The Plot to Hijack the CIA

[As the presidential candidate John Kerry already twice stated in his "honest" responses during the presidential debates he wants our nuclear research stopped and he wants to send money to Russia to "protect the 'former' Soviet era nuclear weapons" from being 'lost' or 'stolen' by Russian Mafia. Please consider the following article in that light of the fact even though it has been written 10 years ago - it was as important then as it is today.Published with permission given by Inside Story Communications. HM note].

In early August, German undercover operatives arrested three foreigners smuggling plutonium out of the "former" Soviet Union. Although the metal was of bomb-grade purity, it was only a fraction of the amount needed to build a bomb. However, over the prior four months, German authorities had made two other arrests for separate acts of smuggling Soviet plutonium or uranium.1

Recent stories leaked by Soviet authorities about a new "Russian mafia" have given the West more reason for nervousness. Mikhail Yegorov, a high official in the new KGB, did his best to heighten the fear: "Crime groups in recent years are demonstrating more and more interest toward defense facilities of the former Soviet Union," he solemnly announced in May.2

The United States is already responding. Soviet personnel have arrived in New Mexico and elsewhere for training in security measures, and in May the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally declared it would now open an office in Moscow-to work more closely with Soviet police authorities.3 Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has quietly been setting up a program of cooperation with the Soviet KGB. But behind this facade of international teamwork to prevent terrorism lies another story-a campaign, orchestrated by the Soviet KGB through its agents and arms in the United States, to turn the CIA into a weapon against the United States, using nuclear terrorism as the excuse.

At the center of the drive to capture the CIA lies the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a radical think-tank formed in the late 1960s. IPS co-founder and strategist Richard J. Barnet, a former US official, has written books publicly defending Marxist revolution and terrorism, and has called for the dismantling of US intelligence activities against the Communist Bloc.4 The IPS has long been funded by the tax-exempt Field Foundation and its associated Fund for Peace, which pursue the same goal by advocating cooperation with the Soviet Union.5

IPS members have included such prominent leftists as Morton Halperin, the former National Security Council staffer who supervised the drafting of the classified Pentagon Papers-a review of documents related to the Vietnam War. Foreign policy official Leslie Gelb and National Security Council member Anthony Lake illegally authorized the public release of the Pentagon Papers, and later affiliated with the IPS (Lake is now the National Security Advisor for Bill Clinton). Indeed, a number of IPS members were involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers scandal, causing the FBI to investigate the IPS for espionage.

The IPS has managed to recruit CIA employees who broke with the agency and leaked top-secret information. Several IPS leaders also work with rogue CIA agent Phillip Agee, who has made career of propagating Soviet disinformation while openly acknowledging his own Communist sympathies and the support of Cuban Communists. And former US Senator James Abourezk, founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and an outspoken supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is an IPS trustee.6

During the past twenty years, the IPS has worked with Communist front organizations in building a network for the neutralization of US intelligence. In 1974, the Fund for Peace established the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), which has worked closely with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in pursuing political and legal challenges against US intelligence. Staff and leadership for the CNSS have been drawn almost entirely from the IPS and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG); the NLG is the American branch of the Soviet-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), operates as a front of the Communist Party, USA, and publicly supports dozens of terrorist groups ranging from the PLO to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). IPS member Morton Halperin became head of the CNSS.7

For many years, the IPS, CNSS, and dozens of other organizations in this network scored only partial victories against US intelligence. But this began changing in February of 1988, when the Soviet Union hosted a conference in Moscow, sponsored by the Soviet Peace Committee-an arm of the Communist Party's International Deparment.8 Representing the Soviets were such "citizens" as Igor Beliaev, a correspondent for the Literaturnaya Gazeta (Soviet journalists are usually members of the KGB); representing the Americans were such people as John D. Marks, an IPS member who became a leader of the CNSS and headed its Project on the CIA.9 In other words, both sides of the conference were acting on behalf of the Soviet KGB.

Beliaev and Marks were assigned the task of finding ways to neutralize US opposition to Soviet-sponsored revolutionary movements. They have described the origins of their plan in Moscow:

As much as the Soviet-American relationship has improved, we recognized that our nations still had substantial differences in the Third World-from Afghanistan to Nicaragua to the Middle East. We immediately decided that our best chance to make a difference was to identify a single issue on which effective U.S.-Soviet collaboration might be possible.... After two days of deliberations with the fifteen or so Americans and Soviets who made up our committee, we agreed that terrorism would be our issue.10

Thus was born the "Soviet-American Task Force to Prevent Terrorism." Its first meeting was held in Moscow in January, 1989, and was again co-sponsored by the Soviet Peace Committee. The Task Force quickly gained high-level support in both countries:

The Soviet delegation included officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and key institutes within the Academy of Sciences [read: heavy KGB involvement-Eds.].

[As a matter of fact any communist country's Academy of Sciences was in hands of communist espionage, in Czechoslovakia for example these were [are] the technology and also recruitment of western scientists operations involving people like today's Czech president Vaclav Klaus [allegedly his real name is Pruzhinskiy] as Klaus was able to travel to the United States and Western Europe during the communist tyranny era without any obstacles as communists gave him the permit to travel abroad without delays even though this kind of permit was impossible to obtain for any ordinary citizen. Klaus was able to enroll in courses on western universities including the Cornell University and so on and the question remains - who paid for it? The same applies to people like German CDU Christian Democratic Party leader Angela Merkel,formerly from East [communist] Germany and also during the communist era active member of the East German Academy of Sciences !!! HM note].

On the American side, more than half of the delegation were current consultants to the U.S. government on counter-terrorism....

...both the U.S. and the Soviet governments were providing at least tacit support to the Task Force...

...the incoming Bush administration and Soviet authorities gave their tacit blessings and asked for full reports. The week before we convened, the KGB's Deputy Director, Lieutenant General Vitaly Ponomarev, declared on Moscow Radio: "We realize we have to coordinate efforts to prevent terrorist acts, including hijackings of planes.... We are willing, if there is a need, to cooperate even with the CIA, the British intelligence service, the Israeli Mossad, and other services in the West."... Within days, James Baker, the new American Secretary of State, testified before Congress: "We ought to find out whether Moscow can be [helpful] on terrorism and if not, why not."11

A subsequent meeting was held at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, that September.

Beliaev and Marks were still organizing the event, which now included such KGB officials as Lieutenant General Feodor Sherbak and Major General Valentin Zvezdenkov.

The Americans were represented by former CIA director William Colby and former deputy director Ray Cline.12 As CIA station chief in Rome during the 1950s, Colby had directed the CIA apparatus to work closely with Italian Communists. While on assignment in Vietnam, Colby had secretly maintained contact with a probable KGB agent without notifying his bosses at CIA; upon being named CIA director in 1974, Colby promptly fired the counterintelligence officers who investigated him for that suspicious contact. Also in 1974, while still director of the CIA, Colby participated in the founding conference of the CNSS-alongside various Communists and assorted radicals.13

Once again, both sides of the Task Force were loaded with Soviet agents and sympathizers.

The Task Force's recommendations were predictable. Terrorism was redefined so as to exclude Soviet-sponsored revolutionaries. Instead, various potential anti-Communists were labeled as real or potential terrorists-including Soviet citizens who hijack planes to try to escape their walled-off dictatorship. The PLO-orchestrated intifadeh was specifically defined as non-terrorist, whereas "Israeli extremists" were identified as terrorists.14 Under the category of "religious extremism," the Task Force labeled not only "Muslim fundamentalists" but also Lebanese Christians and "Jewish extremists" as terrorist, while the PLO was never suggested as being terrorist. Indeed, the Task Force recommended that Middle East terrorism be solved by pressuring Israel to make concessions at the negotiating table.15 In addition, the news media has already hinted that Christians in the United States might also be labeled potential terrorists for opposing abortion.

The Task Force named two other categories of terrorism: "narco-terrorism" and "techno-terrorism" (meaning nuclear or other high-technology terrorism). Using these as excuses, the Task Force endorsed or recommended such measures as universal and total gun control, tight controls over the international movement of money (supposedly to hinder the laundering of drug money), and the establishment of an international tribunal to which "terrorists" would be extradited.16 Under such a tribunal, extradited suspects would lose the protection of their legal and constitutional rights of their home countries. In making these recommendations, the Task Force praised Soviet criminal law as a model for international law.

To finish off the CIA completely, the Task Force also recommended that the United States begin training Soviet police agents, and that the two countries begin sharing intelligence information. The former would lead to international US/Soviet teams to fight terrorism, and would allow Soviet agents to enter the United States to move against alleged "terrorists"-potentially even innocent anti-Communists. The latter proposal would provide the Soviet KGB direct access to our intelligence, while allowing the Soviets to hand us carefully-engineered disinformation that US officials would presume to be reliable. The Task Force even called for the US to hand over classified information on security measures protecting our "civilian nuclear facilities."17 The use of such information can only be imagined.

Have the Soviet-dominated Task Force, and the IPS network of Marxist organizations, been succeeding? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Two months after the Task Force's first conference, "[Soviet] Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and [US] Secretary of State James Baker agreed to put anti-terrorist cooperation on the superpower agenda. By June, the two governments had opened up official discussion at the working level and had reached their first agreements on superpower cooperation to prevent terrorism." The news media accorded the meetings favorable coverage.

"In December 1989, the KGB formally accepted the [Task Force's] recommendations regarding information sharing. Two months earlier, William Colby and Ray Cline personally presented these same recommendations to CIA Director William Webster.... Then, in October 1990, Webster told the Associated Press that the CIA and KGB were sharing intelligence about terrorist threats and that several times U.S. information had been 'pivotal' to Soviet preventive action."18 As of this year, the US has already begun training Soviets in nuclear security measures. President Clinton is meanwhile arranging to provide additional hundreds of millions of dollars to the Soviets, supposedly to prevent the smuggling of nuclear materials.

During June and July, FBI director Louis Freeh concluded agreements with Russia, "former" Soviet Republics, and Eastern European governments for sharing intelligence and to allow foreign agents to operate throughout the various countries. Speaking to officers of the renamed KGB, Freeh declared that "we are proud to join in this battle with you," and praised the "police-to-police bridge" now being established between the FBI and KGB.

"We have now already joined (forces)," boasted KGB official Sergei Stepashin, head of the Soviet Federal Counterintelligence Service. "When we are together, we're undefeatable."19

1 Whitney, C.R., NY Times, "Russian security services linked to plutonium plot," SF Chronicle, 8-16-94, pp. A1, A13. 2 Sniffen, M.J., AP, "FBI warns of danger of nuclear theft rings in Russia," SF Chronicle, 5-26-94, p. A17. 3 Ibid.; Perlman, D., "Russian nuclear security so bad it almost invites bomb thieves," SF Chronicle, 8-22-94, p. A12. 4 Barnet, Intervention and Revolution (1968), and Barnet, The Economy of Death (1969), as cited in Broken Seals, report of the Western Goals Foundation, Alexandria, VA, 1980, pp. 3-7, passim. 5 McIlhany, W.H., The Tax-Exempt Foundations, Arlington House, Westport, CT, 1980, p. 213; Gannon, F.X., Biographical Dictionary of the Left, Vol. II, Western Islands, Boston, 1971, pp. 97-105. 6 Broken Seals, Op cit., passim; Findley, P., They Dare to Speak Out, Lawrence HIll Books, Chicago, 1989. p. 98. 7 Broken Seals, Op cit., passim; 'Outlaws of Amerika,' report of the Western Goals Foundation, Alexandria, VA, 1982, pp. 51-60, passim. 8 Barron, J., KGB Today, Reader's Digest Press, New York, 1983, p. 61. 9 Marks, J. and Beliaev, I, Eds., Common Ground on Terrorism, WW Norton & Co., New York, 1991, p. 10; Broken Seals, Op cit., pp. 10, 12, 15, 18. 10 Marks & Beliaev, Op cit., pp. 20-21. 11 Ibid., pp. 21-22. 12 Ibid., p. 25. 13 Martin, D.C., Wilderness of Mirrors, Harper & Row, New York, 1980, pp. 183-184, 217; Epstein, E.J., Deception, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989, p. 100; Story, C., Soviet Analyst 22 (9-10), June 1994, p. 4; Broken Seals, Op cit., p. 17. 14 Marks & Beliaev, Op cit., pp. 53, 56. 15 Ibid., pp. 65, 71-72, 179. 16 Ibid., pp. 139, 152-154, 173, 175 17 Ibid., pp. 168, 171, 174. 18 Ibid., pp. 24-27. 19 Perlman, Op cit.; Smith, R.J., Washington Post, "US-Russia nuclear effort stalls," SF Chronicle, 8-29-94, p. A12; LA Times, "FBI chief vows to aid Russian cops," SF Chronicle, 7-5-94, p. A8.

In 1989 edition of the National Drug Control Strategy, President Bush made it official:

'We must be prepared to share our knowledge and our concern with the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations and be willing to engage them in cooperative counterdrug activities". (36)

In this strategy document, there was no recognition of the role of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe countries in drug-trafficking and in creating the very sickness the strategy was designed to cure.
Towards the end of 1989, the DEA made a formal proposal to the Soviets for the DEA to conduct 'advanced narcotics investigations' for about 30 anti-narcotics professionals from Soviet customs, the Ministry of Interior and the KGB.
As one DEA official, Paul Higdon, explained: 'We're looking at them as policemen - these guys are cops with a mission similar to ours'. Not to be outdone, US Customs is proposing a formal information-sharing agreement, similar to the ones we have with most of our Western allies'
Hear No Evil -- Part II (FR post)

In case you've any curiosity as to why our agencies might be interested in such information-sharing agreements with the architects and primary assault team of the communist drug offensive, there is always the example of the (still communist) Chinese who've had the upper hand a while in many respects:

Throughout the 1950s, Harry Anslinger, the US Commissioner of Narcotics, worked hard to make people recognise that Communist China was the primary force responsible for narcotics trafficking (1). 'The Mafia ', he explained in response to misleading press reports, 'was not the biggest drug dealer. This was a false impression. By far the biggest drug dealer was Peking'. Anslinger provided extensive data to the United Nations and to the US Congress. He identified the Chinese government agencies that were involved, as well as numerous trafficking routes out of China through North Korea and Southeast Asia into Japan, the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, Mexico and the United States. He led operations to attack known distribution nets. But while he was unable to stop the flow, at least he did identify the source of the offensive: Communist China.
Then, in the early 1960s, something happened. In a study of Chinese narcotics trafficking, Stefan T. Possony observed: 'Beginning in the early 1960s, the subject [Communist China's drug offensive against the United States], which originally had attracted great attention, became an 'unsubject', to paraphrase Orwell". (2)
In a detailed analysis of the problem, A. H. Stanton Candlin observed the same phenomenon, which he explained in the following terms:

'The matter was handled differently until about 1962, before which year the United States showed signs of official comprehension of the problem. Since then, the threat has apparently been concealed from the public by persons who have evidently had the desire to cultivate better relations with the Red Chinese. The Chinese are the principal miscreants in this criminal conspiracy and they have been able, of late, to obtain protection and support in unexpected quarters (3).

It is, perhaps, no mere coincidence that 1962 is the year in which Harry Anslinger retired and that in 1961 the pro-China interests moved into the State Department (4). This coincidence is interesting, especially when coupled with the Soviet intelligence on the 1957 meeting of China's Central Committee, when it was decided to encourage overseas investment in China.
In 1969, President Nixon declared war on drugs [N.B. No. 3 in the Orwellian "War on a Noun" Series]. One of the first measures taken was to identify the sources of the problem. In one instance, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency began looking at drug-trafficking emanating from Southeast Asia. Drawing on a massive amount of detail from a wide spectrum of sources, the first map was drawn of the 'Golden Triangle' - then regarded as the main source of drugs and narcotics (5).
The triangle included parts of Thailand, Burma, Laos, and, especially, Yunnan Province, China, as shown by the solid line triangle in Figure 2 [MISSING] below. The northeast tip of the triangle was located well up in Yunnan Province, near Kunn-dng. Yunnan Province was, indeed, the dominant source, both in its own right and through its control of and assistance to operations in northern Burma and Thailand. As the CIA Far East specialist who constructed the map described the position, the triangle was really a 'Golden V the apex of which was in the region where Thailand, Burma and Laos came together. Most of the area, the funnel of the V, was in Yunnan Province.
This assessment was identical to the information provided by Sejna, based on Czechoslovak and Soviet intelligence studies. He also reported that in 1960 China signed a 'Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation' with Burma, which provided China with the opportunity to operate openly in Burma. According to KGB estimates, fifty percent of the Chinese representatives in Burma were involved (officially) in the drug business in the early 1960s.
In 1970, the CIA map of the Golden Triangle was passed to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [BNDD1, a forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA: see page 671. Months later, a new version of the map emerged from the White House. The tip of the triangle had been moved from 25 degrees north latitude in China down to 0 degrees north latitude, in Laos. The new designation is shown by the dashedline triangle in Figure 2. With a few strokes of a pen, Communist China had been effectively excluded from the Golden Triangle.
At that time, the top national-level US organisation concerned with illegal narcotics trafficking was the Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics, chaired by Henry Kissinger. As Edward Jay Epstein observed, Kissinger evidenced little interest in the heroin problem and rarely attended committee meetings. General Alexander Haig usually chaired the meetings in Kissinger's absence. Kissinger, [Under Secretary of State Elliot] Richardson and Haig spent most of their energies dampening the enthusiasm of White House zealots to launch a new heroin crusade which might again threaten diplomatic relations with important allies (6). Certainly, the initiative towards China was one of the high-priority diplomatic initiatives at that time. Epstein also noted that after the Department of Defence began using reconnaissance planes to help identify poppy fields in Burma and Laos, Kissinger stopped the overflights of Burma specifically to avoid threatening détente with China (7).
In September 1971, the Cabinet Committee on International Narcotics Control was formed, headed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers. The committee seldom met and was quietly phased out in 1972. While in existence, it was run by Nelson Gross, a Republican from Saddle River, New Jersey, who had been defeated in his quest for a Senate seat in 1970 and who President Nixon had then appointed as senior adviser and coordinator for international narcotics matters at the State Department. In August 1972, shortly before the committee's demise, Secretary Rogers released a study which had been prepared under its auspices,
The primary producers of illicit opium identified in this report were India, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Mexico, Eastern Europe, North Africa and Latin America. The geographies of the Southeast Asian network as presented in the study are reproduced in Figure 3 on page 92. As can be seen, both China and North Vietnam are effectively excluded in this representation of the opium network. (8)
Moreover, the text, which specifically addresses the People's Republic of China, was quite revealing. The text explained that in February 1950, China introduced stringent controls over the production of opium poppy and the use of opiates, that the measures were strictly enforced, and that the problem of opium use had been effectively eliminated. Some small-scale illicit production might remain, the text allowed, and, along with it, 'perhaps, minor amounts of cross-border trade in the commodity (9).
However, 'there is no reliable evidence that China has either engaged in or sanctioned the illicit export of opium and its derivatives nor are there any indications of government participation in the opium trade of Southeast Asia and adjacent markets'. (10)
Similar statements were also made during the timeframe 1971-73 by the Strategic Intelligence Office of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD); for example: 'Not one investigation into heroin traffic in the area during the past two years indicates Chinese Communist involvement. In each case, the traffickers were people engaged in criminal activity for the usual profit motive. (11)
While statements such as these can be explained as the results of naivete or incompetence (12), it seems quite clear that there was also present a continuing intent to cover up Chinese Communist drug-trafficking. One of the favourite words used to avoid the existence of intelligence information is 'evidence'. What really constitutes 'evidence'?
Does a report in draft form constitute an 'investigation'? A former CIA analyst who was detailed to the Strategic Intelligence Office of BNDD (which became the DEA in July 1973) was writing a report on Communist China's intelligence service, and specifically its involvement in narcotics trafficking, at the time the above denial was written.
The report picked up the Chinese narcotics trail back in the days of Anslinger and brought the story forward to the date of the report. It identified names, dates, places, organisations and so forth. The extensive and deliberate involvement of Communist China was obvious. The report was suppressed by DEA officials in 1973 while still in draft stage.
The cover-up of Communist China's drugs and narcotics trafficking appears to have started in the early 1960s. It took on greatly increased scope during the Nixon Administration, and it appears to be continuing today.

The footnotes are both scrupulous and fascinating ... in a fearsome sort of fashion.

Interested in the Who, What, Where and Why of the corruption of our Agencies?

Follow the Big, Cash Money ...

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