THE PREVAILING WINDS BRIEFING Toxic Stealth: The Rough Notes of a Scandal We admit it. We're writing this before all the facts are in. But for the past year or so, we've had glimpses of a story which raises a highly disturbing possibility: Are deadly toxins released into the environment during the manufacture and testing of the Stealth bomber and other advanced aircraft? Keep in mind: The reports we have received so far are anecdotal and often second-hand. But a recently-filed lawsuit tends to confirm our worst suspicions. A professional midwife who de-livers babies in the California high desert tells us that clients living in certain desert areas such as Ridge-crest, the "bedroom community" serving the super-secret China Lake Naval Weapons facility —have expe-rienced an abormally high rate of still-births, miscarriages, and placenta previas.
This midwife has compared notes with colleagues who also serve these commu-nities; they report the same frightening trend. Could these problems have any relationship to the many top-secret military projects conducted in the area? As Popular Science and other journals have noted, high desert residents have frequently spotted overflights of unusual aircraft, many quite experimental, all top secret. These craft could include the Stealth fighter and bomber, the teardrop-shaped TR-3A reconnaissance plane (reportedly used secretly during the war against Iraq), and the Aurora, the supersonic spy-plane whose very existence is denied by the Air Force, even though many savvy southern Californians credit it with causing a recent series of sonic booms. Eyewitness reports (including some we have collected personally) describe even stranger craft — including large, silent hovering vehicles, possibly using a radically new propulsion system. Aerial photographs indicate that certain secluded desert facilities conduct open-air radar testing of astonishing new aircraft designs.
Quite recently, we discussed the reported high incidence of stillbirths and miscarriages with a "whistleblower" who worked for a major aircraft corporation. Our source hinted that the problem might well be linked to the high-tech anti-radar material which coats Stealth and successor aircraft. Similar health concerns surround the controversial Area 51 test site, located at the edge of Groom Lake in the Nevada Test Site, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. About six years ago, self-de-scribed "physicist" Robert Lazar drew attention to this covert base when he asserted that the Air Force has used it to back-en-gineer recovered UFOs. Such hard-to-believe claims may have dissuaded mainstream reporters from paying serious attention to "black projects" being tested at the base —the very existence of which the government refuses to admit, even though Soviet satellites have photographed the facility. Enthusiasts make nightly treks to "Freedom Ridge," where the base — and, occasionally, some very odd flying whatzits — can be distantly viewed.
Uncle Sam wants to increase his land holdings in the area in order to re-move the public's vantage point on the "imaginary" base. And now thirty-nine former em-ployees of the non-existent base have come forward to bring suit against the U.S. government, claiming that envi-ronmental hazards at Area 51 have resulted in numerous illnesses and at least one possible death. According to the New York Times Magazine (6/26/94), these former • base workers "are ready to testify that, thanks to the open-air burning of hazardous and toxic wastes in exposed 'burn pits' north of the base, they have sustained long-term damage from dioxins and other hazardous materials. The wastes burned — resins, hardening compounds, and solvents called furrans (used in the anti-radar coating of Stealth aircraft) —are said to cause dioxin-related health prob-lems like liver damage, skin diseases, and birth defects." (Italics added.) One plaintiff, Helen Frost, previously filed a wrongful death suit (dismissed on a technicality) against Lockheed, alleg-ing that burning toxins killed her husband, who was working downwind. We can't help but wonder if defense workers in the Califor-nia desert face similar problems. The toxic side-effects of military R&D remain one of the great under-reported stories of our time. According to an AP story of May 16, 1994, each year the military must find ways to dispose one-half million tons of hazardous chemical wastes, radioactive wastes, and solvents not to mention the lethal ooze seeping out of old nerve gas weapons. Experts indicate that taxpayers may have to shell out some $250 billion to clean up the mess at over 900 sites controlled by the Departments of Defense and Energy. And that's not counting the potential health costs of these military toxins and environmental compro-mises. Is our Defense Department, in its zeal to kill foreigners, accidentally killing us? Midwives report that women living near the China Lake Naval Weapons base have an abnormally high rate of stillbirths and miscarriages. Prevailing Winds Magazine Premiere issue a tr*Prisok • -n • -
We Need This Like We Need Anthrax Social spending is being decimated, schools go unfunded, health care remains a privilege for the propertied — yet the Pentagon keeps marching on. Clinton will spend around $250 billion this year on the military, compared to $230 billion (measured in constant dollars) during the Nixon regime. (And remember: We were fighting a very expensive war/police action back then) And now Gingrich and Dole want to increase defense spending. So: What kind of bang do we get for all those bucks? Well, for starters: The Pentagon wants to spend $150 million on a new germ warfare lab, located at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. This new lab will specialize in the military use of anthrax and botulism, And bio-war research has resumed at the venerable Ehigway proving ground in Utah, even though the Army ceased testing there ten years ago because it could no longer guarantee the safety of its aging facilities.
Of course, the Brass insists that these studies are purely defensive. Back in the early '70s, President Nixon reached a treaty with the Soviets banning all research into the offensive use of chemical and biological warfare. But the distinction is moot: Many experts assert that "defensive" bio-war studies can readily convert into offensive usages. Besides, the heirs to the Soviet Union are scarcely in a position to hold the United States to its agreements. Think about it: If American interest in these areas is indeed purely defensive, why won't the DOD let a civilian agency take over the research? Even When They Lose, They Win Thank God for small failures — specifically, the failures of Senate hopefuls Oliver North and Michael Huffmgton. Against prediction, the voters didn't favor thrice-convicted Iran-Contra felon North, who ran for Charles Robb's Senate seat in Virginia. An astonishing amount of money went into this race, much of it from big oil interests, as well as food magnates Jimmie Dean and Clifford Heinz, Thomas Coombs of Sherwin Williams Paint, the Coors family, and Daniel DeVoss, chairman of Amway. Religious supporters included Pat Robertson and Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
(Odd, isn't it, how Pat and the Moonies so often back the same horse...?) The man heading this fund-raising effort was Richard Viguerie, Rush Limbaugh's main man, well known for his effective direct mail campaigns. As Viguerie once noted in a candid moment, "A well-organized minority can often defeat an unorganized majority." Incidentally, North's candidacy posed a direct challenge to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that no "sworn officer of the United States" (which North was) who has "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof" (which North did) can be a Senator. Since few pay much attention to the Constitution these days, North's opponents had to rally around Robb, an unattractive Democratic candidate. Of course, money raised to combs. the massively-funded North could have gone to other races in other states. This may have been the entirepoint of the North campaign: He is, after all, an old hand at diverting funds.
The mere fact that he attracted so many votes says something disturbing about our electorate. Celerino "Cele" Castillo, a former supervisory agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, has further substantiated longstanding charges that North protected a massive cocaine operation during the mid-1980s. Castillo informed then-Vice President George Bush about this drug operation; Bush did nothing. A North spokesman has de-nounced Castillo's assertions as "a nutty conspiracy theory." The Guardian (of Oct. 5, '94) offered perhaps the most amusing insight into North's run for office. The would-be Senator tried to turn the "threat" of homosexuality into a major campaign issue, even though "his entourage has always in-cluded a remarkably high number of gays." North's chief con-tra-fund-raising aide was Carl "Spitz" Channel', a homosexual who — for reasons best known to himself — once gave a massive donation to an anti-gay organization. According to The Guardian, "Other young male associates of North used to write feverish odes about their hero's clear blue eyes and manly bearing." Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, voters have (just barely) rejected California Senate hopeful Michael (now "Mike") Huffmgton — who, though not the worst candidate running in 1994, was very likely the oddest.
As a House member representing Santa Barbara County, Huff quickly managed to alienate his constituents, who generally regard him as a fabu-lously wealthy, do-nothing carpetbagger from Texas. He's the chief financial officer of Huffco, an oil and natural gas conglom-erate started by his father, Roy — a life-long buddy of the gone-but-not-forgiven George Bush. Indeed, the Huffmgton family's financial history fits the pattern set by other Bush associates. Soon after the CIA estab-lished a murderous regime in Indonesia in 1965, Roy Huffmgton established close ties with the dictatorial government in order to exploit the country's previously untapped natural gas re-serves. (Eventually, the Huffmgton family sold shock batons to their neo-fascist partners in Jakarta) Years later, both Roy and Michael Huffmgton sat on the board of the now-failed First City Bancorp of Texas, which made billions of dollars worth of sour loans. One of these unsecured loans went to — you guessed it — a Huffco subsidiary in Bakersfield, California, which lost $100 million. But — as the national press belatedly learned and as Santa Barbarans have known for some time — to get to the dark, weird heart of the Huffmgton story you must examine the background of his attractive wife, Arianna, an aristocratic Greek who mar-ried Michael about ten years ago. She initially achieved wide-spread public annoyance a couple of decades ago when she argued, in a book called The Female Woman, that feminism devalued motherhood. In 1988, she turned her attentions to the world of art and whipped up a book "proving" that Picasso had no talent. Recently, she wrote The Fourth Instinct, a gently reactionary volume which argues that welfare thwarts the pub-lic's instinctive urge to practice altruism. In her recent literary outing, Arianna largely acted as the amanuensis for her guru, or Raspu tin — a now-infamous cult leader n amecl John-Roger, a, k.a. "The Mystical Traveler." Born Roger Delano Hinkins, John-Roger has established himself as Premiere Issue 3 Prevailing Winds Magazine
The Guns 'n' Drugs Reader ina is vain ray- horn Hui Edina or Prevailing Vilna* e THE GUNS 'N' DRUGS READER "The Guns 'n Drugs Reader" is a collection of articles. inter-views, speeches, and book chapters which deal with narcotics trafficking by sectors of the United States government. The book focuses particularly on the Christie Institute's La Penca lawsuit, providing many primary source materials relevant to that case. The La Penca case is important because it exposes how various intelligence agencies have long used illicit narcot-ics to fund covert op- erations. The LaPenca case also provides most of the missing pieces that the Iran-contra committee re-fused to go near.
"The Guns 'n Drugs Reader" also presents a wide collection of sup-porting viewpoints, ranging from "Bo" Gritz to Professor Al-fred McCoy (author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia). Sprinkled throughout the various longer arti-cles are numerous rele-vant press clippings which add haunting confirmation of what really goes on behind the "national security" facade. What emerges from the various documents is the sense that, more than anything else. drugs like cocaine and heroin are a form of taxation, a covert way of raising billions of dollars with-out any form of congressional or public supervision. Given this hidden budget, intelligence agencies are able to conduct their op-erations without any form of scrutiny. PWR code #671 $18.95 the grand preceptor of The Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, or MSIA (pronounced "Messiah"). In recent months, the press has devoted much ink to John-Roger, whose vast holdings include a heavily-guarded 140-acre compound near Santa Barbara.
Although little of this media attention has been kind, reporters rarely display true insight into his sect. For unknown reasons, the Mystical Traveler has been repeat-edly invited to lecture employees of McDonnell-Douglas and the CIA-linked Lockheed Corporation. His theology includes healthy borrowings from ECKANKAR and various narcissistic self-help systems, mixed in with such concepts as the "As-cended Masters" and the "Priesthood of Melchizedek." Cult-watchers will recognize the "Ascended Masters" as the Aryan demi-deities worshipped by the I AM Religious Activity{ a fascist-linked sect that sprang up in the I930s. If nothing else, the John-Roger story should demolish any lingering misappre-hensions that the New Age movement is entirely, or even his affairs with very young men. putative co-authorship, with Peter McWilliams, of several huge-primarily, progressive in nature. ago. Her loyal support helped the sect leader weather 1988 allegations of fiscal and sexual hanky-panky, mostly concerning Arianna is a minister in MSIA, which she joined 22 years Also helping to rehabilitate his reputation was John-Roger's Prevailing Winds Magazine selling books.
McWilliams fell in with MSIA about ten years ago. He now charges, in his book Life 102: What To Do When Your Guru Sues You, that the cult leader brainwashed him into believing he would fall ill and die unless he credited, and paid, John-Roger as "co-author" of his works. After leaving the sect, McWilliams stopped splitting his earnings, and the messiah of MSIA is suing for over $400,000 unpaid profits on the books he "co-wrote." (Incidentally, Life 102 reports that John-Roger has used expensive machines capable of "beaming invisible mes-sages" —a notion McWilliams pooh-poohs, though others may take the possibility more seriously.) McWilliams' exposé argues, essentially, that John-Roger controls Arianna, who in turn controls her husband. As numer-ous writers have noted, Michael Huffington almost never makes a decision without consulting his wife. According to Peter McWilliams and others, John-Roger still maintains close links to Arianna — though she tries to downplay the relationship, insisting that she is actually a member in good standing of the Greek Orthodox Church in Santa Barbara. A representative of that church claimed otherwise in a letter to the Santa Barbara Independent (11/3/94): "Arianna Huffington is not a member of the Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church... Neither do they attend services, except when it is election time." The letter further notes that baptism occurs only once in Ortho-doxy; thus, one abjures that faith when re-baptised into another. McWilliams' book contains a photograph of Arianna's re-bap-tism into MSIA.
In all likelihood, we'll be hearing again from the wealthy and ambitious Huffingtons —and from Jolly John-Roger. In the meantime, we note once again the distressing pattern: A deep-pockets candidate can "win" even if he loses, by forcing the opposition party to divert funds from other races. What better argument for campaign reform do we need? Leading Republican Sees Gay Conspiracy Prevailing Winds keeps an open mind regarding alternative theories of AIDS causation, such as the competing scenarios proposed by Dr. Alan Cantwell and Dr. Peter Duesberg. We're not sure what AIDS is. But we know what AIDS isn't. It isn't an excuse for hard rightists to persecute homosexuals. Alas, evidence suggests that Dr. Stanley Monteith, chairman of the California Republican Party's Health and Human Serv-ices Committee, thinks otherwise. (Most of our info on Monteith comes by way of writer John Roemer, who profiled the doctor in the Los Angeles Village View, August 12-18, 1994.) At a recent "Human Life International" conference, held in Irvine, CA, Monteith "staffed a booth where rabidly anti-Semitic lit-erature was displayed alongside his own writings." These writ-ings claim that AIDS is a conspiracy concocted by homosexuals out to destroy hetero America. (Presumably the gay schemers who invented AIDS decided to divert suspicion by first inflict-ing the disease on themselves. Now that 's devious.) Monteith 'wants mandatory testing, reporting, and possibly quarantine of the infected.. Enforcement of such laws could effectively criminalize any sexual behavior Monteith dislikes. He sneers at such notions as needle exchanges and education Premiere Issue 4
campaigns, even though both tactics have proven effective. Obviously, Monteith's main concern isn't public health but homosexuality per se: He "hosted" a video called The Gay Agenda, a rumor-mongering piece of homophobic agit-prop heavily promoted by "Reverend" Pat Robertson during the gays-in-the-military debate. Roemer closes his exposé by quot-ing a 1987 letter Monteith wrote to a fellow reactionary: "The entire subject of AIDS gets into sex education, moral break-down, humanism, and all of the sinister forces which work behind the scenes to destroy our society... In many ways, this horrible epidemic gives us a chance to rejuvenate the John Birch Society." Gee, Doc, couldn't you work in some reference to the Illuminati? And remember, folks: This blathering Bircher is the California GOP's main man on health issues. Expect to see much more of this kind of thinking on a national scale. Spying is Forever Col. Sergei G. Gorlenko of Russia's Federal Counterintelli-gence Service made front pages worldwide with his charges (first aired in the Rossisk.aya Gcrzeta of September 3, 1994) that California's Pepperdinc University has sponsored a defense conversion program in Russia with a hidden agenda: Espionage. Pepperdine, generally regarded as a highly conservative institution, denies the FCI accusation.
But the university's con-version program received $1.7 million from the Agency for International Development —which, as the mainstream Ameri-can press rarely points out, has a long history of providing cover for CIA operations. John Gilligan, director of AID during the Carter administration, once revealed that "...many AID field offices were infiltrated top to bottom with CIA people... The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind." Plus Fa change... Who is Carlos? The capture of Carlos the Jackal (born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) has unusually deep ramifications. Many who read newspapers during the 1970s learned to few- Carlos as the terrorist par excellence. At one time, the media portrayed him as the mastermind behind the 1972 Olympics massacre and the muscle behind West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang and It-aly's Red Brigades. Evidence suggests, however, that the public has received a distorted view of the Jackal's activities_ The lime has come to ask the question, who were his true sponsors? Carlos actually had little or nothing to do with the Olympics tragedy, in which Black September terrorists murdered 11 Is-raeli athletes. His only known connection with that event
(ac-cording to James 0. Goldborough in the San Diego Union Tribune of August 22, 1994) is the fact that he worked for a revolutionary named Wadi Haddad in the early '70s. Haddad was a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and helped train the Black September guerillas. Israel retaliated for the massacre by attacking Black Septem-ber operatives throughout the world. One of their targets was a man named Mohammed Boudia, who worked with the terrorist group in Paris. After Mossad killed Boudia, Carlos took over his position. This ascension established a pattern: The authori-ties killed or captured other terrorists, while Carlos always lived to "fight" another day. A later Carlos associate, Wilfred Bose, was arrested in Pans in 1975 after he illegally entered the apartment of still another fellow-terrorist, Michel Moukarbel. Mysteriously, Bose was released shortly thereafter, even though the police found evi-dence linking him and Carlos to a bazooka attack on a Yugoslav airliner. Bose escaped to Germany and helped plan the operation at Entebbe, where the Israeli rescue team killed him. Shortly after Bose walked away from French custody, un-armed Parisian police, acting on a Mossad tip, came to Moukar-bel's apartment, where they found Carlos.
In the resultant gun-fire, Carlos killed Moukarbel point-blank, and then shot two officers while shouting "I am Carlos!" Victor Ostrovsky's By Way of Deception gives an account of this episode as confusing as it is detailed. Mossad veteran Ostrovsk-y claims that Moukarbel was an informant for the Israeli spy agency. (The book also mentions a party of South Americans in the apartment, but doesn't say what happened to them.) Ultimately, we have only Mossad's word that Moukarbel was an Israeli informant — the actual informant may well have been Carlos himself. All we know for sure is this: Carlos got away; his comrade ended up dead. Toward the end of 1975, Carlos and his gun-toting associates rudely interrupted an OPEC meeting in Vienna and took dozens of hostages, including Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia.
Carlos seemed to have no clear political goal. After pocketing a few million (perhaps as much as $20 million) in money, he freed the hostages and walked away. Some still find it hard to believe that Carlos could threaten with impunity so powerful a man as Yamani —who, you will recall, had greatly inconvenienced the United States throughout much of that decade. What could possibly explain the Jackal's phenomenal lucky streak? Perhaps the answer lies in the books Manhunt and Libyan Sandstorm, which tell the story of "renegade" CIA agents Ed Wilson and Frank Terpil, who caused an early-110s scandal by smuggling weapons and other military aid to Libya. Many analysts of the Wilsonfferpil affair wonder whether the "renegades" were operating under Langley's instructions all along. One of the fast to blow the whistle on the pair was former CIA analyst Kevin Mulcahy, who, back in 1977, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post about the Wilson/Terpil operation. Mulcahy insisted that Terpil —then employed by the Agency — had trained the infamous Carlos. On October 26, 1980 — just before Mulcahy was to testify against Wilson — authorities found the witness dead, just outside his Virgina motel room. Accounts of the death vary; Virginia medical authorities (foreshadowing the Casol aro case) ruled that Mulcahy had expired of natural causes. Whatever the cause, he never had the chance to tell a court about Frank Terpil's links to Carlos the Jackal. In recent years, Syria sheltered Carlos. But the warming relations between Damascus and Washington apparently made Carlos a liability, so Syria transferred him to the Sudanese government, which eventually turned him over to French authorities. The politics become quite intriguing at this point Most news accounts of Carlos' capture noted that Sudan, guilty of horrifying atrocities against the Nu ba people in the south, has Prevailing winds Magazine Premiere issue 5
COCAINE • POLITICS DRUGS, ARMIES, AND THE CIA IN CENTRAL AMERICA PETER DALE SCOTT AND JONATHAN MARSHALL
Cocaine Politics tells the story of how elements of our own government went to work with narcotic traf-fickers, and then fought to suppress the truth about what they had done. P officially joined the Clinton Administration's list of terrorist nations — in part because Sheik Rahman, of World Trade Center fame, came to America on a Sudanese passport. These news accounts usually left out the fact that Sudan, previously considered a key player in the region's cold war politics, once housed a sizable CIA station and functioned as a key regional ally of the United States. Sudan is ruled by a fundamentalist clique which draws inspiration from fanatical Hassan al Turabi, leader of the Mus-lim Brothers. As the summer 1994 issue of Covert Action noted, "An influential if small coterie within the State Department welcomed the Brothers as...sympathetic to Western business interests and viscerally hostile to communism."
CIA links to the Brothers, and influence in Sudan, may continue to this day. The latest twist: Carlos' lawyer in France is none other than the mysterious Jacques Verges, the alleged leftist who repre-sented Nazi murderer Klaus Barbie. According to European news stories, Verges was identified as a CIA "asset" in newly released files from the Stasi, the former East German secret police. Even in captivity, Carlos the Jackal continues his tradition of "inadvertent" aid to reactionary causes. A recent article in Vanity Fair predicts that Carlos may spice up his upcoming trial by fingering certain left-of-center French Presidential candi-dates as "people who were personally implicated in terrorism during the 1970s." Once again, the Carlos story dances from the political left to the right and points beyond. His former allies — the ones left alive, at any rate — must now be wondering, was Carlos the Jackal actually Carlos the Judas?
Sieg Heil, Old Chap Two rather embarrassing items about Great Britain and the Nazis: According to the book Eminent Churchillians, by the con-troversial historian Andrew Roberts, King George VI (father of Queen Elizabeth II) personally intervened to prevent Jewish refugees from fleeing to safety in Palestine, which was then governed by Britain. In early 1939, after the Kristallnacht po-groms, His Majesty had his private secretary write Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax to approve of the steps then being taken "to prevent these people from leaving their country of origin." The King did not favor persecution of Jews — he just didn't want any more of them under British rule. In the present day: British Brigadier General Andrew Ridg-way and two staff officers laid a wreath at a war memorial in Celle, Germany. The wreath was labelled "To the Gallant and the Brave. From the British Army." Apparently, Ridgway had no idea that the memorialized German soldiers were fallen SS officers, nor did he realize that the group organizing the cere-mony, the OdR Ritterkreuz, counts dozens of living SS officers among its members. Leading SS men in the OdR include Colo-nel Fritz Dirges, who served as one of Adolf Hitler's adjutants, and SS General Wilhelm Mohnke, who, during the war, mur-dered more than 40 British prisoners of war at Dunkirk. The aged Mohnke may have attended the same Celle ceremony graced by the presence of Brigadier General Ridgway.
Ridgway now commands British forces in Bosnia. Sieg Heil, Mon Ami Speaking of embarassing disclosures: Francois Mitterand, Socialist president of France since 1981 (and now seriously ill), has recently had his war-time dirty laundry aired. According to a new book by French investigator Pierre Penn (who had Mit-terand's cooperation), the Socialist politician did not join the French Resistance early on, as he has heretofore claimed. Evi-dence now indicates that he joined the anti-Nazi forces in late 1943, when the handwriting on the wall already predicted Hitler's defeat. Throughout much of the Nazi occupation, Mit-terand supported the elderly Nazi puppet Charles Petain and his fascist Vichy government, responsible for the decimation of France's Jewish population. Mitterand worked in the Vichy regime's Commissariat General for Prisoners of War, and con-tributed articles to the anti-Semitic journal France. Revue de l'Etat Nouveau. Petain awarded Mitterand the Francisque Gal-lique, a medal bestowed only on those Petain devotees who had helped bring about Nazi rule. Mitterand explains that he was young at the time. Prevailing Winds
Sieg Heil and Kyrie eleison
"Embarrassing" scarcely describes Pope John Paul H's actions this past year. The Vatican has awarded Kurt Waldheim — former UN Secretary General, and later President of Austria (1986-1992) — the honor of a papal knighthood. In the late 1980s, the world learned that Waldheim had spent the previous four decades covering up his participation in Nazi war crimes as a Wehrmacht intelligence officer. The Vatican topped this outrage by sending secret envoys to Iran and Libya, the Pope's allies against the United Nations Conference on Population and Development.
As editorialist Jim Hoagland puts it: "In the Vatican's viewpoint, the worldwide struggle over abortion and birth control seems to take immediate precedence over the political struggles in Egypt, Algeria, Ma-laysia and other countries where Muslim fundamentalists want to sweep away secular governments and install theocracies." Hoagland goes on to quote Iranian Foreign Minister Rafsanjani, who met with a papal envoy on August 1: "The future war is between the religious and the materialists. Collaboration be-tween religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields." However, according to the International Iran Dines of Sep-tember 9, 1994, the Vatican ultimately got little Iranian, help during the Cairo conference. There's a big difference between Catholic and Shiite attitudes toward reproduction: "... the Vati-can opposes any form of artificial birth control while govern-ments in the Islamic world have almost uniformly embraced birth control apart from abortion." It's rather striking, when you think of it: Compared to the Bishop of Rome, even the funda-mentalists of Iran seem like the voices of sweet reason — on the subject of sex, at least. Mercury, Mossad, Murder, and Nukes The Guardian of July 26, 1994, describes a gruesome mur-der mystery with possible intelligence links and nuclear conse-quences. The murder took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, one evening in November, 1991.
A 49-year-old British busi-nessman named Alan Kidger received a phone call at home from an unknown person, then told his wife he was stepping out. He never returned. The next morning two young thieves found his car parked downtown, opened the trunk, and discovered Kidger's body. The arms and legs had been surgically severed, and the torso smeared with black paint. Kidger's family initially suspected that white extremists, angered by his mixed marriage, may have committed the mur-der. But the case went unsolved until June of this year, when a South African police chief, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Land-man, came forward with a startling explanation: Mossad, the Israeli CIA, killed Kidger. According to the police chief, ele-ments of the previous South African intelligence service blocked his earlier investigation into the affair — the same elements which may have been involved with the bombing of Lt. Col. Landman's car in 1993. He believes the installation of a new South African government frees him to pursue the case anew. Why would Mossad agents kill this businessman?
Kidger worked for Thor Chemicals, a British multinational whose presence in South Africa is resented by many. Environmental-ists charge that the Thor mercury reprocessing plant in Natal (the largest such plant in the world) has grossly polluted the Umgeni river. But health issues did not trouble Mossad. Their concerns were nuclear. Kidger may have been involved with smuggling so-called "Red Mercury," a substance potentially valuable in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, to Middle Eastern nations with nuclear ambitions. Or so says Landman. But many deny the very existence of Red Mercury. Reportedly, the substance originated some years ago, when Soviet scientists discovered a way to use a common mercury compound as a cheap and efficient substitute for ura-nium in both fission and fusion bombs. Most nuclear experts in Russia, the United States and Britain deny these reports —yet some knowledgeable analysts insist that Red Mercury does exist.
Included in the latter group are Frank Barnaby, former director of the Stockholm Internationl Peace Research Institute, and Sam Cohen, generally regarded as the father of the neutron bomb. If these experts are correct, the Red Mercury problem could eclipse the plutonium and uranium smuggling scandals now erupting in Russia and Germany. Thor Chemicals officials argue that South African environ-mental extremists killed Alan Kidger. Nevertheless, Lt. Col. Landman is adamently pursuing the Mossad angle, including possible links to the murder last April of chemical expert Wy-nand van Wyk. Expect the Red Mercury story to heat up in the months and years ahead... Atoms for Kohl Speaking of those uranium and plutonium smuggling scan-dals: The New York Times of August 26 notes an aspect of the story seldom reported elsewhere. Officials of the Social Demo-cratic Party charge that German authorities themselves aided the smuggling. The theory, taken seriously by many in Germany, holds that conservative German President Helmut Kohl, who won re-election in October, benefited politically from the spec-tacular series of arrests which dominated German headlines.
As one Social Democratic leader put it, "This smacks of a stunt." Allegedly, the uranium and plutonium uncovered during the smuggling busts originated in Russia. But Russian counterintel-ligence experts doubt that the plutonium came from their coun-try, claiming that the type of plutonium reportedly found in Germany is almost never used in Russia. The smuggling cases raise yet another question. What hap-pens to the recovered plutonium and uranium after the smug-gling operations come to light? One doubts that German cops keep the stuff sitting on a shelf in the evidence room. And as long as Russian officials disclaim the material, they certainly won't press to get it back. Does Kohl's government harbor a clandestine nuclear weap-ons program? Germany did try to beat America to the bomb during the war...
Prevailing Winds Magazine Premiere Issue 7 [f7+ s,.] The Party Girl, the KGB, and the Devil We hope you remember Christine Keeler, the naughty Eng-lish lass who, during the swinging '60s, shook up the British government by bedding both Defense Minister John Profumo and a KGB operative. The resultant scandal inspired one of Esquire's most memorable "dubious achievement" awards, as well as a rather good film — titled, appropriately, Scandal. Keeler now tells British tabloids that she did what she did while spying for the Russians, exactly as some have long suspected. Prevailing Winds remains fairly skeptical about this scenario.
The former party girl is well known to have fallen on rather sad times financially — and some Western ideologues still go to great lengths to keep alive their favorite anti-commu-nist canards (e.g., the KGB-shot-the-Pope myth, the Alger-Hiss-was-guilty myth, etc). The Profumo affair has long attracted bizarre interpretations. Perhaps the most striking assertion came from Hungarian film actress Eva Bartok, who married into uppercrust British society —the same circles in which Stephen Ward traveled. (Recall that Ward acted as the "mentor" to Keeler and other attractive women.) Bartok charged that Ward's crew dabbled in Satanism as well as sadomasochism. Maury Terry's controversial book The Ultimate Evil also notes Ward's occultic leanings. Terry further implies that a woman named Mary Anne MacLean knew Ward and had, like Keeler, serviced prominent Brits. MacLean later married Robert DeGrimston and co-founded an infamous cult called The Process. Is any of this provable at this late date? Perhaps not. History may never know whether Christine Keeler was Old Nick's bosom buddy, one of the KGB's best-laid plants, or simply a girl who wanted to have some fun.
The Fire Next Time? Some observers fear that Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant could prompt another Waco-style disaster. A federal investigation has confirmed what Prophet's critics have long asserted (despite denials from church leaders): Top followers of the self-styled "Guru Ma" have been stockpiling weapons in various strongholds around their headquarters in Livingston, Montana. Stuart Gibson, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, alleged (in a Rocky Mountain News story of 7/6/93) that the cult used a complex stock scheme to launder money from staff salaries for weapons purchases. Such pur-chases would have violated the church's tax-exempt status. None of these revelations, of course, could possibly justify another grandstanding raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A repeat of the inexcusable (and, to a large degree, still unexplained) Branch Davidian tragedy must be avoided at all costs. Even so, let's not paint an idealized portrait of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a far-rightist who practically swoons over Oliver North. Her cult is, in essence, an updated spin-off of the "1 AM Religious Activity." This still-active sect, quite popular during the 1930s, was founded by Guy and Edna Ballard, the students of a mystic-minded American Nazi named William Dudley Pelley, one of this nation's most vicious Jew-haters.
Pelley's teachings ultimately trace back to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's intensely racist The Secret Doctrine — a work which also seminally influenced Dietrich Eckhart, the mentor of Adolf Hitler. I AM-derived organizations still thrive, nipping at the edges of the New Age movement —for example, a few of those rather silty "angel" books contain transparently hidden I AM propa-ganda. Some latter-day Ballardite sects, such as the one headed by Colorado real estate bigshot George Green, are openly an-tisemitic. Prophet's group officially eschews racism, although at least one CUT defector has reported that the inner leadership still maintains a weltanschauung all too reminiscent of Pelley's. Jesus Wept This is the age of miracles. Two pillars of the far-from-liberal mainstream press have actually (albeit belatedly) told some of the truth about a heavily protected right-wing superstar — televangclist Pat Robertson, leader of the Christian Broadcast-ing Network. Newsweek recently gave away one of Robertson's unnerving little secrets: He uses funds from his non-profit ministry to set up his for-profit enterprises. That's right — Social Security checks sent to the 700 Club go to Robertson's expanding busi-ness empire (which includes the rights to all Mary Tyler Moore Show reruns). Robertson spokesmen claim that Pat borrows non-profit monies to make his for-profit investments, which sounds a bit like the sort of rationale Jimmy Hoffa might have offered.
(Does anyone really think that the IRS would let an outfit like, oh let's say, Prevailing Winds use non-profit dona-tions to fund for-profit ventures? Not bloody likely.) To top it off, the ABC Ncws program Prime Time Live uncovered another way Pat Robertson has explored the virtues of free enterprise_ Seems the good reverend has set up a nice little pyramid scheme — oops, beg pardon: We meant to say multi level marketing. Whichever term you prefer, the basic set up remains the same. Rev. Pat proffers a line of products — in this case, KaloVita vitamins, manufactured with water "from the Sea of Galilee"; he also offers a nutritional drink called American Whey. The products are sold via an operation similar to the classic pyramid franchise operation, as described by John Ken-neth Galbraith (in Annals of an Abiding Liberal): "A salesman recruits other salesmen and gets an override — a share in what they receive as down payments. And then the salesmen so recruited recruit other salesmen and take a similar cut before passing the residue back to the individual who recruited them." In the classic pyramid operation, the operation expands and monies flow back to the originator —who, if he is smart, knows precisely when to bail out and hightail it to some congenial nation without an extradition treaty. Although pyramid multi level marketing schemes arcoften fueled by revivalistic religiosity and heart-tugging blather about the free enterprise systeM, eventually the financial bubble bursts, the naive recruits take a bath, and their enthusiasm turns to anger. What will Reverend Pat do if (when?) his operation Prevailing Winds magazine Premiere Issue 8 •
CIA COMPIICITY IM Tiff GLOBAL DRUG TRADE reaches this point? He will face limited options. Of course, he'll probably heap blame on the `liberal media," as Jim Bakker's flacks tried to do. And he can always point the finger at some hapless under-ling. Indeed, he has used that very tactic already, in order to explain the failure of an earlier multi-level enterprise, which sold discount coupons to senior citizens. Pat Robertson denies all charges of questionable business practices. Nevertheless, "multi-level" plans have a sad record (can you name even one which fulfilled the promise of profit for all involved?), and most savvy folk steer clear of them. Key questions remain unanswered. Why doesn't the good reverend simply make his vitamins available via mail order, or on store shelves? Why does he insist on an absurd marketing structure, whereby one super-salesman sells other salesmen on the idea of selling to still other salesmen, who sell to still more salesmen, until finally America becomes a nation of vitamin salesmen rabidly selling salesmanship to each other? Robertson, a Yale graduate and the son of a conservative Virgina senator, deserves closer scrutiny than he has heretofore received.
Born into a Virginia "old money" family (related, on his mother's side, to Winston Churchill and President Benjamin Harrison), Robertson reportedly considered suicide after failing the Bar exam. But he was saved by an act of Grace — J. Peter Grace, chairman of W.R. Grace and Co. The fabulously wealthy Grace took a personal interest in the young man, giving him a job assessing "management techniques" in Peru. Grace is a leading member of the Knights of Malta, the shadowy group which represents American Catholicism's reac-tionary elite. The Knights, in turn, have longstanding ties to the world of intelligence. Leading members have included German spy chief Reinhard Crehlen and Iran-contra spymaster William Casey, as well as numerous other CIA luminaries. J. Peter Grace headed the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which received massive CIA funding throughout the '60s and '70s. These CIA/AIFLD monies went toward union busting and covert operations in Latin America. So far, no evidence suggests that Pat Robertson spent his South-of-the-border sojourn acting on behalf of a Grace political operation. In later years, however, Robertson did supply aid to the contras, and to the bloodthirsty junta led by Guatemalan leader Efrain Rios-Montt.
During the Afghan war, CIA operatives acted as Robertson's drivers during a CBN visit to the Afghan-Pakistani border. As Covert Action Information Bulletin once noted (in its Spring, 1987 issue), "An international organization like CBN, active in 65 foreign countries, would be of obvious use to an intelligence agency like the CIA. Such organizations can be used as conduits of funds and can help administer counterinsur-gency programs." Covert Action further claimed that CBN, unlike other religious broadcasters, "does not voluntarily issue annual audited financial statements." Perhaps the most disturbing tale involving Reverend Pat can be found in the pages of a British book called The Octopus, as yet unpublished in this country. In this work, a former DIA agent reveals how American intelligence protected selected Lebanese heroin smuggling operations. And it seems that one of the poppy fields in that part of the world may have had disturbing links to a certain highly-televised fundamentalist... ...but that's the start of a very long tale. Rest assured that we'll be looking into these matters in greater detail in future issues. After all, Robertson's Christian Coalition played a large role in the propaganda blitz which led to the recent Republican landslide. Which means we can't stand pat. And finally... Boom Town USA Today reported (on June 2, 1994) that the southern region of Tucson, Arizona, has been plagued by the sounds of mysterious explosions. Locals hear bizarre booms twice daily. Trouble is, nobody can figure out the cause of the explosions. Perhaps unlucky Arizonans are ear-witnessing the construction of one of those fabled underground military bases?
El THE POLITICS OF HEROIN "CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" by Alfred W. McCoy, Ph.D. To an average Ameri-can who witnesses the dis-mal spectacle of the narcot-ics traffic at the street level, it must seem incon-ceivable that the govern-ment could be implicated in the international drug trade. Unfortunately, American diplomats and CIA agents have been in-volved in the narcotics traf-fic at three levels: (1) coin-cidental complicity by ally-ing with groups actively engaged in the drug traffic; (2) support of the traffic by covering up for known heroin traffickers and condoning their involvement; and (3) ac-tive engagement in the transport of opium and heroin. It is ironic, to say the least, that America's heroin plague is of its own making." from The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Twenty years of research have led to this revised and updated edition of Alfred W. McCoy's classic. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. In it, he concludes that, with global produc-tion and consumption of narcotics at record levels and her-oin use in America on the rise, it is time to confront the fail-ure of the U.S. government's drug policy and to put an end to the CIA's complicity in the narcotics trade, which since World War H has been an integral part of the agency's ef-forts to maintain US. power abroad. A remarkable expose of official U.S. hypocrisy in its approaches to one of the world's greatest social problems, The Politics of Heroin of-fers an analysis that is destined to influence the public de-bate on drugs for years to come. Alfred W. McCoy is professor Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Prevailing Winds Magazine Premiere issue 9
am the walrus "The time has come," the Walrus said, "to speak of many things..." A look back at 1994 3y now, you've probably all heard the joke about the i newspaper reporter who spots Bill Clinton walking on water, then writes an article headlined "Clinton Can't Swim." This story resonates not because anyone hallucinates Messianic abilities on Bill's part (hardy!), but because we've all seen that particular reporter's work — and his byline is Legion. The media's deviltry never stops. After the great Republican midterm massacre of 1994, in which some of this nation's most obnoxious reactionaries clobbered all competition, conservative spin doctors immediately set to work. They portrayed the vote as a rejection of liberalism in general, and Clinton's policies in spe-cific.
Nonsense.
The voters rejected a Presi-dent, not a set of policies. They spat in the eye of a man, not an ideology.
November 8, 1994, did not mark the occasion when a slap-happy American populace shouted "Thank you Ronald Reagan!" for busting unions and turning $14-an-hour jobs into $6-an-hour jobs. The people did not collectively forgive Reagan and Bush for forcing Mom to punch a time clock alongside Dad, The people did not cheer Big Business' not-so-secret plans to keep wages low by keeping unemployment high. The people did not bestow their blessings on Reagan/Bush-era budget deficits, serviced by bonds which only the wealthy purchase and profit from. The people did not shout hosanna for an increasingly toxic workplace. The people did not say aye to the gutting of Medicare and restrictions on abortion. The people did not suddenly see the wisdom of increased tax breaks for the decadent, arrogant, indolent, elitist pseudo-humanoids comprising the American plutocracy. No.
When questioned on specific issues, the public still expresses opinions and preferences well to the left of Newt Gingrich, and often to the left of Clinton himself Although the Radio Right — perhaps the most effective propaganda force in history -has successfully painted Clinton red, he is essentially a sell-out mushy moderate who could have found a home in either party. Thus, predictably, the President finds himself damned by the marginalized left press because he isn't a socialist, and damned by everyone else as Lenin reincar-nate. The disinformationists have created a false Clinton and made him a scapegoat for the sins of corporate America. His task, all along, has been to play the role of the Bad Democrat. During his eighteen months of attempted power, ruling class hirelings on Capitol Hill and in the press blocked any Administration fancies (such as congressional lobbying reform) which might have inconvenienced the corporate elite.
Then the Radio Right assigned the hapless president sole re-sponsibility for every American ill during the past two decades —rather like blaming all venereal disease on one impdtent man. An absurd idea, but the American people feast on absurdity. Rush Limbaugh and his clones have completely highjacked the airwaves, yet they bleat continually that a Great Liberal Con-spiracy controls the media. Nobody no-tices the contradiction. On the morning after the elections I couldn't find a single liberal, progressive, or even moderate radio commentator on the air in South-ern California. Left-wing broadcasters are as extinct as left-wing newspapers; the only exceptions are heard on the Pacifica Radio Network, which Senate leader Bob Dole has targeted for deci-mation. Apparently, the Radio Right learned an important lesson from Josef Goeb-bels: Always portray your side as the underdog.
Even after the Nazis con-quered Europe, Goebbels-approved propaganda films (like the one re-cre-ated in Kiss ofthe Spider Woman) pictured the Nazis as fighting an uphill battle against greater, more insidious and pitiless forces. Never underestimate propaganda's power to make peo-ple believe the surreal. It was the virus of disinformation, which sent millions into the showers and the ovens, while simultane-ously leading Germans into a war that shamed their nation eternally. What makes the people around you right now — at work, at home, in the restaurant, in the mirror immune to this deadly strain? Tom Brokaw, speaking more presciently than he knew, called November 8, 1994, "the night of the long knives." We will feel the effects of this night long after Bill Clinton has been reduced to a soundbite from the video archives.
Yet we must concede that Bill Clinton — or at least the Bogus Bill erected by the far right — is the man who made this night possible. Astonishingly, the public has turned against the President because of his perceived "personal flaws," while scandal-rid-den reactionaries shamelessly wrap themselves in a banner marked Virtuous & True. House majority leader Newt Gingrich is a womanizer who, after learning his wife had cancer, left her for a younger girlfriend — yet he now poses as our new Cotton Gingrich rails against "big government," yet his Georgia congressional district remains one of the greatest recipients of federal largesse.
Prevailing Winds Premiere Issue Page In Mather, hectoring his enemies for their alleged moral lapses. Gingrich also rails against "big government," though his Geor-gia congressional district remains one of the biggest recipients of federal largesse; amazingly, he once lobbied on behalf of the ultra-spooky Lockheed corporation to allow a sale of Lockheed jets to Khaddafy's Libya. Meanwhile, convicted burglar G. Gordon Liddy regularly denounces Clintonian "sleaze" to his wide radio audience. His younger listeners probably don't know that Liddy once kept silent while an innocent man took the rap for a crime he committed (breaking into psychiatrist Lawrence Fielding's office).
Pyramid schemer Pat Robertson runs daily propaganda broadsides at the administration, though non-profit religious broadcasters are forbidden to take a partisan stance. To describe these years, historians will need a stronger metaphor than the usual one involving pots and kettles. Pretty Paula The President's principal "moral lapses" were Whitewa-ter and his alleged sexual harrassment of an Arkansas woman named Paula Jones. These matters are traffic tickets, yet they have garnered more press attention than did the weekly 20-car pile-ups of the Bush and Reagan years. When a bored public finally cried "Enough!" at Paula-gate, television pundits offered such observations as the following (actual quote): "The people just aren't interested in distractions like Paula Jones on one hand and Iran-Contra on the other." Appar-ently, the documented tale of Ronald Reagan giving TOW missiles to the Ayatollah is somehow equivalent to Ms. Jones' unlikely account of then-Governor Clinton offering up his Scud. Does anyone truly believe that Bill Clinton, in the midst of his 1991 presidential campaign, would suddenly drop his draw-ers and demand fellatio from a woman he did not know well and whose loyalties he could not gauge? When forced to comment on the tale's unlikelihood, political analysts usually muttered something indecipherable about JFK and the arrogance of power, as if this could somehow render Paula plausible.
Few recall that Gennifer Flowers, the last woman to level such accusations, got some $100,000 from Penthouse magazine for her trouble. (Flowers, recently quoted as saying "I love Republicans," is now crying poor. Maybe Hillary can give her advice on money management.) Few recall that the fellow who delivered Flowers to the press was Arkansas fix-it man Larry Nichols, a close friend to contra leader Adolpho Calera. Few recall that Nichols once lined up a parade of women with similar stories, although the tabloids never printed these talcs because the ladies wanted payment in the quarter-million dollar range. And nobody now recalls the forged document — which a source tried to fob off on me during the 1992 campaign -pretending to be Clinton's letter of apology to a lover he once pushed down the stairs of the governor's mansion. Whoever engineered this hoax did a clever, professional job.
Why hasn't anyone fingered the fabricator? I don't know who pasted together that phoney missive, but let's not be in too much of a rush to cross Larry Nichols off the list of suspects. Nichols, a longtime Clinton enemy with a truly majestic ability to carry a grudge, has become a heroic figure to the Radio Right, the Fundamentalist fearmongers, and the anti-Semitic gutter press. He continues to level new charges (publi- cized by the Falwell-approved video The Clinton Chronicles), mostly concerning Clinton's putative involvement with drug smuggling. Nichols wanted to tell us these things earlier, you see, but had to hold his tongue — because 'nobody would have believed him.' So what obligates us to believe him now? Whitewater vs. Silverado 0 ne need not hallucinate a halo atop Bill Clinton's head to be infuriated by the media's handling of the so-called Whitewater scandal. The herd of reporters lapping at Whitewater have implied, without yet offering any evidence, that Clinton funded his gubernatorial campaigns with money from an ill-run Arkansas financial institution called Madison Guaranty. Similarly, when Jay Stephens, a Clinton enemy, was appointed to probe one aspect of the Whitewater affair, otiose private whining from George Stephanopolis became, in the eyes of many journalists, evidence of an attempt to subvert the investigation.
Thus, in the early days of the "scandal," Kathleen Kiely -the Washington correspondent for the Houston Post — ap-peared on the nationwide C-SPAN network, looking the epit-ome of yuppified loveliness as she insisted that the press was treating Clinton no differently than it had Bush. True, she said, one could draw an analogy between Madison and the monumen-tally failed Silverado Savings and Loan, which Neil Bush helped run into the mud at taxpayer expense. But, we were told, there was no evidence that pilfered Silverado funds had benefited any of George Bush's campaigns, and no evidence of White House pressure to squelch that story. Silverado was therefore a less important matter than Whitewater. However, those few who followed the S&L debacle in detail might remember the strange timing of the Silverado failure.
Regulators originally planned to shut down the crooked com-pany by the end of October, 1988, just before the Bush election. Then a mysterious telephone caller "from Washington" de-manded, and got, a 45-day delay in Silverado's closure. This delay allowed Silverado to rack up another half-billion-or-so dollars in losses, but it helped George Bush sidestep an unpleas-ant "October Surprise" which might have cost him the presi-dency_ In point of fact, Silverado had been on the ropes through-out much of the Bush campaign, but reporters at that time conveniently chose to ignore young Neil's banditry. Just as conveniently, most American journalists have now forgotten all about a fellow named Larry Mizel, who ran some-thing called M.D.C. Holdings. M.D.C. received loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Neil Bush's firm, including $208 million worth of "non-conforming mortgage loans" — i.e., loans that were improperly secured. (Compare these figures to those bandied about in the Whitewater affair, which rarely get into the six-digit league.)
"Coincidentally," Mizel was also one of the Republican Party"s largest contributors. Another huge donor to the GOP was Bill Walters, "coincidentally" a business partner of Neil Bush and the single largest recipient of shady loans from Silverado. Naturally, the American taxpayer had to cover Silverado's losses when its loans went sour. In effect, tax money funded the Republicans — the party of Gingrich, the "party of virtue." But none of this mattered to Kathy Kiely, Texas' answer to s. Prevailing Winds Premiere issue Page I I
