textfiles-politics/regexConsp/scrtgovt.xml

<xml><p>   INTRODUCTION:  URGENT!</p>

<p>   On July 5, 1987 the front page of the Miami Herald
   Newspaper carried a now famous article describing secret
   White House plans to:</p>

<p>   A.) DECLARE AN UNDEFINED "NATIONAL EMERGENCY,"</p>

<p>   B.) RE-OPEN CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR PREVENTIVE
   DETENTION OF LEGAL DISSIDENTS CERTAIN ETHNIC
   GROUPS, AND</p>

<p>   C.) SUSPEND OUR UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   Those of us viewing the Iran-Contragate hearings,
   then being broadcast live on TV, had our curiousity peaked
   when one committee member began inquiring about an article
   alleging secret White House plans to suspend the
   Constitution.</p>

<p>   We were even more puzzled when committee chair
   Daniel Inouye interrupted him demanding all discussion on
   that question take place in closed session, out of public
   hearing.</p>

<p>   Not content to wonder, I researched the original
   article, transcribed it, and now present it to you for your
   urgent consideration.  You have a right to read this.  In
   fact, you'd better know about it because it's about secret
   White House plans to remove your rights by SUSPENDING OUR
   UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.  It's about a government which
   we, the people, did NOT elect but which has gained power
   nonetheless.</p>

<p>   What follows is not the whole story but a crucial
   and overlooked part of it.  Read "between the lines" and
   very carefully.  This is not some paranoid's nightmare or
   some fanatic's fantasy.  This is reality in the Reagan White
   House.</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   Please copy this article and circulate it among
   your friends and co-workers.  If George Bush gets into the
   White House, we'll have "elected," or had selected for us,
   precisely the same carnivorous crew comprising The Secret
   Government referred to in this article.</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   First, I offer three appropriate quotes which
   provide a certain perspective in which to view what follows.
   Then, I present the "sidebar" articles which
   summarized and accompanied the main article.
   Finally, I give you the complete text of the
   original article, unedited and uncensored.  While local
   papers ignored this historic article or presented only
   extracts from it, none of them gave you this, the entire
   text.</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   The following did not appear with the original
   article but they provide a certain appropriate perspective
   on it:</p>

<p>    "Perception of reality is sometimes
    more important than reality itself."
    -Henry Kissenger</p>

<p>    "He who controls the past, controls the future.
   He who controls the present, controls the past."
    -O'Brian, the dictator
    in George Orwell's novel "1984"</p>

<p>   "If you don't like the news,
    go out and make some of your own!"
     -Scoop Nisker</p>

<p>  ===========================================================
  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
  ===========================================================</p>

<p>   from THE MIAMI HERALD....SUNDAY JULY 5, 1987....page one:</p>

<p>   SOME SECRET ACTIVITIES</p>

<p>   Sources say the parallel government behind the
   Reagan administration engaged in secret actions
   including:</p>

<p>   A CONTINGENCY plan to suspend Constitution and impose
   martial law in United States in case of nuclear
   war or national rebellion.</p>

<p>   1985 VISIT to Libya by William Wilson, then U.S. ambassador
   to Vatican and close Reagan friend, to meet with
   Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi.</p>

<p>   HAVING ROUTES of sophisticated surveillance satellites
   altered to follow Soviet ships around world.</p>

<p>   LAUNCHING of spy aircraft on secret missions over Cuba and
   Nicaragua.</p>

<p>   PROPOSAL in 1981 to provide covert support of anti-
   Sandinista groups that fled Nicaragua after
   Sandinista revolution in 1979.</p>

<p>   DISSEMINATION of information that cast Nicaragua as threat
   to neighbors and United States.</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   Before Reagan was elected, campaign aides who
   became the president's top advisers carried out
   these secret activities:</p>

<p>   CREATION in 1980 of October Surprise Group to monitor
   President Carter's negotiations with Iran for
   release of 52 American hostages.  Group met with
   man who claimed to represent Iran and who offered
   to release hostages to Reagan.  Offer declined,
   officials say.</p>

<p>   ACQUISITION of stolen confidential briefing materials from
   Carter's campaign before Oct. 28, 1980, Carter-
   Reagan debate.</p>

<p>   ---***---</p>

<p>   [photo captions:]</p>

<p>    PRINCIPALS:</p>

<p>   William Clark:  Allowed bigger North role at NSC.
   William Casey:  Kept guard on President Carter</p>

<p>   =============================================================
   *************************************************************
   =============================================================</p>

<p>  What follows is the complete text of the original article as
   printed in the Miami Herald for July 5, 1987:</p>

<p>    REAGAN AIDES AND THE 'SECRET' GOVERNMENT</p>

<p>    by ALFONSO CHARDY, HERALD WASHINGTON BUREAU</p>

<p>   WASHINGTON -- Some of President Reagan's top
   advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside
   the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from
   the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and
   administration officials have concluded.</p>

<p>   Investigators believe that the advisers'
   activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to
   Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.</p>

<p>   Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up
   a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the
   event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and
   widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S.
   military invasion abroad.</p>

<p>   When the attorney general at the time, William
   French Smith, learned of the proposal, he protested in
   writing to North's boss, then-national security adviser
   Robert McFarlane.</p>

<p>   The advisers conducted their activities through
   secret contacts throughout the government with persons who
   acted at their direction but did not officially report to
   them.</p>

<p>   The activities of those contacts were coordinated
   by the National Security Council, the officials and
   investigators said.</p>

<p>   There appears to have been no formal directive for
   the advisers' activities, which knowledgeable sources
   described as a parallel government.</p>

<p>   In a secret assessment of the activities, the lead
   counsel for the Senate Iran-contra committee called it a
   "secret government-within-a-government."</p>

<p>   The arrangement permitted Reagan administration
   officials to claim that they were not involved in
   controversial or illegal activities, the officials said.</p>

<p>   "It was the ultimate plausible deniability," said
   a well-briefed official who has served the Reagan
   administration since 1982 and who often collaborated on
   covert assistance to the Nicaraguan contras.</p>

<p>   The roles of top-level officials and of Reagan
   himself are still not clear.  But that is expected to be a
   primary topic when North appears before the Iran-contra
   committees beginning Tuesday.  Special prosecutor Lawrence
   Walsh also is believed to be trying to prove in his
   investigation of the Iran-contra affair that government
   officials engaged in a criminal conspiracy.</p>

<p>   ADVISERS FORMED SHADOW GOVERNMENT, PROBERS SAY</p>

<p>   Much of the time, Cabinet secretaries and their
   aides were unaware of the advisers' activities.  When they
   periodically detected operations, they complained or tried
   to derail them, interviews show.</p>

<p>   But no one ever questioned the activities in a
   broad way, possibly out of a belief that the advisers were
   operating with presidential
   sanction, officials said.</p>

<p>   Reagan did know of or approve at least some of the
   actions of the secret group, according to previous accounts
   by aides, friends and high-ranking foreign officials.</p>

<p>   One such case is the 1985 visit to Libya by
   William Wilson, then-U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and a
   close Reagan friend, to meet with Libyan leader Col. Moammar
   Gadhafi, officials said last week.  Secretary of State
   George Shultz rebuked Wilson, but the officials said Reagan
   knew of the trip in advance.</p>

<p>   The heart of the secret structure from 1983 to
   1986 was North's office in the Old Executive Office Building
   adjacent to the White House, investigators believe.</p>

<p>   North's influence within the secret structure was
   so great, the sources said, that he was able to have the
   orbits of sophisticated surveillance satellites altered to
   follow Soviet ships around the world, call for the launching
   of high-flying spy aircraft on secret missions over Cuba and
   Nicaragua and become involved in sensitive domestic
   activities.</p>

<p>    Many initiatives</p>

<p>   Others in the structure included some of Reagan's
   closest friends and advisers, including former national
   security adviser William Clark, the late CIA Director
   William Casey and Attorney General Edwin Meese, officials
   and investigators said.</p>

<p>   Congressional investigators said the Iran deal was
   just one of the group's initiatives.  They say exposure of
   the unusual arrangement may be the legacy of their inquiry.</p>

<p>   "After we establish that a policy decision was
   made at the highest levels to transfer responsibility for
   contra support to the NSC..., we favor examining how that
   decision was implemented," wrote Arthur Liman, chief counsel
   of the Senate committee, in a secret memorandum to panel
   leaders Sens. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Warren Rudman, R-
   N.H., before hearings began May 5.</p>

<p>   "This is the part of the story that reveals the
   whole secret government-within-a-government, operated from
   the [Executive Office Building] by a Lt. Col., with its own
   army, air force, diplomatic agents, intelligence operatives
   and appropriations capacity," Limon wrote in the memo, parts
   of which were shared with The Herald.</p>

<p>   A spokesman for Liman declined comment but did not
   dispute the memo's existence.</p>

<p>   A White House official rejected the notion that
   any of Reagan's advisers were operating secretly.</p>

<p>   "The president has constantly expressed his
   foreign policy positions to the public and has consulted
   with the Congress," the official said.</p>

<p>     Began in 1980</p>

<p>   Congressional investigators and current and former
   officials interviewed -- members of the CIA, State
   Department and Pentagon -- said they still do not have a
   full record of the impact of the the advisers' activities.</p>

<p>   But based on investigations and personal
   experience, they believe the secret governing arrangement
   traces its roots to the last weeks of Reagan's 1980
   campaign.</p>

<p>   Officials say the genesis may have been an October
   1980 decision by Casey, Reagan's campaign manager and a
   former officer in the World War II precursor of the CIA, to
   create an October Surprise Group to monitor Jimmy Carter's
   feverish negotiations with Iran for the release of 52
   American hostages.</p>

<p>   The group, led by campaign foreign policy adviser
   Richard Allen, was founded out of concern Carter might pull
   off an "October surprise" such as a last-minute deal for the
   release of the hostages before the Nov. 4 election.  One of
   the group's first acts was a meeting with a man claiming to
   represent Iran who offered to release the hostages to
   Reagan.</p>

<p>   Allen -- Reagan's first national security adviser--
  and another campaign aide, Laurence Silberman, told The
   Herald in April of the meeting.  they said McFarlane, then a
   Senate Armed Services Committee aide, arranged and attended
   it.  McFarlane later became Reagan's national security
   adviser and played a key role in the Iran-contra affair.
   Allen and Silberman said they rejected the offer to release
   the hostages to Reagan.</p>

<p>    Briefing book theft</p>

<p>   Congressional aides now link another well-known
   campaign incident -- the theft of confidential briefing
   materials from Carter's campaign before the Oct. 28, 1980,
   Carter-Reagan debate -- to the same group of advisers.</p>

<p>   They believe that Casey obtained the briefing
   materials and passed them to James Baker, another top
   Reagan  campaign aide, who was White House chief of staff in
   Reagan's first term.</p>

<p>   Once Reagan was sworn in, the group moved quickly
   to set itself up, officials said.  Within months, the
   advisers were clashing with officials in the traditional
   agencies.</p>

<p>   Six weeks after Reagan was sworn in, apparently
   over State Department objections, then-CIA director Casey
   submitted a proposal to Reagan calling for covert support of
   anti-Sandinista groups that had fled Nicaragua after the
   1979 revolution.</p>

<p>   [THE IRAN-CONTRA CONNECTION:
   NORTH HAD BIG ROLE IN INNER CIRCLE, INVESTIGATORS SAY]</p>

<p>   It is still unclear whether Casey cleared the plan
   with Reagan.  But In November 1981 the CIA secretly flew an
   Argentine military leader, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, to
   Washington to devise a secret agreement under which
   Argentine military officers trained Nicaraguan rebels,
   according to an administration official familiar with the
   agreement.</p>

<p>   About the same time, North completed his transfer
   to the NSC from the Marine Corps.  Those who worked with
   North in 1981 remember his first assignments as routine,
   although not unimportant.</p>

<p>   North, they recalled, was briefly assigned to
   carry the "football," the briefcase containing the secret
   contingency plans for fighting a nuclear war, which is taken
   everywhere the president goes.  North later widened his
   assignment to cover national crisis contingency planning.
   In that capacity he became involved with the controversial
   national crisis plan drafted by the Federal Emergency
   Management Agency.</p>

<p>    NATIONAL CRISIS PLAN</p>

<p>   From 1982 to 1984, North assisted FEMA, the U.S.
   government's chief national crisis-management unit, in
   revising contingency plans for dealing with nuclear war,
   insurrection or massive military mobilization.</p>

<p>   North's involvement with FEMA set off the first
   major clash between the official government and the advisers
   and led to the formal letter of protest in 1984 from then-
   Attorney General Smith.</p>

<p>   Smith was in Europe last week and could not be
   reached for comment.</p>

<p>   But a government official familiar with North's
   collaboration with FEMA said then-Director Louis O.
   Guiffrida, a close friend of Meese's, mentioned North in
   meetings during that time as FEMA's NSC contact.</p>

<p>   Guiffrida could not be reached for comment, but
   FEMA spokesman Bill McAda confirmed the relationship.</p>

<p>   "Officials of FEMA met with Col. North during 1982
   to 1984," McAda said.  "These meetings were appropriate to
   Col. North's duties with the National Security Council and
   FEMA's responsibilities in certain areas of national
   security."</p>

<p>   FEMA's clash with Smith occurred over a secret
   contingency plan that called for suspension of the
   Constitution, turning control of the United States over to
   FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and
   local governments and declaration of martial law during a
   national crisis.</p>

<p>   The plan did not define national crisis, but it
   was understood to be nuclear war, violent and widespread
   internal dissent or national opposition against a military
   invasion abroad.</p>

<p>   PLAN WAS PROTESTED</p>

<p>   The official said the contingency plan was written
   as part of an executive order or legislative package that
   Reagan would sign and hold within the NSC until a severe
   crisis arose.</p>

<p>   The martial law portions of the plan were outlined
   in a June 30, 1982, memo by Guiffrida's deputy for national
   preparedness programs, John Brinkerhoff.  A copy of the memo
   was obtained by The Herald.</p>

<p>   The scenario outlined in the Brinkerhoff memo
   resembled somewhat a paper Guiffrida had written in 1970 at
   the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., in which he advocated
   martial law in case of a national uprising by black
   militants.  The paper also advocated the roundup and
   transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at
   least 21 million "American Negroes."</p>

<p>   When he saw the FEMA plans, Attorney General Smith
   became alarmed.  He dispatched a letter to McFarlane Aug. 2,
   1984 lodging his objections and urging a delay in signing
   the directive.</p>

<p>   "I believe that the role assigned to the Federal
   Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order
   exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for
   emergency preparedness," Smith said in the letter to
   McFarlane, which The Herald obtained.  "This department and
   others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal
   objections to the creation of an 'emergency czar' role for
   FEMA."</p>

<p>   It is unclear whether the executive order was
   signed or whether it contained the martial law plans.
   Congressional sources familiar with national disaster
   procedures said they believe Reagan did sign an executive
   order in 1984 that revised national military mobilization
   measures to deal with civilians in case of nuclear war or
   other crisis.</p>

<p>    ORCHESTRATED NEWS LEAKS</p>

<p>   Around the time that issue was producing fireworks
   with the administration, McFarlane and Casey reassigned
   North from national crisis planning to international covert
   management of the contras.  The transfer came after North
   took a personal interest, realizing that neither the State
   Department nor any other government agency wanted to handle
   the issue after it became clear early in 1984 that Congress
   was moving to bar official aid to the rebels.</p>

<p>   The new assignment, plus North's natural
   organizational ability, creativity and the sheer energy he
   dedicated to the issue, gradually led to an expansion of his
   power and stature within the covert structure, officials and
   investigators believe.</p>

<p>   Meese also was said to have played a role in the
   secret government, investigators now believe, but his role
   is less clear.</p>

<p>   Meese sometimes referred private American citizens
   to the NSC so they could be screened and contacted for
   soliciting support for the Nicaraguan contras.</p>

<p>   One of those supporters, Philip Mabry of Fort
   Worth, told The Herald earlier this year that in 1983 he was
   told by fellow conservatives in Texas to contact Meese, then
   White House counselor, if he wanted to help the contras.
   After he contacted Meese's office, Mabry received a letter
   from Meese obtained by The Herald advising him that his name
   had been given to the "appropriate people."</p>

<p>   Shortly thereafter, Mabry said, a woman who
   identified herself as Meese's secretary gave him the name
   and phone number of another NSC secretary who, in turn, gave
   him North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, as contacts.</p>

<p>   Meese's Justice Department spokesman, Patrick
   Korten, denies that Meese was part of North's secret contra
   supply network and notes that Meese does not recall having
   referred anyone to North on contra-related matters.</p>

<p>   In addition to North's role as contra commander
   and fund-raiser, North became secret overseer of the State
   Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, through which the
   Reagan administration disseminated information that cast
   Nicaragua as a threat to its neighbors and the United
   States.</p>

<p>   An intelligence source familiar with North's
   relationship with that office said North was directly
   involved in many of the best publicized news leaks,
   including the Nov. 4, 1984, Election Day announcement that
   Soviet-made MiG jet fighters were on their way to Nicaragua.</p>

<p>   McFarlane is now believed to have been the senior
   administration official who told reporters that the Soviet
   cargo ship Bakuriani, en route to Nicaragua from a Soviet
   Black Sea port, was probably carrying MiGs.</p>

<p>   The intelligence official said North apparently
   recommended that the information be leaked to the press on
   Election Day so it would reach millions of people watching
   election results.  CBS and NBC broadcast the report that
   night.</p>

<p>   CLARK HAD KEY ROLE</p>

<p>   The leak led to a new clash between the regular
   bureaucracy and the president's advisers.  The official
   State Department spokesman, John Hughes, tried hard to play
   down the report, pointing out that it was unproven that the
   Bakuriani was carrying MiGs.  At the same time, employees of
   the Office of Public Diplomacy, acting under North's
   direction, insisted that the crates were inside the ship and
   that MiGs were still a possibility.</p>

<p>   To take a closer look, the source said, North
   requested a high-flying SR-71 Blackbird spy aircraft be sent
   from Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif., to fly
   over the Nicaraguan port of Corinto while the Bakuriani
   unloaded its cargo.  The pictures showed that the Bakuriani
   unloaded helicopters, not MiGs.</p>

<p>   North was not the only adviser who operated
   outside traditional government channels, investigators have
   concluded.</p>

<p>   Others were known as the RIGLET, a semi-official
   unit made up of North;  Alan Fiers, a CIA Central American
   affairs officer;  and Elliott Abrams, the current assistant
   secretary of state for inter-American affairs, according to
   Abrams' subordinate Richard Melton.  Melton revealed the
   existence of the RIGLET in a deposition given to the Iran-
   contra committees.  The name is a diminutive for RIG, which
   stands for Restricted Interagency Group.</p>

<p>   Among the RIGLET's actions was ordering the U.S.
   ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, to assist the contras
   in setting up a front in southern Nicaragua.  Tambs, who
   resigned suddenly last year after his links to North were
   revealed, testified about the instructions to Iran-contra
   investigators.</p>

<p>   But perhaps the key to the parallel government was
   the role played by Reagan's second national security
   adviser, William Clark.  It was during Clark's tenure that
   North began to gain influence in the NSC.</p>

<p>   Clark also recruited several midlevel officers
   from the Pentagon and the CIA to work on a special Central
   American task force in 1983 to push aid for El Salvador, a
   task force member said.</p>

<p>   "Judge Clark was the granddaddy of the system," he
   said.  "I was working at the Pentagon on another issue when
   my boss said that because of special circumstances, I was to
   be reassigned to the task force."</p>

<p>   A former administration official familiar with
   Clark's activities said Clark also had approved contacts
   between Vatican Ambassador Wilson and Libya before Wilson's
   November 1985 journey, which came after McFarlane replaced
   Clark at the NSC.</p>

<p>   The former official said Wilson also had carried
   out secret missions for the Reagan administration in a Latin
   American country where Wilson reportedly maintained contacts
   with high-level officials.  The source asked that the
   country not be identified because the system is still in
   place and had reduced tensions by circumventing the regular
   bureaucracies of both countries.</p>

<p>   Calls to Wilson's and Clark's offices in
   California were not returned.</p>

<p>     -----END-----</p>

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   by SAX ALLEN of Free San Francisco, California
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