United States in November 1980, stressing that deliveries might help release the hostages, and that on November 21, 1980 he ordered that arms would not be supplied directly or indirectly to Iran until the hostages were released. On February 4, 1981 Begin told Lewis that future deliveries would use only Israeli equipment without United States components.[^11]
 Ben-Menashe's account differs. He wrote that Begin sent the emissary Ruth Ben-David, an old friend of the Ayatollah [[Ruhollah Khomeini]], to him in Paris in December 1978; that in April 1980 Begin gave "the green light for the sale to Iran of non-American military equipment," tires rather than technical parts, after which Carter telephoned Begin on April 27 to complain; that in September 1980 Begin sent Ben-David to Tehran to seek release of the hostages in exchange for Israeli arms guarantees; that in the fall of 1980 Begin ordered the military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Sagi]] and the Mossad's acting director [[Nachum Admoni]] to create the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]; and that Begin "had secretly reached in principle" a cooperation agreement with [[William J. Casey]] in August 1980.[^12] Ben-Menashe is the sole source for these passages. The House task force wrote that credible testimony and documents showed Ben-Menashe "to be totally lacking in credibility" on the Casey and Karrubi meetings, that [[Rafael Eitan]] and Saguy told the Israeli government they had never met him, and that his Israeli military file showed work as a translator; Ben-Menashe was acquitted in New York in November 1990 on charges of conspiring to sell Israeli-owned C-130 aircraft to Iran.[^13] The Mossad's own list of directors gives Yitzhak Hofi as head from 1974 to 1982 and Admoni from 1982.[^14]
 ### Osirak
 On June 7, 1981 the Israeli Air Force destroyed the reactor at Osirak. Hersh wrote that Begin "stunned his colleagues" by announcing the raid himself on June 8, and on June 9 said that "if the nuclear reactor had not been destroyed, another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people"; that Mossad head [[Yitzhak Hofi]] and military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Saguy]] had opposed the attack, "primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb," as had Deputy Prime Minister [[Yigael Yadin]]; that Saguy was not told of the mission until June 4; and that two weeks later Hofi gave a newspaper interview, cited only by title under censorship, complaining about politicians who compromised secret intelligence.[^15] Two days after the raid, at a British diplomatic reception, Begin said that the planes had also destroyed a secret facility forty meters below the reactor where Iraqi bombs were to be assembled; Hersh wrote that Israeli officials knew the description fitted a facility at Dimona and that government spokesmen said the next day that Begin had misspoken and the depth was four meters.[^15] Ben-Menashe wrote that Israeli intelligence had advised against admitting responsibility and that Begin, who had scheduled elections for June 30, made the announcement anyway.[^12]
 The Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, publishing documents from the Reagan Library and the Israeli State Archives in 2021, reported that when the raid took place the administration was surprised; that Haig told the Israelis that the raid was a "serious complication" for the United States and that "President Reagan thinks the same"; that the Israelis learned that Weinberger favored a tough response; that the administration suspended delivery of F-16 aircraft pending a legal review; that Haig then proposed that Washington condemn Israel harshly but "draw the line on punishment"; and that a week after the raid Allen informed Reagan that the administration was "not required to make a legal determination on whether Israel violated US law" and that the issue should be treated "as a political rather than a legal question."[^16] Hersh wrote that Allen recalled Reagan as "delighted" and that the suspension of F-16 deliveries was lifted two months later.[^15]
 ### Lebanon and the Kahan Commission
 Hersh wrote that Sharon, after the American refusal of the strategic plan, led Israel with Begin's support into the invasion of [[Lebanon]] in 1982; that before doing so Sharon placed loyalists in the intelligence services and the nuclear establishment; and that [[Binyamin Blumberg]] was replaced as head of [[LAKAM]] by Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, "Begin's special assistant for counterterrorism," who kept both jobs.[^17][^18] The Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in Beirut, reporting on February 8, 1983, recorded that the [[Mossad]] had been "made responsible for the link with the Phalangists." It found that Begin first heard of the Phalangists' entry into the camps about thirty-six hours after the decision, that it was "not incumbent upon" him to object, but that "for two days after the Prime Minister heard about the Phalangists' entry, he showed absolutely no interest in their actions in the camps," and that his "lack of involvement in the entire matter casts on him a certain degree of responsibility"; it considered it sufficient to determine his responsibility without further recommendation, and recommended that Sharon draw "the appropriate personal conclusions" and, if necessary, that the prime minister consider removing him.[^19] The commission also described the Mossad's approach to the Phalangists as more favorable than that of military intelligence, and wrote that the director of military intelligence knew that the defense minister, the chief of staff "and perhaps also the Prime Minister" accepted the Mossad's approach.[^19] See [[Sabra and Shatila massacres]].
 Ben-Menashe wrote that Begin resigned in 1983 three days before the visit of Chancellor [[Helmut Kohl]], that he said he had personally let down the nation over the Lebanese war, and that Sharon had disappointed him.[^20] Ben-Menashe also wrote that after the death of Yekutiel Adam in Lebanon, whom Begin had picked as Mossad chief in 1981, Begin appointed a professional Mossad bureaucrat, Admoni, to shift power toward military intelligence, and that Rafael Eitan told him Adam's death was an inside job.[^12]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 19.
+[^1]: "Menachem Begin, Facts," Nobel Peace Prize 1978, NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1978/begin/facts/
 [^2]: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 19, "The Carter Malaise," pp. 259-260 and footnote. Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option
 [^3]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 3, "The French Connection," p. 38 footnote.
 [^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 20, "An Israeli Test," p. 274.
 [^5]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement," p. 11.
 [^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19, p. 260 and footnote (Ben-Menashe's service); Ben-Menashe, Ari, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*, TrineDay, 2015 reprint of the 1992 edition, passages on the South African relationship. https://archive.org/details/profits-of-war-1992-ari-ben-menashe
 [^7]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 20, pp. 274-276.
 [^8]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19, p. 269 footnote.
 [^9]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 1, pp. 3-6.
 [^10]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 21, "Israel's Nuclear Spy," pp. 286-288.
 [^11]: 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 X, "Alleged Quid Pro Quo Deliveries of Arms," pp. 197-206, quoting the report of the Government of Israel. https://archive.org/details/14148-h.rp.-1102
 [^12]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, passages on Ruth Ben-David and Khomeini (December 1978), the sale of tires (April 1980), the Joint Committee (fall 1980), the Casey agreement (August 1980), Osirak, and the Mossad directorship. https://archive.org/details/profits-of-war-1992-ari-ben-menashe
 [^13]: *Joint Report of the October Surprise Task Force*, section on Ben-Menashe (p. 97 of the report); Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 19 footnote on Ben-Menashe's service, arrest in 1989 and acquittal in November 1990.
 [^14]: Mossad, "History," list of directors. https://mossad.gov.il/en/history
 [^15]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 1, pp. 8-12.
 [^16]: Rabinowitz, Or, and Giordana Pulcini, "The Israeli Raid Against the Iraqi Reactor - 40 Years Later: New Insights from the Archives," Wilson Center, Sources and Methods, June 3, 2021, citing the Ronald Reagan Library and the Israel State Archives. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/israeli-raid-against-iraqi-reactor-40-years-later-new-insights-archives
 [^17]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 21, p. 287.
 [^18]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, chapter 21, pp. 288-289.
 [^19]: 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, sections on the background, the Prime Minister, the head of Mossad and the Director of Military Intelligence. https://syriaaccountability.org/content/images/wordpress/ISRAELMFA_Commission-Inquiry-Beirut_1983_EN.pdf
 [^20]: Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War*, chapter on the 1983 political upheaval.
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Mohammed
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Mohammed
@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ Colonel [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]] was a former colonel in the [[Jordan|Jordania
 [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] became known as a businessman who championed [[Arab]] and [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] causes in [[Europe]]. To recoup gambling and other losses, he began working for [[Anthony Pearson]], who supplied intelligence information to [[Israel]]. Unwittingly, [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] helped [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson]] acquire intelligence about Palestinian organizations in [[Europe]] by selling arms to them. This intelligence was then passed to [[Mossad]], leading to the elimination of 14 or 15 Palestinians over a two-month period.[^1]
-[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was recruited by [[Rafi]] in 1978 to work for an antiterrorist group in [[Israel]], after [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson]] made it clear that the £200,000 loan he offered [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] came from an [[Israel|Israeli]] source.[^1]
+[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was recruited by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] in 1978 to work for an antiterrorist group in [[Israel]], after [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson]] made it clear that the £200,000 loan he offered [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] came from an [[Israel|Israeli]] source.[^1]
-[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was a key player in [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" operations, including the 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane, which was designed to discredit [[Syria]]. He instructed his cousin, [[Nezar Hindawi]], in this plot. He was also involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which was an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" propaganda operation to portray Palestinians as ruthless terrorists. [[Rafi]] passed instructions to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]], who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack.[^1]
+[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was a key player in [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" operations, including the 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane, which was designed to discredit [[Syria]]. He instructed his cousin, [[Nezar Hindawi]], in this plot. He was also involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which was an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" propaganda operation to portray Palestinians as ruthless terrorists. [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] passed instructions to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]], who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Richard
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Richard
@ -1,57 +1,139 @@
 ---
 created: 2026-05-15
 updated: 2026-05-15
 title: Richard Bissell
 aliases:
  - Richard Bissell
  - Richard M. Bissell
  - Richard M. Bissell Jr.
  - Richard Mervin Bissell Jr.
  - Dick Bissell
  - Richard Bissell Jr.
 created: 2026-05-15
 updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Intelligence & Government"
 tags:
  - Person
  - CIA
  - U2
  - CORONA
  - BayOfPigs
  - ZRRIFLE
  - ChurchCommittee
  - Lumumba
  - ColdWar
-  - 1950s
+summary: "CIA Deputy Director for Plans from January 1, 1959 to February 17, 1962, who ran the U-2 and CORONA programs, the Bay of Pigs operation, and the 1960 Lumumba and Castro assassination preparations."
  - 1960s
 category: "Intelligence & Government"
 summary: "Richard Bissell was the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans from 1958 to 1962, managed the U-2 program, authorized ZR/RIFLE under William Harvey, organized the Bay of Pigs invasion and resigned in February 1962."
 born: 1909-09-18
 died: 1994-02-07
 location: "Washington, D.C."
 relations:
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Marshall Plan]]"
    start: 1948
    end: 1951
    role: "deputy director"
    fn: 1
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
    start: 1954-01
    end: 1962-02-17
    role: "Special Assistant to the DCI for Planning and Coordination; head of the Development Projects Staff; Deputy Director for Plans from January 1, 1959"
    fn: 1
  - type: reported_to
    with: "[[Allen Dulles]]"
    start: 1954-01
    end: 1961-11
    fn: 1
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Directorate of Plans]]"
    start: 1959-01-01
    end: 1962-02-17
    role: "Deputy Director for Plans"
    fn: 1
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Project AQUATONE]]"
    start: 1954-12
    end: 1962-02
    role: "approving officer and project chief for the U-2 overflight program"
    fn: 1
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[CORONA]]"
    start: 1958
    end: 1962-02
    role: "senior CIA representative of the CIA-Air Force photosatellite project"
    fn: 2
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Operation PBSUCCESS]]"
    start: 1954
    role: "coordinated support within the CIA"
    fn: 1
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Bay of Pigs]]"
    start: 1960
    end: 1961-04
    role: "Deputy Director for Plans responsible for the CIA operation"
    fn: 4
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[ZR RIFLE]]"
    start: 1960
    end: 1962-02
    role: "DDP under whom the Executive Action capability was established"
    fn: 3
  - type: participant_in
    with: "[[Church Committee]]"
    start: 1975-06-09
    end: 1975-09-10
    role: "testified June 9, June 11, July 17, July 22 and September 10, 1975"
    fn: 3
 ---
 Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. (September 18, 1909 to February 7, 1994) was an economist who joined the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] in January 1954 and became its Deputy Director for Plans (DDP), head of the clandestine service, on January 1, 1959. Until his resignation on February 17, 1962 he also kept personal control of the [[U-2 Spy Plane|U-2]] overflight program, the first photographic reconnaissance satellite project, and the design of the OXCART aircraft. Under him the agency organized the 1961 [[Bay of Pigs]] operation and, in 1960, made the first preparations in the [[Patrice Lumumba|Lumumba]] and [[Fidel Castro|Castro]] assassination plots later examined by the [[Church Committee]].[^1][^3]
-Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. (September 18, 1909 - February 7, 1994) was the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]'s Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) - the clandestine service - from 1958 to 1962, responsible for the agency's most significant covert operations of the early Cold War period: the [[U-2 Spy Plane|U-2]] reconnaissance program, the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion, and the authorization of the assassination planning infrastructure that became [[ZR RIFLE|ZR/RIFLE]].[^1]
+### Education and early career
-### Early Career and CIA Entry
+The CIA's official history of the U-2 program describes Bissell as a graduate of Groton and [[Yale University]] who studied at the [[London School of Economics]] for a year and took a doctorate at Yale in 1939. He taught economics at Yale and, from 1942, at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], where he became a full professor in 1948. During [[World War II]] he managed American shipping as executive officer of the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board; after the war he was deputy director of the [[Marshall Plan]] from 1948 until the end of 1951, when he joined the staff of the [[Ford Foundation]].[^1]
-Bissell came from an upper-class New England family and was educated at Groton and Yale. He earned a PhD in economics from Yale in 1939 and taught at MIT and later worked in government, including wartime shipping administration. He joined the CIA in 1954 as a special assistant to Director [[Allen Dulles]], his personal friend.
+His first association with the agency came in late 1953 with a contract study of how the United States might respond to a rising in the Soviet bloc like the East Berlin riots of June 1953. He concluded, in his later words, that "very little could be done" by clandestine operations against the bloc, a view the CIA historians say made him a leading advocate of technical rather than human collection. He joined the agency in late January 1954 as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, [[Allen Dulles]], for Planning and Coordination, and was soon occupied with coordination for the operation against Guatemalan President [[Jacobo Arbenz]] ([[Operation PBSUCCESS]]).[^1]
-The combination of his economic and administrative skills, his connections to the scientific and industrial establishment, and his willingness to think boldly about operational problems made him exceptionally valuable to Dulles. Within two years he had become the CIA's most important covert operations organizer.[^1]
+### The U-2 and the Development Projects Staff
-### The U-2 Program
+On November 26, 1954 Dulles told Bissell that [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] had approved a secret program and that Bissell was to run it; on December 3 Bissell and Herbert Miller of the Office of Scientific Intelligence went to the Pentagon for the first interagency meeting. Dulles had no answer to the questions who would run the project or pay for it ("You'll have to work that out"). Bissell built a self-sufficient project staff, Project AQUATONE, with its own contracting, finance, logistics, communications and security personnel and funds kept separate from the agency's regular accounts, and reported directly to the DCI, though the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, General [[Charles Pearre Cabell]], supervised its daily affairs. On April 29, 1955 he signed an agreement with the [[U.S. Air Force]] and, to keep work moving at [[Lockheed]], wrote Kelly Johnson's company an advance check. The first test flight was in August 1955.[^1]
-Bissell's most technically significant achievement was managing the development of the Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft from 1954 onward. Working with Lockheed's Kelly Johnson and the [[Skunk Works]] division at a secret facility ([[Area 51]] at Groom Lake, Nevada), Bissell managed the program from concept to operational deployment in approximately eighteen months. The U-2 conducted its first operational overflight of the Soviet Union in June 1956.
+The first flights over the Soviet Union began on Wednesday, July 4, 1956 (a June 20, 1956 mission had covered Poland and East Germany). Bissell gave the "Go" decision at the project headquarters just before midnight Washington time on July 3. When Dulles asked on July 5 whether the overflights of Moscow and Leningrad had been wise the first time, Bissell replied: "Allen, the first is the safest." The program continued, with Bissell bringing maps of proposed routes to Eisenhower in the Oval Office, until [[Francis Gary Powers]] was shot down near Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960; the Paris summit that opened on May 16 ended when Eisenhower refused [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s demand for an apology.[^1]
-By 1960, the U-2 program had produced invaluable intelligence on Soviet nuclear and missile programs, bomber deployments, and military-industrial infrastructure. The program was ended as a Soviet overflight tool when [[Francis Gary Powers|Gary Powers]] was shot down over Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960. The diplomatic crisis that followed - [[Dwight Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] first denied then admitted U.S. responsibility, collapsing the Paris Summit - was a direct consequence of the program Bissell had managed.[^1]
+Bissell became DDP on January 1, 1959 and on February 16, 1959 turned the Development Projects Staff into a division of the Directorate of Plans, placing all agency air activities under himself; the history states he kept personal control of the U-2, the photosatellite project and OXCART. [[Edwin Land]] and [[James Killian]], his supporters among the presidential science advisers, came to fear he was too involved in covert action to give the reconnaissance programs enough time. The CIA's CORONA history names him the "recognized leader of the early CORONA program" and the senior CIA representative beside Air Force Brigadier General Osmond Ritland; Bissell recalled learning of his role "in an odd and informal way" from Land in 1958, and the first successful recovery, of mission 9009 (DISCOVERER XIV), came on August 19, 1960.[^1][^2]
 ### Congo, 1960
 According to the Church Committee's interim report, DDP Bissell in the summer of 1960 asked the Chief of the Africa Division, [[Bronson Tweedy]], to explore the feasibility of assassinating Lumumba, and asked a CIA scientist given the pseudonym Joseph Scheider, then Special Assistant to the DDP for Scientific Matters, to prepare to assassinate or incapacitate an unspecified "African leader." Scheider testified that Bissell told him he "had direction from the highest authority" and that he understood this to mean the President. Scheider reviewed a list of materials at the Army Chemical Corps installation at [[Fort Detrick]], chose one that "was supposed to produce a disease" indigenous to the region, and in late September delivered the lethal substances to the CIA station officer in Leopoldville with instructions to assassinate Lumumba.[^3]
 On August 19, 1960 Bissell signed a cable to Leopoldville stating "You are authorized proceed with operation," and on September 19 Bissell and Tweedy sent the station a cryptic message through a restricted channel. Bissell testified that it was "entirely probable" he discussed the assassination with Tweedy and "very probable" he discussed it with Scheider, that he "most certainly" approved the cables, and that his belief in presidential authorization "has to be described as inference." He read the Special Group minutes of August 25 as meaning that "if it had to be assassination, that that was a permissible means." He told the committee the August 26 cable from Dulles was, in his belief, a circumlocution for the President's wish that Lumumba be killed.[^3]
 A July 1981 clipping in the CIA's reading room from the London *Daily Telegraph* reported that Madeleine Kalb's *The Congo Cables*, then about to be published, named the scientist who brought the poison kit to the Congo as [[Sidney Gottlieb]], "the CIA's top scientist at the time"; a separate clipping in the same collection describes Gottlieb as head of the agency's [[Technical Services Division]], which, the clipping says, ran the drug experiments of the [[MKULTRA]] program and stored toxins. The Church report's description of Scheider's post as Bissell's science adviser is the record connecting the DDP's office to that division.[^3][^6]
 ### Castro, the Office of Security and ZR/RIFLE
 The Church Committee found the earliest concrete evidence of the CIA's gambling-syndicate plot against Castro in a conversation between Bissell and Colonel [[Sheffield Edwards]], Director of the Office of Security, which the Inspector General placed in August 1960 and Bissell remembered as late summer or early autumn. Bissell testified that he asked Edwards to find someone to assassinate Castro and believed Edwards raised the idea of contacting members of a gambling syndicate; Edwards assigned the task to the chief of the Office of Security's Operational Support Division (the "Support Chief" of the report), who engaged [[Robert Maheu]], who recruited [[Johnny Roselli]], who in turn brought in "Sam Gold" ([[Sam Giancana]]). Edwards told Bissell contact had been made. On October 18, 1960 [[J. Edgar Hoover]] sent Bissell a memorandum reporting that Giancana had told friends Castro would be "done away with very shortly," in November. The Support Chief testified that Colonel [[J. C. King]] gave $50,000 in Bissell's office to be paid to a Cuban contact for the assassination and that Bissell authorized the delivery of communications equipment; Bissell did not recall the meeting and considered it unlikely, though he knew poison pills had been prepared. The Inspector General placed the money passed at $10,000.[^3]
 In early 1961, per Bissell's own account, [[William Harvey]] was assigned responsibility for a general capability within the CIA for disabling foreign leaders, with assassination as a last resort, called Executive Action and later covered by the cryptonym ZR/RIFLE. Bissell described it to the committee as "internal and purely preparatory" and said he was "quite certain" Dulles had full knowledge of it. Harvey's notes record that on November 16, 1961 Bissell asked him to take over the gambling-syndicate operation from Edwards and that they discussed the "application of ZR/RIFLE program to Cuba"; Bissell testified the operation was not reactivated until after he left in February 1962. Bissell and Harvey briefed [[Richard Helms]], who replaced him as DDP, and Bissell did not recall briefing [[John McCone]], who had succeeded Dulles as DCI; McCone testified he had no knowledge of the project. The committee records Bissell as DDP under McCone for three months, November 1961 to February 1962.[^3]
 ### Bay of Pigs
-As DDP, Bissell organized and directed the plan for a [[Cuba|Cuba]]n exile invasion of Cuba designed to overthrow [[Fidel Castro]]. The plan evolved from a relatively modest guerrilla-infiltration program into an amphibious landing operation similar to the [[Operation PBSUCCESS|1954 Guatemala coup]], which had overthrown [[Jacobo Arbenz]] with a paramilitary force. President Kennedy approved the operation but insisted on removing air strikes intended to destroy Castro's air force on the ground before the landing.
+The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation records Bissell's direct involvement in the Guatemalan base arrangements. [[Jake Esterline]], Chief of WH/4, the Cuban task force, told the CIA historian [[Jack B. Pfeiffer]] that he went to Guatemala in 1960 "on specific instruction from Bissell and Dulles" to draw up a status-of-forces agreement with President Ydigoras; on November 14, 1960, when Ydigoras asked to borrow part of the Brigade to put down an uprising at Puerto Barrios, Bissell told Pfeiffer in 1975 that he was called at 2:30 in the morning and sent a cable saying "Yes" on his own responsibility because he did not think the decision should be left to the station. His Assistant DDP for Action was [[Tracy Barnes]].[^4]
-The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961 was a catastrophic failure. Castro's surviving air force destroyed supply ships and sank the brigade's reserve ammunition. The expected popular uprising did not materialize. Within seventy-two hours the 1,400-man exile brigade was captured. The CIA's intelligence assessment that Castro was deeply unpopular and that the invasion would trigger internal resistance had been wrong.
+The agency's post-mortems pitted Bissell's directorate against its Inspector General. The Inspector General's survey of October 1961 was transmitted on November 20, 1961 with a 150-page report and ten recommendations; the Deputy Director, General Cabell, called it deficient in a memorandum of December 15, 1961. An unsigned memorandum to the DCI of December 1, 1961 in the same file listed three factors to which the failure should be charged: the government's lack of recognition of the operation's scale, its failure to plan for using regular U.S. forces, and its unwillingness to commit the resources needed. The DDP's analysis of January 18, 1962 blamed factors outside the agency's control and the failure of the air drops on Cuban reception crews; an agency memorandum of January 26, 1962 replied that it was "preoccupied with interdepartmental policy-making and military strategy" while the survey was concerned with the failure to build internal resistance in Cuba, and that its discussion of Miami activities was inaccurate. The Taylor Committee's conclusion, summarized in an August 15, 1961 memorandum, was that the operation's leaders "did not always present their case with sufficient force and clarity to the senior officers of the government" particularly concerning the cancellation of the D-Day strikes. In his memorandum of February 15, 1962 Dulles wrote that the Inspector General had not requested information from him or from the DDP, that the Brigade had reached the landing area on schedule and with complete surprise, and that the failure to land ammunition and supplies "was due to circumstances beyond the control of the Brigade commander."[^5]
-Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility. He privately blamed the CIA and specifically Bissell for misleading him about the operation's prospects. Bissell resigned in February 1962 and was replaced by [[Richard Helms]].[^1]
+### Departure
-### ZR/RIFLE Authorization
+The CIA's U-2 history states that the Bay of Pigs "discredited Bissell with the Kennedy administration," that Dulles resigned in November 1961, and that Killian and Land pressed for removing the overhead reconnaissance programs from the DDP into a science-oriented directorate, which Bissell resisted. He resigned on February 17, 1962 after refusing McCone's offer to become the CIA's first Deputy Director for Research, and the new directorate absorbed the Development Projects Division two days later. Helms succeeded him as DDP.[^1][^3]
-Before his resignation, Bissell had authorized the development of ZR/RIFLE under [[William Harvey]]. The [[Church Committee]] established that Bissell had directed Harvey to develop an executive action (assassination) capability and had managed the early relationship with organized crime figures recruited for the anti-Castro plots. Like Helms, Bissell did not fully disclose the assassination programs to the [[Warren Commission]].[^1]
+### Later life
-### Later Career
+After the CIA he worked at the [[Institute for Defense Analyses]] and in industry, and wrote *Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs*, with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, which Yale University Press published in 1996 after his death on February 7, 1994.[^7]
 After leaving the CIA, Bissell worked at the [[Institute for Defense Analyses]] (IDA) and other positions. He wrote his memoirs, *Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs*, which were published posthumously by Yale University Press in 1996. The memoir provided a careful but incomplete account of his CIA career; some of the most sensitive material about ZR/RIFLE and the organized crime relationships remained unaddressed.
 Bissell died in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 7, 1994.[^2]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Thomas, Evan. *The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA.* Simon & Schuster, 1995. Weiner, Tim. *Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.* Doubleday, 2007.
+[^1]: Pedlow, Gregory W., and Donald E. Welzenbach, *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974* (CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998), chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 and biographical glossary, including interviews of Bissell by Welzenbach (November 8, 1984) and Pedlow. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA355539
-[^2]: Bissell, Richard M. Jr., with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo. *Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs.* Yale University Press, 1996.
+[^2]: Ruffner, Kevin C., ed., *CORONA: America's First Satellite Program* (CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1995), including Kenneth E. Greer, "CORONA," *Studies in Intelligence*, Spring 1973 supplement. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA499635
 [^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report*, 94th Cong., 1st sess. (1975), sections on the Congo and on Cuba, citing Bissell's testimony of June 9, June 11, July 17, July 22 and September 10, 1975, and Scheider, October 7 and 9, 1975. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit. The report states that pseudonyms were used for some individuals.
 [^4]: CIA History Staff, *Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation*, Volume II, "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy" (Jack B. Pfeiffer), citing Oral History Interview, Richard M. Bissell by Jack B. Pfeiffer, October 17, 1975. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001237696
 [^5]: CIA Reading Room: Memorandum from Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick to John McCone, "Survey of the Cuban Operation," November 20, 1961 (CIA-RDP80B01676R001900160016-0); memorandum of December 1, 1961 and C. P. Cabell memorandum of December 15, 1961 (CIA-RDP80B01676R001900160013-3); "The IG's Cuban Survey and the DD/P's Analysis of the Cuban Operation," January 26, 1962 (CIA-RDP80B01676R001900160009-8); "Taylor Report," August 15, 1961 (CIA-RDP80B01676R001900160002-5); Allen W. Dulles, "The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation," February 15, 1962 (CIA-RDP80B01676R001900160008-9). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01676r001900160008-9
 [^6]: Hugh Davies, "Eisenhower 'ordered Congo assassination,'" *The Daily Telegraph* (London), August 7, 1981, CIA-RDP90-00552R000403870002-9; "CIA Secrecy," CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910017-5 (reading room clipping). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00552r000403870002-9
 [^7]: Bissell, Richard M. Jr., with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, *Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs* (Yale University Press, 1996).
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Yehuda
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Yehuda
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ summary: "Owner of Software and Engineering Consultants in Chatsworth, Californi
 [[Yehuda Ben-Hanan]] was the owner of Software and Engineering Consultants, a small computer company based in Chatsworth, [[California]]. He was a childhood friend of [[Ari Ben-Menashe]].
-[[Rafi]] selected Ben-Hanan to develop a "trap door" for the [[PROMIS]] software, which would allow external access to the computers of intelligence agencies using the program. Ben-Hanan was given blueprints and set about his work for a $5,000 fee, unaware of the true purpose of the project.[^1]
+[[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] selected Ben-Hanan to develop a "trap door" for the [[PROMIS]] software, which would allow external access to the computers of intelligence agencies using the program. Ben-Hanan was given blueprints and set about his work for a $5,000 fee, unaware of the true purpose of the project.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Yekutiel
+++ b/PEOPLE/(A-G)/Yekutiel
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ died: 1982-06-10
 location: "Tel Aviv, Israel"
 ---
-General [[Yekutiel Adam]] was an [[Israel|Israeli]] military leader who was in line to take over as Director of [[Mossad]] in 1981. However, he was assassinated by his own people, according to [[Rafi]], who claimed it was an inside job. The old guard in [[Mossad]] were reportedly afraid of him because he had told people in the [[Prime Minister's Office]] that he would make a clean sweep of the intelligence network.[^1]
+General [[Yekutiel Adam]] was an [[Israel|Israeli]] military leader who was in line to take over as Director of [[Mossad]] in 1981. However, he was assassinated by his own people, according to [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]], who claimed it was an inside job. The old guard in [[Mossad]] were reportedly afraid of him because he had told people in the [[Prime Minister's Office]] that he would make a clean sweep of the intelligence network.[^1]
 Prior to his assassination, [[Yekutiel Adam|Adam]] lost a number of top-secret documents when he left his briefcase behind in a [[Los Angeles]] gas station, which caused a huge internal row within [[Mossad]] and an unsuccessful attempt to stop his appointment.[^1]
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ann-Marie
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ann-Marie
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ summary: "Ann-Marie Murphy was the Irish girlfriend of Nezar Hindawi."
 location: "Sallynoggin, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland"
 ---
-Ann-Marie Murphy was the Irish girlfriend of [[Nezar Hindawi]]. She was unwittingly used in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane. Hindawi, acting on instructions from [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]] as part of an [[Rafi|Israeli]] "black" operation, intended for her to board the plane with explosives in her bag, leading to her death and the deaths of all other passengers.
+Ann-Marie Murphy was the Irish girlfriend of [[Nezar Hindawi]]. She was unwittingly used in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane. Hindawi, acting on instructions from [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]] as part of an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" operation, intended for her to board the plane with explosives in her bag, leading to her death and the deaths of all other passengers.
 The plot was foiled by [[Israel|Israeli]] security. Ann-Marie Murphy was interrogated by British security, where she revealed Hindawi's involvement. She later gave birth to their daughter in [[Ireland]].[^1]
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Baldur
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Baldur
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ summary: "Business partner tasked by Rafi Eitan to receive the PROMIS software w
 [[Baldur K. Kleine]] was a business partner of [[Manfred Herrmann]] and the representative in Maitland, [[Florida]], for [[Ora Group|Ora]], an [[Israel|Israeli]] arms-running company. He coordinated [[Israel|Israeli]] activities in [[Central America]].[^1]
-[[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] was tasked by [[Rafi]] to receive the [[PROMIS]] software, complete with its "trap door," from [[Earl Brian]] in Maitland. He then passed the program to [[Manfred Herrmann]] in [[Guatemala]], who, in conjunction with [[Robert Maxwell|Maxwell's]] [[Degem]], implemented it for intelligence purposes.[^1]
+[[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] was tasked by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] to receive the [[PROMIS]] software, complete with its "trap door," from [[Earl Brian]] in Maitland. He then passed the program to [[Manfred Herrmann]] in [[Guatemala]], who, in conjunction with [[Robert Maxwell|Maxwell's]] [[Degem]], implemented it for intelligence purposes.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Iris.md
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Iris.md
@ -5,9 +5,9 @@ tags:
 summary: "LAKAM representative in Washington D.C. who served as an intelligence conduit between Robert McFarlane, Jonathan Pollard, and Rafi Eitan."
 ---
-[[Iris]] was a representative of [[LAKAM]] in [[Washington, D.C.]]. She served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]] and [[Jonathan Pollard]] in the [[United States|U.S.]], and [[Rafi]] in [[Israel]].[^1]
+[[Iris]] was a representative of [[LAKAM]] in [[Washington, D.C.]]. She served as a conduit for intelligence reports between [[Robert McFarlane]] and [[Jonathan Pollard]] in the [[United States|U.S.]], and [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] in [[Israel]].[^1]
-[[Iris]] would receive requests for computer access codes for certain intelligence items from [[Rafi|Eitan]]. She would then pass these requests to [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]], who would provide her with the specified access codes. [[Iris]] would then give these codes to [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]], who would retrieve the information, photocopy it, and return the copies to [[Iris]]. This process was designed to distance [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] from [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]].[^1]
+[[Iris]] would receive requests for computer access codes for certain intelligence items from [[Rafael Eitan|Eitan]]. She would then pass these requests to [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]], who would provide her with the specified access codes. [[Iris]] would then give these codes to [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]], who would retrieve the information, photocopy it, and return the copies to [[Iris]]. This process was designed to distance [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] from [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]].[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Manfred
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Manfred
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ summary: "Herrmann was recruited to represent Ora, an Israeli arms-running compa
 [[Manfred Herrmann]] was a German expatriate in his 60s who owned an automobile spare-parts company in [[Guatemala City]] known as [[Sedra]]. He was involved in [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence operations in [[Guatemala]].[^1]
-Herrmann was recruited to represent [[Ora Group|Ora]], an [[Israel|Israeli]] arms-running company, in [[Guatemala]]. His partner, [[Baldur K. Kleine]], was the representative in Maitland, [[Florida]], coordinating activities in [[Central America]]. After [[Robert Maxwell]] took over [[Degem]], [[Rafi]] asked [[Earl Brian]] to provide [[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] with the [[PROMIS]] software, complete with its "trap door." [[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] then passed the program to Herrmann, who also received the [[Israel|Israeli]] version of [[PROMIS]].[^1]
+Herrmann was recruited to represent [[Ora Group|Ora]], an [[Israel|Israeli]] arms-running company, in [[Guatemala]]. His partner, [[Baldur K. Kleine]], was the representative in Maitland, [[Florida]], coordinating activities in [[Central America]]. After [[Robert Maxwell]] took over [[Degem]], [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] asked [[Earl Brian]] to provide [[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] with the [[PROMIS]] software, complete with its "trap door." [[Baldur K. Kleine|Kleine]] then passed the program to Herrmann, who also received the [[Israel|Israeli]] version of [[PROMIS]].[^1]
 Herrmann's Sedra company, in conjunction with [[Robert Maxwell|Maxwell's]] [[Degem]], played a key role in implementing [[PROMIS]] in [[Guatemala]]. This involved setting up terminals in offices, railway stations, airports, and even remote roadblocks, as part of a system to track suspected dissidents. This venture was a major success from an intelligence perspective, enabling the tracking of individuals even under false names.[^1]
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nezar
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nezar
@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ born: 1954
 location: "Baqura, Jordan"
 ---
-[[Nezar Hindawi]] is a Syrian national who was involved in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane. He was recruited by his cousin, [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], as part of an [[Rafi|Israeli]] "black" operation designed to discredit [[Syria]].
+[[Nezar Hindawi]] is a Syrian national who was involved in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane. He was recruited by his cousin, [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], as part of an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" operation designed to discredit [[Syria]].
 Hindawi was instructed to ensure his pregnant Irish girlfriend, Ann-Marie Murphy, boarded an [[El Al]] flight with explosives in her bag. He was led to believe the money for this operation came from "Syrian brothers on behalf of the Palestinians." He arranged for her to receive the bomb package in the [[Heathrow Airport|El Al]] departure lounge after passing through security, expecting her to die in the explosion along with other passengers.
--- a/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Wilma
+++ b/PEOPLE/(H-M)/Wilma
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ summary: "Secretary to Robert McFarlane at the NSC and mother of Fawn Hall who h
 [[Wilma Hall]] was the secretary to [[Robert McFarlane]] at the [[National Security Council]]. She is also the mother of [[Fawn Hall]], who was [[Oliver North|Oliver North's]] secretary.[^1]
-[[Wilma Hall|Hall]] assisted [[William Odom|Gen. William Odom]] in proving that [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] was an [[Israel|Israeli]] mole working for [[Rafi]]. She did this by taping a phone conversation between [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] and [[Rafi|Eitan]].[^1]
+[[Wilma Hall|Hall]] assisted [[William Odom|Gen. William Odom]] in proving that [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] was an [[Israel|Israeli]] mole working for [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]]. She did this by taping a phone conversation between [[Robert McFarlane|McFarlane]] and [[Rafael Eitan|Eitan]].[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Abu
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Abu
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, was a Palestinian terrorist and t
 Ben-Menashe wrote that Radi later presented his case to Nidal in [[Baghdad]], claiming he had been unwittingly used by Pearson. Nidal believed his story and put out the word that Radi was "clean," placing the blame on [[Yasser Arafat|Yasser Arafat's]] group.[^1]
-Ben-Menashe also wrote that Nidal was involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which he described as an Israeli "black" propaganda operation. In his account, [[Rafi]] passed instructions to Radi, who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack. Abbas was reportedly receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons.[^1] These accounts rest on Ben-Menashe's book alone.
+Ben-Menashe also wrote that Nidal was involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which he described as an Israeli "black" propaganda operation. In his account, [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] passed instructions to Radi, who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack. Abbas was reportedly receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons.[^1] These accounts rest on Ben-Menashe's book alone.
 ### BCCI
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Amiram
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Amiram
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ location: "Israel"
 ---
 [[Amiram Nir]] was a former [[Israel|Israeli]] TV newsman and a counterterrorism adviser to [[Shimon Peres]]. He was originally a military officer in the tank corps and lost an eye in a training accident. He married [[Judy Moses]], the daughter of the owner of [[Yediot Ahronot]], a major [[Israel|Israeli]] newspaper chain.[^1]
-Nir resigned from his TV job to work as a public relations adviser for [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] during the 1981 elections. After [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, he appointed Nir as his counterterrorism adviser. Nir found documents related to [[Rafi|Eitan's]] [[United States|U.S.]] spy network and the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee|Joint Committee's]] arms sales to [[Iran]].[^1]
+Nir resigned from his TV job to work as a public relations adviser for [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] during the 1981 elections. After [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] became prime minister in 1984, he appointed Nir as his counterterrorism adviser. Nir found documents related to [[Rafael Eitan|Eitan's]] [[United States|U.S.]] spy network and the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee|Joint Committee's]] arms sales to [[Iran]].[^1]
 [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] and Nir faced challenges from the [[Likud Party]]-controlled intelligence community and the lack of financial power within the [[Labor Party]]. [[Shimon Peres|Peres]] decided to open a competing arms channel, run by Nir, to gain control over the profitable [[Iran]] arms sales and to undermine the existing intelligence-community channel. Nir, despite his lack of experience in intelligence or business, sought support from individuals like [[Al Schwimmer]] and [[Yaacov Nimrodi]].[^1]
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Anthony
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Anthony
@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ According to [[Mossad]] files, Pearson could also arrange assassinations for $50
 Pearson recruited [[Nicholas Davies]], the London *[[Daily Mirror]]* foreign editor, for Mossad in the 1970s. He also worked with [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], a former colonel in the [[Jordan|Jordanian]] Army. Pearson used Radi's unwitting help to acquire intelligence about Palestinian organizations in [[Europe]] by selling arms to them. This allowed Pearson to pass intelligence to Mossad about the groups' movements and weapons. Based on Radi's tips, 14 or 15 Palestinians were eliminated over a two-month period.[^1]
-In 1978, Pearson offered Radi a £200,000 loan, making it clear the money came from an Israeli source, and recruited him to work for an antiterrorist group in Israel run by [[Rafi]].[^1]
+In 1978, Pearson offered Radi a £200,000 loan, making it clear the money came from an Israeli source, and recruited him to work for an antiterrorist group in Israel run by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]].[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Cheri
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Cheri
@ -2,24 +2,68 @@
 title: Cheri Seymour
 aliases:
  - Cheri Seymour
  - Cheri Seymour (author)
  - Seymour, Cheri
 created: 2026-05-17
-updated: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Authors & Journalists"
 tags:
  - Person
  - PROMIS
  - Journalist
  - Author
-  - OrganizedCrime
+  - Casolaro
-summary: "Cheri Seymour is an investigative journalist and author whose book The Last Circle documented Danny Casolaro’s investigation into the PROMIS software scandal and the alleged criminal network he called The Octopus."
+  - Inslaw
  - PROMIS
  - Octopus
  - ChristianIdentity
  - Mariposa
 summary: "Mariposa, California newspaper reporter who wrote Committee of the States (1991) on William Potter Gale's Identity movement and The Last Circle (2010), a 599-page account of Danny Casolaro's Octopus investigation."
 location: "Mariposa, California"
 relations:
  - type: employed_by
    with: "[[Mariposa Gazette and Miner]]"
    start: 1986
    role: "reporter covering the October 1986 arrests of Committee of the States members"
    fn: 1
  - type: investigated
    with: "[[The Octopus]]"
    start: 1991
    end: 2010
    role: "researched and interviewed sources on the Casolaro investigation, the Inslaw/PROMIS dispute and the Octopus"
    fn: 3
 ---
 Cheri Seymour is an author who was a reporter on the *[[Mariposa Gazette and Miner]]* in [[Mariposa]], California, in the 1980s. She wrote *Committee of the States: Inside the Radical Right* ([[Camden Place Communications]], Mariposa, 1991), a study of the [[Christian Identity]] movement built on the case of Colonel [[William Potter Gale]], and *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal* ([[TrineDay]], 2010), a 599-page account of the death of [[Danny Casolaro]] and of the network he called [[The Octopus]]. An interviewer on Radio Free Kansas introduced her in 2010 as a former private investigator and non-fiction journalist whose book took 18 years to complete.[^1][^2][^3][^4]
-Cheri Seymour is an investigative journalist and author. She is the author of *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* Seymour was a reporter for a small newspaper in a remote community near Yosemite Valley. Her work on *The Last Circle* involved extensive investigation into organized crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, and pirated software, following the trail of [[Danny Casolaro]]’s investigation into what he termed "[[The Octopus]]."[^1]
+### Committee of the States, 1991
-### Bibliography
+Seymour's first book carries the copyright of Seymour and the imprint of Camden Place Communications, Inc., 4859 Morningstar Lane, Mariposa (ISBN 0-9628772-0-4, Library of Congress card number 90-92264), with editing and production by Rapp Publishing and Typographic Services; the acknowledgments thank reporters at the *San Francisco Chronicle*, the *Arizona Republic*, the Fargo *Forum* and the *Davis Enterprise*, and the *Mariposa Gazette and Miner*, the *[[Las Vegas Review-Journal]]* and the *[[Los Angeles Times]]*, and reprint material from the *Sacramento Bee*, *California Magazine*, James Corcoran's *Bitter Harvest*, the [[Anti-Defamation League]]'s *The Arizona Patriots* and the *Washington Post*.[^1]
- *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal* (TrineDay, 2010) - ISBN-13: 978-1-9362960-0-2
+The foreword says she attended a "Soldiers Ransom" ritual in the [[Aryan Nations]] compound, a midnight Ku Klux Klan cross burning and a Skinhead rally in Napa Valley, and a three-week Committee of the States trial in Las Vegas, and accumulated "an entire file cabinet of court transcripts and discovery material" from a two-year federal investigation called Operation Clean-Sweep, which ended in a Fort Smith, Arkansas courtroom where thirteen leaders from several states were acquitted of sedition.[^1]
 The book opens with the arrests of October 23, 1986. Seymour writes that she was awakened at 10 p.m. on October 22 by the executive editor of the *Gazette*, who had been told by the district attorney's office that Gale and Fortunato "Slim" Parrino would be arrested at their homes the next morning, and that Commander Rod Sinclair of the Mariposa County Sheriff's Department told her to stay out of the area. On the 23rd federal agents seized Gale, still in pajamas, on his porch in Mariposa County and took him to a detention hearing in Fresno; Parrino was arrested at Bootjack and five other members of the Committee of the States in Arizona and Nevada, on a ten-count indictment from a Las Vegas grand jury charging threats to kill four [[Internal Revenue Service]] agents and a Nevada judge by "Constructive Notices." She describes the Committee's compact, filed in Mariposa County on July 13, 1984 after a signing at the Manasseh Ranch, and writes that the case grew out of two years of undercover work by the IRS and five years of earlier FBI investigation, and that the federal government had "declared war on the radical right."[^1]
 ### The Casolaro investigation
 *The Last Circle* is organized as Seymour's own account of research that began after Casolaro was found dead on August 10, 1991 in a hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia. It states that she interviewed Robert Booth Nichols at his home on February 13, 1992 and the U.S. Customs agent Scott Lawrence on February 5, 1993, and she places the murders of Neal Abernathy on February 19, 1997 among events of her investigation. Chapter 17, "The Inslaw Affair," summarizes House Judiciary Committee Report 102-857 (released September 10, 1992), the committee's three-year investigation of the Justice Department's treatment of the Hamiltons' [[Inslaw]] and its PROMIS software, with the investigators James E. Lewin and John D. Cohen, and adds [[Bill Hamilton]]'s account. In the same chapter she reproduces what she describes as a packet from a confidential source in Washington containing Judiciary Committee memoranda by Cohen, including the committee's contacts with the FBI agent [[Thomas Gates]], the prosecutors [[Marvin Rudnick]] and [[Richard Stavin]], and Casolaro's brother Dr. Anthony Casolaro.[^3][^5]
 According to that chapter, the memoranda record Gates telling Cohen that "the FBI feels Danny Casolaro's death was an ITAR murder" (Interstate Travel in Aid of Racketeering) and that Casolaro told him three days before his death that Nichols had visited Casolaro in Martinsburg. Seymour writes that Stavin told her by e-mail: "I never believed for a moment that Danny Casolaro committed suicide. I spoke to him for about 45 minutes the week before and this was not a despondent man," and that Stavin said Casolaro first asked whether he had to be concerned for his safety because he was going to meet Nichols. She records Stavin's opinion that the MCA prosecution of three suspects "never went forward because no one at the DOJ in Washington D.C. wanted all the wiretap affidavits in the case to be released," and that Dan Moldea was copied on her e-mail exchanges with Stavin and Rudnick.[^5]
 Chapter 22, "The Octopus Exposed," reports a four and a half hour meeting on February 14, 2001 at the home of [[Peter Zokosky]] and his wife Regina, with the journalist [[Kelly O'Meara]] of *Insight* magazine. Seymour attributes to Zokosky the statements that Nichols did contract work for the NSA and NSC, that the Lebanese company FIDCO was an NSA front whose directors included [[Robert Maheu]] and Glenn Shockley, and that Nichols was in Vietnam working for [[Ross Perot]]. She records that Zokosky said he believed Casolaro committed suicide, while Regina Zokosky "frowned and said she thought her husband had said otherwise at previous times." Zokosky let the two visitors read a manuscript by Nichols dated November 22, 1991, "Danny Casolaro's Octopus," and gave them a three-page FBI Los Angeles report dated December 2, 1982, which Seymour quotes: a confidential source alleged on March 16, 1978 that Nichols was "an international money launderer of money derived from both narcotics and organized crime activities," and the report concluded that Nichols "should be considered armed and dangerous."[^6]
 ### The Cabazon killings and the final chapter
 Chapter 25, "Rachel's Resolution," follows [[Rachel Begley]], daughter of Ralph Boger, who was shot with Fred Alvarez, vice-chairman of the [[Cabazon Band of Mission Indians|Cabazon]] tribal council, and Patricia Castro in Rancho Mirage, California on June 29, 1981. Seymour records the autopsy finding of a single .38 caliber bullet to each head, Alvarez's prior statements to a reporter that they were marked for death, and the 2007 assignment of the cold case to Detective John Powers of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. She reports the arrest of James "Jimmy" Hughes at Miami airport on September 26, 2009 on a California fugitive warrant for three counts of murder, and the stalling of his extradition by his Miami lawyer as of December 1, 2009. She reprints a translated *La Prensa* (Honduras) article of October 5, 2009 by Jessica Figueroa headed "Jimmy Hughes - From CIA operative and mafia hitman to evangelical pastor," and closes the chapter with Begley's statement to the court, delivered on the day Seymour records Hughes as being released, asking that he remain in custody "at least until another DOJ prosecutor who is less timid can be assigned," and that the case go to another jurisdiction or a special prosecutor.[^7]
 ### Publication
 TrineDay published *The Last Circle* in September 2010 (ISBN 978-1-936296-00-2; a second ISBN, 978-1-936296-38-5, appears in library records). Chapters 17, 22 and 25 were posted on the internet with Seymour's permission from the site ark-roundtable.com. Radio Free Kansas broadcast an interview with her on October 20, 2010, whose notes say the book follows "a story that took 18 years to develop" with a "surprise conclusion that even she did not anticipate" and that the title refers to the last circle of Dante's *Inferno*, reserved for traitors.[^3][^4][^5]
 ### Footnotes
-[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. TrineDay, 2010.
+[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *Committee of the States: Inside the Radical Right.* Camden Place Communications, Mariposa, California, 1991, copyright page, acknowledgments, foreword and chapter "The Arrests." https://archive.org/details/seymour-cheri-committee-of-the-states
 [^2]: Radio Free Kansas, interview "Cheri Seymour 'The Last Circle,'" October 20, 2010, program notes. https://archive.org/details/CheriSeymourtheLastCircle
 [^3]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010; Open Library records 1936296004 and 9781936296002 (599 pages). https://openlibrary.org/search?q=last+circle+seymour+casolaro
 [^4]: Same as note 2.
 [^5]: Seymour, *The Last Circle*, chapter 17, "The Inslaw Affair," pp. 247 ff. https://archive.org/details/TheInslawAffair. Sole source for the passages so cited (Gates, Stavin and Rudnick statements as she records them).
 [^6]: Seymour, *The Last Circle*, chapter 22, "The Octopus Exposed," pp. 337 ff. https://archive.org/details/TheOctopusExposed. Sole source for the Zokosky meeting.
 [^7]: Seymour, *The Last Circle*, chapter 25, "Rachel's Resolution," pp. 393 ff. https://archive.org/details/RachelsResolution
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Pat
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Pat
@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ Schnabel's account of the end of the trip is the fullest. In mid-July 1975 Price
 Schnabel wrote that when "Richard Kennett" and others tried to find out what had happened, they learned that no autopsy had been performed, although autopsies were normal for out-of-town deaths outside hospitals; they were told that a friend of Price, not Alvarez, had arrived with a briefcase of his medical records, which with the emergency-room physician's statements led Las Vegas officials to waive the autopsy. Kennett could not identify the man with the briefcase. Schnabel recorded the rumors that followed: that the man was from the CIA, that Price had been murdered by the Soviets, that he was alive under a new identity, and that a friend had a vision in which Price's ghost said he had been poisoned. He recorded the view of those who knew of Price's heart disease that "there was no real mystery," and that a CIA official who worked with Price told him the Agency "had no connection with any of the events surrounding Price's death, including the (alleged) appearance of the mysterious man with the medical records." As late as 1994, Schnabel wrote, Targ told him: "I don't know how Pat Price died."[^24]
-In late summer 1977, Schnabel wrote, the day after [[The Washington Post]] published an article by [[John L. Wilhelm|John Wilhelm]] on government psychic research, [[Stansfield Turner]], the Director of Central Intelligence, was asked about the subject at a meeting with reporters and, "clearly referring to Pat Price," said that the CIA had once worked with a man who seemed to have some psychic ability, whose drawings of foreign targets he had not seen were reasonably accurate but rudimentary: "he died, and we haven't heard from him since." When the Office of Technical Service briefed the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] on November 17, 1977, it left with the staff "a brief article on Mr. Pat Price."[^25] A [[Defense Intelligence College]] thesis of 1992 quotes Turner at a breakfast for journalists in 1977 as saying the CIA "had an individual who from time to time was able to draw very elementary sketches of street scenes in foreign countries where he had never been," and that "this subject died in 1975, and we haven't heard from him since."[^26]
+In late summer 1977, Schnabel wrote, a few weeks after the Parade section of [[The Washington Post]] of August 7, 1977 carried an article headed "Psychic Spying," [[Stansfield Turner]], the Director of Central Intelligence, was asked about the subject at a meeting with reporters and, "clearly referring to Pat Price," said that the CIA had once worked with a man who seemed to have some psychic ability, whose drawings of foreign targets he had not seen were reasonably accurate but rudimentary: "he died, and we haven't heard from him since." When the Office of Technical Service briefed the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] on November 16, 1977, a briefing the Agency's memorandum of November 17 says "was occasioned by" the Parade article, it left with the staff "a brief article on Mr. Pat Price."[^25] A [[Defense Intelligence College]] thesis of 1992 quotes Turner at a breakfast for journalists in 1977 as saying the CIA "had an individual who from time to time was able to draw very elementary sketches of street scenes in foreign countries where he had never been," and that "this subject died in 1975, and we haven't heard from him since."[^26]
 ### The 1995 review
@ -150,6 +150,6 @@ The American Institutes for Research report of September 29, 1995 described the
 [^22]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter on Swann's return and Price's departure.
 [^23]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter on the embassy tests; pseudonyms as listed in the book.
 [^24]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter "The Shamans" and its footnotes, including the footnote recording the statement by a CIA official who worked with Price. The pseudonym list in the same book includes Bill and Judy Alvarez and Richard Kennett.
-[^25]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter on the summer of 1977, naming Wilhelm's Washington Post article; the Wilhelm piece also survives in CIA files as "The Search for Superman," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100040006-1. Brandwein, David S., Director, Office of Technical Service, memoranda "Stanford Research Institute Parapsychology Research," February 20, 1976 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020001-9), and "OTS Support to Research in Parapsychology," October 7, 1976 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020016-3); memorandum for the record, "Briefing for House Permanent Select Committee re OTS Involvement in ESP Research," OTS memo 287-77, November 17, 1977 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020020-8), at which OTS left with the committee staff "a brief article on Mr. Pat Price." Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^25]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter on the summer of 1977, on Turner's remark; OTS/BAB Memo #287-77, November 17, 1977 (CIA-RDP79-00999A000400050014-1), on the Parade article "Psychic Spying," Washington Post, August 7, 1977; reading notes on John L. Wilhelm's book *The Search for Superman* are in CIA-RDP96-00788R001100040006-1. Brandwein, David S., Director, Office of Technical Service, memoranda "Stanford Research Institute Parapsychology Research," February 20, 1976 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020001-9), and "OTS Support to Research in Parapsychology," October 7, 1976 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020016-3); memorandum for the record, "Briefing for House Permanent Select Committee re OTS Involvement in ESP Research," OTS memo 287-77, November 17, 1977 (CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020020-8), at which OTS left with the committee staff "a brief article on Mr. Pat Price." Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
 [^26]: Zarbo, Michael E. (Captain, U.S. Army), *Remote Viewing: Parapsychological Potential for Intelligence Collection?,* master's thesis, Defense Intelligence College, November 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002600250001-6, quoting Turner. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
 [^27]: 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, chapter 3, p. 3-77 and following, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180005-5, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
--- a/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Yitzhak
+++ b/PEOPLE/(N-S)/Yitzhak
@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ location: "Ruzhany, Belarus"
 ### Coalition Government and Arms Trading
-[[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] was a key figure in the [[Likud Party]]. He formed a bizarre coalition government with [[Shimon Peres]] of the [[Labor Party]] in 1984, sharing the roles of prime minister and foreign minister. [[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] had a close relationship with [[Rafi]], who served as his counterterrorism adviser and later ran the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]. [[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] was involved in the decision to supply [[Iran]] with arms in its war with [[Saddam Hussein|Saddam Hussein's]] [[Iraq]], believing it was in [[Israel|Israel's]] national security interest.[^1]
+[[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] was a key figure in the [[Likud Party]]. He formed a bizarre coalition government with [[Shimon Peres]] of the [[Labor Party]] in 1984, sharing the roles of prime minister and foreign minister. [[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] had a close relationship with [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]], who served as his counterterrorism adviser and later ran the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]. [[Yitzhak Shamir|Shamir]] was involved in the decision to supply [[Iran]] with arms in its war with [[Saddam Hussein|Saddam Hussein's]] [[Iraq]], believing it was in [[Israel|Israel's]] national security interest.[^1]
 ### Pollard Espionage Case
--- a/PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Craig
+++ b/PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Craig
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ summary: "In July 1992, *The Village Voice* printed a long article by Unger that
 born: 1949-03-25
 ---
-[[Craig Unger]] is an [[United States|American]] journalist and author. In October 1991, his article in *Esquire* magazine 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]
+[[Craig Unger]] is an [[United States|American]] journalist and author. In October 1991, his article in *Esquire* magazine 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]
 In July 1992, *The Village Voice* printed a long article by [[Craig Unger|Unger]] that quoted [[Moshe Hebroni]], a former colleague of [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe]], confirming [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe's]] access to very sensitive material while working for the Foreign Flow desk in External Relations.[^1]
--- a/PEOPLE/(T-Z)/John
+++ b/PEOPLE/(T-Z)/John
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ location: "Houston, Texas"
 [[John Tower]] was a [[United States|U.S.]] Senator and a prominent figure with connections to [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] circles. He served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.[^1]
-[[John Tower|Tower]] was introduced to [[Rafi]], then counterterrorism adviser to [[Menachem Begin]], in 1978. Eitan sought to build a network within the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists. [[John Tower|Tower]] and his senior aide, [[Robert McFarlane]], developed a close relationship with Eitan, and much information reaching the Senate Armed Services Committee found its way to Eitan's desk.[^1]
+[[John Tower|Tower]] was introduced to [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]], then counterterrorism adviser to [[Menachem Begin]], in 1978. Eitan sought to build a network within the [[United States|United States]] to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists. [[John Tower|Tower]] and his senior aide, [[Robert McFarlane]], developed a close relationship with Eitan, and much information reaching the Senate Armed Services Committee found its way to Eitan's desk.[^1]
 [[John Tower|Tower]] was involved in the secret negotiations concerning the [[Iran-Contra Affair]]. He was present at a meeting in [[Santiago]], [[Chile]], in late 1986 with [[Carlos Cardoen]], [[Robert Gates]], and [[Pieter Van Der Westhuizen|Gen. Pieter Van Der Westhuizen]] (South African Military Intelligence), where the [[United States|U.S.]] reaffirmed its intention to maintain arms channels to [[Iraq]].[^1]
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Iran-Israel
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Iran-Israel
@ -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]
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/LAKAM.md
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/LAKAM.md
@ -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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Mossad.md
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Mossad.md
@ -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
+  - Organization
-  - intelligence
+  - Intelligence
-  - international
+  - Israel
-description: Mossad is the national intelligence agency of 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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Rafi.md
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Rafi.md
@ -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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/LASD
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/LASD
@ -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
+  - LawEnforcement
-  - United_States
+  - LosAngeles
-  - Los_Angeles
+  - Narcotics
  - DarkAlliance
  - BigSpender
  - ContraCocaine
  - 1980s
-  - Dark_Alliance_Investigation
+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."
 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.
 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.
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/El
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/El
@ -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]
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Esquire.md
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Esquire.md
@ -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.
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Los
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Los
@ -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
+  - Newspaper
-  - 1990s
+  - TimesMirror
-  - Dark_Alliance_Investigation
+  - CIAMediaRelations
-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.
+  - 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.
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Massachusetts
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Massachusetts
@ -1,15 +1,108 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - MIT
  - M.I.T.
  - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
 category: "Private Organization"
 start: 1861
 location: "Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA"
 tags:
  - Organization
  - Academic
-  - USA
+  - University
-category: "Private Organization"
+  - CENIS
-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."
+  - MKULTRA
-start: 1861
+  - InstrumentationLaboratory
-location: "Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA"
+  - 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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Miami
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Miami
@ -1,20 +1,89 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - The Miami Herald
  - Miami Herald
 category: "Private Organization"
 start: 1903
 location: "Miami, Florida, USA"
 tags:
-  - organization
+  - Organization
-  - media
+  - Media
-  - contra-war
+  - Newspaper
-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.
+  - 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.
+[^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]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 5.
+[^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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/New
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/New
@ -1,32 +1,122 @@
 ---
 aliases:
  - The New York Times
  - New York Times
  - NYT
 category: "Private Organization"
 start: 1851
 location: "New York City, USA"
 tags:
-  - organization
+  - Organization
-  - media
+  - Media
-  - contra-war
+  - Newspaper
-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.
+  - 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.
+[^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]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
+[^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]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
+[^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]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Epilogue.
+[^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.
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Spartacus
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Spartacus
@ -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
+  - Publishing
-  - Pedophile_Network
+  - Amsterdam
-  - Child_Trafficking
+  - JohnStamford
  - ElmGuestHouse
  - ChildSexTourism
  - PedophileNetworks
  - 1970s
  - 1980s
  - 1990s
-  - Amsterdam
+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."
  - 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."
 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]: 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/
-[^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). Eye of the Chickenhawk. United States: Thehotstar.
+[^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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford
@ -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.
+[^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]: 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.
+[^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.
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford
@ -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
+  - University
-category: "Private Organization"
+  - StanfordResearchInstitute
-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."
+  - RemoteViewing
-start: 1885
+  - MKULTRA
-location: "Stanford, California"
+  - 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
--- a/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Washington
+++ b/ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Washington
@ -1,31 +1,108 @@
 ---
 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
+  - Newspaper
-  - 1990s
+  - CIAMediaRelations
-  - Dark_Alliance_Investigation
+  - Newsweek
-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.
+  - FamilyJewels
-start: 1877
+  - MediaBurglary
-location: "Washington, D.C."
+  - 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).
--- a/PROJECTS/INTELLIGENCE_OPERATIONS/Project
+++ b/PROJECTS/INTELLIGENCE_OPERATIONS/Project
@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ A CIA security memorandum of July 28, 1975, records: "In November of 1974 it was
 ### Exposure
-Director [[William Colby]] telephoned [[Franklin Murphy]], chief executive of the [[Times Mirror Company]], to stop a story in the [[Los Angeles Times]]. It ran on February 8, 1975, under the headline "U.S. Reported After Russian Submarine." [[Jack Anderson]] broadcast the story on March 18 and [[Seymour Hersh]] published it in [[New York Times|The New York Times]] the next day. At the [[White House]] that day [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]] [[James Schlesinger]] recommended acknowledging the "bare facts." Colby, recalling that [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]]'s admission of the U-2 flight had deepened the crisis of 1960, argued that confirmation would put Moscow under "pressure to respond," and President [[Gerald Ford]] took his advice.[^1]
+A story in the [[Los Angeles Times]] ran on February 8, 1975, under the headline "U.S. Reported After Russian Submarine," after what the CIA's history calls "an improbable series of events following a break-in and robbery in June 1974 at Summa Corporation headquarters in Los Angeles"; the history states that "extraordinary efforts by DCI Colby and others were able to contain the spread of the story for a time." [[Jack Anderson]] broadcast the story on March 18 and [[Seymour Hersh]] published it in [[New York Times|The New York Times]] the next day. At the [[White House]] that day [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]] [[James Schlesinger]] recommended acknowledging the "bare facts." Colby, recalling that [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]]'s admission of the U-2 flight had deepened the crisis of 1960, argued that confirmation would put Moscow under "pressure to respond," and President [[Gerald Ford]] took his advice.[^1]
 When the journalist [[Harriet Ann Phillippi]] asked under the [[Freedom of Information Act]] for records of the agency's efforts to discourage the reporting, the CIA replied that it could "neither confirm nor deny" any connection with the ship. The court of appeals upheld the answer in Phillippi v. CIA in 1976. The formula has since been known as the Glomar response. In 2010 a retired officer who had served aboard, [[David Sharp]], wrote that the agency's review board still refused to clear a third of his manuscript on the project.[^1]
--- a/EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Media
+++ b/EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Media
@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ tags:
  - Hoover
  - 1970s
 start: 1971-03-08
-summary: "The Media, Pennsylvania FBI office break-in on March 8, 1971, by the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI removed approximately 1,000 documents whose distribution to the press exposed COINTELPRO and triggered Hoover's formal termination of the program."
+summary: "The Media, Pennsylvania FBI office break-in on March 8, 1971, by the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI removed approximately 1,000 documents whose distribution exposed COINTELPRO and led Hoover to end the program."
 location: "Media, Pennsylvania"
 ---
@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ The group's identities remained unknown until 2014, when five members went publi
 ### The Documents and Their Distribution
-The group mailed packets of documents to multiple journalists and to Representative Parren Mitchell (D-Maryland). Several major newspapers, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, received the documents. Most held them initially. The Los Angeles Times published a story within days. [[The Washington Post]]'s Ben Bagdikian received and published documents, working with reporters including Betty Medsger; the Justice Department requested the Post not publish, and the Post ultimately decided to publish.[^1]
+The group mailed five sets of the 14 most explosive memoranda, under the name "Liberty Publications," to two members of Congress (including Representative Parren Mitchell, D-Maryland) and to writers at three national newspapers, among them Betty Medsger of [[The Washington Post]] and Jack Nelson of the [[Los Angeles Times]]. Four of the recipients quickly handed the packages to the FBI; the copies sent to Nelson were apparently diverted and never reached him. Medsger alone wrote a story. Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] telephoned Post editors and publisher Katharine Graham to ask that it not run, and Graham approved publication; the Post's front-page article of March 24, 1971 was headed "Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities."[^2]
 The documents included bureaucratic records with the word "COINTELPRO" in their headers - the program had never been publicly named and its existence was not known outside the FBI. The documents revealed that the FBI had been infiltrating and disrupting legal political organizations, opening mail, maintaining informants in campus and civil rights organizations, and preparing regular reports on the political views of American citizens.[^1]
@ -46,3 +46,4 @@ The Media documents seeded subsequent journalistic and congressional investigati
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Medsger, Betty. *The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI*. Knopf, 2014. Davidon, William, et al. (Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI). Original documents distributed March 1971. Church Committee, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976.
 [^2]: Garrow, David J. "Meet the Burglars Who Outsmarted Hoover's FBI," *The Washington Post*, January 26, 2014, p. B1 (review of Medsger, *The Burglary*), 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/
--- a/EVENTS/TERRORISM/Achille
+++ b/EVENTS/TERRORISM/Achille
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ location: "Mediterranean Sea"
 ---
 The [[Achille Lauro]] was a cruise ship that was attacked in 1985. This event is described as an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" propaganda operation designed to portray Palestinians as deadly and cutthroat.[^1]
-The operation was orchestrated by [[Rafi]], who passed instructions to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]]. [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]], who was reportedly receiving millions from [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. [[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] gathered a team to attack the cruise ship, with instructions to make the attack severe to show the world what would happen if Palestinian demands were not met.[^1]
+The operation was orchestrated by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]], who passed instructions to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]]. [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]], who was reportedly receiving millions from [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. [[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] gathered a team to attack the cruise ship, with instructions to make the attack severe to show the world what would happen if Palestinian demands were not met.[^1]
 During the attack, an elderly [[United States|American]] Jewish man in a wheelchair was killed and his body thrown overboard. For [[Israel]], this was considered the best kind of anti-Palestinian propaganda.[^1]
--- a/TECHNOLOGY/PSI_PHENOMENA/Psi.md
+++ b/TECHNOLOGY/PSI_PHENOMENA/Psi.md
@ -1,35 +1,81 @@
 ---
 created: 2025-07-22
 updated: 2025-07-22
 title: Psi
-tags:
+aliases:
-  - concept
+  - Psi
-  - parapsychology
+  - PSI
-description: Psi is a general term in parapsychology for psychic phenomena, encompassing abilities such as extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK).
+  - Psi Phenomena
  - Psi Phenomenon
  - Psi Processes
  - Psi Gamma
  - Psi Kappa
  - Psi-Missing
  - Psi Research
  - Anomalous Mental Phenomena
  - AMP
  - Anomalous Cognition
  - Anomalous Perturbation
  - Biocommunications
 created: 2025-07-22
 updated: 2026-10-05
 category: "Psi Phenomenon"
-summary: "Psi is a general term in Parapsychology for psychic phenomena, encompassing abilities such as Extrasensory Perception (ESP) and Psychokinesis (PK)."
+tags:
  - Concept
  - Parapsychology
  - Psi
  - Stargate
  - DefenseIntelligenceAgency
  - SovietParapsychology
  - ESP
  - Psychokinesis
 summary: "Psi is the neutral term for extrasensory perception and psychokinesis, used from 1942 by parapsychologists, in DIA and SRI documents, and replaced inside the STAR GATE program by the labels anomalous cognition and anomalous perturbation."
 description: "Psi is the neutral umbrella term in parapsychology for extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK), and the vocabulary through which Cold War intelligence agencies named the subject."
 ---
 Psi is the neutral umbrella term of [[Parapsychology]] for [[Extrasensory Perception|extrasensory perception]] (ESP) and [[Psychokinesis|psychokinesis]] (PK). The word also names the subject in the intelligence record: the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] used it in its Soviet-research studies of 1972 to 1978, [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] and [[Science Applications International Corporation]] (SAIC) used it in their contract reports, and the 1995 review of the [[Stargate Project]] defined its terms by reference to it.[^1][^3][^6][^7]
-[[Psi]] is a general term in [[Parapsychology]] for psychic phenomena, encompassing abilities such as [[Extrasensory Perception|extrasensory perception]] (ESP) and [[Psychokinesis|psychokinesis]] (PK). The concept of psi has been explored throughout history, from ancient shamans and prophets to modern scientific research. In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, psi is the underlying phenomenon investigated by programs like the [[Stargate Project|Stargate Project]] for military and intelligence applications.[^1]
+### Origin of the term
-### Manifestations of Psi
+The psychologist James E. Alcock wrote in 1987 that the term "psi" was "introduced by Thouless (1942) as a neutral label" to avoid the associations of "psychic phenomena" and "extrasensory perception," and that parapsychologists defined it, citing [[Stanley Krippner]] (1977), as "interactions between organisms and their environment (including other organisms) which are not mediated by recognized sensorimotor functions." Alcock argued that this made psi a purely negative definition, in which every normal sensorimotor explanation must first be eliminated.[^2] The SAIC glossary of 1991 attributes the sub-terms "psi gamma" (ESP) and "psi kappa" (PK) to R. H. Thouless and B. P. Wiesner, whose 1947 paper (published in the *Proceedings* of the [[Society for Psychical Research]]) a later author in the same collection called their "classic paper," putting forward the idea that ESP is the "extrasomatic extension" of normal perception and PK the extrasomatic extension of voluntary movement.[^3][^4] The glossary also defines "psi-hitting" and "psi-missing" as scoring above or below chance at a target, and "psi field hypothesis" as a theory of W. G. Roll that events connected with physical objects produce changes in "psi fields" apprehended by ESP.[^3]
-Psi can manifest in various forms, including:
+### Forms
-*   Clairvoyance: The ability to perceive objects or events without the use of the known senses, often at a distance or hidden from view. [[Remote Viewing]] is a specific application of clairvoyance.[^1]
+Writers in the field distinguish several manifestations:
-*   Precognition: The ability to perceive or predict future events. This was explored in techniques like [[Associative Remote Viewing|Associative Remote Viewing]].[^1]
+Clairvoyance, perception of objects or events without the known senses, often at a distance or hidden from view; [[Remote Viewing]] is the form of it developed at SRI by [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]].[^1]
-*   Telepathy: The direct mental communication of thoughts, feelings, or ideas from one mind to another without the use of conventional sensory channels. The [[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)|Nautilus (Telepathy Project)]] was a fabricated story that spurred Soviet research into telepathy.[^1]
+Precognition, perception of future events, the basis of [[Associative Remote Viewing]], in which an object or place serves as a surrogate for an abstract outcome. The SAIC glossary defines it as information about an event or target not yet chosen, "accessed without the possibility of a prediction or inference based on currently known clues."[^1][^3]
-*   Psychokinesis (PK): The ability to influence physical systems, objects, or events with the mind, without physical interaction. This includes phenomena like metal bending, as demonstrated by [[Uri Geller]], or affecting the swing rate of a pendulum.[^1]
+Telepathy, direct mental communication without conventional channels. [[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that the 1960 French magazine story of telepathy experiments with the submarine USS Nautilus (see [[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)]]) was a fabrication that Soviet researchers nonetheless cited, with the effect of spurring Soviet telepathy research.[^1]
-### Scientific Investigation and Challenges
+Psychokinesis, influence on physical systems without physical interaction, including the metal bending demonstrated by [[Uri Geller]] and the effects on pendulums recorded by SRI.[^1]
-Scientific investigation into psi has a long and controversial history. Early psychical research, which emerged from the study of hypnosis, later transformed into parapsychology, seeking to apply rigorous scientific methods to the study of psi. Despite efforts by researchers like [[J. B. Rhine]] and organizations like the [[Parapsychological Association]], psi research has largely remained outside mainstream science, facing skepticism and the "giggle factor" due to the lack of tangible, repeatable results and real-world applications that could convince the broader scientific community.[^1]
+### Soviet and Czechoslovak vocabulary
-However, government interest in psi, particularly from the [[Soviet Union|Soviet Union]] and the [[United States|U.S.]], led to covert research programs like the Stargate Project, driven by concerns about a potential "[[Psi Gap|psi gap]]." These programs explored the operational utility of psi for intelligence gathering, despite the scientific controversies.[^1]
+A July 1972 DIA report, "Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR" (ST-CS-01-169-72), prepared for the Army Surgeon General's medical intelligence office, stated that "the Soviets prefer the term biocommunications instead of the term parapsychology" and listed as terms that "normally mean parapsychology" in Soviet writing "psycho-physiology, psychotronics, psychoenergetics, or biophysical effects." Western parapsychologists, it wrote, referred to the same complex as "extrasensory perception (ESP) and psi phenomena." A March 30, 1978 DIA report, "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact," noted that the Soviet word [[Psychoenergetics|psychoenergetics]] had been "gaining popularity" and that the newer terms "tend to lessen or avoid adverse views sometimes associated with the older terminology."[^5][^6]
---
+The 1972 report's own summary posed the "strategic threat posed by the current 'explosion' in Soviet parapsychological research": that "Soviet efforts in the field of psi research sooner or later, might enable them" to know the contents of top-secret U.S. documents and the movements of troops and ships, to mold the thoughts of key leaders at a distance, to cause the instant death of any U.S. official at a distance, and to disable U.S. military equipment, including spacecraft, at a distance. The report called these "science fiction" but concluded that "the literature appears to support (b)," the influencing of leaders' thoughts, as the most possible use of psi phenomena in the period studied, drawing on [[Sheila Ostrander]] and Lynn Schroeder's *Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain*.[^5]
-[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
+### The "psi gap"
 The 1972 formulation became the "[[Psi Gap]]." Schnabel wrote in the London *Independent on Sunday* on August 27, 1995, in an article the CIA's files preserve as a wire transcript, that in the Sixties the Soviet Union began to pour resources into "ESP and psychokinesis, phenomena collectively termed 'psi' by researchers in the field," that much of it came under the control of the Soviet military and [[KGB]], and that by the early Seventies American analysts, "formerly concerned about a possible 'missile gap,'" were growing anxious about a "psi gap."[^8] The phrase appeared in the American press in January and February 1984, in *Time* ("An E.S.P. Gap: Exploring psychic weapons," January 23, 1984) and *Discover* ("A Psi Gap?"), both listed in a 1988 Air War College research report by Lieutenant Colonel Dolan M. McKelvy, "Psychic Warfare: Exploring the Mind Frontier." McKelvy quoted a source saying the "establishment has apparently gone underground and is using titles other than psi, ESP or parapsychology to contract out research," and another, McRae, that "any CIA report mentioning psi is automatically classified top secret or higher," while Targ wrote that reliable information on psychic functioning should be more easily available.[^9]
 ### Program terminology: AMP, AC and AP
 SAIC's 1991 "Comprehensive Research Plan for Anomalous Mental Phenomena," by [[Edwin May]] and Wanda L. W. Luke, defines "PSI. See Anomalous mental phenomena (AMP)," with anomalous cognition (AC) as the information-gathering form (the older ESP) and anomalous perturbation (AP) as the form that acts on matter (PK).[^3] The American Institutes for Research report of September 29, 1995 stated that "the investigators use the term 'Anomalous Mental Phenomena' to refer to what the parapsychologists label as psi," including ESP (called Anomalous Cognition) and psychokinesis (called Anomalous Perturbation); the experimenters claimed their results supported anomalous cognition, "especially clairvoyance ... and precognition," and found no evidence for anomalous perturbation.[^7]
 The two outside reviewers divided. Jessica Utts, a statistician, concluded that "using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established," that the results were "far beyond what is expected by chance" and that arguments from methodological flaws "are soundly refuted." [[Ray Hyman]] wrote that Utts's conclusion rested on three claims, that the statistical results of the SAIC and other experiments were far beyond chance, that methodological objections were refuted and that comparable effects had been replicated at several laboratories, and argued against each. The AIR evaluators, Michael Mumford, Andrew Rose and David Goslin, concluded that a "statistically significant laboratory effort has been demonstrated," but that it was unclear whether the effects could be attributed to paranormal ability, and that remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence.[^7]
 ### Scientific investigation and criticism
 Early psychical research, which emerged from the study of hypnosis, became parapsychology as researchers such as [[J. B. Rhine]] and the [[Parapsychological Association]] applied laboratory methods. Schnabel wrote that psi research stayed largely outside mainstream science, hampered by the "giggle factor" and the absence of repeatable results and applications. Alcock's critique held that parapsychologists had produced no "single reliable demonstration" of the paranormal and that principles such as the experimenter effect made the psi hypothesis unfalsifiable; he argued the field sought to establish a non-material aspect of human existence rather than explain anomalies.[^1][^2] Government interest nevertheless led, in Schnabel's account, to covert programs such as the Stargate Project, driven by the concern about a psi gap.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997.
 [^2]: Alcock, James E. "Parapsychology: Science of the Anomalous or Search for the Soul?" *Behavioral and Brain Sciences* 10, no. 4 (1987): 553-565, citing Thouless (1942) and Krippner (1977), CIA-RDP96-00789R002200120001-4. https://archive.org/download/cia-rdp96-00789r002200120001-4
 [^3]: May, Edwin C., and Wanda L. W. Luke. *A Comprehensive Research Plan for Anomalous Mental Phenomena (U)*, SAIC, June 7, 1991, glossary entries "PSI," "PSI Gamma," "PSI Kappa," "PSI-Hitting," "PSI-Missing," "PSI Field Hypothesis," "Precognition," CIA-RDP96-00789R003100080001-9.
 [^4]: Reference to Thouless and Wiesner (1947) in a chapter on biofeedback control and PK, CIA-RDP96-00792R000701030002-5 (and the related CIA-RDP96-00792R000701040001-5).
 [^5]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR" (ST-CS-01-169-72), July 1972, section I paragraph 1 and the threat assessment at pp. 39-40, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100120001-9.
 [^6]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78, March 30, 1978 (Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command), introduction. https://archive.org/details/ParaphysicsRDWarsawPact_201609
 [^7]: 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 the reviews of Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4.
 [^8]: Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi," *The Independent on Sunday* (London), Sunday Review, August 27, 1995, pp. 10-13, as transcribed by FBIS and circulated in a CIA memorandum of August 28, 1995 ("US Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported"), CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.
 [^9]: McKelvy, Dolan M. *Psychic Warfare: Exploring the Mind Frontier.* Air War College research report, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, May 1988, reference list and section "No Focal Point," CIA-RDP96-00789R001001420001-3.
--- a/PLACES/LANDMARKS/Syrian
+++ b/PLACES/LANDMARKS/Syrian
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ tags:
 category: "Landmark"
 summary: "The Syrian Embassy in London was implicated in a 1986 plot to bomb an El Al plane, orchestrated by Rafi Eitan to discredit Syria."
 ---
-The [[Syrian Embassy in London]] was implicated in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane, orchestrated by [[Rafi]] to discredit [[Syria]]. [[Nezar Hindawi]] was instructed to meet with a Syrian intelligence officer at the embassy, leading him to believe his actions were for the Arab cause. Following the foiled plot, [[Margaret Thatcher|Margaret Thatcher's]] government closed down the embassy in London.[^1]
+The [[Syrian Embassy in London]] was implicated in a 1986 plot to bomb an [[El Al]] plane, orchestrated by [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] to discredit [[Syria]]. [[Nezar Hindawi]] was instructed to meet with a Syrian intelligence officer at the embassy, leading him to believe his actions were for the Arab cause. Following the foiled plot, [[Margaret Thatcher|Margaret Thatcher's]] government closed down the embassy in London.[^1]
 ### Footnotes
 [^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.