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<xml><p>Article 11143 of alt.activism:
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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
<info type="Message-ID"> 1991Oct15.160142.29417@odin.corp.sgi.com</info>
Date: 15 Oct 91 16:01:42 GMT
Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 180</p>

<p>   The Wackenhut Corporation:  the maturation of "private" government.</p>

<p>   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.</p>

<p>from "The First Stone" column of the Sept. 18-24 1991 issue of "In These
Times":</p>

<p>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Scandal Gates
   By Joel Bleifuss</p>

<p>   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.</p>

<p>   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 1,700-acre reservation"
   belonging to the 30-member Cabazon tribe.  According to Littman,
   these projects include a HUD and mafia-financed casino, a 1,800-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.</p>

<p>   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.</p>

<p>   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.</p>

<p>   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.</p>

<p>--
     daveus rattus</p>

<p>   yer friendly neighborhood ratman</p>

<p>    KOYAANISQATSI</p>

<p> 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.</p>

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