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A THANKSGIVING FABLE: IN THE SOUP

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Al the Turkey gobbled with his friends in the farmyard where they all lived. They gobbled about who had the prettiest feathers, and about the quality of birdseed. But mostly they gobbled about how lucky they were not to be chickens. Chickens, all turkeys knew, were cowards. Sure, chickens crossed the street, but nobody ever knew why--and chickens probably didn't know either. Dumb clucks!

But the main reason these turkeys believed they were lucky not to be chickens was because humans bred chickens to be eaten as food. Or forced to lay eggs that would be soft-boiled, hard-boiled, poached, fried or scrambled.

A large rooster named Rufus overheard the turkeys gobbling as he sauntered by, pecking corn kernels. "Ha!" the rooster clucked. "You'll all get yours. Thanksgiving is coming soon."

"Thanksgiving?" gobbled Al the Turkey.

"Uh-huh," Rufus clucked, in a language only fowl could understand. "I can tell by the leaves. They're orange and yellow, and they're falling from the trees."

"But what is Thanksgiving?" asked Al the Turkey.

"When all the leaves have fallen," clucked Rufus, "Thanksgiving will be here. And when that happens--ha!--fried chicken is not on the menu."

"N-n-no?" gobbled Al. "Pork chops?"

Rufus clucked with laughter. "Guess again, gobble-face."

Something about this rooster's cockiness worried Terry. "You m-m-mean...?"

“You got it, butterball," clucked Rufus. "Stuffed oven-roasted turkey!" With that, the rooster eructed a triumphant "cock-a-doodle-doo" and moseyed off, clucking with delight.

"Did you hear that?" gobbled Al. "What are we gonna d-d-do?"

The turkeys glanced around nervously, shaking their snoods. The trees would be barren of leaves in a matter of days.

"Let's go see Ted Turkey," said one of Al's friends. "He'll know what to do."

Ted was the toughest turkey on the farm—reputed to be the smartest, too.

The young turks surrounded Ted, and Al conveyed what Rufus Rooster told them about Thanksgiving. "R-R-Rufus is trying to scare us, isn't he?" Al’s eyes begged for hope.

For a long moment Ted was silent. "No," he gobbled. "That rude rooster told you the truth. You will all be eaten at Thanksgiving," he said bluntly. "Sorry," he added.

The turkeys were gobble-less. It was Al who finally found his gobbler. "B-b-b-b-b-but...you're still here, Ted."

Ted flapped his wings. "Darn right, I am. I'm too tough to eat."

"Can't we t-t-toughen up like you?" asked Al.

"Too late," gobbled Ted. "Thanksgiving is upon us and you birds are tender as can be. The only question is how those humans will prepare you."

Al puzzled this. "Prepare us? What are the ch-ch-choices?"

"Ch-ch-choices?" Ted squawked with laughter. "You don't get no ch-ch-choices. The humans decide on preparation."

"Preparation?"

"Chances are, oven roast turkey, stuffed with chestnuts," said Ted. "A side of cranberry sauce. Or maybe smoked turkey breast and mashed potatoes covered in giblet gravy."

"G-g-giblet?" asked Al.

"Internal organs," gobbled Ted. "Liver and kidneys, mostly."

Al gasped.

A few of the younger turkeys started to cry.

"Or could you wind up as turkey salad sandwiches." Al cocked his head. "And I hear they're making turkey pastrami these days. And turkey dogs. And turkey burgers and turkey bacon."

"What about t-t-turkey soup?" asked Al.

Ted considered this. "Yep. That's a possibility."

"If I'm going to end up d-d-dinner," gobbled Al. "I want to be t-t-turkey soup."

Ted gobbled with mirth. "I told you turkeys already, you can't decide nothing. Whether you get roasted, fried, boiled, broiled, barbequed, smoked, micro-waved or souped, you have no say, no way." And with that, Ted flapped off, gobbling gaily about Christmas.

"What's C-C-Christmas?" asked Al.

Ted called back, "You won't need to know."

A few days before Thanksgiving, the trucks arrived.

Word had already gobbled round the farmyard about the meaning of trucks. What trucks meant was this: It was time to flap your wings and scram. Because trucks were there to take all the tender, terrified turkeys to the abbatoir--a fancy French word for slaughterhouse.

Alas, a high fence surrounded the turkeys, so scramming was not an option.

Rufus Rooster watched in glee as all the turkeys--except tough Ted--were chased aboard trucks.

Al got squashed in tight with the other turkeys, no space to turn around. All he could think about was: If I’m going to become a meal, I want to be turkey soup, even though all the other turkeys laughed when he talked about that.

The turkeys were crying, not laughing, when they drew near the abbatoir. The smell of poultry death hung foul in the air. Al tried to hold his breath to stifle his fear.

Al's truck ground to a halt. Its back doors opened and, one by one, the turkeys were grabbed and hung by their feet from a metal shackle and rail that carried upside-down turkeys to the stunning tank. Here, turkeys were dunked headfirst into electrified water that knocked most of them out cold. The lucky ones did not wake up for the next step: a throat slashing by a mechanical blade. After this, turkeys bled to death before reaching the boiling water.

Fortunately for Al, his soul had departed to turkey heaven by the time he reached the boiling tank. And good thing, too, since processing came next. And no self-respecting turkey would want to remain conscious for processing.

Some turkeys were blast-frozen whole. These butterballs would end up stuffed and roasted. Other turkeys were carved up with a large knife and packaged into parts, including giblets.

Al got tossed into a giant cauldron with carrots and celery and spices, left to simmer, then canned and dispatched to Safeway.

Al’s wish had come true. Turkey soup.

Moral: Relax. Quite often things turn out just fine.


THE KU KLUX KLAN FROM THE INSIDE, PART III

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We penetrate Fiery Cross Terror Gangs


Robert Scoggin's den was plastered with posters.

One showed a black man about to stab a frightened white mother embracing her two children, along with the slogan: "The time is coming--will you be ready?" It also showed a Klansman brandishing a rifle.

Another showed a black man with the slogan: "He may be your equal, but he sure isn't ours!"

Yet another portrayed a tearful white girl holding a torn white dress and the slogan: "The black savage must go. Every 14 minutes a woman is raped in the USA. Unite together white men."

Scoggin has a huge business in mail-order Klan paraphernalia. His stock includes emblems, embroidered patches, car bumper and window stickers, belt buckles, earrings, tie pins and neckties. "I send them all over the world," he said.

Klan recruits are measured up and supplied with robes, hoods and masks. After measuring us, Scoggin said, "I'll call the robe factory right now." He said they would be red because he had made us Kleagles (officers) and would cost us 16 pounds each. He also gave us badges to decorate the robes.

In Jail

Scoggin says he has been a Klan member for 26 years and claims to be the longest-serving KKK officer in America. He proved his dedication in the Sixties by refusing to answer questions about the Klan before the un-American activities Committee.

At the time, it was claimed that the Klan was making bombs to destroy stores and restaurants which permitted blacks to eat at lunch counters. For contempt of Congress, Scoggin spent nine months in jail.

Fully robed and hooded, we later took part in a KKK rally and its ritual of burning the cross.

Climax

We were accompanied by Emperor Scoggin who took us into a field and presented us with red satin robes, hoods and masks.

Klan members stood around in their robes of white, scarlet, green, purple and black. Many wore masks.

Up to 300 members of the public were harangued by speakers friom different Klan units.

The climax to the rally came as Klansmen were handed flaming torches and circled and lit the 20-feet high pinewood cross.

Klan rallies are held regularly across America, and Klanspeople are often arrested for racial disturbances.

And Emperor Scoggin made it clear that he expects his English disciples to do the same.

THE FORCE OF WILLIS CARTO

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This article appeared in Mother Jones in April 1981.


Ask a radical right-winger, "Who's behind the Trilatercal Commission?" Nine out of ten will tell you, "David Rockefeller." Now ask who's behind The Spotlight, the weekly tabloid in which rightists read about the Trilateral Commission. Ninety-nine out of a hundred won't know.

Willis Allison Carto's network is probably more secretive than the Trilateral Commission could ever hope to be. But with a radio show aired on 470 stations daily, a brand new television commentary series seen in 37 cities and a newspaper circulation approaching 340,000, Carto is a formidable force within the Right.

Former Senator Sam Ervin has commended Carto's Liberty Lobby for being "faithful toi the concept of the Constitution." Idaho Representative George Hansen says he's "pleased to feceibve The Spotlight and hope all my colleagues have access to it." Carto's propaganda machine is being taken seriously by a growing number of rightists. Here's a thumbnail rundown of his empire and the history of his activities:

Liberty Lobby: This non-profit, ultra-conservative pressure group is the core of Carto's industry, estimated to be a multimillion-dollar operation. Founded by Carto in 1956, the group reached a financial turning point in 1964 with the publication of a character assassination of Lyndon Johnson.

In April 1969, columnist Drew Pearson wrote that the Liberty Lobby was a "neo-Nazi group" and published a letter written by Carto that read, in part: "Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe. And America." Furious, Carto went to court but was unsuccessful in his attempt to stop Pearson from writing about Liberty Lobby.

This past June, Robert Bartell became chairman of Liberty Lobby's Board of Policy. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, Bartell's history includes having presided over a hush-hush 1970 Liberty Lobby fundraiser for a project--"Operation Survival"--to finance a right-wing military dictatorship for the U.S. Barlett denies the charge, saying that the fundraiser was to help prevent the U.S. climate from deteriorating into further "chaos." According to the ADL, which will not reveal its sources but apparently planted an informant in Operation Survival, Bartell asked for help in raising $400,000 yearly from the 50 influential right-wingers in attendance.

The Spotlight: This weekly tabloid is a radically right-wing version of the National Enquirer: "Soviet Spy in White House"; "Rockefeller Named Dope Overlord"; "The Diary of Anne Frank is a fraud." News stories "expose" the conspiracy being perpetrated against hard-working, blue-collar citizens by "Jew-Zionist" international bankers and communists.

Affiliated Fronts: Liberty Lobby front groups can sometimes be identified by their address: 300 Independence Avenue SE, Washington DC or 132 Third Street, a side entrance to Carto's building.

Carto's West Coast operations revolve mainly around The Noontide Press. He also has been affiliated with the once-respected American Mercury magazine and the Institute for Historical Review, asn organization designed to promote the belief that the Holocaust was a hoax.

Willis Allison Carto, himself: Carto does not speak in public, refuses to be interviewed and keeps an unlisted telephone number. His name does not even appear on the masthead of The Spotlight.

He directs his operations from a plush penthouse apartment in Torrance, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. According to Spotlight's managing editor, Jim Tucker, Carto conducts Liberty Lobby business by way of conference calls from a public telephone. His occasional surprise appearances at the Liberty Building in Washington are geared to catch employees off-guard. One former employee says the staff fears Carto's stormy temperament, and Robert Bartell confirms that polygraph tests are not uncommon for new employees.

LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE US LABOR PARTY

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From Critique, Summer Issue 1981


PART I: 304 WEST 58TH


Retired Army General John Singlaubrefers to them as "a kookie bunch of anti-Semite Jews."

The New Right Report found them "every bit as weird as Marxist Jim Jones' People's Temple."

And a strongly worded editorial in the New York Times has called for an examination of the US Labor Party. It condemned the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, the Party's founder, as repulsive ideology, frightening in their manipulative power over his adherents and hallucinatory in their theories of conspiracy theory.

Headquarters for the US Labor Party is a suite of offices occupying the entire fifth floor at 304 West 58th Street, just off Columbus Circle in New York City. The building's directory lists the Labor Party and its many spin-offs as "Campaigner Publications." For all practical purposes, the Labor Party has become less a political party and more a massive publishing operation. It comprises of the following branches:

New Solidarity: a twice-weekly broadsheet newspaper with a circulation of about 20,000.

The Campaigner: a bi-monthly magazine. Sample articles: "The Racist Roots of Jazz" and "Why the British Hate Shakespeare."

Executive Intelligence Review: a $400 per-year weekly newsletter, styled for business executives.

Investigative Leads: A bi-weekly "intelligence report."

New Solidarity International Press Service (NSIPS): it staffs the Labor Party's publications; its "reporters" carry NSIPS "press" credentials.

The New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Company: current titles include The Power of Reason: A Kind of Autobiography by Party founder Lyndon LaRouche and Dope Inc: Britain's Opium War Against the U.S. by a "US Labor Party Investigating Team."

Grand Design: the Labor Party's advertising company.

The receptionist at Labor Party headquarters sits safely behind an ultra-thick pane of bulletproof glass. One communicates with her through a special telephone. The doors leading from reception to offices are locked by a computer system; one must punch a code to gain entry.

Labor Party members are fearful of mass assassination.

The Labor Party boasts 35 regional offices throughout the United States, from Atlanta to Seattle. Membership estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000, with about 150 members in Europe.

The European branch, known as the European Labor Party, is based in Wiesbaden, West Germany; its chairperson is Helga Zepp, Lyndon LaRouche's third wife.


Next: Who Be LaRouche?

LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE US LABOR PARTY, PART II

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From Critique, Summer Issue 1981

PART II: WHO BE LAROUCHE?


Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., founder and chairman of the US Labor Party, was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1976. He managed to obtain 40,043 votes, roughly .05 percent of the electorate.

By 1978, LaRouche was ready to launch another campaign for the U.S. presidency, this time as a Democrat. In his amusingly delusional autobiography, LaRouche writes, "If I survive the months immediately before me at this moment of writing (September 1978), it will become reasonable--=at a rapids rate--that I might be inaugurated President of the United States in January 1981."

He did nor become inaugurated, of course. But, he concedes in his book, "If I did not become President in 1981, I would be in a position to significantly determine the selection and policies of an appropriate alternative nominee."

Wrong again!

But hence the reason, we are told, for his autobiography: "The presently increasing demand for written autobiographical information will expand considerably. Either way, assassination or active political like before me, a single sort of autobiographical dissertation best serves all proper requirements. Either way, what need be known are those features of my life which have enabled me to accomplish things of a special quality which few in this country have been able to match?"

Such is the delusional state of mind of LaRouche, who once depicted himself as "the American Lenin."

Aside from being a grammatical catastrophe, LaRouche's autobiography is comically pompous and at times rabidly incoherent. At best, it is a testament to his acute paranoia. Like most self-published books, it is poorly edited, perhaps because no editor employed by his publishing company wished to risk LaRouche's wrath by correcting him. Other than offering marvelous insight into the schizoid mentality of the Labor Party, LaRouche's book is an unintentional joke. It portrays a man who desperately craves attention; a man who would prefer to die a martyr than be ignored.

How then has LaRouche been able to amass a huge cult following?

Probably for the same reason that the People's Temple, Scientologists, and Moonies were able to flourish over the years: there are always those willing to believe, willing to allow themselves to be hypnotized by demagogues, in their search for purpose and identity.

LaRouche found his opportunity to prey upon this need in 1968 while teaching courses in Marxism at the Free University in New York City.. He took advantage of the student strike at Columbia University to join up with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Organizing his most dedicated students, LaRouche formed the SDS Labor Committee.

LaRouche and all thirty disciples on his committee were expelled from SDS in 1969 for violating a New Left ruling by supporting a strike by New York City teachers.

In 1971, the larger and better organized Labor Committee officially became the National Caucus of Labor Committees/US Labor Party, a radical organization bent on Marxist revolution.

Born in Rochester, New Hampshire, in 1922, LaRouche grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts. His father worked for a shoe machinery company.

LaRouche spent several years at Northwestern University (he did not graduate), and most of World War II at a special work camp for conscientious objectors.

In 1948 he joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyist group, and assumed the party name "Lyn Marcus."

"They were intellectually mediocre," LaRouche writes. "One had to begin somewhere."

Nonetheless, LaRouche stuck with the SWP for nearly ten years.

For a while, it looked as though the Labor Party would simply become LaRouche's version of the SWP. But then began the first of LaRouche's two transitions.


Next: Transition One


LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE US LABOR PARTY, PART III

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From Critique, Summer Issue 1981

PART III: TRANSITION ONE, DESCENT INTO MADNESS


In June 1972, Lyndon LaRouche's common-law wife, Carol Schnitzer, ran off to England with Christopher White, a British Labor Party member.

The dumped LaRouche sunk into deep depression. For months he refused to leave his apartment. He became almost delirious with paranoia, accusing women of marrying men only to hurt them. He convinced himself that Schnitzer asnd White had been brainwashed by the CIA.

LaRouche emerged from this draining emotional experience with grand delusions of a vast conspiracy against him, led by the British Royal Family (presumably due to White being British.

Consequently, LaRouche announced to his disciples that the Queen of England, herself, had called for his head; that the Hare Krishna Movement was a British intelligence operation; that the Ku Klux Klan had been organized by the British to sell narcotics in the South; that the British formed the John Birch Society to sabotage President Dwight Eisenhower's "grand design policies for permanent detente with the Soviet Union."

These LaRouche praclomations were followed by terror within the ranks of his US Labor Party. Hypnotic "de-programming" of members became the order of the day to counter "CIA brainwashings."

Hence, LaRouche initiated "Operation Mop-up," which included the formation of a front-group called the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM).

Street gangs in New York, Newark, and Detroit were recruited by the RYM, and violent tactics were deployed against the US Communist Party and several trade unions, including United Auto Workers and United Farm Workers.

Christopher White, LaRouche's tormentor, was "successfully de-programmed."

For in a Labor Party pamphlet, White wrote the following about his native countrymen: "The British are different from us because they are not human. They are the end product of a specialized process of genetic engineering that had begun to produce congenital deficiencies and brain damage in the 17th and 18th centuries."

White advocated the removal of the British from our planet: "Let us speedily expedite the urgently necessary task of freeing humanity from the grasp of that specific form of lower life before we are destroyed by them or enslaved by them."

LaRouche was unable, however, to prevent White from marrying Ms. Schnitzer.

In January 1974, several Labor Party members were arrested for holding former Party member Alice Weitzman prisoner in her Bronx apartment.

Not long after, the Labor Party began operating a military training program at a farm in upstate New York.

Next: Transition II



US LABOR PARTY, PART IV

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From Critique, Summer Issue 1981

PART IV: TRANSITION TWO, TURNING RIGHT

Shortly after Lyndon LaRouche returned from a visit to Baghdad, Iraq's capital, he embarked on a plan of cooperation with America's Far Right. This marked his first step breaking through the thin political ice between the Lunatic Left and Raving Right.

LaRouche had been invited to Baghdad by officials of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. Could they have actually taken him seriously? Perhaps they advised him, in jest, "Turn Right," where he might be more effective to their interests.

Whatever may have occurred in Baghdad, LaRouche returned with a new plan. It began with a "Security Memorandum" to Party lieutenants which said, in effect, that the time had come to cooperate with the Right "to defeat this common enemy" (the Brits and the Rockefellers).

Security Staffer Scott Thompson was assigned the task of coordinating the operation. In this capacity, he made the acquaintance of Willis Carto, owner of Liberty Lobby.

In the March 3oth, 1979 issue of National Review, former Labor Party member Gregory Rose wrote: "Thompson met regularly with Carto through 1975 and 1976. Sources close to the Labor Party report that these meetings centered on join anti-Rockefeller actions and Carto's use of his connections to procure funding for these operations. These sources further report that Carto's Liberty Lobby was a conduit for extremist right-wing contributions to LaRouche's campaign for the Presidency, including part of more than $90,000 used to purchase half-hour prime time commercials on NBC on the eve of the 1976 election."

A further result of the Thompson-Carto relationship was the placement of Labor Party advertisements in The Spotlight, Liberty Lobby's weekly tabloid. Favorable reviews of Labor Party material began appearing in Spotlight.

Former Spotlight staffer Vincent Drosdik told me: "We on the paper's staff were always disturbed about Carto's love affair with the Labor Party." Drosdik contemptuously referred to the Labor Party as "a bunch of idiots even more crackpot than Liberty Lobby."

The transition became final in 1976 when LaRouche announced the Labor Party's renunciation of Marxism and declared that henceforth the Party would be a patriotic organization in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin.

Overnight, the masthead of New Solidarity was changed from "Newspaper of the USLP" to "Non-partisan National Newspaper of the American System." Stories in New Solidarity actually began to defend the CIA.

This was Larouche "going respectable" (or trying); attempting to overcome the embarrassment of his Marxist/Trotskyist pasty. Today he describes himself as "American as apple pie."

Konstandinos Kalimtgis a.k.a. Costa Axios, the Party chairman, tried to explain LaRouche's new philosophy to Washington Post reporter Paul Valentine: "We are socialist, but first we must establish an industrial capitalist republic and rid this country of the Rockefeller anti-industrial, anti-technology, monetarist dictatorship of today."

LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE US LABOR PARTY, PART V

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From Critique, Summer Issue 1981

PART V


The question most often asked about the US Labor Party: Where do they get their money?

Some suggest that the Party is a front for the CIA, citing a meeting Lyndon LaRouche once had with former CIA director Richard Helms. The communist press insists that the Labor Party is CIA.

Others, including former Party member Gregory Rose, believe differently. Rose poiunted out in his National Review piece that "in January 1974 the first contact with the Soviet Mission to the United Nations was established."

Rose named Gennady Serebreyakov as the Russian who dealt with the Labor Party. According to Rose, LaRouche met twice with Serebreyakov, first at Party headquarters, next at the Soviet Mission. Officially a Press Officer, Serebreyakov has been identified as a KGB officer.

Konstandinos Kalimtgis met with the Russian regularly through 1975-75, until Serebreyakov returned to Moscow.

Still, for whatever was made of the relationship, who was using who?

Most likely, this scenario: The Labor Party tries to impress the Soviets with their "inside knowledge" of the Great British Conspiracy. The Soviet Mission, suspecting the Labor Party to be some kind of provocation, plays along, gaining what little they can from the exchange. Meantime, LaRouche claims to be taken seriously by the Soviet Mission, which makes him look all the more important to himself and his disciples. Moreover, LaRouche will claim a high-level KGB official as an information source.

Another candidate for Labor Party funding is the secret police of East Germany.

The South Korean Intelligence Agency estimated that Labor Party expenditures reached $1.3 million by 1975. Their report, leaked to Rising Tide (the newspaper of the Unification Church), stated that to pay these bills the Labor Party received approximately one million dollars a year fro the European Labor Party, which, they claim, is wholly financed by East Germany's secret police.

U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald elaborated on this with material he inserted into the Congressional Record on December 10th, 1975: "The US Labor Parts acts in Western Europe as if they were East German agents. For example, their group in West Germany was instructed to gather information on a whole series of industrial plants in West Germany with information concerning how many East European workers were employed in these plants. A group like the Labor Party could have no possible need for such information; the East German intelligence service would have such a need"

LaRouche and his Labor Party crave attention and recognition. In his autobiography, LaRouche mentions that he sometimes forwards his assessments of the world situation to "U.S. intelligence circles." No doubt he does. And no doubt his "assessments" are looked upon with great humor and promptly tossed into the garbage bin.

The Labor Party;s assessments of West German industrial plants probably met the same fate.

In 1977-78,m the Labor Party prepared reports fort South Africa's intelligence service.

This is what happens: Un-encouraged, the Labor Party strives to make contact with those involved in the intelligence arena. They prepare unsolicited reports for these bodies in the hope that someone, anyone, will take them seriously enough to stay in contact.

Congressman McDonald hit the nail on the head when he asserted, for the Congressional Record, that the Labor Party "have a history of contacting prominent persons with offers of help and then using the names of those persons to attract other support."

In 1977, LaRouche decided that his name had been discovered on a Baader-Meinhof "hit-list."

So he hired Mitchell WerBell III.

Known as the "Wizard of Whispering Death," WerBell is "credited" with inventing the world's first submachine-gun silencer, and having conducted paramilitary operations in Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. He admits to bombing North Vietnam with live rats infected with bubonic plague.

WerBell went to work training Labor Party members to become proficient in combat skills at his "anti-terrorist training center"--a 66-acre estate (known as "The Farm") in Powder Springs, Georgia.

It quickly became a high honor among Labor Party members to be among those chosen to participate.


INTERVIEW WITH THE ANTITERRORIST

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This article appeared in Saga magazine, 1981


He's dropped rats infected with bubonic plague on North Vietnam, recruited mercenaries for hot spots all over the world, and runs the top antiterror school in the country.

Mitch WerBell may seem outlandish--because he is!

"If somebody wants a revolution, they usually wind up talking to me."


These are the words of 63 year-old Mitchell Livingston WerBell, one-time OSS officer, international arms dealer, mercenary recruiter, and commander of Cobray International, an "Antitierrorist Training Center" he operates at his 66-acre estate (called "The Farm") in Powder Springs, Georgia.

At five-foot-seven with little piercing eyes, WerBell is most aptly described as nasty. (How else can one describe a man who once headed an operation to bomb North Vietnam with live rats infected with bubonic plague?) Mitch WerBell spends his days gulping large shots of Chivas Regal, smoking fine cigars, and fondly reminiscing his days as a mercenary extraordinaire.

A fervent anticommunist, WerBell has conducted paramilitary operations--mostly for foreign dictators--in Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Through the tears he has become known as a sort private CIA for hire.

Coco-Cola sang along with Mitch some yeara back after receiving kidnapping threats in Argentina. Although the cola company now denies this, WerBell observes, "Coca-Cola hasn't had any kidnappings lately." Continuyes Mitch: "I'll tell you how we stopped it. We said, number one, anybody kidnapped, go ahead and kill them, because we're not going to ransom them, not for 10 cents. But we will go after you. We will kill you. We will kill your wife. We will kill your children., you cats and dogs, your pigs and your chickens."

WerBell's intensive 10-day antiterrorist training course is priced at $2,500. He runs two courses a month, each attended by six or eight students. The course offers training in .38 and .45 calibre pistols, rifles and scopes, shotguns, unconventional weaponry, martial arts and counter-terrorist procedures. In addition, there are sessions in bomb search techniques, electronic countermeasures, convoy techniques, and evasive driving.

So far, over 300 students have passed through WerBell's school. It has become so popular that courses for the next six months are fully booked.


Next: The Interview

MITCHELL WERBELL: THE INTERVIEW

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This interview appeared in Saga magazine, 1981


ERINGER: You formed your school about two years ago...

WERBELL: It existed before, but got formalized two years. Its purpose is to train law enforcement people, private bodyguards, security personnel, etc. It's a very concentrated course in which we teach all the countermeasures against poltical assassinations, terrorists--that sort of thing.

ERINGER: Could it not be said that a school for antiterrorists could double as a school for terrorists?

WERBELL: Well, how can you tell?

ERINGER: Precisely.

WERBELL: We investigate everybody that comes here very thoroughly--right down to their socks. They have to furnish us with authentic documents testifying to their good reputation--no criminal activity, not being nuts or alcoholics. Now, everything you do in a countermeasure, of course, teaches you how they're going to do it, so you can counter them. You never know who's going to turn bad. But even the CIA has that same problem.

ERINGER: Have you ever rejected applicants to your school?

WERBELL: Yes, indeed. We have canned a couple. Tossed 'em out.

ERINGER: For what reasons?

WERBELL: Bad attitudes. We felt that some of them were potential danger spots I say some--we're only talking about two people.

ERINGER: You charge $2,500 for your 10-day course, and that doesn't include accommodations and most meals. How much if that do you make in profit?

WERBELL: (Laughs.) I can can tell you, but you'd be horrified at how little it is.

ERINGER: What I'm getting at is this: Is money the motivation for running the school?

WERBELL: Well, naturally, partially, but it really is not a big profit producer at all. We've got too many top-notch, high-priced instructors.

ERINGER: So what is your major motivation?

WERBELL: Well, I guess there's really several things. One of them is, of course, I felt there is a tremendous need for it. Plus the fact that I can't stand just not doing anything.

ERINGER: Do you recruit mercenaries from graduates of your school?

WERBELL: Well, in some cases, yes.

ERINGER: You can find employment for those that have successfully gone through your course?

WERBELL: We don't claim to do that. We can recommend them in certain areas where we get enquiries.

ERINGER: Do you keep track of Cobray graduates?

WERBELL: Oh, yeah.

ERINGER: In what sense?

WERBELL: We have a continuous on-going record of what they're doing because they all check in with us, which is extraordinary, too.

ERINGER: Suppose they don't check in with you. Do you keep track of their activities?

WERBELL: Yeah. So far none of them have turned bad.

ERINGER: That's reassuring, considering what they've been taught.

WERBELL: Well, once again, even in the CIA you have people turn bad.

ERINGER: Do you report the activities of your graduates to any U.S. intelligence agencies?

WERBELL: Nope.

ERINGER: How about your students from foreign countries? When they return to their respective countries do you report their activities to their governments?

WERBELL: Yep. The government send them.

ERINGER: What government sends them?

WERBELL: You know, there are certain things I really can't talk about. But frankly, we/'re expecting a number n of Thai students over the next few months. Others come from Central and South American countries. Most of our students are Americans.

ERINGER: Students sigh a waiver relinquishing Cobray from responsibility in case of injury or death. Have there been any injuries or deaths?

WERBELL: I think one guy got a couple cracked ribs --through his own fault. He was a smart-ass and our martial arts guy tamed him down a little bit.

ERINGER: Let's go back in time. When did you first become involved in this kind of work?

WERBELL: World War II--1942--when I joined the Office of Strategic Services.

ERINGER: What missions did you undertake?

WERBELL: China, Burma, and then I went into French Indochina, before the war was over when the Japanese were occupying it.. Out outfit brought Hi Chi Minh out of hiding. And, of course, Ho Chi Minh was a big buddy of the United Stated States in those days. What spoiled it was our stupidity in going to the aid of the French.

ERINGER: Tell me about one such mission.

WERBELL: I went in on prisoner recovery, and I also took the surrender of General Sumita with 80,000 Japanese the day the atomic bomb was dropped. That was in San Che Province.

ERINGER: What did you do after the OSS was disbanded?

WERBELL: We were in an outfit called SS Unit, which was the next phase of our clandestine operations, before the CIA--which doesn't mean we played in the band.

ERINGER What does it mean?

WERBELL: Special Operations, which is the parachute-behind-the-lines unit. I made a number of jumps.

ERINGER: Did you join the CIA when it was formed in 1947?

WERBELL: I have never been CIA. I have worked very closely with them.

ERINGER: Have you ever been paid any anount of money by the CIA?

WERBELL: Boy, that ios the question that keeps popping up.

ERINGER: What is your response?

WERBELL: Nope.

ERINGER: But in his book, Spooks, Jim Houghan wrote that you "worked under contract to the CIA in the 1960s, organizing amphibious landings against Cuba from a base in the Dominican Republic."

WERBELL: I was with an entirely different facility.

ERINGER: So when you left the SS Unit, what did you do?

WERBELL: Well, I became a civilian. At that time I was a captain in a parachute unit and I didn't like it. So I transferred into Military Intelligence and stayed in there in reserve and didn't do a damn thing. So I quit and went into the advertising business. I was advertising director of Rich's department store, the biggest department store south of New York. That ladted about a year, and then I got back into geopolitics.

ERINGER: You missed the excitement?

WERBELL: Well let me tell you a little story. You see, a guy went to a house of pleasure. And he picked up this broad and took her upstairs--the $100-a-whack type. And she had a beautiful accent. He said, "My goodness, where are you from?" Well, she was raised in Haverford-Philadelphia, Mainline, you know, comes from a socially prominent family. He says, "Holy Christ, what's a cultured, charming woman like you doing in a whorehouse." And she said, "I guess I just got lucky." You get it? I guess I was just lucky.

ERINGER: So how did you make your comeback?

WERBELL: What do you want me to do, pull down my pants and show you my palms?

ERINGER: I'm just asking how you got back in the business.

WERBELL: Like the babe said, I guess I just got lucky. One of my major assignments--it was about 1957--was to keep Batista in business. Not that everybody was favorable towards Batista, but we knew at that point what Fidel was all about. Actually, Fidel never fought a battle. Fidel never did a goddamned thing. The students did all the fighting. That son-of-a-bitch never fought a battle, he never fired a round. However, my job at the time was to keep Batista in.

ERINGER: What went wrong?

WERBELL: The New York Times, The Washington Post--those no-good crap liberal bastards we have in this country. That's what went wrong.

ERINGER: What do you mean?

WERBELL: The s0-called liberal press that is communist bought and owned. The New York Times--what a bunch of crap those guys are. The Washington Post. They're traitors. Quote me on that.

ERINGER: At what point did you start Military Armaments Corporation?

WERBELL: About 1967. It was originally called Sionics. We produced silencers.

ERINGER: To whom did you sell them?

WERBELL: The Philippines. Thailand. South Vietnam. The Israelis. The raid on Entebbe was all done with my weapons and silencers.

ERINGER: Is that company still operational?

WERBELL: I saw the writing on the wall. They wanted to retire me because I was such a prickly thorn.. First, I was president, then I was chairman of the board, and you know what happens when you're chairman of the board at a young age. Next step is the boot. I told 'em, the only way to retire me is buy my stock. So I sold my stock and two years later they folded and went under. Now I've got Defense Systems International.

ERINGER: Have you ever gotten into trouble with the U.S. Government because of your international arms dealings?

WERBELL: The Firearms, Alcohol and Tobacco people are always bugging me. I've had some real battles with those bastards. I think they're all pinheads.

ERINGER: What sort of battles?

WERBELL: Concerning their regulations. And they've come up with the most goddamned stupid ones I've ever heard.

ERINGER: Are you still engaged in mercenary recruitment?

WERBELL: What a question. You know it's illegal in the United States? We don't recruit mercenaries. We recruit security personnel.

ERINGER: You still doing that?

WERBELL: Under certain conditions.

ERINGER: What conditions?

WERBELL: I can't get into that.

ERINGER: Is it true you once bombed Vietnam with live rats infected with bubonic plague?

WERBELL: (Laughs.) Yeah.

ERINGER: Was that bombing sanctioned by the U.S. Government?

WERBELL: No.

ERINGER: It was all on your own?

WERBELL: It was special operations.

ERINGER: For whom?

WERBELL: (Laughs.) The group that I worked for.

ERINGER: And who was that?

WERBELL: That's unimportant.

ERINGER: Are you a religious man?

WERBELL: I don't believe in organized religion. I'm religious in the sense that I committed myself to Jesus a long time ago. I don't make a big stink about it. And the Pope, incidentally, sent me a blessed cross when he was here in the States. And the Pope himself sent word that they were including me on the mass for the sick every week, which is very flattering. The way it happened is this: his major Bishop assistant was the nuncio in the Dominican Republic when I was leading the loyalists in the revolt. I'm rather proud of that.

ERINGER: The Pope realizes you're sick?

WERBELL: Yeah, I've got cancer. We think we've got a piece of it under remission, but I don't know. There's no real way to find out except surgery and I've got a legal document that prevents any of them from doing tricks while I'm in surgery.

ERINGER: Tricks?

WERBELL: No life support and no bags hanging or anything like that. It's not my lifestyle.

ERINGER: Is it true you're taking Laetrile, the controversial vitamin derived from apricot pits banned by the FDA?

WERBELL: Yep. I'm convinced that Laetrile had a major effect pulling me through the first bout. When I came back from five weeks at the clinic in Alabama, one of my conventional doctors said, "I don't know what the hell you'r doing, but keep mit up. it seems top be working." But I couldn't take all the damn vitamin pills. I was taking 50 pills with every meal.

ERINGER: What would you most like to be remembered for?

WERBELL: I don't give a damn about being remembered. But if I've got to be remembered for something, I'd like it to be for being a good military officer and a patriot.


Mitchell WerBell III died in 1983.

LECH WALESA INTERVIEW

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The full interview appeared in The Toronto Star, The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) and the (UK) Sunday Mirror on July 29th, 1984


Gdansk, Poland -- On the weekend that Poland's premier, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, announced that 652 political prisoners would be released, I interviewed Lech Walesa, the founder of Polish Solidarity, at his modest home in Zaspa, a residential district in Gdansk.

I had traveled up from Warsaw at night on winding back roads, through hilly countryside as a safeguard against being turned away from seeing the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Walesas sitting-room is dominated by a large painted portrait of Pope John Paul II. Next to this hangs a signed photograph of the late Stefan Cardinal Wyszinski. Solidarity memorabilia adorns other walls and the bookshelf. Taped to the telephone is the number of United Press International in Warsaw.

The flat was alive with the sounds of children playing, laughing, crying. Neighborhood children stopped in to catch a glimpse of their local hero and to request an autograph. The family had just been on a camping holiday. Mrs. Danuta Walesa busily wandered in and out of the sitting room, which doubles as Lech's office.

Walesa looked fit and refreshed, if a little overweight. His walrus mustache is thicker than ever. He wore an open blue shirt, exposing a gold cross on a chain, and, as always, sports a badge of the Black Madonna; pale-green trousers and blue socks without shoes.

During the interview, he smoked Salem cigarettes, sipped lemon tea, and fiddled with a Swiss Army Knife.

Following the interview, I peered out the sitting-room window through white-lace curtains and saw a sinister-looking figure on the ground peering up at me.

When we emerged from Walesa's cionderblock apartment building soon after, the same figure followed and passed by.

After walking barely a hundred yards, a dull gray car marked Milijia drove up from behind and stopped us while I chatted with Andrzej Drzyzcimski and Adam Kinaszewski, Walesa's closest advisers.

Our identity documents were inspected and noted. The soldiers departs, but the plainclothes figure soon reappeared behind us. As he passed by a second time, he growled, "Press us a little more and we will stomp on you."





UNMASKED: THE EVIL MAN WHO PREACHES HATE TO CHILDREN

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The full article appeared in the (UK) Sunday People on May 27th, 1984


He's got a degree in sociology, a face like Himmler--and a heart overflowing with hate.

Bespectacled, bristle-headed Ian Bone, 36, is unmasked today as the leader of a group of political nutters who preach a dangerous new creed of anarchist violence.

And they are trying to spread their evil message among striking miners peace marchers--even school-kids.

If Bone had his way, the blanks fired at the Queen in the Mall would have ben real bullets. And the attempt on the life of President Reagan would have succeeded.

Bone and his followers can be seen on the pit picket lines , at CND demos and at animal rights rallies peddling a foul=mouthed propaganda sheet called Class War.

It is a publication whose symbol is the skull and crossbones and whose message is murderous.


SCHOOL FOR SPIES

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The article appeared in The Toronto Star

November 2nd, 1986




GARMISCH, West Germany


Washington calls it a training ground for Sovietologists.

Moscow denounces it as “the school of spies.”

The United States Army Russian Institute—its official name—was quietly opened near here in 1947 and moved to this health resort town 22 years ago.

Today intelligence analysts and future ambassadors drop in for anything from a six-hour mini-course to a two-year program.

Their mission is to try and make sense of what Winston Churchill once called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”--the 15 republics, 62 nationalities and 136 languages that comprise the Soviet Union.

Each student is a specialist on the Soviet Union. “We use the word specialist, not expert,” says one recent graduate, “because we all specialize in various degrees of ignorance about the Soviets.”

When you enter Building 104 at the institute, you might as well be in Mother Russia. Vladimir Lenin and Leonid Brezhnev stare down from the revolutionary posters that adorn the corridor walls.

Soviet slogans are everywhere: “Forward to the Victory of Communism” and “Glory to the Heroic Armed Forces of the U.S.S.R.” and “Mother Wants You!” (the Soviet equivalent of an Uncle Sam poster).

All conversation among students and staff is Russian as are all notices and signs.

“You can't find the men's room unless you know Russian,” says Dr. Otto Pick, a Czechoslovakian emigre who lectures at the institute. “I've seen people running around in desperation.”

Military Reading

The first year of the two-year program includes courses in physical-military geography, Russian diplomatic history, party and government, Russian intellectual tradition, Marxist-Leninist philosophy, introduction to the Soviet national defence establishment, Russian military and thought and Soviet military readings.

Second-year students concentrate on the politics of east central Europe, the Soviet economy, Soviet foreign policy, the problems of contemporary Soviet society and Soviet military power.

The course handbook lists its objective as to “produce competent Soviet foreign area officers, proficient in the Russian language, who fully understand the U.S.S.R and in particular its military establishment, and who are capable of formulating sound politico-military estimates concerning the capabilities, limitations and potentials of the Soviet Union.”

Students receive 16 hours of classroom instruction each week and they must also participate in an extracurricular cultural program. There is a drama group that stages Soviet plays (in Russian), a cooking club that prepares ethnic dishes, a folk-dancing group and a choir.

Students unwind by watching old Russian movies (no subtitles) and by playing chess and Russian scrabble.

So exclusive is the school that in almost 40 years of operation there have been fewer than 700 graduates—but no dropouts.

“By the time you get here, you're beyond dropping out,” says one graduate.

Applicants are carefully selected—most are men and women from the army of State Department and, says graduate Maj. Sean Maxwell, “all those people from the gobbledygook of initials out of Washington D.C.

The marines, air force and navy sneak in one of their own whenever they get the chance.

“We're the only school of its kind,” says Col. Don Stovall, the institute's commander.

About a fifth of 60 current students are civilians from the intelligence community. “All of the foreign service officers that are assigned to Moscow come through this institute,” says Stovall.

Some graduates go directly to the Soviet Union as military attaches; others serve with U.S. Military liaison mission in Potsdam, East Germany, which runs observation patrols behind the Iron Curtain.

Maj. Arthur Nicolson, the young officer shot and killed by the Soviets in March 1985 while serving in East Germany was a graduate, as are White House Soviet advisers Mark Palmer and Tyrus Cobb, former ambassadors Robert Barry (Bulgaria) and William Leurs (Czechoslovakia), and Lt. Gen. William Odom, director of the National Security Agency.

The Russian Institute was created in May, 1947 in Oberammagau, a half-hour drive northwest of Garmisch. Originally attached to the Europe Command Intelligence School, its first class had just three students.


Needed experts


“After World War II we saw that the Soviet Union was going to play a big role in how our defence and foreign policy is devised,” says Stovall. “It was determined that we needed a group of experts who could serve as decision-makers in the ensuing years—who would not only understand the Soviet mind, but could also anticipate their reactions.

“If we could send out students to Leningrad University this place would not exist.”

The initial faculty members were Russians from displaced persons camps in Bavaria. For their protection, “Detachment R,” as the institute was originally called, operated under a cloak of secrecy.

Many of the instructors had defected from the Soviet Union, and, says Maxwell, “a few of them were under a death threat from the KGB.”

Today the institute has 19 staff instructors, 14 of whom were born and raised in the Soviet Union.

“Life can be painful for an emigre,” says Lev Yudovich, a Russian Jew who teaches the Soviet political system. “You can change your citizenship without too much difficulty. Escaping can be the easiest part. But the scars, worse for being self-inflicted, remain.”

Yudovich graduated in 1950 from the Moscow Law Institute, where he knew Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Professor Michael Checinski has been at the Institute since September 1984. He served 20 years in the Polish army and lectured at the Polish General Staff Academy before quietly leaving for the West.

A sometime television pundit, Checinski accurately predicted martial law in Poland four months before it was imposed. His subject is the Soviet military economy.

Not all emigres have stayed at the school. Former instructor Yuri Mickalovich Marim re-defected to the Soviet Union in 1968 after two years here. Thirty days after his return, Pravda and Red Star, the Soviet army newspaper, carried Marim's “expose” about the “spy school in Garmisch.”

“Yuri was never heard from after that,” Stovall says.

Until 1983, students visited the Soviet Union annually on group field trips. All requests for visas these days are refused, attributed to the decline in U.S.-Soviet relations.


No degree


“When we travelled there, we didn't try to hide anything,” says former student Maxwell. “People would ask me, 'Why do you speak Russian?' 'Well,' you say, 'I'm an intelligence officer.' They can't believe it!”

Before graduation from the two-year program, students are expected to prepare a major research paper, in Russian, based on information gleaned exclusively from the Soviet press.

No degree is awarded. Students simply receive a simple diploma with the institute's colorful crest and motto: “For a Better Future.”




INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE IN THE UNITED STATES--IT'S SLAVERY

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This article appeared in the Toronto Star in 1985.



Call it involuntary servitude, illegal bondage... call it what you will.

But when a human being, with or without proper working papers, is forced to work against his will, under threat of physical violence, you have enslavement, pure and simple.

It is 118 years since the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States, and this wicked practice endures.

For almost a year, a House of Representatives subcommittee on labor standards has been hearing testimony on the federal government's failure to adequately investigate numerous reports of migrant farm workers being held in illegal bondage and peonage in remote parts of the Southwest and Midwest United States.

Vincent Trivelli, a professional staff member of the subcommittee, told me that 24 separate complaints about one farm were not investigated by the justice of labor departments until subcommittee began its investigation.

At a hearing on Sept. 23, a Roman Catholic nun told congressmen that since 1980 she has been operating an improvised “underground railroad”--an escape route for “slaves” in southwest Virginia whose pleas for help had been ignored by local law enforcement officials.

One of those rescued by Sister Adele Della Valle, 47-year-old Horace Taft, gave this chilling account of his experience picking sweet potatoes after being recruited and transported south from his native Philadelphia:

“It was just horrible, the things I seen at those camps. I see men beat with rubber hoses. I seen women beat. There was always someone guarding and watching you. You couldn't get away because they were sitting out there with guns.”

“It is my conviction,” testified Sister Valle, “that the men who begged us to (help them) leave did so out of desperation to get away.”


How it works


Sister Valle cited the inhumane conditions under which farmworkers are being held—long hours, appalling food, no heat in winter, no medical care—and she declared that the system which permits workers to become indebted to their employers from the moment they arrive at a work camp is “tantamount to slavery.”

This is how the system works:

Legal and illegal migrant farm workers are recruited by a middleman, a “coyote,” who transports them to remote farms. The coyote is paid a flat rate (about $200) by the farm owner or crew leader for each new recruit. The moment the workers reach their destination—most notorious are farm camps in Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina and Florida—they become indebted to their new boss for the inflated cost of their transportation.

For 16-hour work days, seven days a week, they are paid a piece-rate wage that usually falls far short of the $3.35-an-hour minimum wage, it itself illegal. But because the workers have been grossly overcharged, on credit, for meals lodging, cigarettes and liquor, the balance owed them is in the red—so they remain continually in debt to their crew leader.

Any attempt to leave the camp is met with threats of physical violence. While working, they are watched by armed guards. There have been cases where dissatisfied workers have been set upon by dogs, locked up or put in chains. Some who have escaped have found local sheriffs unsympathetic; often they are returned to the custody of their crew leader.

The view of some North Carolina sheriffs is summed by sheriff's deputy J.P. Thornton of Johnson County: “99.9 percent of the migrants are bums, drunks, winos, been burned up on drugs or else are running from the law, and they aren't going to stay anywhere else than in that environment.”

Steven Nagler, executive director of the U.S. Migrant Legal Action Organization, estimates that up to 100,000 agricultural workers are held in illegal bondage in the Land of the Free. A former Peace Corps volunteer and civil rights lawyer, Nagler has been monitoring reports of slavery among farm workers for 3 ½ years.

His greatest lobbying triumph came last June when the North Carolina legislature felt compelled to enact state anti-slavery legislation. The new statute makes the holding of another in involuntary servitude punishable by a five-year prison term and a hefty fine. This followed the federal conviction of two Americans in 1982 in New Bern, N.C., for “strong-arm kidnapping” and holding farm workers in involuntary servitude on a farm camp in Nash County.


Recruit died


Brothers Dennis and Richard Warren had recruited migrant workers and unemployed street people in cities along the eastern seaboard. One of their recruits, Robert Anderson, later collapsed and died in the fields when forced to work after complaining that he felt ill. Ironically, the Warren brothers are black. Both received long prison terms.

There have been similar convictions in other states; about 35 cases are pending in Florida, Arkansas, Texas, and in Michigan, and even in affluent Beverly Hills, California.

In January, 1982, FBI agents acting on a tip-off raided several homes in Beverly Hills and uncovered what they alleged to be a slave ring. Ed Best, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, said that at least 30 Indonesians had been sold into servitude as domestics for $3,000 each. They had been recruited by a travel agent in Jakarta and brought in to the United States under false pretences by slavers who confiscated their documents. They were expected to remain with their “owners” for a minimum of two years, without payment.

An agent of the U.S. Immigration Service, Ambrose Laverty, said that those who tried to run away were “threatened with bodily harm.” Said Laverty: “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Los Angeles Times quoted one woman as saying, when served by subpoena by the FBI, “All my neighbors have illegal aliens working for them.” She had paid $6,000 to a Los Angeles “employment agency,” which she declined to name, for two illegal domestics.

Since 1980 there have been 25 federal slavery convictions, Susan King, a young justice department lawyer, told me that slavery in the United States is wide-ranging. But she pinpointed domestic servants, migrant farm workers and members of religious cults as the most vulnerable. King said that her most recent case, in which arrests were made, involved dairy farmers who enslaved elderly retarded men.

King and a colleague, Albert Glenn, constitute the involuntary servitude department. Together, they appear to have their hands full.




DOWN THE HATCH

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This article appeared in Harpers, April 1983


THIRTY-SEVEN percent of the enlisted men in the U.S. Navy and 18 percent of its commissioned officers suffered from “serious” of “critical” drinking problems in a study prepared for Congress in 1976. The alcoholism rate in the active U.S. armed forces as a whole has been estimated to be as high as 10 percent. The drinking problems in the Russian armed forces are even greater (as Andrew Cockburn reported in last month's issue). What distinguishes our military is that it actually encourages the consumption of booze.

With an efficiency that our Rapid Deployment Force might envy, the Military Airlift and Military Sealift Commands transport American spirits, beer, and wine, at government expense, from the Norfolk. Virginia, naval exchange headquarters to all U.S. defense establishments worldwide. An annual government subsidy of $16 million permits the Department of Defense to sell hard liquor to servicemen at one fifth of its cost on the British market, and almost one third of retail prices in the United States. A large (1.75-liter) bottle of rum that sells for over $25 in London and over $14 in New Jersey can be purchased at any military PX in Britain or elsewhere for a mere $5.80. Hard liquor is “rationed” to about four large bottles per month per person, but tax--and transport--free beer and California wine may be bought in unlimited quantities at roughly one third the price of identical brands in Britain or the United States.

Cheap liquor is probably not the main reason for the military's alcohol problems; a spartan corps of the teetotalers would not be in the cards even if liquor were expensive. But you do not have to be an economist to guess, in this case, that low prices have a significant effect in stimulating consumption. One petty officer who became an alcoholic at age twenty-four remembers that a common attitude among his drinking buddies was “I might as well take advantage of the cheap booze while I'm here. I won't be in the navy forever.

The Pentagon has responded to the problem of alcoholism not by cutting back on liquor subsidy, but by spending more money on programs to hospitalize and rehabilitate alcoholics. The U.S. Naval Command in Britain established an “alcohol counseling and assistance center” at a secret navy cryptographic base at Edzell, Scotland. Other counseling centers dot Europe, where drinking problems among servicemen, as might be expected, are more common than at bases back home. Five out of every 1,000 American servicemen in Europe are involved in alcohol-related accidents each month. Twelve thousand of the navy's men and women are treated for alcohol abuse or alcoholism each year.


The problem extends to navy ships, which by law are supposed to be completely free of alcoholic beverages. A former naval lieutenant with five years' ship experience recalls that a still producing an improvised gin was quietly maintained in the engine room of a destroyer on which he served. In another instance, the captain of an aircraft carrier on which he was traveling requested over the loudspeakers that all alcohol be dumped overboard because a customs inspection was scheduled to take place at the next port of call. An are at the rear of the craft was set aside and a blind eye turned while sailors disposed of their (mostly empty) bottles. Officers who have become addicted to alcohol while enjoying subsidized liquor onshore have been known to lug cases of mouthwash on board to quench their thirst during long voyages.


If the Pentagon is looking for ways to cut its budget while improving national security, the $16 million annual subsidy for liquor seems a good place to start. Short of eliminating the subsidy, the Reagan administration could probably find someone other than the tax-payers—the Russians, for example—who would be willing to pick up the tab for helping our military men become drunks.


CHANNELING: VOICES FROM BEYOND

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This article was published May 17-23, 1987, in Toledo Magazine (The Blade)


FORGET COCAINE. The craze that's turning on Hollywood stars these days in “channeling.” This is the chic new term for old-fashioned seancing. But it isn't only the dead who are being drudged up for messages from beyond. “Entities” from other planets and dimensions are being “channeled” by today's medium's, who prefer to be known as “channels.”

Some of the biggest names in showbiz are reaching to the stars for spiritual guidance. Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, and “Dynasty” beauty Linda Evans are only a few of the Hollywood heavyweights involved with channeling. Other reportedly include George Lazenby, Leslie Ann Warren, Goldie Hawn, and Telly Savalas of “Kojak” fame.

“The drug of the 60's was LSD and marijuana,” says one disenchanted follower. “I think the drug of the 80's is cosmic consciousness.”

It's a small metaphysical world in Southern California, where it's said that you can't get a glass water without whipped cream. Everyone in this New School of Seancing knows each other—and the ranks of followers and actual channelers are swelling.

There are now said to be about 1,000 channelers—mostly based in the film capital of the world, but spreading across America. They believe they are the chosen spokesmen for the “New Transformational Age.”

This is how channeling works:

A channel, or medium, puts him or herself into a trance—this takes only a minute or less—and invites a specific “discarnate entity” to use his or her body to transmit information. These modern mediums don't use props like darkened lights or crystal balls. They say they can channel anywhere, anytime, and under any conditions.

One channel told me has gone into a trance on horseback.

America's best known channel is J.Z. Knight, a 40 year-old Bo Derek-lookalike. Ms. Knight claims to channel “Ramtha,” a 35,000 year-old man who has used her body to dispense wisdom since 1977.

Ms. Knight says she first saw Ramtha while she was playing with pyramids at her home. She placed a a pyramid on her head and Ramtha stepped into her life.

Ramtha now has a devoted cult following, mostly middle-aged women. Through Mr. Knight's “vehicle,” Ramtha claims to be warrior who created the first war, before ascending into higher consciousness.

Hundreds of devoted Ramtha supporters, including actress Shirley MacLaine, have moved to Washington state to live near Ms. Knight. This was after Ramtha announced that within three years death and destruction will come to America's less rural regions. Ramtha has advised his disciples to stock a two-year supply of food and other needs and to become self-sufficient by planting gardens.

Richard Chamberlain, star of “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds,” used to host Ramtha's day-long sessions in his Beverly Hills mansion.

These days, followers pay $400 each for weekend group session with Ramtha.

And the profits don't stop there. Ms. Knight has become a multi-millionaire though the sale of Ramtha videotapes and other materials.


ANOTHER POPULAR channel is Darryl Anka, a 34 year-old special-effects designer who channels “Beshar.” Mr. Anka says that Beshar is “a non-physical entity from planet Essassani, which forms a triangle with Earth and the star Sirius.”

Mr. Anka used to do his channeling at the homes of followers, with mabe six or eight persons present. He had grown so popular that he now uses the Encino Women's Club in the valley, near some of Hollywood's largest film studios.

I went to see Mr. Anka's Thursday-night session. About 150 followers had assembled to either seek advice or for a learning experience. Each had paid a “donation” of $12.

I watched as Mr. Anka, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, put himself into a trance. He sat in a simple wooden chair on a well-lighted stage.

Mr. Anka closed his eyes and his head began to twitch. He grunted a few times. He settled back in his chair, his eyes still closed, and a strange, powerful voice erupted from his mouth. It carried an unusual accent.

He was in what enthusiasts call an “altered state.” In the course of 2 ½ hours, Beshar dispensed his wisdom and answered questions from the audience. One follower asked about a friend who had recently died of cancer.

Came Beshar's reply:

“She is still here and now, fourth dimension physical. There is orientation going on—assistance that is necessary to acclimate the being to the new understanding of what you call the astral realm. There is also the opportunity being presented this individual that she can function for a while as spiritual guides for her own children. There may be—for this not yet decided—but there may be an opportunity for this individual to reincarnate as one of her own children's children.

The audience oohed and aahed. They were begging to believe. But it was higher intelligence from outer space or metaphysical mumbo-jumbo?


BESHAR SOON pronounced it was time for a coffee break. The hall grew quiet as he twitched and turned and grunted, and within 30 seconds re-opened his eyes and became plain old Darryl again.

The applause was deafening. There are believers.

Darryl told me that Beshar first came to him 12 years ago in a spaceship. He channels Beshar in private sessions, and he's booked up two months in advance.

I am not convinced that Darryl was in a trance. Anyone who studies the numerous books on UFOs, reincarnation, spiritual growth, and self-healing could spill out the same material as “Beshar.'' The essence of Beshar's guidance was “lighten up.”

One Beshar follower is David Rapkin, a psychotherapist. Dr. Rapkin told me that channeling sessions provide him with practical instruction for his patients.

He is not certain that the messenger is really from outer space, but thinks that is unimportant. It is possible, Dr. Rapkin speculates, that the channel “accesses” into his own unconscious throuh self-induced hypnosis.

“But it doesn't matter who or what the messenger is,” he says, “it is the message that counts.”

Dr. Rapkin claims that he can now channel himself. He told me that his spiritual guide is called “Monocles.”

A grand session of channeling was recently staged at the Pasadena Convention Center in Los Angeles. It was billed as the main attraction of a three-day Whole Life Expo.

The channeling event was sold out weeks in advance—3,000 people at $35 each, packed the large hall to see American television celebrity Joyce DeWitt introduce two of the most popular channels in the business.

They are:

Jack Pursel, a former insurance salesman who channels an entity called “Lazaris,” and Kevin Ryerson, from the Midwest, who was featured on Shirley MacLaine's recently broadcast television movie, “Out On A Limb.” Mr. Ryerson channels two entities: “John,” a scholar from the year 46 B.C., and “Tom McPherson,” an Irish-Scottish pickpocket from Shakespearian times.

Mr. Pursel's Lazaris sounds like a Billy Graham-style evangelist. He preaches love and inner peace.

Actor Michael York is a big supporter of Lazaris. He has accompanied and promoted Mr. Pursel on several American television talk shows.

Along with J.Z. Knight, Pursel and Ryerson make up the Big Three in the channeling movement.

Mr. Pursel says that “the majority of Lazaris followers are college graduates, and a good number of these are post-graduates. Lots of doctors, lots of lawyers, psychologists—successful, upper-middle income people.”

It takes 12 to 18 months to get a private consultation with Lazaris.


AND LAZARIS is big business. Mr. Pursel sells videos and cassettes and runs two New Age galleries, Illuminaria and Isis Unlimited.

He charms his audience by saying that many of them are former residents of Atlantis. He says they have come back to get a second chance at preventing world destruction.

Pursel bills Lazaris as “the Consummate Friend.”

Next to me in the audience at Pasadena sat Naville Rowe, a New Zealander who lived in London for 12 years before settling in West Hollywood.

Mr. Rowe told me that he can transform himself into a dolphin, and he teaches other how to turn into dolphins through channeling.

“I couldn't believe it,” says Mr. Rowe. “My mouth began to suck air and my forehead made squeaky noises. Next thing I knew, I was one of the dolphins, swimming with them.”

Mr. Rowe says that he channels “Kachuba,” which he describes as the consciousness of six dolphins scattered around the oceans.


THE CHANNELING movement is a real social whirl.

Susan Levin has organized a forum for channels called Conscious Connection. This evolved out of a “metaphysical singles” dating service called Mix and Match.

She is also involved in a series of cable television programs on channeling.

Conscious Connection publishes a 24-page magazine of the same name every two months. Its circulation has grown to an astonishing 25,000 over the last six months.

There are skeptics to spoil the fun. They try to bring the stars back down to Earth.

“Channels give simplistic answers, and they give you that touch of magic and the esoteric,” says Gerald Larue, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Southern California.

“It's a typical religious experience, and there are benefits,” Professor Larue says. “It's uplifting, but it's not real. You have to come back for another fix, like a drug addiction.”

Reginald Alev, executive director of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago, also takes a dim view.

“It's very sad what's going on,” says Mr. Alev. “Most of the people who get involved in these New Age groups want to know the meaning of life, and someone comes along and tells them they have the answer.

“Then they're told they're the master of their own destiny, but they don't know they are being subjected to mind control.”


THEY DON'T DEBATE IN ALBANIA

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This appeared in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) in 1984



LONDON—A Frenchman made a fatal mistake this summer. He surrendered to an Albanian border patrol.

Jean-Marie Masselin, 29, an employee of the French Club Mediteranee on the island of Corfu, was on a fishing trip with two colleagues. They strayed into Albanian waters, and their inflatable dinghy with outboard motor soon came under fire by Albanian guards.

They dived into the water. Two of them swam off to a Greek boat nearby, but Mr. Masselin decided to take a chance with the border patrol and swam ashore. He climbed up some rocks and was apprehended by the Albanians. Simon Periatinos, a Greek eye-witness watched as Mr. Masselin was marched away.

Three days later, his body was discovered floating in the sea, a bullet wound in his head.

THE MOST surprising part of all this is that nobody is surprised—this is the sort of behavior the world has come to expect from the Albanians, not a people renowned for their tolerance of foreigners.

Albania is a country of 2 ½ million people. Some 25,000 Albanians, mostly descendants of Illyrian tribes, belong to the secret police.

The official language, an Indo-European tongue, contains Latin, Greek, Italian and Turkish words.

Albania is the only country in the world where the memory of Stalin is invoked with admiration. Enver Hoxha, Albania's iron-fisted leader for four decades, has written of the man under whose tyrannical rule millions perished: “Our beloved friend, the glorious leader, Stalin...”


RELATIONS between Albania and the Soviet Union stiffened considerably after Stalin's death in 1953. Mr. Hoxha staunchly disapproved of Nikita Khrushchev's “revisionism.”

When Khrushchev requested that Albania not spoil its seaside landscape with industry, Mr. Hoxha's reply was terse: “We have no intention of becoming a spa for Soviet functionaries.”

His opposition to the Soviet Union increased when, in 1960, Khrushchev broke with the Chinese Communists and demanded, at a party congress in Romania, that all Communist delegations offer their support.

Mr. Hoxha responded by allying Albania with Communist China, a relationship that remained until Mao Tse-tung's death, but terminated in 1978 when Mr. Hoxha decided that China, too, had become “revisionist.”

HIS LAST STRAW with Moscow came in 1968 when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. He abruptly withdrew Albania from the Warsaw Pact, making it the only country to ever pull off such a maneuver.

Albanian soldiers were dispatched to take up positions in the mountains for fear of Soviet reprisals. Weapons were distributed to every village throughout the country as Albanians braced themselves for an invasion. The Soviets never came.

Villagers are still armed to the teeth, a policy encouraged by Mr. Hoxha. (One wonders how the Communist parties of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland would fare if its citizens were permitted weapons.)

Mr. Hoxha, 75, rules supreme in Tirana, the capital. His features adorn most public places, invoking a “Big Brother” style personality cult. His birthplace is a national shrine.

He was elected secretary-general of the Communist party in 1943. For many years he ruled through Mehmet Shehu, the prime minister, and Beqir Balluku, the defense minister.

Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs: “Hoxha and Shehu would sentence the accused to death. Balluku would personally carry out the execution.”

But Beqir Balluku was executed as part of a Hoxha-inspired purge in the mid-1970's, during which eight senior ministers vanished.

Mehmet Shehu suffered a similar, albeit more public, purge in a bizarre incident in 1982. Many eyebrows were raised when his “suicide” was announced. Sources say that a raging argument between him and Mr. Hoxha ended with cabinet-room shoot-out in which Mr. Shehu was gunned down. Known as “the butcher,” he was said to have shot and killed a colleague who dared argue with him during a 1950 cabinet meeting.


ALBANIA is the only country where Marxism truly works, the propaganda machine claims. Propagandists say Albanians are treated badly by both the western and Communist press because (1) the Pentagon doesn't want anyone to know that Marxism can work and (2) the Russians don't wish to acknowledge that Marxism doesn't work in the Soviet Union.

Albania is self-supporting in food. The staple diet consists of rice, bread, paprika and a little goat meat.

The country is also self-supporting in oil and is the fourth largest producer of chromium ore (900,000 tons per year). Natural resources include asphalt, coal, copper and iron.

There is no tax. Medical and dental services are free. Only a half percent of wages are paid in rent.

Churches and mosques were outlawed in 1967. So were beards.

A small travel agency in Britain offers “a chance to have a non-Christmas or non-Easter” in Albania.

There are no foreign books or newspapers.

The last time western countries attempted to interfere was in 1945. A Committee of Free Albanians was financed by the American and British intelligence services, and 300 “Free Albanians” parachuted into Albania and were never seen again. Kim Philby, the British spy, had betrayed the operation.



FOR SALE: PARAGUAYAN CITIZENSHIP

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This appeared in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) in 1986



Can He Buy Paraguyan Citizenship?



LONDON—Psst....want to buy Paraguayan citizenship?

A “business consultants” firm named MATRAS based in Hamburg, West Germany, is offering a complete package—a genuine Paraguayan passport, driver's license and, at extra cost, a Bolivian birth certificate in a new name.

Posing as a prospective client, I answered MATRAS' tiny classified in the InternationalHerald Tribune. The promotional bumf arrived by return mail: “In a crisis you can fall back on your emergency passport.” Paraguay is described as “one of the last places of refuge in the world.”

It certainly has been a haven for Nazi war criminals, including the notorious Dr. Mengele.

The material from MATRAS is clearly geared for someone who may one day have to make a quick getaway; the service offered is that of an escape route for persons engaged in tax evasion or other criminal activity.


CURIOUS about how the Paraguayans might feel about such assistance, I spoke with Mr. Alvarienta, the consul-general at Paraguay's embassy in London.

“Come again?” he asked, when I informed him of MATRA'S offer. “Ha, ha, ha. They must be out of their minds.”

Or very well-organized. I put it to Mr. Alvarienta that perhaps this German agency had useful connections in South America.

“Why not?” the consul-general replied. “I can't say we are all saints.”

On one point he was adamant: “Five years' physical presence in Paraguay is compulsory to obtain nationality by residence. There is no way around that.”

The Bolivian consulate was equally vehement.


THE PROPIETOR of MATRAS, Karsten K. Niemann, comfirmed by telephone that the price for Paraguayan nationality and passport would be $6,500—more if I required a whole new identity complete with phony birth certificate.

Would I have to visit Paraguay? “No, no, no,” he replied. I would not even have to set foot in what he called the “Switzerland of South America.”

Mr. Niemann said he would be visiting London and suggested a meeting: “This is no subject to be done by letter.”

Several weeks later I met him in a London hotel. He is in his late 30's, 5-foot-3-inches tall and has rugged American-Indian features.

Over a pot of tea in the hotel's lounge, he reiterated his offer: $12,000 for the whole Paraguayan package.

Mr. Niemann explained enthusiastically that he has been in the business of peddling Paraguayan nationality for six years to people “who may need to escape.”


HE BOASTED of being busy with many clients internationally. He spends half his time in Paraguay, which he first visited in 1973 while working in real estate.

I told him that I wished to move to Paraguay, under a different name, as a Paraguayan citizen.

Mr. Niemann smiled and said this was no problem, claiming that with his bona-fide documents I could “disappear” to Paraguay without a trace—many of his clients had done just that, “but, most wait a few years.”

He told me he has dealt with many clients from Britain and the United States. Most of his customers have tax problems and need new names and nationalities with which they can travel freely, he said.

Lowering his voice to barely a whisper, he explained that he had to be especially careful because Italian terrorists had acquired Paraguayan passports through the same procedure.

“We had a lot of trouble from some criminals, very bad criminals—one who killed Aldo Moro, the Italian president, the other who blew up the [Bologna] train station.”

Dr. Paul Wilkinson, a leading expert on terrorism, later confirmed that neo-fascist terrorists in Italy, called “Black Terrorists,” are known to carry Paraguayan passports.

Mr. Niemann said I would have to get a letter of good conduct from the British police to “cover” is Paraguayan contacts.

“The Paraguayan government has been blackmailed to crack down on criminals,” Mr. Niemann said with a sigh. “And therefore the letter of good conduct is most important.”

A London contact of his could arrange to get me a letter of good conduct from the police under a different name, he promised.


The whole procedure would take six to eight weeks, following which I would be a new person—and a full-fledged citizen of Paraguay.

I have passed my file on MATRAS to the American consul-general and the Internal Revenue Service, which is taking more than a passing interest.



COUSINS AND FRIENDS

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This appeared in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) in 1986



Britain's SIS Operates Hand-in-Glove With the CIA



LONDON—Unlike America's CIA, the British Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, does not officially exist.

Its address and telephone are state secrets, as is the name of its current chief.

The SIS occupies a 20-story building called Century House in south London, not far from Westminster. It is said to employ a staff of between 1,000 and 1,500.

The extensive filing system used by SIS analysts is known as “The Registry.” (The CIA's central computer is called “The Spider”).

The SIS director-general is known simply as “C.”


OFFICERS are organized geographically into regional “desks”--the United Kingdom (concerned with recruitment and the monitoring of foreign diplomats), the Soviet bloc, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.

The SIS maintains only one station in the whole of Latin America, so is largely dependent upon the CIA for intelligence reports from that part of the world. It is said that the SIS station in South America reported Argentina's aggressive intention two weeks before the invasion of Falkland/Malvinas Islands.

The SIS is generally thought to be smaller than the CIA and therefore its officers more broadly trained. While they lack specialization, they are said to be strong on good political analysis.

Americans tend to have an image of British agents, whether or not deserved, as “class acts,” as characters out of spy thrillers: good at their jobs, urbane dashing, polished, in the mold of James Bo

THE SECRET Intelligence Service was created in 1907 as the Secret Service Bureau. In the 1930s it was split into MI5 and MI6. “Five,” as the former is known, is also officially secret.

Attached to the Home Office, the SIS is a sort of British equivalent of the FBI, although MI5 officers do not have powers of arrest. This function is left to the Special Branch, a department of the police which works in conjunction with MI5.

A SPECIAL relationship exists between the CIA and MI5.

They have close liaison in Washington and London, as indeed throughout the globe, sharing both secrets and defectors. They run a joint defector program.

CIA people are called the “cousins,” in the parlance of the secret world; SIS people are called the “friends.” They have jointly mounted operations including:

  • An unsuccessful attempt in 1950 to topple Enver Hoxha's Stalinist regime in Albania. Their sponsorship of Albanian freedom fighters ended in tragedy, betrayed by the notorious traitor, Kim Philby, who was at that time the senior SIS liaison officer in Washington.
  • A successful CIA-SIS cooperative operation in 1953 deposed the Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, and installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran.

In theory, the cousins and friends do not spy on each others. It is assumed that both the SIS and CIA keeps check on everybody, friendly or not.


The CIA tends to use Britain as a home base for operations in Africa and the Middle East. On the occasion when CIA mounts operations inside Britain, such as reported infiltration of labor unions in the 1960s, it is with the knowledge and blessing of the SIS.

In 1975, Harold Wilson, then the prime minister, said in the House of Commons that everything the CIA does in Britain is known to the government.

CIA operatives abroad are probably closer to their British “friends” than to their own colleagues in the State Department.

UNLIKE the CIA, the SIS does not possess a portfolio for paramilitary operations. These missions are undertaken by the Special Air Service, an elite counterinsurgency force. The size and structure of the three SAS regiments are, of course, secret. The nearest U.S. Equivalent of SAS is the Delta Force, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

The most important element of the British and American special intelligence alliance is the Government Communications Headquarters, which works hand-in-hand with the supersecret National Security Agency, its America counterpart. Their function is signals intelligence and decoding.

BRITISH newspapers are banned from printing details about British intelligence. A system known as the “D Notice,” which critics call official censorship, makes the naming of names illegal and subject to public prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

Much of the information available today on SIS is that obtained in the United States under the Freedom of Information Act.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

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This appeared in the (UK) Sunday People on May 4th, 1986



Terror plan to 'smash the rich scum and their lackeys'



THE angry Brigade is back. The ruthless anarchists who brought terror to Britain more than a decade ago are manipulating an ultra-left plot to turn out cities into bloodbaths.

The sinister network of fanatical anarchists are motivated solely by a desire to destroy, to maim and to sabotage.

They are bent on whipping up a nationwide hate campaign which will erupt with a summer of riots.

Their evil intent is summed up in this chilling warning. “We fight the cops with all our strength with bricks and petrol bombs, we maim them and kill them because we hate them.”

The anarchists hope there will be an explosion of violence to mark Prince Andrew's marriage to Sarah Ferguson on July 23.

As the Sunday Mirror revealed last week, the underground newspaper Class War showed a photo of the couple under the sick headline Better Dead Than Wed.


Campaign


And an activist told us: “We would be over the moon if there were riots on the day of the Royal wedding.”

The Sunday Mirror has infiltrated several anarchist movements and we have uncovered their plot to join forces in a campaign of violence.

MI5 believe Angry Brigade urban guerillas are playing a sinister behind-the-scene role in the plot.

They have close links with terror groups abroad.

And they are also closely linked to the shadowy world of British anarchists.

The most active of the British cells is Class War whose driving force is former punk musician Ian Bone, 38.

Their charter states: “Together we can do our bit to smash the rich scum and their state, courts armies and lackeys.”

Class War has close ties with VIRUS, a communist-anarchist group who publish a paper called The Enemy Within.

The winter issue says: “Virus gives a welcome to the burning and looting...take it, it's yours! Burn it, it's rotten!”


Sabotage


A journal called Crowbar in Brixton, South London, offers advice on how to commit sabotage.


And BLACK FLAG, also based in Brixton, are thought to be linked with a Belgian terror group.


The Bristol-based group ACAB--which stands for All Coppers Are Bastards--call on their followers to attack expensive cars.


Their leaders often visit Ian Bone at his council flat in Hackney, North-East London.

This is the main way that informal links are made between British anarchist cells.

Intelligence chiefs know that most of the groups were active during the riots last year in Brixton and Tottenham.

They are likely to be the flashpoints again this year.

One police officers warned that anarchists might also start riots in other areas of London at the same time.


FORCES OF HATE


SECURITY chiefs are alarmed at the close cooperation between the Angry Brigade and terror organisations in Europe.

And our inquiries revealed that a meeting was held in London last year between leading UK anarchists and the Belgium terror group, CCC, the Cellules Communists Combattantes.

The CCC are linked with West Germany's Red Army Faction and with the ultra-Left French group Action Directe.

Intelligence services are now concerned that European expertise will lead to terrorists in Britain becoming more and more sophisticated.

A former police chief said: “The Angry Brigade has always had strong continental connections—that will continue to be the case.”


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