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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/DEA.md
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@ -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."

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md
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@ -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

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---
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.
### 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).

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@ -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

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Customs.md
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@ -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

123
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Science Applications International Corporation.md
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@ -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.
### 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.