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From: dave@ratmandu.corp.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.conspiracy
Subject: the INSLAW case: more on Wackenhut
Keywords: Hitler's rise to power succeeded through the use of private ar-
mies
The Wackenhut Corporation: the maturation of "private" government.
Wackenhut's Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black told the "Washington Times"' Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: "We are similar to a private FBI." The company's board of directors reads like a who's who of the intelligence community.
from "The First Stone" column of the Sept. 18-24 1991 issue of "In These Times":
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scandal Gates By Joel Bleifuss
As CIA Director-designate Robert Gates pleads ignorance to knowledge of CIA misdeeds before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, the lawmakers might do well to remember his sworn testimony of March March 6, 1986. At the time, CIA Director William Casey had nominated Gates for the number-two position at the agency. In an effort to impress the senators considering his nomination, Gates said: "[Casey] and I have consulted extensively, even in my present position [as deputy director for intelligence] in all areas of intelligence policy including not just analysis and estimates but also organization, budgeting and covert action. I will now have a formal role in all of these areas." If Gates really had "a formal role in all of these areas"--which appears likely--he certainly knows more than he has let on. And someone should ask Gates what he knows about the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Fla. As the Wackenhut letterhead puts in, the company provides "security systems and services throughout the world." As Wackenhut's Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black told the "Washington Times"' Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: "We are similar to a private FBI." The company's board of directors reads like a who's who of the intelligence community. In 1984, for example, former Deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman, currently one of Gates' main boosters in Washington, was a director of the company. And among those on the 1983 board were two former FBI special agents, one retired Air Force general, one former commander in chief of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), one former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former CIA Director William Rabor, Nixon-appointed FBI Director Clarence Kelly and former CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci (who would later become Ronald Reagan's national security adviser). Further, the 1983 board included Robert Chasen, a former FBI special agent who was Carter's commissioner of customs until 1980, when he became a vice president of Wackenhut. Also in 1980, soon-to-be CIA chief William Casey served as Wackenhut's outside legal counsel--the same year he managed the Reagan-Bush election campaign.
ON THE RESERVATION: It was in 1980 that Wackenhut began working closely with Southern California's Cabazon Indians and their tribal administrator John Philip Nichols. The "San Francisco Chronicle"'s Jonathan Littman reported this month that Nichols, a white American who spent years in South American, has boasted to friends about working on the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro and the successful assassination of Salvador Allende. The Cabazons hired Nichols as their administrator in 1978. Littman reports that thanks to Nichols' connections and grantsmanship, "federal and state agencies are helping to finance nearly $250 million worth of projects on the 1700-acre reservation" belonging to the 30-member Cabazon tribe. According to Littman, these projects include a HUD and mafia-financed casino, a 1800-unit housing complex and a $150 million waste incinerator/power plant that was built with tax-exempt state bonds. But most intriguing is the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture, which began in 1980 when the tribe was asked to design a security system for Crown Prince Fahd's palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia. This was followed by Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture proposals to develop biological weapons for the Pentagon and assemble night-vision goggles for the Guatemalan and Jordanian governments. Why was a security firm so interested in working with a small tribe of native Americans? One good reason can be found in a May 26, 1981, inter-office memo from Wackenhut executive Robert Frye to the above-mentioned Robert Chasen. Frye described an 11-day business trip with Nichols "to explore the apparent potential for the Cabazon-Wackenhut joint venture." Frye wrote that the reservation has "several key ingredients necessary" for a weapons plant, including "lack of opposition by adjacent governing bodies and `irate citizens' over the siting of such a facility." John Philip Nichols is no longer officially running the reservation. According to Littman, son Mark Nichols is the tribal administrator while the elder Nichols serves as a "mental-health counselor to Cabazon reservation employees." John Philip Nichols lost his job because federal law prohibits convicted felons from running casinos. In January, 1985, Nichols was sentenced to four years in prison for capital solicitation of murder. He served 19 months. No one was killed in that murder-for-hire scheme. However, in 1981, Alfred Alvarez, a Cabazon Indian tribal vice president, and two non-Indians were murdered execution style. Alvarez's sister Linda Streeter Dukic says her brother and his friends died because they were about to expose mismanagement on the Cabazon reservation. Mike Kataoka of the Palm Springs "Press-Enterprise" reports that in 1985, when Nichols was arrested for hiring the hitman, the U.S. Justice Department was investigating his possible involvement in those 1981 deaths. No charges were ever filed.
ANOTHER MURDER? The Cabazon/Wackenhut connection was of particular interest to Danny Casolaro, the Washington-based journalist who was found dead in the Martinsburg, W. Va., Sheraton on August 10 (see "The First Stone," Sept. 4 [an earlier post in this on-line series]). Casolaro's friends, family and professional associates fear he was murdered--and that the crime was related to his investigations into a series of corporate and governmental scandals. Casolaro's brother, Anthony, told the Washington-based "Corporate Crime Reporter," "Danny was trying to track monies Wackenhut spent and what Danny found was that [Wackenhut] had ear-marked a half million dollars for what they call `research.'" Anthony Casolaro said that the money "ties in Wackenhut with this Indian reservation and organized crime and CIA guys . . . Those same people showed up with Inslaw and one of them shows up in the October Surprise." The "October Surprise" was the alleged campaign deal between Iran and the 1980 Reagan campaign to delay the release of the U.S. hostages held in Tehran (see "In These Times," June 24, 1987, Oct. 12, 1988 and April 27, 1991). "Inslaw was Inslaw Inc. of Washington D.C.--a firm that has brought suit in federal court, charging that the Reagan Justice Department stole the company's Promis case-management software program. Two judges has thus far ruled in the company's favor. The suit is still in the courts (see "In These Times," May 29, 1991 ["Software Pirates," an earlier on-line post in this series]). Earlier this year, Inslaw further alleged that the Justice Department turned the stolen software over to Earl Brian, a friend of both former President Ronald Reagan and former Attorney General Edwin Meese. Inslaw charges that the software was a payback for Brian's help in arranging the October Surprise. Former Israeli intelligence agent Ari Ben-Menashe alleges that Brian--now the head of United Press International--was directly involved in arranging the 1980 deal. Ben-Menashe claims that Brian "worked very closely" on the deal with Robert Gates, who was then a top CIA official.
NO JUSTICE: Wackenhut is also linked to the Inslaw scandal. Michael Riconosciuto--a weapons-systems designer and software specialist--was director of research for the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture in the early '80s. In a March 1991 affidavit for the Inslaw case, Riconosciuto claimed that "in connection with [Riconosciuto's] work for Wackenhut," he modified the stolen Promis software for foreign sales. "Earl W. Brian made [the software program] available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the Promis software." Videnieks, a former Customs Service official under Commissioner Chasen, served in the Justice Department from 1981 through 1990. In his affidavit, Riconosciuto said Videnieks had threatened to retaliate against Riconosciuto if he cooperated with a House Judiciary Committee probe of the Inslaw case. Seven days after filing the affidavit (which was not, technically, part of the committee investigation), Riconosciuto was arrested on drug-selling charges. He is now in a Seattle jail awaiting trial.
PRIVATE SPIES The 1980s were a decade of privatization. As a for- profit intelligence service, Wackenhut appears to have taken on the kind of work that in earlier years the FBI and CIA would have done (and still do), albeit illegally. On the environmental-crime front, Wackenhut is now the object of an investigation by the House Interior Committee. Early in 1990, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a consortium of seven oil companies that run the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, hired Wackenhut to spy on environmentalists, whistleblowers and other oil company critics. Wackenhut tactics included setting up a phoney environmental organization and having agents pose as reporters. It is alleged in press reports that the company also monitored Rep. George Miller (D-CA) whose house subcommittee has been investigating environmental crimes allegedly committed by the consortium which is composed of British Petroleum, Exxon, ARCO, Phillips, Unocal, Mobil and Amerada Hess.
-- daveus rattus
yer friendly neighborhood ratman
KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.