diff --git a/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md b/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md index 0205c202..a69ce457 100644 --- a/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md +++ b/00 - META/CHANGELOG.md @@ -1,8 +1,36 @@ -- 2026-10-05T1715 · [[Annie Jacobsen]] +- 2026-10-05T1725 · [[Cocaine]] +- 2026-10-05T1725 · [[Jose Santacruz Londono]] +- 2026-10-05T1725 · [[Gambino Crime Family]] +- 2026-10-05T1724 · [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] +- 2026-10-05T1724 · [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]] +- 2026-10-05T1723 · [[Medellin Cartel]] +- 2026-10-05T1722 · [[Ronald Reagan]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[Fort Meade]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[Dimona]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[Science Applications International Corporation]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[U.S. Army]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[U.S. Air Force]] +- 2026-10-05T1721 · [[Science Applications International Corporation]] +- 2026-10-05T1720 · [[_FOIA_A4]] +- 2026-10-05T1720 · [[_NOTES_A4]] +- 2026-10-05T1720 · [[Oliver North]] +- 2026-10-05T1719 · [[U.S. Air Force]] +- 2026-10-05T1719 · [[Dimona]] +- 2026-10-05T1719 · [[Thomas Gates]] +- 2026-10-05T1718 · [[Freedom of Information Act]] +- 2026-10-05T1718 · [[U.S. Customs]] +- 2026-10-05T1718 · [[DEA]] +- 2026-10-05T1718 · [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] +- 2026-10-05T1718 · [[DEA]] +- 2026-10-05T1717 · [[_DELTA_Ingo Swann_A6]] +- 2026-10-05T1717 · [[_DELTA_Hal Puthoff_A6]] +- 2026-10-05T1717 · [[_FOIA_A2]] +- 2026-10-05T1717 · [[_NOTES_A2]] +- 2026-10-05T1716 · [[Freedom of Information Act]] +- 2026-10-05T1716 · [[U.S. Army]] - 2026-10-05T1715 · [[U.S. Customs]] +- 2026-10-05T1715 · [[Annie Jacobsen]] - 2026-10-05T1715 · [[Fort Meade]] -- 2026-10-05T1714 · [[DEA]] -- 2026-10-05T1713 · [[Science Applications International Corporation]] - 2026-10-05T1713 · [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] - 2026-10-05T1711 · [[Kit Green]] - 2026-10-05T1711 · [[R. S. Hawke]] @@ -70,31 +98,3 @@ - 2026-10-05T1639 · [[9 East 71st Street]] - 2026-10-05T1639 · [[358 El Brillo Way]] - 2026-10-05T1639 · [[United Arab Emirates]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Tampa, Florida]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Shreveport, Louisiana]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Sierra Blanca, Texas]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Palm Beach, Florida]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Little Rock, Arkansas]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Frankfurt]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Fort Lauderdale]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Coral Gables, Florida]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Charlotte Amalie]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Baton Rouge, Louisiana]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Satoshi Nakamoto]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Pretty Good Privacy]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Hashcash]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Cybernetics]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[BlackNet]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Thiel Influence Network]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Palantir Gotham]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Whole Earth Catalog]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Russian Cosmism]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[EtherSec]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Chan ARG Ecosystem]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Antichrist]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Utilitarianism]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[Transhumanism]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[The Sovereign Individual]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[The Californian Ideology]] -- 2026-10-05T1639 · [[TESCREAL]] diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/DEA.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/DEA.md index c5f0ab0a..6c82cc65 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/DEA.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/DEA.md @@ -3,8 +3,9 @@ title: DEA aliases: - DEA - Drug Enforcement Administration + - Drug Enforcement Agency created: 2026-05-17 -updated: 2026-05-17 +updated: 2026-10-05 category: "U.S. Government" tags: - Organization @@ -12,67 +13,115 @@ tags: - UnitedStates - 1980s - DarkAllianceInvestigation -summary: "The Drug Enforcement Administration was the principal federal anti-narcotics agency that possessed extensive knowledge of Danilo Blandón's cocaine trafficking as early as 1981 yet took no action while he received U.S. political asylum." + - IranContra + - Stargate + - ContraWar +summary: "The federal anti-narcotics agency whose files, informants and Central American offices recur in the Contra drug cases, the Seal sting, the Camarena search and the Stargate collection." start: 1973-07-01 location: "Arlington, Virginia" +relations: + - type: member_of + with: "[[Department of Justice]]" + role: "federal anti-narcotics agency" + fn: 1 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Danilo Blandon]]" + reverse: true + start: 1994 + end: 1996 + role: "paid informant used in the San Diego case against Ricky Ross" + fn: 8 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Norwin Meneses]]" + reverse: true + start: 1987-07-24 + end: 1989-12-23 + role: "formally established informant of the Costa Rica country office, briefly reactivated May 1990" + fn: 10 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Barry Seal]]" + reverse: true + role: "pilot used to photograph Colombian and Nicaraguan figures" + fn: 6 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Ricky Ross]]" + start: 1994-10 + end: 1995-03-02 + role: "San Diego reverse sting" + fn: 8 --- -Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a branch of the [[Department of Justice|U.S. Department of Justice]] and the principal federal agency responsible for enforcement of anti-drug laws.[^3] It is the successor to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). During the Contra war, multiple DEA agents and offices were involved in or aware of Contra-connected [[Cocaine]] trafficking. -### Contra War Involvement +The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a component of the [[Department of Justice]] and the principal federal agency enforcing the controlled substance laws of the [[United States]]. It was created on July 1, 1973, under Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1973, by merging the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement and a contingent of agents from the [[U.S. Customs|Customs Service]].[^1] Its offices in [[Costa Rica]], [[Guatemala]], [[Mexico]] and [[Los Angeles]] appear throughout the records of the Contra war, and its requests for help appear in the [[Stargate Project]] files. -DEA agent [[Celerino Castillo]] discovered Contra cocaine trafficking at [[Ilopango Airbase|Ilopango Air Force Base]] in [[El Salvador]] and was subsequently forced to retire.[^2] [[Robert Nieves|"The Snowman" Nieves]], head of the DEA office in [[Costa Rica]], was identified by [[Norwin Meneses]] as his control agent. While Nieves was DEA attaché in Costa Rica, the DEA office was alleged by Costa Rican officials to be involved in drug trafficking and protecting cocaine labs in Contra war zones. Nieves later became head of all DEA operations internationally before resigning in 1995 and joining [[Oliver North]]'s company Guardian Technologies.[^2] +### The 1982 Reporting Agreement -[[Joseph Kelso]], a former [[Central Intelligence Agency]] operative and undercover Customs informant who investigated DEA involvement in cocaine trafficking in Costa Rica, was beaten and threatened with death by DEA agents, deported, and arrested for probation violation. +On February 11, 1982, Attorney General [[William French Smith]] wrote to Director of Central Intelligence [[William Casey]], on the day the Justice Department and the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] signed a memorandum on reporting federal crimes, that no formal requirement to report narcotics violations by non-employees had been included in the procedures, citing the agency's drug intelligence mandate under Executive Order 12333 and "the fine cooperation the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from CIA." Casey's reply of March 2 did not address the point. The Inspector General found that the memorandum did not list narcotics among the crimes the CIA had to report for non-employees and was unclear on whether it covered paid assets; a 1995 memorandum was amended to require reporting of drug offenses by non-employees. In July 1987 the chief of the CIA Central American Task Force, [[Alan Fiers]], told the congressional intelligence committees the CIA reported "immediately all information on narcotics trafficking" to law enforcement, and said the CIA would meet the DEA about possible trafficking by the Nicaraguan resistance; neither the DEA nor the CIA Inspector General found a record of such a meeting, and Fiers declined an interview.[^2] -### Castillo Investigation and Ilopango +The Inspector General also found that from 1986 or 1987 the CIA asked the DEA Intelligence Division for "derogatory information" on pilots it was considering for Contra operations, and that the Division ran NADDIS searches and reported the results.[^2] DEA personnel in Costa Rica told the Inspector General that the Station "always took and never gave," that one attache's Station contacts were sometimes "eyes only" and not to be shared with headquarters, and that none recalled the CIA passing information about Contra trafficking or asking them to refrain from investigating Contras.[^3] -Celerino Castillo discovered Contra cocaine trafficking at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador and was subsequently forced to retire.[^2] Castillo began firing off reports to DEA headquarters in January 1986 about suspicious activities of Contra pilots, listing their names, destinations, tail numbers, and criminal records. He received no replies and no offers of assistance. When Ambassador Edwin Corr requested an internal DEA review, the DEA informed him that Castillo's information was "totally inaccurate" and ordered him to close the investigation. The DEA later claimed under FOIA that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango - a claim the [[Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General|Justice Department Inspector General]] exposed as false, having located and quoted from the reports.[^6] +### The Camarena Search and Project 8501 + +The DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar disappeared in Guadalajara on February 7, 1985, after leaving the U.S. consulate. The New York Times reported on February 11 that it was the first kidnapping of a U.S. narcotics agent in Mexico since the joint anti-drug effort began in 1975, and that a high-ranking Mexican official said the most unusual aspect was that "they usually just kill them." The Washington Post reported on March 6 that the bodies of Camarena and the pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar were found near Zamora, Michoacan, with a $50,000 U.S. reward unclaimed, on property of a family killed in a police shoot-out the previous weekend, and that a U.S. source said, "There are a lot of inconsistencies, a lot of holes in the story."[^4] + +A memorandum for record of March 18, 1985, in the CIA's Stargate collection, titled "Project 8501," states that before February 15 the Army unit conducting remote viewing was alerted that it might assist the DEA with the Camarena case, that the DEA formally requested [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] assistance on February 15, and that authorization came on February 16 with collection beginning within hours. Five sources were interviewed by one interviewer who had no contact with DEA personnel or "close hold" investigative information. A sealed envelope held the coordinates of the Guadalajara consulate, the time and date of the kidnapping, Camarena's name and a photograph, and each source was asked to describe "the critical location." The sources' composite described a poor area of low, flat-roofed buildings with unpaved streets and one taller, hotel-like building of two to three stories with a large domed structure, a large silver water-tank-like structure and water to the east and west nearby. One source described a man alone in a room in a chair; another described the occupant as "afraid and angry yet determined and hopeful." The memorandum notes the data went to the DEA, that Camarena was found dead on March 6, that "no feedback" on the described location had been or was expected to be provided, and that any association between the interviewer and military intelligence was classified CONFIDENTIAL.[^5] + +### Seal, Mena and the Cartel Sting + +A Senate subcommittee report found that the DEA used the former smuggler Barry Seal as an informant in a sensitive operation against the Colombian cartels and Sandinista officials, that Seal flew to [[Nicaragua]] and photographed [[Federico Vaughn]] and [[Pablo Escobar]] loading Seal's plane, and that the operation was disclosed prematurely by an administration official who leaked the evidence to influence a pending congressional vote on Contra aid, to the fury of law enforcement officials who saw their agents' lives jeopardized. After the exposure Vaughn disappeared; the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime found the telephone number Vaughn used in calls from Seal was one the U.S. embassy had controlled since 1985. The report added that associates of Seal who operated aircraft service businesses at the Mena, Arkansas, airport were targets of grand jury probes, and that the cases were dropped over the protests of State and federal law enforcement officials although the evidence sufficed for money laundering indictments.[^6] ### Costa Rica: Kelso Investigation -In 1986, Joseph Kelso, a CIA and [[U.S. Customs]] informant, gathered testimony from six witnesses willing to testify that DEA agents in Costa Rica were skimming cocaine from seizures, making counterfeit money, and protecting cocaine labs including on Contra bases. DEA agent Robert Nieves had Kelso arrested and threatened his life. Kelso's evidence tapes were turned over to Oliver North via [[Robert Owen]], who threw them away when the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] broke. The DEA never investigated the allegations. DEA director Jack Lawn told Congress he had never heard of the case.[^7] +In 1986, [[Joseph Kelso]], a CIA and U.S. Customs informant, gathered testimony from six witnesses willing to testify that DEA agents in Costa Rica were skimming cocaine from seizures, making counterfeit money and protecting cocaine labs including on Contra bases. [[Gary Webb]] wrote that DEA agent [[Robert Nieves]] had Kelso arrested and threatened his life, that Kelso was beaten and deported, that his evidence tapes were turned over to [[Oliver North]] through [[Robert Owen]], who threw them away when the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] broke, that the DEA never investigated, and that DEA Administrator Jack Lawn told Congress he had never heard of the case. Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.[^7] -### Relationship with Blandón +### Blandon in DEA Files -[[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] became a DEA informant after his 1992 arrest. The government secured his cooperation by dropping charges against his wife [[Chepita Blandon|Chepita Blandón]], granting her [[United States|U.S.]] citizenship, reducing his sentence from life to twenty-eight months, and releasing him on unsupervised probation to work as a full-time paid informant. Blandón subsequently served as the chief confidential informant in the DEA reverse sting that arrested [[Ricky Ross]].[^1] +The Justice Department Inspector General found the first mention of [[Danilo Blandon]] in DEA files was a March 1983 debriefing of a confidential source in Los Angeles, followed by a January 1985 source report that Blandon supplied cocaine to [[Norwin Meneses]] and a February 1986 report that he had attended a Contra support conference in Miami in December 1982. The Inspector General wrote that this was "treated as background intelligence" and that the DEA opened a case on Blandon in August 1986 when an informant walked into the Riverside office. A judge granted Blandon political asylum on August 19, 1985, after a January 1983 denial.[^8] -The DEA possessed extensive knowledge of Blandón's drug dealing years before recruiting him as an informant. The agency opened a NADDIS file on Blandón on May 24, 1983, after receiving a tip from a confidential informant that he was a member of a cocaine trafficking organization. In early 1984, while Blandón's political asylum application was under review at the [[State Department|State Department]], the DEA learned from an informant that he was "the head" of his own cocaine distribution organization based in Los Angeles. The DEA similarly opened a NADDIS file on Blandón's wife Chepita on March 15, 1985, after she was reported as a "member of a cocaine distribution organization" - yet she was granted political asylum later that same year. It is State Department policy to check with the DEA before approving asylum applications. When the Justice Department's Inspector General examined the Blandóns' immigration records, he found them "in disarray."[^4] +Webb wrote that the DEA opened a NADDIS file on Blandon on May 24, 1983, on a tip that he belonged to a cocaine trafficking organization; that in early 1984, while his asylum application was under State Department review, an informant told the DEA he was "the head" of his own Los Angeles distribution organization; that the DEA opened a NADDIS file on his wife [[Chepita Blandon]] on March 15, 1985, before she was granted asylum that year; that State Department policy was to check with the DEA before approving asylum; and that the Inspector General found the Blandons' immigration records "in disarray." Webb is the sole source for the NADDIS dates and the quoted finding.[^9] -### Relationship with Meneses +Webb wrote that after Blandon's 1992 arrest the government dropped charges against Chepita Blandon, granted her citizenship, reduced his sentence to twenty-eight months and released him on unsupervised probation as a full-time paid informant. The Inspector General found Blandon was sentenced to 48 months, reduced to 28 on a government motion for substantial cooperation, found no sign the leniency rested on anything but his cooperation, and concluded an INS agent improperly obtained him a green card in 1994 despite his felony conviction because the agent wanted to avoid the effort of obtaining travel documents the proper way.[^8] -Norwin Meneses worked as a DEA informant from 1985 to 1991 despite being under federal indictment for drug trafficking since 1989.[^2] In Costa Rica, DEA agent [[Sandalio Gonzalez]] handled Meneses as an off-the-books informant whose name did not appear in DEA databases until 1987, preventing other DEA offices from knowing about his status. DEA public affairs chief James McGivney offered to facilitate an interview with Meneses but demanded a "quid pro quo" - that reporters leave out details about Danilo Blandón's relationship with the DEA.[^5] +### Costa Rica: Meneses and Operation Perico -During 1987 Senate subcommittee hearings, Senator [[John Kerry]] told DEA director Jack Lawn that "the head of the DEA office in Costa Rica was interviewed by this committee and he told us that the infrastructure that was used to supply the Contras was used to smuggle drugs." Lawn said he was not familiar with the report. The DEA's position was that there was "no credible evidence" to support such allegations. The DEA officer in question, Robert J. Nieves, was Meneses's control agent throughout the remainder of the 1980s.[^5] +Norwin Meneses approached the DEA Costa Rica office in July 1986. The Inspector General found that the agent, [[Sandalio Gonzalez]], checked DEA databases, found no warrants, and in December 1986 sent Meneses and a DEA informant ("DEA CI-1") to Los Angeles, where in January 1987 they met Blandon, [[Ivan Torres]] and others. The San Francisco FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office, and FBI agent [[Douglas Aukland]], were surprised. On July 24, 1987, the Costa Rica office formally established Meneses as an informant, noted "no pending charges known at this time," obtained a 45-day visa for him in September 1987 and another in November, deactivated him on December 23, 1989, reactivated him briefly in May 1990 and paid him $7,377.50 over thirteen payments. Meneses had been indicted under seal in San Francisco in February 1989. In a debriefing on February 10, 1987, Meneses told Gonzalez he had personally paid $5,000 "on numerous occasions" to a DEA agent in the San Francisco area three to four years earlier "for protection," and that the agent worked with corrupt San Francisco police officials. Gonzalez forwarded the memorandum to headquarters; a DEA Office of Professional Responsibility official replied by telephone on March 16, 1987, that the allegation had been made in June 1985, investigated and found false (the office had issued a clearance letter to the agent on February 3, 1986), and no further action was taken. The FBI had polygraphed two persons who made the earlier allegation, Jairo Meneses and Renato Pena, in July 1986 and its examiner concluded they were deceptive in denying they had lied.[^10] -Despite obvious and widespread trafficking through Contra war zones in northern Costa Rica, a U.S. Senate subcommittee reported in 1988 that it was "unable to find a single case against a drug trafficker operating in those zones which was made on the basis of a tip or report by an official of a U.S. intelligence agency." Costa Rican prosecutor Jorge Chavarria said the DEA "knew about the Contras and drugs. All these flights and pilots that were flying in and out with drugs could not have been ignored by the DEA. They were looking in the other direction."[^5] +Webb called the January 1987 operation "Operation Perico" and wrote that the CIA operative "Roberto" accompanied Meneses, that the DEA conducted it without informing Aukland, that the debriefing reports captured admissions that CIA representatives were aware of Contra drug activity and did not mind, that the San Francisco office cabled Costa Rica that it did not know "who was being targeted," and that headquarters was asked "whether an indictment of Meneses by the San Francisco FBI will result in national security problems with other agencies." Webb also wrote that Meneses worked as a DEA informant from 1985 to 1991 despite the 1989 indictment, that Nieves was his control agent, and that the DEA public affairs chief James McGivney offered an interview with Meneses on condition that reporters omit Blandon's DEA ties. Webb is the sole source for these passages.[^11] -### Operation Perico +Webb quoted Senator [[John Kerry]] telling Lawn in 1987 that the head of the Costa Rica office told the committee "the infrastructure that was used to supply the Contras was used to smuggle drugs," and quoted the Costa Rican prosecutor Jorge Chavarria saying the DEA "knew about the Contras and drugs... They were looking in the other direction."[^12] The subcommittee's own report of December 1988 stated that despite "obvious and widespread trafficking through the war zones of northern Costa Rica" it was "unable to find a single case against a drug trafficker operating in those zones which was made on the basis of a tip or report by an official of a U.S. intelligence agency."[^6] -In December 1986, DEA agent Gonzalez in Costa Rica launched "Operation Perico," sending Norwin Meneses and a CIA operative known as "Roberto" to infiltrate Blandón's drug ring in Los Angeles. The operation was conducted without informing [[Douglas Aukland|FBI agent Aukland]], who was leading the federal investigation of the same targets. In early January 1987, Meneses and Roberto met with Blandón and FDN official [[Ivan Torres]], gathering intelligence about the drug operation and its connections to the Contras. The CIA operative's debriefing reports captured admissions that CIA representatives were aware of Contra drug activities and did not mind.[^8] +### Morales, Hull and the Southern Front -Other DEA offices were angered by the Costa Rican operation. The San Francisco office cabled Costa Rica complaining it had no idea "who was being targeted by Meneses and [Roberto]" or what they were supposedly investigating. An accompanying cable to DEA headquarters inquired "whether an indictment of Meneses by the San Francisco FBI will result in national security problems with other agencies." After Meneses completed his mission and returned to Costa Rica, he refused to continue as an informant. Once the OCDETF investigation was shelved in July 1987, the DEA rehired Meneses and began issuing him visas that allowed him to travel in and out of the United States at will.[^8] +The Inspector General reproduced CIA memoranda of October 25, November 5 and December 5, 1984, reporting that Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro of the [[Eden Pastora]] group had agreed in Miami with the trafficker Jorge Morales to provide airstrips in return for aircraft, pilot training and money, and that the CIA told Justice representatives, including DEA and FBI personnel, on November 9, 1984. A later DEA cable said the source "had not furnished actionable information." The Inspector General noted that if the CIA had the information by November 28 it should have notified the DEA immediately. When DEA analysts debriefed Morales in a Miami jail in January 1988, he named [[John Hull]] and a Costa Rican ranch as a transit point. Agent Juan Perez inspected the airstrip, found it short and grass-surfaced, and reported orally to Nieves, then Costa Rica country attache; no one else in the office investigated. The Inspector General noted that Lawn later told the Kerry subcommittee Morales had passed a polygraph, although Morales had changed his allegations about a "Contra connection" after an initial finding of deception.[^3] + +### Castillo, Ilopango and Customs + +DEA agent [[Celerino Castillo]], assigned to the Guatemala City office, which covered El Salvador, from 1985 to 1990, opened an investigation of the pilot Grasheim, who Castillo wrote had crash-landed near Tamiami, Florida, in May 1986 claiming to be a "secret agent," and whose Salvadoran home was searched on September 1, 1986. At a briefing on October 30, 1986, U.S. Customs agent Richard Rivera told Ambassador [[Edwin Corr]] Customs had investigated Grasheim for years for illegal export of weapons and "hi-tech" equipment; Corr asked that any investigation be "very discreet." On November 21, 1986, the Guatemala country attache Robert Stia closed the DEA case, recording that "the drug aspect" was concluded and that the information went to Customs and the [[Internal Revenue Service]].[^13] + +Webb wrote that Castillo discovered Contra cocaine trafficking at [[Ilopango Airbase]], began sending reports to DEA headquarters in January 1986 listing names, destinations, tail numbers and criminal records without reply, that Corr requested an internal review and the DEA told him Castillo's information was "totally inaccurate" and ordered the investigation closed, that Castillo was forced to retire, and that the DEA later claimed under the Freedom of Information Act it had no such reports, a claim Webb said the Inspector General exposed as false. Webb is the sole source for these passages.[^14] The Inspector General reported that Castillo refused an interview unless he could record it and have Representative [[Maxine Waters]] present, found that Castillo had passed such information in 1986 and that the Ilopango investigation was closed amid sensitive covert supply operations, found his broader conclusions unsupported, and recorded that Castillo resigned in 1992.[^13] ### San Diego Reverse Sting -The DEA's most significant operation involving Blandón as an informant was the March 1995 reverse sting that arrested Ricky Ross. After Blandón was recruited as a full-time paid informant following his 1992 arrest, he reestablished contact with Ross, who had been released from prison in 1993 and was attempting to go straight with the Freeway Academy youth center project. Blandón called Ross repeatedly, paged him constantly, and pressed him to resume drug dealing. Ross's probation officer James Galipeau confirmed Blandón's persistence: "The son-of-a-bitch called him while he was in the car with his probation officer!"[^9] +Webb wrote that Blandon, recruited as a full-time paid informant, reestablished contact with [[Ricky Ross]], released in 1993 and attempting to go straight with the Freeway Academy youth center, calling and paging him constantly, and that Ross's probation officer James Galipeau said, "The son-of-a-bitch called him while he was in the car with his probation officer!" On March 2, 1995, at the Bonita Plaza Mall in Chula Vista, DEA agents watched [[Leroy Brown|"Chico" Brown]] hand $169,445 to Blandon's Colombian associate for 100 kilos of cocaine in a booby-trapped Chevy Blazer, and agent Charles Jones said agents blocked the vehicle and activated a kill switch. Webb is the sole source.[^15] The Inspector General found the DEA opened its investigation of Ross in October 1994 after Ross contacted Blandon, that Ross was convicted over an entrapment defense and, with two prior felony drug convictions, received a mandatory life sentence, and that Ross's claim of retaliation for his 1991 testimony against sheriff's deputies was not supported.[^8] -When Ross's associate [[Leroy Brown|"Chico" Brown]] proposed a drug deal with Blandón to settle a $30,000 debt, Blandón served as the government's inside man. On March 2, 1995, at the Bonita Plaza Mall in Chula Vista, DEA agents watched as Brown handed $169,445 to Blandón's Colombian associate in exchange for 100 kilos of cocaine in a booby-trapped Chevy Blazer. DEA agent Charles Jones said federal agents blocked the vehicle and activated a kill switch. Ross was captured after a brief foot chase. The DEA had been taping Ross's conversations with Blandón throughout the operation.[^9] +### October 1995 Meeting With Webb -### Attempt to Suppress the Dark Alliance Story - -In October 1995, [[Gary Webb]] was contacted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall, who warned that Webb's reporting could endanger Blandón and compromise ongoing investigations. On October 19, 1995, Webb met with [[Craig Chretien|SAC Craig Chretien]] and six agents at the National City regional office. Chretien asked Webb to omit Blandón's DEA ties; agent [[Chuck Jones]] denied any knowledge of Blandón's Contra drug history but inadvertently confirmed the DEA knew about it during the exchange. Chretien proposed trading information about Norwin Meneses if Webb would drop the Blandón angle. Eight days later, Robert Nieves resigned as head of the International Division and Chretien was promoted to replace him.[^10] - -The DEA's public affairs office in Washington later attempted to broker a deal: an interview with Meneses in exchange for omitting Blandón's DEA ties. Freelance journalist [[Georg Hodel]] beat them to it, locating Meneses in a Nicaraguan prison.[^10] +Webb wrote that in October 1995 Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall warned him his reporting could endanger Blandon; that on October 19 Special Agent in Charge [[Craig Chretien]] and six agents met him at the National City regional office and asked him to omit Blandon's DEA ties; that agent [[Chuck Jones]] denied knowing of Blandon's Contra drug history yet confirmed the DEA knew; that Chretien offered information about Meneses in exchange; that eight days later Nieves resigned as head of the International Division and Chretien was promoted to replace him; and that Nieves later joined Guardian Technologies, a company associated with Oliver North. Freelance journalist [[Georg Hodel]] located Meneses in a Nicaraguan prison before the DEA's brokered interview materialized. Webb is the sole source for these passages.[^16] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know" -[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Cast of Characters -[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Glossary of Organizations and Locations -[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it" -[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction" -[^6]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends" -[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 17: "We're going to blow your fucking head off" -[^8]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter" -[^9]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 24: "They're gonna forget I was a drug dealer" -[^10]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 25: "Things are moving all around us" +[^1]: Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1973, 38 Fed. Reg. 15932, 87 Stat. 1091, effective July 1, 1973; Drug Enforcement Administration, "DEA History: The Early Years," https://www.dea.gov/es/node/1045 +[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter XI, sections B and E, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch11p1.htm +[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter XI, sections C, D, F and footnote 82, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch11p1.htm +[^4]: Richard J. Meislin, New York Times, February 11, 1985, and William A. Orme Jr., Washington Post, March 6, 1985, as filed in CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750003-8 and -0004-7, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750003-8 +[^5]: Memorandum for Record, "Project 8501," March 18, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750015-5, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750015-5 +[^6]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), chapters on the Barry Seal episode and "Intelligence vs. Law Enforcement," https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras +[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 17: "We're going to blow your fucking head off." +[^8]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Executive Summary sections II and VI, and Chapter II (Blandon), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch02p1.htm +[^9]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it." +[^10]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter III (Norwin Meneses), section on continued use of Meneses by the Costa Rica DEA, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch03p2.htm +[^11]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter," Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction," and Cast of Characters. +[^12]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction." +[^13]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter X (Celerino Castillo), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch10p2.htm +[^14]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends," and Cast of Characters. +[^15]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 24: "They're gonna forget I was a drug dealer." +[^16]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 25: "Things are moving all around us." diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md index 6a0c3707..d1ea8dd6 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md @@ -1,45 +1,119 @@ --- created: 2025-07-22 -updated: 2025-07-22 +updated: 2026-10-05 title: Federal Bureau of Investigation aliases: - FBI + - Federal Bureau of Investigation + - Bureau of Investigation + - The Bureau +category: "U.S. Government" tags: - Organization - Government - USA - LawEnforcement - FBI + - UFO + - Stargate - DarkAllianceInvestigation -category: "U.S. Government" -summary: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency." + - IranContra + - BCCI + - Epstein +summary: "The principal federal investigative agency, whose files record the 1947 Maury Island inquiry, the 1950 Hottel memorandum, the 1986 Operation Front Door, the Meneses indictment and the 2006 Epstein case." start: 1908-07-26 location: "Washington, D.C." +relations: + - type: member_of + with: "[[Department of Justice]]" + role: "investigative component" + fn: 14 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Fred Crisman]]" + start: 1947-08 + role: "Maury Island flying disc inquiry and 1947 Atomic Energy Act applicant investigation" + fn: 1 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Ronald Lister]]" + start: 1983-09 + end: 1987 + role: "five FBI files, including a Neutrality Act inquiry into Pyramid International Security Consultants" + fn: 6 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Norwin Meneses]]" + start: 1987-02 + end: 1991 + role: "San Francisco FBI case, sealed indictment obtained February 1989" + fn: 9 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Jeffrey Epstein]]" + start: 2006 + end: 2007 + role: "West Palm Beach FBI squad, case agents and supervisor" + fn: 14 --- -The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. The FBI was aware of the [[Stargate Project|Grill Flame]] program and occasionally sought assistance from its remote viewers for counterintelligence situations.[^1] +The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the principal federal criminal investigative agency of the [[United States]] and a component of the [[Department of Justice]]. Its files bear on several clusters of this vault: the 1947 flying disc inquiries, the army parapsychology program, the Contra drug cases, the [[Operation C-Chase]] prosecution of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] and the Palm Beach investigation of [[Jeffrey Epstein]]. -### Psi Research Assistance +### Maury Island and the Crisman File -One notable instance involved an FBI official seeking [[Norm Everheart]]'s help to investigate a Soviet Embassy official using a fishing pole suspiciously. [[Joe McMoneagle]]'s remote viewing session accurately revealed the pole was being used to retrieve a dead-drop package, helping the FBI break an important case.[^1] +On August 6, 1947, the FBI field office in [[Seattle]] teletyped the Director that Army Air Forces intelligence officers at [[McChord Field]] attributed the August 1 crash of a B-25 at [[Kelso, Washington]], to a burned-out exhaust stack and not to sabotage. The same teletype stated that the two officers killed, Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown of the Fourth Air Force, had flown to [[Tacoma]] to interview Harold Dahl and [[Fred Crisman]] about flying discs reported over [[Maury Island]], and that they carried some of the disc fragments on the flight. [[Kenneth Arnold]] and the United Airlines pilot Emil Smith were interviewed with them at the Winthrop Hotel on July 31. The teletype also reported anonymous telephone calls on July 31 and August 1 to a Tacoma Times reporter and a United Press wireman asserting that the B-25 had been sabotaged or shot down, and that the story had possibly been begun by Dahl and Crisman to promote the sale of slag from a gravel pit.[^1] -### Dark Alliance Investigation +A later Hoover teletype in the same file noted from the interrogation of Smith that Dahl had admitted on the night of August 2 that the story was a hoax, and observed that Dahl and Crisman evidently had not told the Army officers, who otherwise would probably not have taken the fragments aboard. It stated that when the point was clarified "no further investigation" was necessary.[^1] -During the Contra war, the FBI investigated - and in some cases suppressed - connections between [[Contras|Contra]] supporters and [[Cocaine]] trafficking. In 1982, the FBI identified [[Fernando Sanchez|Fernando Sánchez]] and [[Horacio Pereira]] as cocaine suppliers to the Contra drug operation in [[San Francisco]]. In 1987, Contra supporter [[Dennis Ainsworth]] told the FBI that [[Norwin Meneses]] "ran one of the major distributions in the U.S. He was national. And he was totally protected." The FBI took no apparent action.[^2] +The Bureau's file on Crisman continued for three decades. A House Select Committee on Assassinations outside-contact report of May 18, 1978, indexes the FBI's Crisman volumes: a 1947 applicant investigation under the Atomic Energy Act, Seattle reports of September 13, 1947, a 1966 informant report about Crisman and a business partner who operated an organization called the National Institute of Criminology and who described Crisman as carrying $100,000 in cash for the Democratic Central Committee to California, a CIA-to-FBI communication about Crisman dated April 20, 1970, and an anonymous letter about Crisman's background as an alleged CIA agent. The index also lists 1974 stock-certificate inquiries and "JFK References" serials.[^2] -Between 1983 and 1986, the FBI opened five separate investigations of [[Ronald Lister]] for trafficking in illegal weapons. In September 1983, [[Pyramid International Security Consultants]] came under FBI scrutiny for Neutrality Act violations involving weapons sales to [[El Salvador]] and Saudi loans. Despite the Saudi government's involvement in financing covert operations, "no further information was ever developed."[^3] +### The Hottel Memorandum -### Operation Front Door and Iran-Contra +An FBI memorandum dated March 22, 1950, from the Washington Field Office, begins: "An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico." It describes the objects as circular with raised centers, about 50 feet in diameter, each occupied by three bodies of human shape three feet tall in metallic cloth. The memorandum attributes the location to a high-powered radar installation in the area that was believed to interfere with the saucers' control mechanism. The name of the informant is blacked out. The copy circulates under the cover sheet "Guy Hottel (3-22-1950)," after the special agent in charge of the field office.[^3] -In November 1986, FBI agent [[Douglas Aukland|Aukland]] was assigned to "Operation Front Door," the FBI's Iran-Contra probe. He investigated connections between Lister and [[Oliver North]]'s arms ring, but the FBI's Los Angeles office declared there was "no connection." The next month the FBI learned Lister had told a neighbor he "worked for Oliver North and [Richard] Secord, and had sent arms shipments to the Contras." That lead was not pursued.[^4] +### Grill Flame and the Army Human Use Panel -### Operation Perico and the Meneses Case +A Department of the Army memorandum of record dated April 30, 1979, titled "FBI Support of GRILL FLAME," records that on April 17 the Army General Counsel directed that one member of the Surgeon General's Human Use Test Committee be unaffiliated with the Department of Defense. An accompanying memorandum, signed by E. R. Thompson of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and addressed through the Director of the FBI to the Assistant Director of the Training Division at the FBI Academy, asked for the nomination of an FBI member for an ad hoc panel of behavioral scientists and medical doctors to meet at the Pentagon two or three times a year. The action officer, Major Bill Stoner, had been told by the Training Division, which the memorandum says "owns" the Bureau's behavioral scientists, that a particular candidate (name withheld) had the background. The addendum states: "So far no one in FBI has been briefed on GF and the project nickname is not even mentioned in basic correspondence," and that Dr. LaBerge was "particularly sensitive about widening the group of people having access to GF."[^4] -In early 1987, the Costa Rican DEA sent Norwin Meneses into [[Danilo Blandon|Blandón]]'s drug ring under "Operation Perico" without informing the FBI agents investigating the case. San Francisco FBI agents presented U.S. Attorney [[Joseph Russoniello]] with a prosecution memo charging Meneses with running a continuing criminal enterprise. Russoniello's office rejected the proposal within a week, citing a "cooperation agreement" that Justice Department investigators later determined never existed.[^4] +[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote in 1997 that the FBI knew of the Grill Flame program and occasionally sought help from its remote viewers in counterintelligence matters. Schnabel's account is that an FBI official asked [[Norm Everheart]] for help with a Soviet embassy official seen using a fishing pole, and that a session by [[Joe McMoneagle]] indicated the pole was retrieving a dead-drop package, which Schnabel says helped the FBI break a case. The vault has found no FBI-side record of the episode; this account rests on Schnabel alone.[^5] + +### Lister, Front Door and the Los Angeles Cases + +The Justice Department Inspector General's 1997 review found five FBI files on [[Ronald Lister]]. In September 1983 his company, Pyramid International Security Consultants, was the subject of a neutrality investigation involving arms sales to [[El Salvador]] and a Saudi loan to the Salvadoran government, and "no further information was ever developed." In 1984 the FBI investigated an offer by Lister of services to a foreign government and closed the case after concluding he was "an ordinary con man" who could not supply what he offered.[^6] + +On December 12, 1986, the Los Angeles FBI office teletyped headquarters that it saw no connection between Lister and "Front Door," the Bureau's investigation of alleged neutrality violations in the covert arms sales to Iran, which the Independent Counsel later took over. Headquarters asked that Lister be questioned about [[Richard Secord]], [[Albert Hakim]] and Stanford Technology, and on December 22, 1986, Lister denied knowing them. On December 23 the Bureau suspended Front Door inquiries pending the appointment of Special Counsel [[Lawrence Walsh]]. On February 3, 1987, an informant reported that Lister had told a neighbor over drinks that he worked for [[Oliver North]] and Secord and had sent arms shipments to the Contras. Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Crossan Andersen]] reported this to Public Integrity Section attorney William Hendricks III, who advised that the drug investigation could continue so long as it did not conflict with Front Door, and Andersen asked that Lister and the neighbor not be interviewed, citing the effect on the drug case.[^6] + +[[Gary Webb]] wrote that FBI agent [[Douglas Aukland]] was assigned to Operation Front Door in November 1986 and investigated connections between Lister and North's arms ring, and that the Los Angeles office declared "no connection." Webb is the sole source for the November 1986 assignment date.[^7] + +### Meneses, Blandon and the San Francisco Case + +Webb wrote that in 1982 the FBI identified [[Fernando Sanchez]] and [[Horacio Pereira]] as cocaine suppliers to a Contra-linked operation in [[San Francisco]], and that in 1987 the Contra supporter [[Dennis Ainsworth]] told the FBI that [[Norwin Meneses]] "ran one of the major distributions in the U.S. He was national. And he was totally protected." Webb states the FBI took no apparent action.[^8] + +The Inspector General found that the San Francisco FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office were surprised in early 1987 to learn that the DEA's Costa Rica office had taken Meneses and a DEA informant to Los Angeles in December 1986 to meet [[Danilo Blandon]]; Aukland, the lead FBI agent on the Los Angeles Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force case, was upset not to have interviewed Meneses first. In February 1987 the agencies agreed Meneses could be used as a source if he pleaded guilty to a cocaine charge in San Francisco; the San Francisco FBI opened a case and held it inactive. The Los Angeles case closed in July 1987. In February 1989, shortly before the statute of limitations expired, the San Francisco FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office obtained a sealed indictment of Meneses; the Inspector General found the warrant was entered in the FBI database, contrary to the Mercury News account, and that Meneses was not arrested while working for the DEA. An FBI informant had told Special Agent Donald Hale in October 1987 that Meneses was telling associates he was a CIA informant, which was why he had not been arrested. The Inspector General found no evidence of a CIA connection and attributed the outcome to poor coordination and shifting views on whether Meneses was a target or an informant.[^9] + +Webb gave a different account of the same February 1987 events: San Francisco FBI agents presented U.S. Attorney [[Joseph Russoniello]] a memo charging Meneses with running a continuing criminal enterprise, and Russoniello's office rejected it within a week, citing a "cooperation agreement" that Justice Department investigators later determined never existed. Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.[^10] + +### Contra Drug Information in FBI Hands + +Senate subcommittee staff recorded that the FBI and Customs possessed information on Luis Rodriguez's narcotics and money-laundering involvement when the State Department used his firm [[Frigorificos de Puntarenas]] to deliver humanitarian funds to the Contras in late 1985 and 1986.[^11] The Inspector General reproduced a November 9, 1984, FBI headquarters cable to the Miami field office relaying CIA information, given at a meeting with DEA and FBI personnel, that the trafficker Jorge Morales had agreed to supply the Southern Front group of [[Eden Pastora]] with aircraft in exchange for use of its airstrips; the cable directed Miami to check bank accounts and coordinate with the DEA.[^12] A later DEA cable said the source "had not furnished actionable information sufficient to predicate initiation of a criminal investigation."[^12] + +### The Tampa Customs Case + +The Kerry-Brown report on BCCI concluded that Operation C-Chase "arose as a Treasury Department investigation brought by Customs and IRS agents only, without the involvement of the FBI," and that "the failure to bring the FBI into the case may have contributed to the lack of follow through" on what Customs agent [[Robert Mazur]] called "literally hundreds of important leads." The report added that "there does not appear to have been anything sinister" in the Justice Department's pause on the Tampa grand jury.[^13] + +### Epstein, 2006 to 2008 + +The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility reported that in early 2006 a West Palm Beach FBI special agent told Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana that the Palm Beach Police had approached the FBI because the state attorney's office was considering not charging the case or allowing a misdemeanor plea. Villafana and two FBI case agents developed a federal case. The FBI planned to arrest Epstein after a May 15, 2007, indictment date and to hold a press conference, and wanted to arrest him in the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]] while he judged a beauty pageant. After the U.S. Attorney's Office managers in [[Miami]] declined to approve the indictment, the squad supervisor was "not happy," and the case agent recalled the supervisor as "extremely upset." At a meeting with Villafana and her managers the FBI insisted that Epstein register for life as a sex offender. After Epstein rejected the proposal, the squad supervisor "yelled at" First Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Jeffrey Sloman]]. The report found no misconduct by Department attorneys and concluded that U.S. Attorney [[Alexander Acosta]] exercised poor judgment in resolving the case through a non-prosecution agreement.[^14] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997. -[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know" -[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty" -[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter" +[^1]: FBI Seattle teletype to Director, August 6, 1947, and Hoover teletype to Seattle (undated, August 1947), FBI file 62-HQ-83894 ("Unidentified Flying Objects"), Section 2, FBI Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts release, archive.org item "expediente-ovni-65-hs1-834228961-62-hq-83894-section-2-1ecd79," https://archive.org/details/expediente-ovni-65-hs1-834228961-62-hq-83894-section-2-1ecd79 +[^2]: HSCA Outside Contact Report 008624, FBI notes of January 26, 1978, request on "Fred Lee Crisman Vol. 1 of 3," NARA record 180-10085-10264, dated May 18, 1978, https://archive.org/details/crisman_fbifile ; same record at https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=149142 +[^3]: FBI Office Memorandum, March 22, 1950, FBI FOIA cover sheet "Guy Hottel (3-22-1950)," https://archive.org/details/GuyHottel +[^4]: Department of the Army, ACSI (DAMI-ISH) action memorandum "FBI Support of GRILL FLAME," April 30, 1979, and memorandum thru Director FBI for Assistant Director, Training Division, "Nomination of FBI Member to Assist on Army Project," signed E. R. Thompson, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100440022-9, -0023-8 and -0024-7, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100440022-9 +[^5]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997. Sole source for the passages so cited. +[^6]: 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 V (Ronald Lister), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch05p1.htm +[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter." Sole source for the passages so cited. +[^8]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know." Sole source for the passages so cited. +[^9]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Executive Summary section III, and Chapter III (Norwin Meneses), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/exsump1.htm and https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch03p2.htm +[^10]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter." Sole source for the passages so cited. +[^11]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras +[^12]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter XI, section D, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch11p1.htm +[^13]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *The BCCI Affair*, report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown (December 1992), section on Operation C-Chase, https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 +[^14]: 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* (November 2020), Parts III and IV, copy at https://archive.org/details/epsteindocs ; executive summary at https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Air Force.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Air Force.md index b479b41f..2cb43431 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Air Force.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Air Force.md @@ -1,26 +1,92 @@ --- aliases: - United States Air Force + - U.S. Air Force + - USAF + - Air Force created: 2025-07-22 -updated: 2025-07-22 +updated: 2026-10-05 title: U.S. Air Force tags: - - organization - - military + - Organization + - Military - USA -description: The U.S. Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. + - StargateProject + - ForeignTechnologyDivision + - AFOSI + - AFTAC + - VelaIncident + - DarkAllianceInvestigation +description: The U.S. Air Force, whose Foreign Technology Division funded SRI remote viewing work from 1976, whose Technical Applications Center read the 1979 Vela flash, and whose officers appear in the Contra, Dimona and AFOSI UFO records. category: "U.S. Government" -summary: "The U.S. Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the U.S. military and a primary customer for the STARGATE remote viewing program, tasking viewers with sensitive targeting and strategic intelligence missions." +summary: "Service whose Foreign Technology Division funded SRI remote viewing research from 1976 and whose Technical Applications Center read the Vela satellite's double flash of September 22, 1979." start: 1947 location: "Arlington, Virginia" +relations: + - type: funded + with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]" + start: 1976 + end: 1979 + role: "Foreign Technology Division funding of $300,000 for SRI remote viewing research" + fn: 2 + - type: participant_in + with: "[[Stargate Project]]" + start: 1978 + role: "Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, concurred on September 29, 1978 in a Defense Department remote viewing working group and kept a focal point" + fn: 3 --- +The [[U.S. Air Force]] is the aerial service of the [[Department of Defense]]. In this vault's records it appears in the remote viewing program, the detection of a 1979 flash over the South Indian Ocean, the recruitment of the Nicaraguan Contra commander, and the investigations office whose agent [[Richard Doty]] figures in the UFO record. -The [[U.S. Air Force]] is the aerial warfare service branch of the [[United States]]. In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, the Air Force was a key customer for the [[Stargate Project|Grill Flame]] program, tasking remote viewers with sensitive intelligence problems.[^1] +### Foreign Technology Division and the psychoenergetics program -One notable instance involved the tasking of [[Mel Riley]] and [[Joe McMoneagle]] to remote-view a new Chinese nuclear device at Lop Nor. Air Force officials, anxious to supplement their conventional intelligence efforts, sought details about the device's design and whether it had been tested. The remote viewers' descriptions, particularly of an "hourglass-shaped device," were of significant interest to Air Force analysts. The Air Force also tasked remote viewers to locate a crashed U.S. Navy A-6 aircraft, which [[Ken Bell]] successfully did.[^1] +The [[Defense Intelligence Agency]]'s 1989 history of government psychoenergetics research lists the Air Force's [[Foreign Technology Division]] (FTD) as the largest service sponsor of the 1975 to 1980 SRI work: $300,000 for 1976 to 1979, against $74,000 from the Navy's NAVALEX in 1975 to 1976, $281,000 from the Army's Missile Intelligence Agency, $230,000 from the Army's [[Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity]] and $75,000 from the Army's INSCOM. It states that FTD "was tasked by DIA to follow and report on foreign research in psychoenergetics," that it "funded research at SRI to provide the needed basis for assessing the psychoenergetic process as an advanced threat technology," and that the questions FTD put to SRI included whether remote viewing is possible, whether distance is a factor, whether map coordinates can target a viewer, whether real time events can be viewed and whether shielding blocks it; the history records that SRI investigators concluded remote viewing "is indeed a human perceptual ability."[^1][^2] -Additionally, the Air Force was involved in the public rollout of the B-2 Stealth bomber, which Mel Riley had accurately remote-viewed years prior during an opsec tasking, demonstrating the program's ability to penetrate highly secret projects.[^1] +On September 29, 1978 Major General James L. Brown, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, at Air Force headquarters, wrote to [[Jack Vorona]] of the Defense Intelligence Agency that the Air Force concurred "with your proposal to establish an Advisory Committee and Working Group for a DOD remote viewing development program," that FTD would take part "since it is responsible for production of threat assessment concerning Warsaw Pact paranormal research," and that "Air Force intelligence, for the last two years, has supported $100K of contractual assistance for FTD to verify data on Warsaw Pact experiments in paranormal techniques," a level it could maintain but not raise "due to the austere level of funding within the General Defense Intelligence Program."[^3] A Grill Flame key-players list names [[Dale Graff]] of "USAF Foreign Technology Division" among the participants, and a request of the Army's 902d Military Intelligence Group for a June 6, 1978 briefing at [[Fort Meade]] on Soviet parapsychology mentions earlier discussion with Graff.[^4][^5] A Defense Intelligence Agency paper of the period states that FTD "now has the DoD charter to assess Warsaw Pact country activities in parapsychology" and that its most recent report was published October 1, 1979.[^6] A later Defense Intelligence Agency paper calls the Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center "formerly the Foreign Technology Division (FTD)."[^7] ---- +The Air Force also lent its name to the oversight of the research contractor: [[Science Applications International Corporation]]'s 1992 technical volume lists [[Garrison Rapmund]] on its Institutional Review Board as of the "Air Force Science Advisory Board," and the corporation's director [[Jasper Welch]] was an Air Force major general who retired in 1983 after 31 years.[^8][^9] The Defense Intelligence Agency's own address on the Star Gate contract schedule was Building 6000 at [[Bolling Air Force Base]].[^10] -[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997. \ No newline at end of file +### Taskings from Air Force intelligence + +[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that in late summer 1979 Air Force intelligence tasked the Fort Meade unit with a new Chinese nuclear device at [[Lop Nor]], that [[Mel Riley]], [[Joe McMoneagle]] and [[Ken Bell]] each described an hourglass-shaped object at its center, and that the Air Force officials who received Atwater's summary declined to say what it was because he lacked a Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information clearance; Schnabel wrote that the shape "turned out" to be a design element the Chinese had not been thought capable of incorporating, and that a second session on a failed test matched what other sources later showed.[^11] The same book states that an Air Force security team gave Atwater a blurry photograph, that Riley described "a strange batlike flying-wing shape" with control "strings" that were "light," that the team "blanched" and told Atwater to stop, and that years later Atwater recognized the shape in the public rollout of the B-2 bomber, whose control lines were fiber optic.[^12] Schnabel also placed the search for a lost Navy A-6, which Bell located at Bald Knob in the Blue Ridge, as a tasking that came from the Pentagon through General [[Edmund Thompson]]'s aide, not from the Air Force.[^13] + +A January 1982 message from the Defense Intelligence Agency reporting information from "several unevaluated psychic sources" on the location of Brigadier General [[James L. Dozier]] was copied to an [[Air Force Office of Special Investigations]] district at [[Aviano Air Base]], [[Italy]].[^14] + +### Vela, September 22, 1979 + +Technicians of the Air Force Technical Applications Center at [[Patrick Air Force Base]], [[Florida]], which ran the atomic energy detection system, saw on the night of September 21, 1979 a double-humped signal from the Vela 6911 satellite, whose bhangmeters had matched a nuclear detonation in each of 41 earlier double flashes; the area in view included the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the southern tip of Africa.[^15] [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that "former Israeli government officials" told him the event was an Israeli low-yield test, with South African participation, and the third such test over the ocean; the presidential panel chaired by [[Jack Ruina]] concluded in May 1980 that the signal was more likely a meteoroid strike on the satellite, and reports from Los Alamos, SRI International, Sandia, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Aerospace Corporation among those published in 2006 disagreed with it.[^15][^16] See [[Dimona]] and [[VELA Satellite]]. + +### Nicaragua + +[[Gary Webb]] wrote that after the collapse of [[Anastasio Somoza]]'s regime Major General Charles E. Boyd, "a top U.S. Air Force official," called the unemployed Colonel [[Enrique Bermudez]], invited him to the Pentagon, "sounded out" the idea of running a rebel force and told him he had a friend at the CIA; Somoza himself had flown on July 17, 1979 to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.[^17] Webb quoted retired Air Force general [[Richard Secord]], whom he described as closely involved in the Contra operation, telling Leslie Cockburn in 1987 of allegations about UDN-FARN commanders: "most of them were true. I didn't pick them. The Agency picked them."[^18] Webb also described videotaped depositions taken by the staff of Senator [[John Kerry]], in which pilots admitted flying weapons down and cocaine and marijuana back, landing "in at least one instance at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida."[^19] + +### Air Force Office of Special Investigations + +A 1992 monograph by Robert G. Durant on the parapsychologist and ufologist [[C.B. Scott Jones]], held in the Star Gate files, states: "There is overwhelming evidence that personnel from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), a counter intelligence organization, have for years been involved in disinformation activities in the UFO field," and names Sergeant Richard Doty of [[Kirtland Air Force Base]], [[William L. Moore]], [[Linda Moulton Howe]] and Captain Robert Collins, citing a 1989 paper by Hastings and [[Jacques Vallee]]'s *Revelations* (1991).[^20] Doty's own account is on his page. + +### Contracts + +The Air Force accounted for 12 percent of SAIC's consolidated revenue in fiscal 1993 and 1994, 11 percent in 1995, 9 percent in 1996 and 8 percent in 1997; a SAIC executive vice president, R. A. Rosenberg, had served as an Air Force officer from 1957 to 1987.[^21] + +### Footnotes + +[^1]: Defense Intelligence Agency, *Government-Sponsored Research in Psychoenergetics,* February 1989, section 2 ("The Service Years"), CIA-RDP96-00789R002200440001-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^2]: Same, section on the Air Force Foreign Technology Division. +[^3]: Headquarters United States Air Force, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, letter to Dr. Jack Vorona, DIA/DT, "DOD Program on Remote Viewing," September 29, 1978, signed James L. Brown, Major General, USAF, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200410026-7. +[^4]: "Key Players Grill Flame," list, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200270002-9. +[^5]: 902d Military Intelligence Group, request to DIA/DT for a briefing at the INSCOM SSO conference room, Fort Meade, June 6, 1978, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160006-8. +[^6]: Defense Intelligence Agency paper on parapsychology charters, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160011-2. +[^7]: Defense Intelligence Agency paper on the service programs that preceded Star Gate, CIA-RDP96-00789R002900010001-9, discussion of Army, Navy and Air Force programs. +[^8]: May, Edwin C., and Wanda L. W. Luke, *Phenomenological Research and Analysis: Technical Volume,* May 8, 1992, section 6.5.1, CIA-RDP96-00789R003100170001-9. +[^9]: Science Applications International Corporation, proxy statement of May 30, 2001, biography of J. A. Welch. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/000091205701518019/0000912057-01-518019.txt +[^10]: Delivery schedule, contract MDA908-93-C-0004, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460007-2. +[^11]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, chapter on the Lop Nor tasking. https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2 +[^12]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* chapter on the opsec tasking and the B-2. +[^13]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* chapter on searches and taskings. +[^14]: Defense Intelligence Agency message, "Psychic Report: BG Dozier Kidnapping," January 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R000700140007-4. +[^15]: Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm +[^16]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option.* Random House, 1991, chapter 20, "An Israeli Test." +[^17]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 1 (Somoza's flight) and chapter 2 (Boyd and Bermudez). +[^18]: Webb, *Dark Alliance,* passage on UDN-FARN. +[^19]: Webb, *Dark Alliance,* prologue (depositions taken by Senator Kerry's staff). +[^20]: Durant, Robert G., "Will the Real Scott Jones Please Stand Up?," February 20, 1992, CIA-RDP96-00792R000400300004-7. +[^21]: Science Applications International Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1995, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000912057-95-002498.txt ; Form 10-K for fiscal 1996 and 1997 (customer tables). diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Army.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Army.md index b855fd26..6a43863f 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Army.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Army.md @@ -1,46 +1,106 @@ --- aliases: - United States Army + - U.S. Army + - US Army + - Army +created: 2025-07-22 +updated: 2026-10-05 title: U.S. Army tags: - Organization - Government - USA - Military - - Dark_Alliance_Investigation -description: The U.S. Army trained hundreds of Nicaraguan National Guard officers who later formed the leadership of the FDN Contra army, and hosted the Stargate Project remote viewing unit at Fort Meade. + - StargateProject + - INSCOM + - GrillFlame + - FortMeade + - FortDetrick + - DarkAllianceInvestigation + - ContrasNicaragua +description: The U.S. Army, parent service of the INSCOM remote viewing unit at Fort Meade and of the medical research command that funded SRI's psychoenergetics program from 1985, and the service whose schools and attaches appear in the Nicaraguan Contra and Dimona records. category: "U.S. Government" -summary: "The U.S. Army is the primary ground combat branch of the U.S. military and the parent service for INSCOM, which administered the STARGATE remote viewing unit at Fort Meade." +summary: "Parent service of the INSCOM remote viewing unit at Fort Meade and of the Surgeon General's research command that paid for SRI's psychoenergetics work from 1985, named in the Contra and Dimona records." +relations: + - type: funded + with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]" + start: 1985 + end: 1990 + role: "Surgeon General's research office funded a five-year psychoenergetics program through the Army Medical Research and Development Command, contract DAMD17-85-C-5130" + fn: 8 + - type: funded + with: "[[Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity]]" + start: 1978 + end: 1980 + role: "AMSAA contracted SRI to remote view field tests at Hunter-Liggett Military Reservation ($230,000 by the Defense Intelligence Agency's account)" + fn: 4 + - type: participant_in + with: "[[Stargate Project]]" + start: 1977 + end: 1995 + role: "host service of the Gondola Wish, Grill Flame and Center Lane unit at Fort Meade, and party to a 1995 memorandum of understanding with the Central Intelligence Agency on the transfer" + fn: 10 --- +The [[U.S. Army]] is the [[Department of Defense]]'s ground service. The pages of this vault touch it at four points: the remote viewing unit it housed at [[Fort Meade]] and the Surgeon General's research command that paid for the [[Stanford Research Institute]] program; the [[Nicaraguan National Guard]] officers that [[Anastasio Somoza]] said its schools had trained; the military attache who photographed [[Dimona]] in the 1960s; and the contracts it gave [[Science Applications International Corporation]]. -Obviously this is an enormous organization within the larger umbrella of the [[Department of Defense]] and well beyond the scope of a single information page. With that said, the U.S. Army is deeply ingrained as one of the locuses of power within the United States due in large part to its abilities to directly inflict violence globally as well as direct hundreds of billions of dollars in funding annually. +### Gondola Wish, Grill Flame and Center Lane -The ability of the Army, like all governmental programs entrusted with some semblance of "defense" or related critical task, to classify programs makes its activities and actions hard to discern and attractive to individuals looking to shield information and related materials from inquisitive eyes. +[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that the Army's [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]] (INSCOM), formed in 1977 from the Army Intelligence Agency and the [[Army Security Agency]], took in a small Systems Exploitation Detachment at Fort Meade in which Lieutenant [[Frederick Atwater]] began the project later called Gondola Wish.[^1] An Army legal chronology records that on September 26, 1978 the Army staff office DAMI-ISH cancelled Gondola Wish on a memorandum from the 902d Military Intelligence Group, and that in February 1979 the Army General Counsel advised that [[Grill Flame]] could involve "testing on human subjects"; the Surgeon General's human use subcommittee ruled in March 1979 that the protocol sponsored by the [[Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity]] was "NO RISK, NO HUMAN USE," and in 1980 the Surgeon General said the existing protocols of the Army Missile Command and SRI "constitute research involving human subjects."[^2] Army records name Colonel [[Garrison Rapmund]], Director of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as the Surgeon General's "permanent point of contact" for Grill Flame and "an impartial member" of both the Defense Department working group and its human testing subcommittee.[^3] -### Dark Alliance Investigation +The Defense Intelligence Agency's 1989 history of government psychoenergetics research lists Army money for 1975 to 1980 as $230,000 through AMSAA, which contracted SRI "to remote view daily field tests being conducted at Hunter-Liggett Military Reservation" and, in the Defense Intelligence Agency's words, produced no final reports, and $75,000 through INSCOM in 1979 to 1980, adding that "it was also INSCOM that compartmentalized the area of psychoenergetics under the code name Grill Flame." INSCOM was tasked in 1978 to determine whether remote viewing could serve as a collection method, assembled a unit in 1979, held its first operational sessions in September 1979 and declared the unit operational in December 1979.[^4] On March 7, 1985 an INSCOM information paper for the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency described the successor project Center Lane, with training at Fort Meade and at the Monroe Institute in Virginia.[^5] Operational control passed to the Defense Intelligence Agency under [[Sun Streak]] in 1986.[^6] -The U.S. Army trained hundreds of [[Nicaraguan National Guard]] officers who later formed the leadership of the [[FDN]] Contra army. [[Anastasio Somoza|Somoza]] invoked the training program when pleading with Ambassador [[Lawrence Pezzullo]] not to abandon his National Guard: "They have been fighting Communism just like you taught them at [[Fort Gulick]], [[Fort Benning]], and [[Fort Leavenworth]]. Out of nine hundred officers we have, eight hundred or so belong to your schools." [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]], the FDN's military commander, was a graduate of the [[U.S. Army School of the Americas]].[^1] +### The Surgeon General's money, 1985 to 1995 + +A sole-source justification written for the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1992 states that "the bulk of this prior R&D effort was provided by the Department of the Army's Surgeon General Office (SGRD) in 1985" with [[Edwin May]] as principal researcher at SRI.[^7] The contract was DAMD17-85-C-5130, "Research and Application of Psychoenergetics," for October 7, 1985 to September 30, 1990, and a military interdepartmental purchase request carried Defense Intelligence Agency funds to Jean V. Smith at the Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland.[^8] The Defense Intelligence Agency's statement of work recites that in 1987 "it became apparent that SGRD funding might not be available to carry through to the end of the five year period," so that "additional funding was sought by DIA and acquired through funding transfer action by the House Appropriations Committee."[^9] The 1989 history adds that for fiscal 1988 "the Army funding was reduced from the expected $2.3 million to $1.15 million, and the Army Medical R&D Command expressed its intent of providing no additional funds."[^4] + +The Army reappears in the 1995 transfer. The Central Intelligence Agency's chronology for that year lists informal discussions with the Army Research Institute, a site visit to Fort Meade, and a memorandum of understanding "executed between US Army and CIA" with funds "officially transferred to Pentagon."[^10] A December 1992 study had also examined moving Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, whose staff expressed concern about a repeat of the "Yellow Rain" controversy; the Defense Intelligence Agency kept the project at Fort Meade.[^11] + +### Nicaraguan National Guard officers + +[[Gary Webb]] quoted Somoza telling Ambassador [[Lawrence Pezzullo]] in 1979, as the dictator urged him not to abandon the National Guard: "They have been fighting Communism just like you taught them at Fort Gulick and Fort Benning and Leavenworth, out of nine hundred officers we have, eight hundred or so belong to your schools."[^12] The figure is Somoza's. Webb wrote separately that Colonel [[Enrique Bermudez]], later military commander of the [[FDN]], had been in the United States from 1975, "first as a student attending courses on subversion and counterinsurgency at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington and later as the Nicaraguan government's liaison to the American military," and that Edmundo Meneses, brother of [[Norwin Meneses]], "had been trained in irregular warfare and anticommunism at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Panama"; Webb's glossary calls Edmundo Meneses a "graduate of U.S. Army School of the Americas."[^13] Webb also wrote that Colonel Pino, "another Bay of Pigs veteran," became the Army's "action officer" on the civil war in El Salvador in 1982 and was a close friend of [[Felix Rodriguez]], and that Lieutenant Colonel James "Bo" Gritz said he worked after his 1979 retirement with the Army's Intelligence Support Activity.[^14] + +### Dimona + +Colonel [[Carmelo Alba]], the Army's military attache in Israel in the mid-1960s, told [[Seymour Hersh]] that he spent many weekends in the Negev with a long-range camera, shipping the film to Washington "with no reaction" until a photograph showed "smoke coming out of the dome"; CIA station chief [[John L. Hadden]] later sent him to Beersheba to count French names on mailboxes.[^15] + +### Contracts + +[[Science Applications International Corporation]] reported that the Army accounted for 15 percent of its consolidated revenue in fiscal 1993, 17 percent in 1994, 19 percent in 1995 and 22 percent in 1996, and that its services included engineering support to the Army's chemical demilitarization activity and a contract to support the National Cancer Institute's Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center at Fort Detrick.[^16] + +### Related pages -### Departments - [[ACSI]] - [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]] - [[Advanced Tactics Projects]] +- [[Army Chemical Corps]] - [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] - [[Great Skill Program]] - [[Green Berets]] - [[Joint Special Operations Command]] -- [[United States Army Intelligence Support Activity]] -- [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]] - [[Special Operations Group]] - [[Systems Exploitation Detachment]] -### Facilities +- [[United States Army Intelligence Support Activity]] - [[Fort Bragg]] - [[Fort Carson]] - [[Fort Huachuca]] - [[Fort Meade]] -### Projects -- [[Stargate Project]] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 4: "I never sent cash" +[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, chapters on Atwater and Gondola Wish. +[^2]: "Human Use Chronology," Army staff, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100430001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection (the scan's columns are misaligned). +[^3]: Message on Grill Flame human use, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100440009-4, paragraph 2d. +[^4]: Defense Intelligence Agency, *Government-Sponsored Research in Psychoenergetics,* February 1989, section 2 and section on fiscal 1988, CIA-RDP96-00789R002200440001-9. +[^5]: *Center Lane Information Papers for Director, Defense Intelligence Agency,* March 7, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R000400060001-2. +[^6]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Senate Appropriations Committee Congressionally Directed Action: Star Gate," CIA-RDP96-00789R002900010001-9, and Staff Study of December 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002500130001-0 (Congressional direction of fiscal 1986 and twelve billets). +[^7]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Justification and Approval for Other Than Full and Open Competition," Virginia Contracting Activity, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460008-1, section 5. +[^8]: Contract DAMD17-85-C-5130, sections B and C, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000400005-0, and military interdepartmental purchase request, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000400001-4, as cited on the page for Edwin May. +[^9]: Statement of work, paragraphs 2.6 and 2.7, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460008-1. +[^10]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. +[^11]: Staff Study of December 1992 (note 6), discussion section. +[^12]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 1, "A Pretty secret kind of thing." https://archive.org/details/dark-alliance-the-cia-the-contras-and-the-crack-cocaine-explosion-gary-webb-1998 +[^13]: Webb, *Dark Alliance,* chapter 2, "We were the first" (Bermudez); chapter 3, "The brotherhood of military minds" (Edmundo Meneses); and the glossary of principal figures. +[^14]: Webb, *Dark Alliance,* chapters on the Contra supply network (Pino; Gritz and the Intelligence Support Activity). +[^15]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, chapter 12, "The Ambassador," pp. 163-164. https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option +[^16]: Science Applications International Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1995, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000912057-95-002498.txt ; Form 10-K for fiscal 1996, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000936392-96-000116.txt ; Form 10-K for fiscal 1997, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000936392-97-000561.txt diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Customs.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Customs.md index 363386fc..b9efed4a 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Customs.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Customs.md @@ -1,27 +1,97 @@ --- +created: 2026-10-05 +updated: 2026-10-05 +title: U.S. Customs aliases: - - "United States Customs Service" + - U.S. Customs + - United States Customs Service + - U.S. Customs Service + - Customs Service + - US Customs category: "U.S. Government" tags: - Organization - Government - - United_States - - Contra_War + - UnitedStates + - USCustoms + - ContraWar + - BCCI + - IranContra + - Stargate - 1980s -summary: U.S. federal law enforcement agency responsible for border protection and customs enforcement that investigated Contra-connected cocaine trafficking through informants including Joseph Kelso. +summary: "The federal border and trade enforcement agency whose agents ran Operation C-Chase, employed Joseph Kelso as an informant, reviewed the Lister flowchart, and tasked an Army remote viewing unit to find a fugitive in 1989." +location: "Washington, D.C." +relations: + - type: investigated + with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]" + start: 1986 + end: 1988-10-08 + role: "undercover money laundering operation (Operation C-Chase)" + fn: 8 + - type: investigated + with: "[[Ronald Lister]]" + start: 1986 + role: "Customs Special Agent James P. McShane reviewed a seized flow chart for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department" + fn: 5 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Joseph Kelso]]" + reverse: true + role: "informant sent abroad for Customs; arrested in Costa Rica in 1986" + fn: 4 + - type: informant_for + with: "[[Richard Brenneke]]" + reverse: true + role: "offered himself as an informant after a Seattle airport stop; judged to have little to offer" + fn: 3 --- -[[U.S. Customs and Border Protection]] (U.S. Customs) is a federal law enforcement agency responsible for protecting the borders of the [[United States]].[^1] -### Contra War Role +The United States Customs Service (U.S. Customs) was the federal agency responsible for the inspection of goods and persons crossing the borders of the [[United States]] and for enforcement of the customs and export control laws; the successor bodies include [[U.S. Customs and Border Protection]]. In the records of this vault it appears as an investigator of the Contra supply networks, the employer of informants used in Central America, the lead agency in [[Operation C-Chase]], and the requester of a remote viewing task under the [[Stargate Project]]. -[[Joseph Kelso]], a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and U.S. Customs informant, gathered testimony from six witnesses willing to testify that [[DEA]] agents in [[Costa Rica]] were skimming cocaine from seizures, making counterfeit money, and protecting cocaine labs on Contra bases. When Kelso's investigation was exposed, [[Robert Owen]], serving as a conduit for [[Oliver North]], had Kelso arrested. Evidence tapes from Kelso's investigation were turned over to North via Owen, who threw them away when the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] broke.[^2] +### Source of the DEA's Agents -### Flowchart Analysis +When the [[DEA]] was created on July 1, 1973, a contingent of Customs agents was merged with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement.[^1] -The U.S. Customs Service analyzed a flowchart seized from [[Ronald Lister]]'s home during a 1986 raid, which appeared to diagram an illegal weapons diversion scheme matching the methods used to funnel arms to the [[Contras]].[[^3] +### Noriega, Morales and Frigorificos in the Senate Record + +The Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee report of December 1988 recorded that Customs Commissioner [[William von Raab]] testified that the Customs Service had evidence linking General [[Manuel Noriega]] to narcotics trafficking as early as 1983, which he said made Panamanian cooperation in drug seizures "virtually meaningless." A Customs document furnished to the subcommittee showed that the trafficker Jorge Morales entered the United States from the Bahamas on October 13, 1984, with the Contra pilot Marco Aguado, Octaviano Cesar and Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro, carrying $400,000 in cash and checks that were declared at Customs and returned to Morales after clearing. The subcommittee reported that despite the information held by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]], Customs and other agencies on Luis Rodriguez's narcotics and money-laundering involvement, the State Department used Rodriguez's firm [[Frigorificos de Puntarenas]] to deliver humanitarian funds to the Contras from late 1985.[^2] + +The same report described the arms dealer [[Richard Brenneke]] as a man who began telling stories of a secret life after Customs stopped him at the Seattle airport with a briefcase of references to arms deals; he offered to become a Customs informant. The subcommittee found that Customs undercover agents building the "Sam Evans" case in [[New York City]] had fed his business associates fabricated information about arms deals, that approaches Brenneke made through Marine Corps Intelligence, the State Department and the [[Department of Defense]] were passed to Customs, and that Customs agents interviewed him extensively and decided he had little to offer. The subcommittee separately recorded that a DC-6 returning from Central America was searched at Miami and that its operator protested that the search endangered navigation equipment installed for government operations, and that Customs officials were incredulous because they knew the pilot Palmer was under indictment in Detroit in a large narcotics case.[^3] + +### Joseph Kelso + +[[Joseph Kelso]] was, in [[Gary Webb]]'s account, a CIA informant who worked for Customs after being arrested by the service for trying to buy Harpoon missiles for Iraq, given a new identity as "Richard Williams," and sent worldwide for four years. In 1986 he gathered testimony in [[Costa Rica]] from six witnesses willing to testify that [[DEA]] agents were skimming cocaine, making counterfeit money and protecting cocaine labs on Contra bases. Webb wrote that a junior Customs agent mistakenly reported the findings to the DEA agents under investigation, that Kelso was arrested and threatened by DEA agent [[Robert Nieves]], and that after Kelso gave tapes of the witness interviews to his lawyer, Customs enforcement chief William Rosenblatt telephoned [[Oliver North]] "to find out whether Kelso/Williams was working with the intelligence community," with North sending [[Robert Owen]] to collect the tapes, which Owen threw away when the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] broke. Kelso was imprisoned for violating probation by going to Costa Rica. Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.[^4] + +### The Lister Flow Chart + +Among documents seized from [[Ronald Lister]]'s home in the October 1986 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department raids was a ten-page document that included, on its last page, a flow chart suggesting a flow of money. Sheriff's investigators asked Customs Special Agent James P. McShane of the Office of Defense Trade Controls to review it. McShane reported that the chart could represent a legitimate transaction if a State Department license had been obtained; that the notation "% EUC" might indicate an end-use certificate being purchased, which would make the transaction illegal, since in a legitimate transaction one is provided free; and that routing funds through [[Hong Kong]] to "X Country" indicated an attempt to disguise the true destination and might be an illegal diversion of arms. The Justice Department Inspector General wrote that, whatever the legality, "nothing indicates that it shows the sale of arms to the Contras." A 1991 Customs report by the agent assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force case on [[Danilo Blandon]] recorded that a DEA source had described a project in [[El Salvador]] "to provide assistance to the Contras," which the Inspector General believed was Lister.[^5] + +### The Grasheim Case in El Salvador + +On October 30, 1986, Customs agent Richard Rivera and the DEA's [[Celerino Castillo]] briefed Ambassador [[Edwin Corr]] in [[San Salvador]] on the pilot Grasheim. Rivera told Corr that Customs had for several years investigated Grasheim for illegal export of "hi-tech" equipment and weapons to Central America. Castillo's November 5 report recorded that an embassy source said Grasheim had told a member of the U.S. military group that if he were arrested "everybody else was going to go down with him." On November 21, 1986, the DEA closed its case and recorded that its information had gone to Customs and the [[Internal Revenue Service]], who were conducting "an active investigation." The Inspector General noted that Corr asked that any investigation be "very discreet" and said the CIA had no records that Grasheim worked for it.[^6] + +### Operation C-Chase + +In 1986 Customs undercover agent [[Robert Mazur]] proposed the money laundering operation that became [[Operation C-Chase]], after nearly two and a half years of undercover work in Florida; Customs notified the Justice Department, which gave strategic and tactical assistance. The Kerry-Brown Senate report recorded that Mazur opened a [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] account because it was the only bank he knew with international branches, and that BCCI retained an investigative firm to investigate Mazur and the IRS affiant on the BCCI search warrants, work that Mazur testified ruined a citizen whose business had served as part of the government's cover.[^7] + +The report found that Customs "had information as far back as 1983" on the smuggling of the Jordanian arms merchant Munther Bilbeisi, a BCCI customer. It recorded that senior Customs officials let journalists have access to information about C-Chase before the sting ended and to the October 1988 take-down, which "potentially jeopardized the lives of the agents involved"; that Mazur and other Customs agents suspected the October date had been set for political reasons connected to the November elections while the Tampa prosecutor Mark Jackowski testified the date was set in February and the evidence was complete; and that in an April 11, 1989, memorandum Mazur wrote that "literally hundreds of important leads" remained to be pursued. After a January 1990 plea agreement, the Tampa prosecutors and Customs investigators stopped the grand jury, and the Justice Department took what agents called a "time-out." The report concluded that "there does not appear to have been anything sinister" in the decision and that the case was a Treasury investigation by Customs and IRS agents "without the involvement of the FBI."[^8] + +### Remote Viewing for a Fugitive, 1989 + +The CIA's Stargate collection includes two [[Project Sun Streak]] reports under project number 8923, titled "Re: Fugitive from US Customs," by viewer 079 using the "WRV" method, dated July 5, 1989 (0900 to 0924) and August 14, 1989 (0930 to 0950). The July summary gives a physical description of the fugitive, a set of alias names that "surfaced phonetically," a location "near water in the warehouse district" of a suburban area identified as "Dent," Ohio, with the operator's comment that a Dent, Ohio, lies five to ten miles northwest of [[Cincinnati]], and a warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous. The August session used a map of Cincinnati to refine the location and records that an address given at the start of the session appears in the summary. The evaluation fields of both reports are blank.[^9] + +### Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Epstein Case + +In a July 2007 email to her superior Matthew Menchel, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana wrote that a plea offer being negotiated by the managers in [[Miami]] was "completely unacceptable to the FBI, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the victims, and me," and that it violated the Ashcroft memorandum and the U.S. Attorney's Manual.[^10] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it" -[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 17: "We're going to blow your fucking head off" -[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it" +[^1]: Drug Enforcement Administration, "DEA History: The Early Years," https://www.dea.gov/es/node/1045 +[^2]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), chapters on Panama, the Southern Front and the Contra supply network, https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras +[^3]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), section on Richard Brenneke and the chapter on the Contra supply network, https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras +[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 17: "We're going to blow your fucking head off." Sole source for the passages so cited. +[^5]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter V (Ronald Lister) and note 46, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch05p1.htm +[^6]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter X (Celerino Castillo), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch10p2.htm +[^7]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *The BCCI Affair*, report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown (December 1992), sections on Operation C-Chase and on BCCI's intelligence and security operations, https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 +[^8]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *The BCCI Affair* (December 1992), findings on Customs and Justice handling of Operation C-Chase, https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 +[^9]: Project Sun Streak reports, project 8923, sessions 01 (July 5, 1989) and 02 (August 14, 1989), viewer 079, CIA-RDP96-00789R003500530001-5, -0004-2 and -0005-1, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00789R003500530001-5 +[^10]: 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* (November 2020), copy at https://archive.org/details/epsteindocs diff --git a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Science Applications International Corporation.md b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Science Applications International Corporation.md index b7da7b2f..3ab985d7 100644 --- a/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Science Applications International Corporation.md +++ b/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Science Applications International Corporation.md @@ -1,21 +1,124 @@ --- +aliases: + - SAIC + - Science Applications International Corporation + - Science Applications Incorporated + - Science Applications Inc + - SAI created: 2025-01-09 -updated: 2025-01-29 +updated: 2026-10-05 title: Science Applications International Corporation tags: + - Organization - SAIC - - Stargate Project - - Department of Defense -description: SAIC, founded in 1969, evolved from nuclear research to diverse projects like radiation therapy and missile development. Its unique structure supported classified DoD programs and later consciousness research, including the Stargate Project, which it managed until 1994 before its declassification in 1995. + - DefenseContractor + - EmployeeOwned + - StargateProject + - CognitiveSciencesLaboratory + - NationalSecurity + - DefenseIntelligenceAgency + - MilitaryIntelligence +description: Employee-owned San Diego defense and intelligence contractor founded in 1969 that held the Defense Intelligence Agency's Star Gate research contracts from 1991 to 1995 through Edwin May's Cognitive Sciences Laboratory. category: "Private Organization" start: 1969 -location: "La Jolla, California" -summary: "The Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) was founded in 1969 by J Robert Beyster as Science Applications Incorporated (SAI)." +location: "San Diego, California" +summary: "Employee-owned defense and intelligence contractor founded in 1969 by J. Robert Beyster, whose Cognitive Sciences Laboratory held the Defense Intelligence Agency's Star Gate research contracts from 1991 to 1995." +relations: + - type: founded + with: "[[J Robert Beyster]]" + reverse: true + start: 1969 + role: "founder, chairman and chief executive officer" + fn: 1 + - type: contractor_to + with: "[[Defense Intelligence Agency]]" + start: 1991 + end: 1995 + role: "sole-source prime contractor for phenomenological research (contracts MDA908-91-C-0037 and MDA908-93-C-0004) through the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory" + fn: 9 + - type: contractor_to + with: "[[U.S. Army]]" + start: 1993 + end: 1997 + role: "customer accounting for 15 percent of consolidated revenue in fiscal 1993, 17 percent in 1994, 19 percent in 1995, 22 percent in 1996 and 16 percent in 1997" + fn: 4 + - type: contractor_to + with: "[[U.S. Air Force]]" + start: 1993 + end: 1997 + role: "customer accounting for 12 percent of consolidated revenue in fiscal 1993 and 1994, 11 percent in 1995, 9 percent in 1996 and 8 percent in 1997" + fn: 4 + - type: director_of + with: "[[Bobby Ray Inman]]" + reverse: true + start: 1982 + role: "director; part-time employee from 1990; chairman of the Executive Committee in fiscal 2001" + fn: 1 + - type: director_of + with: "[[Jasper Welch]]" + reverse: true + start: 1984 + role: "director; retired Air Force major general; part-time employee from July 1990" + fn: 1 + - type: director_of + with: "[[Wayne Downing]]" + reverse: true + start: 1996 + role: "director; retired commander in chief of U.S. Special Operations Command" + fn: 1 + - type: director_of + with: "[[Melvin Laird]]" + reverse: true + role: "listed among the directors on the signature page of the annual report for the year ended January 31, 1995" + fn: 3 + - type: employed_by + with: "[[Edwin May]]" + reverse: true + start: 1991 + end: 1996 + role: "director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory" + fn: 9 --- -The Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) was founded in 1969 by [[J Robert Beyster]] as Science Applications Incorporated (SAI). Beyster remained with the company, which was employee owned, until 2003 which paved the way to it’s 2006 initial public offering and 2012 split into two companies (SAIC and Leidos which is the core of the original SAIC). +Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) was founded in 1969 by [[J Robert Beyster]], who was chairman and chief executive officer from that year and president from 1969 to 1988 and again from June 1998.[^1] The company was owned by its employees, with its stock traded at a formula price set by the board, and its headquarters in the 1990s was at 10260 Campus Point Drive in San Diego.[^2] The registrant filing under CIK 353394 now carries the name Leidos, Inc. and lists "Science Applications International Corp" as its former name for filings through October 11, 2013; a separate registrant, CIK 1571123, files as SAIC.[^3] -During this period, SAIC operated through a unique structure of semi-autonomous divisions, allowing it to simultaneously pursue multiple classified programs for the [[Department of Defense]] while maintaining information compartmentalization. This structure would prove crucial in its later involvement with consciousness research and advanced physics programs. +### Federal revenue and business lines -The company initially focused on nuclear power and weapons effects study programs but expanded into: radiation therapy, development of the cruise missle (1970’s), cleanup of Three Mile Island, and even luggage inspection machines for the FAA. +For the fiscal year ended January 31, 1995, the company reported revenues of $1,921,880,000, of which 86 percent came from the [[United States]] government as prime or subcontractor. The [[U.S. Army]] accounted for 19 percent of consolidated revenue (17 percent in fiscal 1994 and 15 percent in 1993), the [[U.S. Air Force]] for 11 percent (12 percent in both earlier years), the [[U.S. Navy]] for 10 percent and the [[Department of Energy]] for 11 percent.[^2] The Army share rose to 22 percent in fiscal 1996 and fell to 16 percent in 1997, while the Air Force share fell to 9 and then 8 percent.[^4][^5] The 1995 annual report lists, among its national security services, studies on "conventional and nuclear warfare issues, treaty negotiation and verification," imagery collection, processing and exploitation systems for the [[Department of Defense]], engineering support to the Army's chemical demilitarization activity, and "systems engineering and technical assistance for cruise missiles, future aircraft and ballistic missile concepts."[^2] Its subsidiaries in 1995 included Network Solutions, Inc.; by 1997 that subsidiary held an agreement with the [[National Science Foundation]] to set aside 30 percent of domain-name registration receipts, and the company held a contract to support the [[National Cancer Institute]]'s Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center at [[Fort Detrick]], [[Maryland]].[^2][^5] On November 20, 1996 it agreed to buy Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), a company of about 5,500 employees and $1 billion in annual revenue.[^5] -[[Edwin May]] moved the [[Stargate Project]] in 1991 following [[Stanford Research Institute]] stepping away. SAIC operated the project until 1994 at which point is was declassified in 1995. \ No newline at end of file +### Officers and directors + +The 1995 annual report lists as executive officers [[Donald M. Kerr]], corporate executive vice president, formerly president of EG&G, Inc.; D. H. Foley, a sector vice president who had been Director of Special Projects at the [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]] from 1985 until he joined SAIC in 1991; S. D. Rockwood, a sector vice president formerly with [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]]; and R. A. Rosenberg, an executive vice president who served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force from 1957 to 1987.[^2] The signature page, dated April 1995, carries the names of directors including B. R. Inman, J. A. Welch, M. R. Laird, M. R. Thurman, D. A. Hicks, E. A. Frieman and D. M. Kerr.[^3] + +A proxy statement of 2001 gives biographies. Admiral [[Bobby Ray Inman]], a director since 1982, had joined the company in 1990 as a part-time employee after serving as Director of the [[NSA]] and [[Deputy Director of Central Intelligence]]; in fiscal 2001 he chaired the Executive Committee, whose charter included "overseeing and assisting in the formulation and implementation of human resource management, scientific research policies and financial matters." [[Jasper Welch]], a director since 1984 and a part-time employee from July 1990, was a retired Air Force major general with 31 years of service. General [[Wayne Downing]], a director from 1996 and a part-time employee from March 1996, had commanded the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Army Special Operations Command and the [[Joint Special Operations Command]]. [[Duane Andrews]], a director from 1996, had been Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, and [[Anita K. Jones]], a director from 1987 to 1993 and again from 1998, was Director of Defense Research and Engineering from 1993 to 1997.[^1] [[Melvin Laird]], Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973, is listed in a biographical summary as a director of the company.[^6] + +### Cognitive Sciences Laboratory and Star Gate + +[[Edwin May]], who had run the psychoenergetics program at [[SRI International]] from 1985, became director of SAIC's [[Cognitive Sciences Laboratory]] in 1991. A [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] justification for other than full and open competition states that he "has since joined" SAIC "and has taken his extensive data base and key research assistants with him."[^7] The laboratory's address in 1992 was 1010 El Camino Real, Suite 330, [[Menlo Park]], [[California]], where the DD Form 254 security specification names the Defense Investigative Service at the Presidio of [[San Francisco]] as cognizant security office; by 1995 its letterhead gave 330 Cowper Street, [[Palo Alto]].[^7][^8] + +On June 7, 1991 May and [[Wanda L. W. Luke]] delivered "A Comprehensive Research Plan for Anomalous Mental Phenomena." It proposed "a 175 man-year program" starting in fiscal 1992 at about $7.5 million for each of the first two years, rising to a total of $30 million over five years, with subcontracts to the general research community and a technical panel "of academic and government experts."[^9] What Congress supplied was smaller. A Defense Intelligence Agency summary prepared for the Senate Appropriations Committee records $2 million received in fiscal 1991 ($1.5 million for research and $0.5 million for operations and maintenance), a "sole source R&D contract ($1.5 million)" with SAIC's Cognitive Sciences Laboratory "on line by July 1991," a further $2 million for research in fiscal 1992, and an authorization of $0.6 million for Star Gate in fiscal 1993.[^10] The first contract was MDA908-91-C-0037. A second action, funded from the fiscal 1992 line for "Congressional Directed Programs," was a $1,450,000 sole-source award justified by the [[Virginia Contracting Activity]] under the authority "Only one Responsible Source." The justification gave SAIC's "extensive classified data base which has co-mingled with both government and proprietary data" as a reason no other contractor could perform the work and named a second SAIC physicist, a Dr. Angelo, with more than ten years in the field; a sibling award is cited as MDA908-93-C-0004.[^7][^11] + +The statement of work for the 1992 award required use of "a technical review group (e.g., a Scientific Oversight Committee, a Human Use Review Panel and a Policy Board)" established in the earlier effort.[^7] SAIC's 1992 technical volume describes the Scientific Oversight Committee as five voting scientists in physics, astronomy, statistics, neuroscience and psychology, adds Professor Steven A. Hillyard of the [[University of California, San Diego]], and lists an Institutional Review Board whose members included [[Louis Jolyon West]] (neuropsychiatry, [[University of California, Los Angeles]]), [[Robert Livingston]] (neuroscience, UC San Diego), Byron Brown (Stanford biostatistics), Robin Michelson (UC San Francisco) and [[Garrison Rapmund]], listed there as of the "Air Force Science Advisory Board."[^12] Rapmund, a retired Army major general who had commanded the [[United States Army Medical Research and Development Command]] at Fort Detrick, chaired the board in 1993.[^13] + +The contract schedule for MDA908-93-C-0004 directed deliveries to "Defense Intelligence Agency, Building 6000, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. 20032."[^14] In December 1992 a staff study for the Defense Intelligence Agency, written after the fiscal 1993 conference report asked it to examine moving Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, recorded that the project, "housed in temporary facilities at Fort George G. Meade," drew on external research under the SAIC contract, that Fort Meade "is an open military post," and that the project building was "a substandard World War II pre-fabricated frame structure." The agency kept the project at [[Fort Meade]].[^10][^15] + +SAIC's experiments were the basis of the 1995 evaluation by the [[American Institutes for Research]] (see [[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]). An April 20, 1995 memorandum of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s Office of Research and Development records that "Ed May of SAIC called this morning and volunteered to send me unsolicited information he had obtained from a 'remote viewer' named 'Joe' relating to the Oklahoma City Bombing"; the covering memorandum to the Counterterrorist Center states: "We attach no credibility to this information."[^16] May resigned from the review contract on November 28, 1995, the day the report was released, and in 1996 the laboratory's work moved from SAIC to the Laboratories for Fundamental Research.[^17] The page for Edwin May gives the full account of his objections to the review. + +### Footnotes + +[^1]: Science Applications International Corporation, definitive proxy statement for the 2001 annual meeting (Form DEF 14A, filed May 30, 2001), "Nominees for Election" and committee descriptions. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/000091205701518019/0000912057-01-518019.txt +[^2]: Science Applications International Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1995, Items 1 and 4, executive officer table and subsidiary list. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000912057-95-002498.txt +[^3]: Same Form 10-K, signature page; Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1994, signature page, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000912057-94-001362.txt ; Securities and Exchange Commission company index for CIK 0000353394, https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000353394&type=10-K +[^4]: Science Applications International Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1996 (customer percentages). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000936392-96-000116.txt +[^5]: Science Applications International Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1997 (customer percentages; Network Solutions; National Cancer Institute contract; Bellcore agreement). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/353394/0000936392-97-000561.txt +[^6]: CIA-RDP96-00792R000400300004-7 ("its board of directors includes such luminaries as Bobby Ray Inman and Melvin Laird"), https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00792r000400300004-7; Academy of Diplomacy, biographical page for Melvin R. Laird, https://www.academyofdiplomacy.org/members-1/laird/melvin-r. +[^7]: Defense Intelligence Agency acquisition package for purchase request 330/026Z/92: statement of work paragraphs 2.6, 2.7, 5.1 to 5.4, DD Form 254, military interdepartmental purchase request and "Justification and Approval for Other Than Full and Open Competition," CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460008-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^8]: SAIC memorandum of May 31, 1995 on Cognitive Sciences Laboratory letterhead, as described on the page for Edwin May; May and Luke, *Phenomenological Research and Analysis,* technical proposal of August 27, 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R003100200001-5. +[^9]: May, Edwin C., and Wanda L. W. Luke, *A Comprehensive Research Plan for Anomalous Mental Phenomena,* SAIC, June 7, 1991, section VI, CIA-RDP96-00789R003100080001-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^10]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Senate Appropriations Committee Congressionally Directed Action: Star Gate," CIA-RDP96-00789R002900010001-9; Staff Study, "Transfer of Project Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center," December 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002500130001-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^11]: Second justification and approval, purchase request 330/0262/93, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000200009-8, and the contract schedule CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460007-2 (contract number MDA908-93-C-0004), as cited on the page for Edwin May. +[^12]: May, Edwin C., and Wanda L. W. Luke, *Phenomenological Research and Analysis: Technical Volume,* May 8, 1992, contract MDA908-91-C-0037, section 6.5.1, CIA-RDP96-00789R003100170001-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^13]: SAIC, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, Institutional Review Board minutes, January 22, 1993 (members attending include Garrison Rapmund, M.D., chairman, and Louis Jolyon West, M.D.), CIA-RDP96-00789R003100260001-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00789r003100260001-9. +[^14]: Delivery schedule, contract MDA908-93-C-0004, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460007-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^15]: Staff Study of December 1992 (note 10), sections on background and discussion. +[^16]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Research and Development, memorandum for the record, April 20, 1995, and covering memorandum to the Counterterrorist Center, as quoted on the page for Edwin May. +[^17]: May, Edwin C., commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* (1996) and interview of May 12, 1996, as cited on the page for Edwin May. diff --git a/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Freedom of Information Act.md b/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Freedom of Information Act.md index 1051b94b..6425823d 100644 --- a/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Freedom of Information Act.md +++ b/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Freedom of Information Act.md @@ -3,24 +3,54 @@ title: Freedom of Information Act aliases: - Freedom of Information Act - FOIA + - Freedom of Information + - Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts created: 2026-05-17 -updated: 2026-05-17 +updated: 2026-10-05 category: "Intelligence Scandal" tags: - Law - USGovernment + - FOIA + - UFO + - Stargate - ContraWar -summary: "The Freedom of Information Act was used by Gary Webb to obtain government documents that revealed the CIA and DEA's knowledge of Contra-connected drug trafficking." + - DarkAllianceInvestigation +summary: "The 1966 federal disclosure statute, strengthened over a presidential veto in 1974, through which the Glomar Explorer, UFO, Stargate and Contra drug records reached the public." start: 1966-07-04 location: "United States" --- -The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was used by [[Gary Webb]] to obtain government documents that revealed the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and [[DEA]]'s knowledge of Contra-connected drug trafficking. Webb's FOIA requests produced thousands of pages of previously classified documents that formed the evidentiary backbone of the [[Dark Alliance]] series.[^1] -### Document Discovery +The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. section 552, gives the public a statutory right to request records of the executive branch, subject to nine exemptions. In this vault it matters as the mechanism by which several record sets became public: the 1947 and 1950 FBI flying disc files, the CIA's [[Stargate Project]] collection, the CIA's UFO files and portions of the Contra drug record. -Webb filed FOIA requests with multiple federal agencies to obtain records about [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]], [[Norwin Meneses]], and their connections to the Contra war. The documents he received confirmed that federal law enforcement agencies had been aware of the Blandón-Meneses cocaine trafficking network for years but had failed to prosecute or disrupt it. The FOIA-obtained records included DEA reports, CIA cables, FBI files, and court documents that corroborated the testimony of witnesses and filled in gaps in the narrative.[^2] +### The 1974 Amendments and the Ford Veto + +The House passed H.R. 12471, the amendments to the Act, on March 14, 1974, 383 to 8, and the Senate passed it on May 30, 1974, 64 to 17. After a conference, the Senate approved the conference version by voice vote on October 1 and the House by 392 to 2 on October 7. President [[Gerald Ford]] vetoed the bill on October 17, 1974. His veto message raised three objections: that judicial in camera review of classified material risked exposing "military and intelligence secrets," that the investigatory files exemption would burden law enforcement, and that the administrative deadlines were unrealistic. On November 20 the House overrode the veto 371 to 31 and on November 21 the Senate overrode it 65 to 27.[^1] + +The National Security Archive's compilation of the White House record includes a September 25, 1974, memorandum from Ken Cole to Ford stating "There is little question that the legislation is bad on the merits, the real question is whether opposing it is important enough to face the political consequences"; a Central Intelligence Agency memorandum of September 26 describing a call from [[Antonin Scalia]], then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, urging the agency to lobby a White House staffer directly; and handwritten notes of a September 30 staff meeting presided over by [[Donald Rumsfeld]], with [[Dick Cheney]] as deputy chief of staff, that devote much of the discussion to leaks.[^1] + +### Phillippi v. CIA and the Glomar Response + +In March 1975 news organizations reported that the vessel [[Hughes Glomar Explorer]], publicly listed as a research ship owned and operated by the Summa Corporation, was owned and operated by the United States government (see [[Project Azorian]]). The journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi requested all [[Central Intelligence Agency]] records of its contacts with the media about the ship. The agency answered that the existence or nonexistence of such records was itself information pertaining to intelligence sources and methods protected by the National Security Act of 1947, and invoked FOIA exemptions (b)(1) and (b)(3). The district court upheld the refusal and denied her request for a Vaughn index. On November 16, 1976, the D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded, requiring the agency to supply as detailed a public affidavit as possible, and rejecting the Government's reliance on an affidavit by [[Brent Scowcroft]], then Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, filed in another case. Judge MacKinnon dissented on the ground that the CIA's statute controlled. The agency's refusal to confirm or deny became known as a "Glomar response."[^2] + +### Ground Saucer Watch and the CIA + +On January 1, 1979, the New York Times reported that Ground Saucer Watch, an Arizona organization headed by the aerospace engineer William Spaulding, said it had obtained 1,000 pages of CIA documents in a Freedom of Information suit showing agency surveillance of UFOs since 1949, although the agency had said its interest ended in 1952. The article quoted an agency memorandum of August 1, 1952, urging "that no indication of CIA interest or concern reach the press or public"; an October 2, 1952, report to the Director of Central Intelligence recommending that the National Security Council be advised of "the implications of the flying saucer problem" and that the Psychological Strategy Board be consulted on a public information policy to "minimize concern and possible panic"; and a November 1975 document advising against acknowledging any pattern in sightings. Spaulding stated that the documents described a 1976 incident in [[Iran]] in which two F-4 fighters pursued a large object that released smaller craft, and that he held sworn statements from retired Air Force colonels that two objects had crashed and been recovered, one in New Mexico in 1948 and one near Kingman, Arizona, in 1953. The group was awaiting a federal judge's ruling on 57 further items, including motion picture film and landing residue.[^3] + +### FBI and CIA Releases in the Vault's Files + +The FBI's copy of the March 22, 1950, "Hottel" memorandum circulates under a cover sheet of the Bureau's Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Section.[^4] The CIA's Stargate files carry release stamps from the agency's review, for example "Approved For Release 2001/04/02" on the Project 8501 file concerning the kidnapped [[DEA]] agent Enrique Camarena, which bears redaction codes such as "SG1A" and "SG1J" where text was withheld, and classification markings reading "Declassify On: OADR."[^5] A House Select Committee on Assassinations record on the FBI's Crisman file shows a "Date of Last Review" of February 17, 1998, under the JFK records process.[^6] + +### The Contra Record + +[[Gary Webb]] wrote that his FOIA requests to multiple federal agencies produced thousands of pages about [[Danilo Blandon]] and [[Norwin Meneses]], including DEA reports, CIA cables, FBI files and court documents, and that the records confirmed federal agencies had known of the Blandon-Meneses network for years without prosecuting or disrupting it. Webb also wrote that the DEA stated under the Freedom of Information Act that it had no reports from [[Celerino Castillo]] about drug trafficking at [[Ilopango Airbase]], and that the Justice Department Inspector General found and quoted such reports. Webb is the sole source for these passages; the Inspector General's published report describes Castillo's reports on the pilots Grasheim and others but does not mention a FOIA response.[^7] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 1. -[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 1. +[^1]: National Security Archive, "Veto Battle 30 Years Ago Set Freedom of Information Norms," Electronic Briefing Book No. 142, edited by Dan Lopez, Thomas Blanton, Meredith Fuchs and Barbara Elias (November 23, 2004), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB142/ +[^2]: Phillippi v. Central Intelligence Agency, 546 F.2d 1009 (D.C. Cir. 1976), argued April 19, decided November 16, amended November 24, 1976, https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/546/546.F2d.1009.76-1004.html +[^3]: "C.I.A. Papers Detail U.F.O. Surveillance," New York Times, January 1, 1979, as reproduced at https://ufology.patrickgross.org/htm/nytcia79.htm +[^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, memorandum of March 22, 1950, FOIA/Privacy Acts Section cover sheet "Guy Hottel (3-22-1950)," https://archive.org/details/GuyHottel +[^5]: Memorandum for Record, "Project 8501," March 18, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750015-5, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001900750015-5 +[^6]: HSCA Outside Contact Report 008624, NARA record 180-10085-10264, JFK Assassination System Identification Form, https://archive.org/details/crisman_fbifile +[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 1, and Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends." Compare U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter X, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch10p2.htm diff --git a/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md b/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md index ec943b46..1ef21665 100644 --- a/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md +++ b/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md @@ -1,59 +1,89 @@ ---- +--- +aliases: + - Dimona + - Negev Nuclear Research Center + - Nuclear Research Center Negev + - Dimona reactor + - Dimona facility +created: 2025-01-09 +updated: 2026-10-05 +title: Dimona tags: - Place - Israel - Nuclear - NegevDesert - Intelligence + - SamsonOption + - Vanunu + - VelaIncident + - ArmsControl category: "Military Installation" -summary: "The Dimona facility, officially known as the Negev Nuclear Research Center, stands as a deeply clandestine and pivotal complex within Israel's national security apparatus, nestled in the arid Negev Desert south of Jerusalem." +summary: "Israel's Negev Nuclear Research Center near Beersheba, built from 1958 with French help and discovered by the United States in 1960, visited but never inspected by American teams until July 1969." start: 1958 location: "Negev Desert, Israel" --- -The [[Dimona]] facility, officially known as the Negev Nuclear Research Center, stands as a deeply clandestine and pivotal complex within [[Israel]]'s national security apparatus, nestled in the arid [[Negev Desert]] south of [[Jerusalem]]. Its existence and operations are central to Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program, embodying the nation's commitment to [[The Samson Option (GFE)]], a doctrine of last resort that envisions massive nuclear retaliation in the face of an existential threat. This facility is not merely a research center but a fully operational industrial complex dedicated to the production of weapons-grade plutonium and the development of advanced nuclear armaments. +Dimona is the site in the [[Negev Desert]] of [[Israel]], south-east of [[Beersheba]], of the Negev Nuclear Research Center: a heavy water reactor, a chemical reprocessing plant and associated buildings that [[France]] helped build from 1958. The Israeli government's own description of its purpose was for years a series of cover stories; the American record of the reactor consists of intelligence discovery in 1960, ten years of negotiated "visits" ending in July 1969, and a 1986 account by the technician [[Mordecai Vanunu]]. -### History and Construction +### Origins and French construction -The genesis of Dimona can be traced back to the early 1950s, driven by the unwavering vision of Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister [[David Ben-Gurion]], Defense Minister [[Shimon Peres]], and the brilliant scientist [[Ernst David Bergmann]]. Bergmann, often hailed as the "scientific father of the Israeli bomb," tirelessly championed the pursuit of nuclear capabilities, believing it to be the ultimate guarantor of Israel's survival in a hostile region. [[France]] emerged as Israel's indispensable partner in this ambitious endeavor, providing critical expertise and resources. Israeli scientists were granted unprecedented access to French nuclear facilities, including [[Marcoule]] and [[Saclay]], gaining invaluable knowledge and experience. This collaboration culminated in late 1955 when Ben-Gurion formally sought French assistance in constructing a large nuclear reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant on Israeli soil. The agreement was reportedly solidified in the aftermath of the 1956 [[Suez Crisis]], with [[Guy Mollet|French Prime Minister Guy Mollet]] famously declaring, "I owe the bomb to them" [^1]. The [[Saint-Gobain|French]] chemical firm, Saint-Gobain, was subsequently contracted to undertake the construction of the crucial underground reprocessing facility. +[[Avner Cohen]] and [[William Burr]] wrote that in 1955, after [[David Ben-Gurion]] returned as prime minister and defense minister, he delegated a feasibility effort to [[Shimon Peres]], then director general of the Defense Ministry; that Israeli Atomic Energy Commission chairman [[Ernst David Bergmann]] favored self-reliance while Peres sought a foreign supplier; and that by 1958 the plan had France as supplier, [[Norway]] (with the British) supplying heavy water, and the United States supplying a small "Atoms for Peace" package that could serve as camouflage.[^1] A secret Israel-Norway agreement of June 1959 provided for the sale of heavy water through the United Kingdom; it was reported by the political officer at the American embassy in Oslo, Richard Kerry, the father of [[John Kerry]].[^1] [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that [[Guy Mollet]], "obsessed with the consequences of France's failure" at Suez, "was quoted as telling an aide" at the time of the talks with Peres and [[Golda Meir]]: "I owe the bomb to them. I owe the bomb to them"; that the formal French-Israeli agreement has never been made public; and that the firm [[Saint-Gobain]], which had worked at [[Marcoule]], was chosen to build the reprocessing facility underground, its engineers being "stunned" that the reactor's cooling ducts and waste facilities suggested operation at two to three times the 24 megawatts of thermal power the agreement specified.[^2] Hersh wrote that the French-Israeli work made the Negev site a "French boom town," with upward of 2,500 French men, women and children living there, and that the reactor "went critical sometime in 1962" and "was capable of being operated at more than seventy megawatts."[^3] The French foreign minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, told Secretary of State [[Christian Herter]] on December 16, 1960 that France had helped Israel build a "replica of [the] Marcoule plant" and that under the bilateral agreement France would supply raw materials and receive any plutonium produced.[^1] -Groundbreaking for the EL-102 reactor commenced in early 1958, marking the physical manifestation of Israel's nuclear aspirations. The remote Negev Desert site rapidly transformed into a bustling "French boom town," as hundreds of French engineers and technicians, eventually numbering up to 2,500, arrived to oversee and execute the complex construction. By the end of 1960 [[Ian Smart]], third secretary of the British embassy in [[Tel Aviv]], was reporting his "suspicion" that the site looked like a nuclear reactor, prompted by its visible progress and the French presence in [[Beersheba]] [^2]. The reactor achieved criticality in 1962, demonstrating its capacity to operate at over 70 megawatts (MW), significantly higher than the publicly acknowledged 24 MW. This enhanced operational capacity was vital for producing larger quantities of plutonium, a key ingredient for nuclear weapons. In December 1963 [[Shimon Yiftach]], director of scientific programs at the defense ministry, stated publicly that the reactor would produce plutonium as a by-product and that the government had no plans to build a separate reprocessing plant; French construction companies had by then restarted work on the underground reprocessing plant [^7]. By mid-1964, the underground reprocessing plant, a marvel of engineering with its remote-controlled laboratories and computer-driven machinery, was largely completed and poised to begin extracting weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor's spent uranium fuel rods. This progress continued despite [[Charles de Gaulle|French President Charles de Gaulle]]'s public attempts to distance France from the project [^2]. The immense financial undertaking of Dimona, estimated to cost billions of dollars, was partially sustained through covert fundraising efforts led by figures like Shimon Peres and [[Abraham Feinberg]], who solicited contributions from wealthy [[American]] and [[European]] Jews [^2]. +Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion's decision to finance Dimona outside the Israeli budget led Peres, "sometime in 1960," to form, according to Israeli sources, a group of donors called the Committee of Thirty, among them Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris and [[Abraham Feinberg]] of New York, president of the [[Israel Bond Organization]]; Hersh quoted Peres as saying that "not one penny [for Dimona] came from the government budget," and wrote that the project later cost "upward of $500 million a year" in the 1960s, more than 10 percent of the Israeli military budget, according to a former aide to [[Levi Eshkol]].[^4] Cohen and Burr recorded that the financing of Dimona, "through both the diversion of U.S. government aid and the use of tax-deductible individual charities," played an important role in the internal deliberations of the Eisenhower administration when it learned of the site.[^1] -### Operational Details and Facilities (Based on Mordecai Vanunu's Revelations) +### Discovery, 1960 -The intricate workings of Dimona were brought to light in 1986 through the detailed revelations and photographs provided by [[Mordecai Vanunu]], a former technician at the facility. His disclosures offered an unprecedented glimpse into Israel's advanced nuclear capabilities. The complex comprises the main reactor and at least eight other specialized buildings, or Machons, each serving a distinct function in the nuclear fuel cycle. +Cohen and Burr, publishing declassified documents in 2015, wrote that the first known reference to Dimona in American records was in late July 1960, when a "U.S. corporate official" learned of it from an Israeli oil executive and told diplomats in [[Tel Aviv]] that the site would be a power reactor; that Henry Gomberg, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor, learned on a November 1960 trip that Israel had a secret reactor project involving plutonium experiments; and that in September 1960, on a helicopter flight near the site with Ambassador [[Ogden Reid]], the senior Treasury Ministry official Addy Cohen answered a question about the construction by saying "that's a textile plant," later telling an embassy officer that "that was our story at the time" and that "we have been misbehaving."[^1] The British diplomat [[Ian Smart]], third secretary in Tel Aviv, told Hersh that "there was a lot of talk by the end of 1960 about Dimona," that Israeli officials told the British embassy in turn that the site was a desert grasslands research institute and, at a military checkpoint, a "manganese-processing plant," and that during his last year he reported the "suspicion" that it looked like a nuclear reactor.[^5] [[Dino Brugioni]], a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] photo interpreter, told Hersh that officers watched the fencing, new road and subterranean digging on [[U-2 Spy Plane|U-2]] imagery.[^6] -[[Machon 1]] houses the large, silver-domed reactor, a prominent structure 60 feet in diameter, visible even from nearby highways. This heavy-water moderated reactor utilizes uranium fuel rods, which remain within its core for approximately three months. The heavy water coolant is, in turn, cooled by ordinary water flowing through a heat exchanger, generating steam that, unlike in a conventional power plant, is vented directly into the atmosphere, creating a radioactive cloud [^3]. +Special National Intelligence Estimate 100-8-60 of December 8, 1960 stated that "Israel is engaged in construction of a nuclear reactor complex in the Negev near Beersheba" and that "plutonium production for weapons is at least one major purpose of this effort," and estimated that Israel would produce some weapons-grade plutonium in 1963 to 1964, possibly as early as 1962; a large part of the estimate remains classified. At a meeting of December 19, 1960 President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] discussed Israeli fundraising in the United States and plans to encourage visits and [[International Atomic Energy Agency]] safeguards.[^1] Hersh wrote that [[Arthur Krock]] sent the New York Times reporter [[John W. Finney]] to the Atomic Energy Commission chairman [[John McCone]], who told him "They lied to us. The Israelis. They told us it was a textile plant," and that Finney's article appeared on the front page of December 19, 1960.[^7] Cohen and Burr called the late discovery "a major blunder," "an intelligence failure," and, from the Israeli side, "a tremendous counterintelligence success."[^1] The vault's pages on [[John L. Hadden]], [[Robert T. Webber]] and [[Carmelo Alba]] describe the American embassy's later efforts: Hersh wrote that Alba, then the U.S. Army's military attache, photographed the site monthly with a telescopic camera until a picture showed "smoke coming out of the dome," and that Hadden, the CIA station chief from 1963, sent Alba to Beersheba to count French names on mailboxes.[^8] -The most sensitive and critical component of Dimona is [[Machon 2]], the chemical reprocessing plant, informally known as "The Tunnel." This six-level underground facility is where plutonium is meticulously extracted through chemical processes from the highly radioactive spent uranium rods. Operating around the clock for 34 weeks annually, "The Tunnel" is a testament to advanced engineering and stringent security. Within this facility, an observation area in the control room, affectionately dubbed "Golda's Balcony," commemorates [[Golda Meir|Prime Minister Golda Meir]]'s frequent visits during her tenure [^3]. On level five of "The Tunnel," weapons-grade plutonium is precisely molded into hemispheres for warheads within sealed glove boxes, alongside the fabrication of other crucial chemicals like lithium and beryllium. Vanunu's accounts indicated a steady weekly production of 1.2 kilograms of pure plutonium [^3]. +### American visits, 1961 to 1969 -Beyond the core reprocessing functions, other Machons contribute to the overall operation. [[Machon 3]] is responsible for converting lithium-6 into a solid form suitable for nuclear warheads and for processing natural uranium for the reactor. [[Machon 4]] manages the waste treatment processes for the radioactive residues generated by Machon 2. [[Machon 5]] applies an aluminum coating to the uranium rods, prepared in Machon 3, before their insertion into the reactor. [[Machon 6]] provides essential basic services and power to the entire Dimona complex. Advanced research and development take place in [[Machon 8]], which notably includes [[Special Unit 840]], where Israeli scientists pioneered a gas centrifuge method for uranium enrichment. Further enrichment capabilities are housed in [[Machon 9]], a laser-isotope-reprocessing facility. Finally, [[Machon 10]] is dedicated to the chemical isolation of depleted uranium, which is then prepared for military applications or commercial sale [^3]. The facility also includes specialized units for tritium production, with Unit 92 having removed tritium from heavy water since the 1960s, and Unit 93, opened in 1984, focusing on large-scale tritium production. Tritium is a vital component for "boosted" fission weapons and neutron bombs, underscoring Israel's pursuit of sophisticated nuclear designs [^3]. +Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion insisted that inspection by the [[International Atomic Energy Agency]] would violate Israeli sovereignty, and that [[John F. Kennedy]]'s White House agreed to an American team on terms by which it "would have to schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of Israel. There would be no spot checks permitted."[^9] He wrote that [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]] dated the first inspection to 1962 and that Culler's teams made the visits.[^10] According to Hersh, the Israeli scheme "based on plans supplied by the French" built a false control room at Dimona "complete with false control panels and computer-driven measuring devices that seemed to be gauging the thermal output of a twenty-four-megawatt reactor"; Culler told him he reported to the White House that the reactor was a "standard reactor," and when informed of the false room replied, "It's possible to make a system appear that it's controlling something when it's not." A former member of the Israeli General Staff Reconnaissance Unit told Hersh that weeks before an inspection soldiers brought "eight semitrailers loaded with grass. It was sod, all for camouflage," to cover walks and bunkers.[^11] The CIA photo interpreter Brugioni told Hersh that the sudden grass "just spotlights activity."[^11] -### Security and Secrecy +The documents of 1969 give the American side. On March 17, 1969 Secretary of Defense [[Melvin Laird]] wrote to the Secretary of State, the national security adviser and the Director of Central Intelligence, under the subject "Stopping the Introduction of Nuclear Weapons Into the Middle East," that he had seen "additional evidence of activity" (the object is redacted), referred to export licenses granted the previous June and October for two Control Data 6400 computers and one IBM 360/65 computer, and endorsed [[David Packard]]'s recommendation that shipment of the second CDC 6400 be withheld.[^12] The visit of July 10 to 13, 1969 was, in a State Department memorandum of June 12, 1970, "the last 'visit' to Dimona"; the memorandum added that "no one in the U.S. community has been satisfied with the restrictions and conditions Israel has imposed."[^13] In a memorandum of conversation of August 13, 1969 between Dr. Charles H. Reichardt, the AEC's Director of Intelligence, his deputy Charles A. Sommer, George B. Pleat, chief of the Dimona inspection team, and a State Department officer, the team was said to have drawn "the inference that the US government is not prepared to support a real 'inspection' effort," to have been "cautioned to avoid controversy" and to "be gentlemen," and to have been "criticized roundly" by the Israelis on one occasion "for having 'acted like inspectors'"; the State officer added that "visits conducted under these approaches may even be counter-productive."[^14] A State Department background paper of September 19, 1969 for the visit of Golda Meir, drafted by Robert H. Munn and cleared by [[Joseph Sisco]], [[Rodger Davies]], the Atomic Energy Commission and a CIA officer named Chamberlain, stated: "Our 'visits' to Dimona have shed virtually no light on the role that site may play in a weapons program," that "we have actually learned very little from the standpoint of a weapons program," that Israel had since about 1963 "moved as rapidly as possible" on strategic missiles and warheads, that "all the facilities required for production of plutonium have been identified with the exception of a separation plant," that "others feel confident that Israel already has one or more complete nuclear weapons now," and that Israel's formula was "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East."[^15] [[Henry Kissinger]]'s memorandum of October 7, 1969, "Discussions with the Israelis on Nuclear Matters," was written after the meeting of [[Richard Nixon]] and Meir.[^16] Hersh wrote that the Israeli leadership "correctly interpreted the end of the Culler inspections as an American carte blanche."[^17] -From its inception, Dimona has been shrouded in an unparalleled veil of secrecy, a testament to Israel's determination to conceal its nuclear ambitions. The Israeli government consistently maintained elaborate cover stories, publicly asserting that the facility was solely dedicated to peaceful purposes such as scientific research, seawater desalinization, or agricultural development [^4]. This narrative was meticulously crafted to deflect international scrutiny. +### Facilities, as described by Vanunu -Despite these denials, American intelligence, particularly through [[U-2 Spy Plane|U-2]] spy plane overflights beginning in the late 1950s, gathered early evidence of the clandestine construction. From 1962 to 1969, American inspection teams, notably led by [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]], conducted scheduled visits to Dimona. However, these inspections were largely a "whitewash," as Israel employed sophisticated deception tactics. This included the construction of a false control room, complete with fake panels and measuring devices designed to mimic a 24 MW research reactor, and the use of elaborate camouflage, such as covering bunkers with sod, to mislead inspectors [^5]. The inspections ultimately ceased in 1969 under the [[Nixon Administration]], which implicitly acknowledged Israel's nuclear status without public declaration. +Mordecai Vanunu, a technician, gave photographs and an account to the London Sunday Times in 1986 that Hersh summarized as follows. The complex has a main reactor and at least eight other buildings (machons). Machon 1 houses the silver-domed reactor, 60 feet in diameter and visible from a nearby highway, with uranium rods left in the core about three months, heavy water cooled by ordinary water through a heat exchanger, and steam vented into the atmosphere. Machon 2, "the Tunnel," is the six-level underground reprocessing plant where plutonium is extracted; its control room contains an observation area called "Golda's Balcony" for Meir's visits after 1969; plutonium is molded into hemispheres in glove boxes on level five, with lithium compounds and beryllium; and Vanunu gave the output as a weekly average of nine "buttons" of plutonium weighing 1.2 kilograms. Machon 3 converts lithium 6 and processes natural uranium; Machon 4 treats waste; Machon 5 coats rods with aluminum; Machon 6 supplies services and power; Machon 8 holds a test laboratory and Special Unit 840, "where Israeli scientists have developed a gas centrifuge method of enriching uranium for weapons use"; Machon 9 holds a laser-isotope facility; Machon 10 isolates depleted uranium. Unit 92 had been removing tritium from heavy water since the 1960s and Unit 93, opened in 1984, produced tritium on a large scale. The reactor ran 34 weeks a year.[^18] Vanunu's account is the sole source for these passages; Hersh's note states that the nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby spent two days with Vanunu for the Sunday Times and concluded that the account "is totally convincing." The vault's pages on [[Machon 1]], [[Machon 2]], [[Machon 3]], [[Machon 4]], [[Machon 5]], [[Machon 6]], [[Machon 8]], [[Machon 9]] and [[Machon 10]] carry the individual descriptions. -The protection of Dimona's secrets was a paramount concern, leading to the creation of the Office of Special Tasks (later known as [[LAKAM]]), an intelligence agency specifically tasked with this mission. Led by figures like [[Binyamin Blumberg]], LAKAM agents operated globally, collecting technical information and establishing front companies to acquire high-tech equipment that would otherwise be denied to Israel due to export controls [^3]. Israeli security forces maintained constant vigilance, actively monitoring and deterring any attempts at unauthorized photography or infiltration, engaging in a prolonged "cat-and-mouse game" with American intelligence [^6]. +### The security apparatus -### Nuclear Arsenal and Testing +Hersh wrote that [[Binyamin Blumberg]], a former military intelligence officer chosen by Peres, headed the Office of Special Tasks, later known as [[LAKAM]], placed in the Defense Ministry to protect the nuclear project, collect technical information abroad and set up front companies for restricted equipment.[^19] He wrote that Israeli forces watched for photography, that aircraft, "including those belonging to the Israeli Air Force," are forbidden to overfly the site, and that in 1967 an Israeli Mirage was shot down in its airspace.[^20] -Dimona's operational success paved the way for Israel's emergence as a nuclear power. Well-placed Israeli sources indicate that at least one successful low-yield nuclear test was conducted in an underground cavern in the Negev Desert during the mid-1960s [^7]. By early 1968, Dimona had transitioned to full-scale production, manufacturing an estimated 4 to 5 warheads annually. By the time of the [[Yom Kippur War]] in September 1973, Israel's nuclear arsenal comprised, according to Seymour Hersh, at least 20 warheads.[^8] +### Output and tests, as reported by Hersh -A significant event in Israel's nuclear history occurred on September 22, 1979, when Israel, in conjunction with [[South Africa]], conducted a low-yield nuclear test over the [[South Indian Ocean]]. This event was detected by the [[VELA Satellite|U.S. VELA satellite]], providing concrete evidence of Israel's nuclear capability [^9]. Vanunu's later revelations further underscored the sophistication of Israel's nuclear program, suggesting its capacity to manufacture advanced thermonuclear weapons, including low-yield neutron bombs [^3]. +Hersh wrote that "sometime early in 1968, Dimona finally was ordered into full-scale production and began turning out four or five warheads a year," and, in another chapter, that by 1973 "according to former Israeli government officials, the Israeli nuclear arsenal totaled at least twenty warheads"; his chapter on the Tunnel states a figure of more than twenty-five by the Yom Kippur War.[^21] He wrote that "well-placed Israeli sources" said that technicians conducted "at least one successful low-yield nuclear test sometime in the mid-1960s at an underground cavern" in the Negev.[^22] -### Strategic Significance +On September 22, 1979 the Vela 6911 satellite recorded a double flash over the South Indian Ocean; the technicians of the [[Air Force Technical Applications Center]] at [[Patrick Air Force Base]] had seen 41 earlier double flashes, each confirmed as a nuclear explosion.[^23] Hersh wrote that "former Israeli government officials, whose information on other aspects of Dimona's activities has been corroborated," said the event was a low-yield Israeli artillery shell tested with the South African Navy observing and was the third such test over the ocean; he wrote that the presidential science adviser [[Frank Press]] wanted the review panel to buy time and that an aide recalled Press "did not want that panel to conclude there had been a nuclear explosion."[^24] The panel chaired by [[Jack Ruina]], which included [[Richard Garwin]], [[Luis Alvarez]] and [[Wolfgang Panofsky]], concluded in May 1980 that the signal was more likely a meteoroid striking the satellite and sunlight reflecting off the ejected particles, while reports from [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]], [[SRI International]], [[Sandia National Laboratories]], the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Aerospace Corporation]] published in 2006 included several that held a nuclear test most probable.[^23] See [[VELA Satellite]] and [[Nuclear Intelligence Panel]]. -The existence and output of Dimona form the bedrock of Israel's nuclear deterrent strategy. The facility's continuous production of plutonium and its capability to develop advanced warheads have enabled Israel to maintain a policy of "strategic ambiguity" regarding its nuclear capabilities. This deliberate lack of official confirmation, coupled with the implied threat of a nuclear arsenal, serves to enhance Israel's perceived security in a volatile and often hostile region. The The Samson Option (GFE), deeply intertwined with Dimona's capabilities, represents Israel's ultimate assurance against existential threats, a powerful and silent guarantor of its survival. +### Doctrine and deterrence + +Hersh's title phrase, [[The Samson Option (GFE)|the Samson Option]], is treated on its own page. The official Israeli formula quoted in the American record of 1969, that Israel "will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East," was, in the State Department paper, a position on which Ambassador [[Yitzhak Rabin]] "failed to go beyond this position, or to agree to any refinement of understanding of the word 'introduce,'" and Israel made no reply to the American interpretation, put in a letter of November 27, 1968 by Assistant Secretary of Defense [[Paul Warnke]], that it meant "possess."[^15] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 3. -[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 5. -[^3]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 15. -[^4]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 6. -[^5]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 8. -[^6]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 4. -[^7]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 10. -[^8]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 13. -[^9]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, Chapter 20. \ No newline at end of file +[^1]: Cohen, Avner, and William Burr, "The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona: March 1958-January 1961," National Security Archive, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project and Center for Nonproliferation Studies, April 15, 2015 (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 510), with documents including SNIE 100-8-60 and the Eisenhower meeting record of December 19, 1960. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb510/ +[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, chapter 3, "The French Connection." Full text read at https://archive.org/details/Sampson_Option +[^3]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars" (French residents) and chapter 9, "Years of Pressure" (criticality in 1962). +[^4]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars" (Committee of Thirty); chapter 8, "A Presidential Struggle" (Feinberg); chapter 10, "The Samson Option" (annual cost). +[^5]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars," interview with Ian Smart, New York, July 23, 1989. +[^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 4, "First Knowledge." +[^7]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 6, "Going Public." +[^8]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 12, "The Ambassador," pp. 163-164. +[^9]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 8, "A Presidential Struggle," pp. 110-111. +[^10]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 8 (Culler's account of the first inspection in 1962). +[^11]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 8 (false control room; Culler) and chapter 10, pp. 131-132 (sod; Brugioni's comment is in the footnote on p. 131). +[^12]: Laird, Melvin R., memorandum for the Secretary of State, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Director of Central Intelligence, "Stopping the Introduction of Nuclear Weapons Into the Middle East," March 17, 1969, sanitized, in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 189, document 6. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-06.pdf +[^13]: Munn, Robert H., to Sisco through Davies, "Scheduling of Visit to Dimona Reactor," June 12, 1970, EBB 189, document 29. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-29.pdf +[^14]: Department of State, memorandum of conversation, "1969 Dimona Visit," August 13, 1969, EBB 189, document 16b. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-16b.pdf +[^15]: Department of State, "Background: Israel's Nuclear Weapon and Missile Programs," enclosed in Executive Secretary Theodore L. Eliot to Henry Kissinger, September 19, 1969, EBB 189, document 21 (pp. 2 to 8, with drafting and clearance box). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-21.pdf ; Cohen, Avner, and William Burr, "Israel crosses the threshold," *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,* May/June 2006. +[^16]: Kissinger, Henry A., to the President, "Discussions with the Israelis on Nuclear Matters," October 7, 1969, EBB 189, document 22 (title and date; the National Security Archive's index describes it as written "in the wake of the Nixon-Meir meeting"). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-22.pdf +[^17]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 16, "Prelude to War," on the end of the Culler inspections. +[^18]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 15, "The Tunnel." +[^19]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars," and chapter 10 (Office of Special Tasks). +[^20]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131 and its footnote. +[^21]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 13, "An Israeli Decision" (1968 production; more than twenty-five bombs), and chapter 16, "Prelude to War" (at least twenty warheads by 1973). +[^22]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131. +[^23]: Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm +[^24]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 20, "An Israeli Test," pp. 271-273. diff --git a/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Fort Meade.md b/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Fort Meade.md index 590a0ee8..40cbfc53 100644 --- a/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Fort Meade.md +++ b/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Fort Meade.md @@ -1,23 +1,71 @@ --- +aliases: + - Fort Meade + - Fort George G. Meade + - Fort George Meade + - Ft. Meade + - Ft Meade + - Fort George G Meade created: 2025-07-22 -updated: 2025-07-22 +updated: 2026-10-05 title: Fort Meade tags: - - Organization - - Government - - Military - - Intelligence - - USA + - MilitaryInstallation - Maryland -description: Fort George G. Meade is a United States Army installation in Maryland, serving as a key center for intelligence and security operations, and a primary location for the Stargate Project. + - NSA + - INSCOM + - StargateProject + - GrillFlame + - CenterLane + - SunStreak + - RemoteViewing + - Intelligence +description: Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, the Army post that has housed the National Security Agency since 1957 and hosted the Army and Defense Intelligence Agency remote viewing unit from 1977 to 1995. category: "Military Installation" -summary: "Fort Meade is a sprawling U.S. Army installation in Maryland that houses the NSA, INSCOM, and was the home base for the STARGATE remote viewing unit from 1977 to 1995." +location: "Maryland" +summary: "Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the National Security Agency since 1957, was the site of the Army and Defense Intelligence Agency remote viewing unit from 1977 until its 1995 closure." --- -[[Fort Meade]] (officially Fort George G. Meade) is a [[United States Army]] installation located in Maryland, approximately twenty-five miles northeast of Washington, D.C. It is a sprawling, town-like base that houses, among other things, the [[NSA]], the U.S. First Army, and a part of the Army's [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command|Intelligence and Security Command]] (INSCOM).[^1] +Fort George G. Meade, Maryland (postal address Fort Meade, MD 20755 on [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command]] correspondence) became the headquarters of the [[NSA]] after a site board chose it in February 1952; the first personnel to arrive were 149 Marine guards, about 2,000 employees worked in barracks on Canine Road before construction ended, and the Operations 1 building was completed in 1957, after which the agency's communications intelligence staff moved in.[^1] The post also held the headquarters of the [[U.S. First Army]], named in a Grill Flame session report as "First Army Headquarters, Ft Meade MD."[^2] On the fort the [[U.S. Army]]'s 902d Military Intelligence Group, the Operations Security Group and the Systems Exploitation Detachment worked in numbered buildings, among them the Command SCIF in Building 4554.[^3][^4] -Fort Meade served as a primary location for the [[Stargate Project]], the U.S. Army's secret psychic research program. The remote viewing unit, initially codenamed Gondola Wish and later Grill Flame, was established here in 1977. The unit's offices were initially located in building 4554, and later moved to buildings 2560 and 2561 on Llewellyn Street, which were refurbished by the remote viewers themselves to create quiet, secure spaces for their sessions.[^1] +### Gondola Wish and the Army unit, 1976 to 1979 -Key figures in the Stargate Project, such as [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]], [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]], [[Mel Riley]], [[Joe McMoneagle]], and [[Ken Bell]], were stationed at Fort Meade. The base served as the operational hub for many of the remote viewing missions, with tasking requests originating from various offices throughout the U.S. intelligence community.[^1] +[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that [[Mel Riley]] was posted to the [[Operations Security Group]] at Fort Meade in 1976 and that the Systems Exploitation Team, set up by Brigadier General [[Edmund Thompson]] of the [[Army Intelligence Agency]], had offices down the hall in Building 4554; Lieutenant [[Frederick Atwater]] arrived in the summer of 1977, when the Army Intelligence Agency and the [[Army Security Agency]] were merged into the Intelligence and Security Command.[^3] The project Atwater proposed was given the code name Gondola Wish, with a few thousand dollars in travel money, cramped space in Building 4554 and Major [[Murray Watt]] as commanding officer; Schnabel placed the viewers' first quarters directly under a women's lavatory, and wrote that after complaints (including a howitzer salute on the parade ground that startled [[Ken Bell]] out of a session) the unit moved to Buildings 2560 and 2561 on Llewellyn Street, former bakery school and mess hall huts of the Second World War, which the viewers refurbished themselves, [[Joe McMoneagle]] painting a deep-space mural on a disused oven shield in 2561.[^3] + +An Army legal chronology shows a different date for the program's formal limits. Its entry for September 26, 1978 records a 902d Military Intelligence Group memorandum in which the Army staff office DAMI-ISH "cancelled GONDOLA WISH" because the [[Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences]] training was not cleared and "could be categorized as experimenting with human use"; the same chronology follows the Army General Counsel's opinion of February 1979 that [[Grill Flame]] could involve "testing on human subjects," a Surgeon General's subcommittee ruling of March 1979 that the Army protocol was "NO RISK, NO HUMAN USE," and the Under Secretary of the Army's concurrence, in early 1980, in continuing the in-house INSCOM program.[^5] The Defense Intelligence Agency's own history states that INSCOM assembled a unit in 1979, held its first operational sessions in September 1979 after a summer training phase at [[Stanford Research Institute]], and in December 1979 declared the in-house unit operational "having the capability to remote view targets of intelligence interest."[^6] + +### Visitors, 1982 + +On February 9, 1982 Brigadier General [[James L. Dozier]], after his kidnapping, was briefed on Grill Flame at the Command SCIF (Building 4554) and asked to review viewers' sketches for correlation to places surrounding his kidnapping; the project manager, Lieutenant Colonel [[Robert Jachim]], decided not to have him sign a briefing certificate.[^7] A letter of April 14, 1982 from the Defense Intelligence Agency's Intelligence Programs office to the staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence arranged for up to six members and staff to visit "Army's GRILL FLAME facility at Fort Meade," adding that "much of the concern should be laid to rest by the Fort Meade trip."[^8] On May 4, 1982 Annette Smiley of the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] staff was briefed at Building T-2561, where McMoneagle presented completed evaluated projects and Atwater walked her through Building T-2560; the record states that she explained that the only reason she was there was "the strong support for GRILL FLAME" by a committee member from North Carolina (the name is withheld), and that Grill Flame "had been cut in the Senate."[^9] On June 29, 1982 three Senate Appropriations Committee staff members, with [[Jack Vorona]] of the Defense Intelligence Agency, were briefed at T-2561.[^10] + +### Center Lane and Sun Streak + +A Center Lane information paper for the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated March 7, 1985, lists initial orientation training of one to two months at Fort Meade, advanced training in which the Monroe "Discovery" series was "done at Fort Meade to screen personnel" before a Gateway program in Virginia, "applications training" in "specially designed hemi-sync environments" at Fort Meade, and states that facilities at Kimbrough Army Hospital, Fort Meade, "are available if required."[^11] After the Defense Intelligence Agency took the unit in 1986 under [[Sun Streak]], with twelve billets authorized, a December 1992 staff study called its project, then named [[Stargate Project|Star Gate]], one "housed in temporary facilities at Fort George G. Meade."[^12] + +That staff study, prepared after the fiscal 1993 defense authorization conference report directed the agency to study moving Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at [[Fort Detrick]], records visits by Star Gate managers to the center on October 9 and 22, 1992, a meeting of the center's director, deputy, chief scientist and life sciences chief on October 14, and an inspection of the Fort Meade facility by the center's deputy director on October 29. Arguments for the move included that "Fort Meade is an open military post; Fort Detrick has controlled access through a guarded gate," that the Star Gate building was "a substandard World War II pre-fabricated frame structure," that the project reached the Defense Intelligence Agency's electronic mail only by "commercial telephone and facsimile service," and that the medical center had a reserve attorney who could assess human use compliance. Arguments against included an AFMIC concern that Star Gate methods "might damage AFMIC's credibility," a concern about a repeat of the "Yellow Rain" controversy, and the project manager's opinion that "the Fort Meade facility is ideal." A later Defense Intelligence Agency summary states that "a decision was made to retain the project at Fort Meade."[^12][^13] + +### Closure, 1995 + +The Central Intelligence Agency's transfer chronology for 1995 records an all-day visit by the agency and a representative of its Office of Military Affairs to "Ft. Meade to meet all program personnel and discuss transfer" on March 15, an independent contractor hired to compile bibliographies who began work at Fort Meade "immediately," a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Army and the agency in April with funds "officially transferred to Pentagon," and a May entry in which the Defense Intelligence Agency told the agency it would reassign the Star Gate personnel because the review would not end by July 1.[^14] An agency memorandum of April 11, 1995 states that unclassified reports were moved to the agency's Office of Research and Development, classified reports were retained "in appropriate containers at the Star Gate facility," and "all additional or duplicate copies of contractor reports at the facility were destroyed."[^15] + +### Later contracts paid at Fort Meade + +The Defense Intelligence Agency's 2008 award HHM402-08-C-0072 to [[Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies]], issued by the [[Virginia Contracting Activity]] at [[Bolling Air Force Base]], names the NSA Finance and Accounting Office at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland 20755-6856, as the office making payment.[^16] ### Footnotes -[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997. \ No newline at end of file + +[^1]: National Security Agency, "The Move to Fort Meade," Cryptologic Almanac article. https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/nsa/cryptoalmanac/The_Move_to_Fort_Meade.pdf +[^2]: INSCOM Grill Flame session report noting "First Army Headquarters, Ft Meade MD," CIA-RDP96-00788R000900410001-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. +[^3]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, chapters on Riley, Atwater and Gondola Wish. +[^4]: Memorandum for the record, "Conversation with BG Dozier," February 22, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R000700130019-2 (Command SCIF, Building 4554); INSCOM message traffic addressed to "CDR 902D MI GP FT MEADE MD," CIA-RDP96-00788R000100250011-3. +[^5]: "Human Use Chronology," Army staff, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100430001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection (the scan's columns are misaligned; entries are as legible). +[^6]: Defense Intelligence Agency, *Government-Sponsored Research in Psychoenergetics,* February 1989, section on INSCOM, CIA-RDP96-00789R002200440001-9. +[^7]: Memorandum for the record, "Conversation with BG Dozier," February 22, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R000700130019-2. +[^8]: Defense Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Programs, letter to Robert R. Simmons, Staff Director, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, April 14, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100400017-9. +[^9]: Memorandum for the record, "Briefing of Ms. Annette Smiley," May 7, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100190010-0. +[^10]: Memorandum for ADCSOPS-HUMINT, "Briefing for Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) Staffers," July 7, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100290001-9. +[^11]: *Center Lane Information Papers for Director, Defense Intelligence Agency,* March 7, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R000400060001-2. +[^12]: Defense Intelligence Agency, Staff Study, "Transfer of Project Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center," December 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002500130001-0. +[^13]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Senate Appropriations Committee Congressionally Directed Action: Star Gate," CIA-RDP96-00789R002900010001-9. +[^14]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. +[^15]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Research and Development, memorandum for the record, "Status of Contractor Reports and Annotated Bibliographies," April 11, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200170009-0. +[^16]: Defense Intelligence Agency, Standard Form 1449, order HHM402-08-C-0072, September 22, 2008, released in FOIA-00269-2018. https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dia/AAWSAP/FOIA-00269-2018-.pdf