Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash, Part 5: Teterboro Airport & the CIA



By Alex Constantine

Before returning to Lexington, you have to know about the airport in Teterboro, about whispers overheard at the pilot's coffee shop, insinuations, rumors, gaps in the record, men in uniform, obscure movements in the middle of the night ...

The town is the home of Bendix Corp. - a company that demonstrated during the Big (German-American industrial-based) One that Nazi total-war profiteering is a capitalist's wet dream, a member of the notorious Stuttgart-based Bosch patent pool that sent American military data to Germany as late as May, 1940 - today, a division of AlliedSignal.27

Teterboro has a busy little airport. Some very well-known aviators have called it home and made their mark in history - you would recognize their names in an instant:

"April-July 2001: Hani Hanjour Receives More Flight Training; Rents Small Aircraft - According to the 9/11 Commission, soon after settling in the area, hijacker Hani Hanjour starts receiving 'ground instruction' at AIR FLEET TRAINING SYSTEMS, a flight school in Teterboro, New Jersey. While there, he flies the Hudson Corridor: 'a low-altitude "hallway" along the Hudson River that passes New York landmarks like the World Trade Center.' His instructor refuses a second request to fly the Corridor, 'because of what he considered Hanjour’s poor piloting skills.'... "28

Shortly, another aviator connected to 9/11 will surface in Teterboro, but first Air Fleet:

From the Air Fleet web site, we learn that the facility is "the only Part 141 school within easy public transportation reach of New York City." The school is run by the Bopps - you remember them - there was a comet named after them. "The Bopps, who own and operate Air Fleet, have a much longer family history of involvement in aviation. Beginning in the 1950s, Paul Arnold (Susan Bopp's father) was the Chief Pilot for Bendix Corporation, now better known as AlliedSignal, for more than twenty years. During that time, he also assisted with the development of some of the equipment now used in aircraft. He was also responsible for instilling a love of aviation in his daughter, Susan. ... "29

There is some tension in Teterboro among the locals concerning obscure, "immoral" parapolitical activities - that is, apart from Nazi collaborations:

Troubling uses for Teterboro - Moral issues raised over flight bookings

MIKE KELLY
10 April 2005
The Bergen Record

... one of the most disturbing revelations about recent Teterboro jet traffic almost slipped under the public's radar screen. It seems that Teterboro was the launching pad for a secret flight in which U.S. agents sent a suspected al-Qaida operative to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

The story of Maher Arar has emerged as a focal point in congressional debates over the secret Bush administration policy of "rendition" - or sending suspected terrorists to nations where they can be tortured. But almost lost in the story is this footnote: After American agents apprehended Arar in late September 2002 and held him for two weeks, they secretly took him to Teterboro and hopped aboard a chartered private jet that eventually made its way to Syria.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who denies he is a terrorist, was released 10 months later. He is now suing the United States, claiming he was brutally tortured in Syria.

Teterboro Airport was used in the early 1990s by federal agents to fly mob boss John Gotti on a small chartered plane to a federal prison in Illinois. The
airport was also linked in the 1980s to a Virginia firm that chartered private jets through a Teterboro-based carrier to fly CIA agents and U.S. military commando units on covert missions.

But the secret trip by U.S. agents with Maher Arar raises an additional concern. Obviously, the agents wanted to keep a low profile. But it's one thing to use Teterboro's privacy to transport a convicted mob boss or CIA agents. It's something else when the airport is used to maintain the secrecy of a controversial program that involves torturing suspected terrorists.

Is this why North Jersey residents should endure the hassles of Teterboro? That question is important, not just for the moral debate over torture of suspected terrorists, but because of the thousands of northern New Jersey residents whose lives are affected by Teterboro's low-flying jets.

With so many ordinary citizens in the flight path of these jets, it's important to question the safety and noise of the airport. But once safety or noise is debated, then authorities should discuss what kinds of flights come in and out of Teterboro. Are we interrupting the lives of thousands of area residents for the convenience of guests at Trump's wedding, professional basketball stars and now possible torture victims? And if U.S. authorities plan to use Teterboro for more rendition flights, will the airport and surrounding community need additional security?

All sides agree that the neighborhoods around Teterboro Airport are too congested. After a jet rolled off a Teterboro runway in February and smashed into a warehouse, even airport supporters conceded they wished there was more room at the end of runways for crash barriers. But the far-more-basic question about Teterboro is this: Who uses this airport anyway?

The story of Maher Arar and his possible torture adds a moral component to that question about Teterboro's future and the federal grants to soundproof schools. It's about time. Ultimately, the dangers of Teterboro's jets are really
a moral issue.30


Here are some of the *immoral* CIA rendition flights from Teterboro, complete with tail numbers.31 ...

N829MG – N259SK
Teterboro (USA) Hahn (Germany) 07/06/2003

N1HC
Teterboro (USA) Northolt (UK) 16/12/2003
Budapest (Hungary) Teterboro (USA) 09/09/2005

N50BH
Teterboro (USA) Coventry (UK) 02/04/2005

Then there was N829MG-N259SK - a peek at the plane's registration files is revealing.32 ...

A Gulfstream III (Grumman G-1159A), this plane carried Canadian national Maher Arar from the US to Jordan, where he was transferred overland to Syria. He was tortured during 13 months of detention without charge,
and was released in October 2003. The plane has also made over 100 trips to Guantánamo Bay. There are 380 relevant FAA recorded landings or takeoffs between March 2001 and May 2005. Registration: registered by
MJG Aviation in October 2000 in Florida; the company dissolved July 2004. MJG’s owner also owned Presidential Aviation, a company first registered in
Florida in 1998 and dissolved November 2004. The aircraft was re-registered as 259SK in March 2004 by S&K Aviation LLC. S&K Aviation was first registered in Florida in December 2003 and is an active company with a registered agent.__Range and capacity: average range of 3,715 nautical miles. The aircraft can transport up to 22 passengers, but it is usually configured for 10/12 people.

Destinations: Recorded movements of N829MG-N259SK include landings and take offs from the following airports:

COUNTRY CITY/AIRPORT PASSAGES THROUGH THE AIRPORT

Belgium Antwerp 1/Canada Gander, Newfoundland 10/France Le Bourget 2/Germany Frankfurt 1/Germany, Frankfurt-Hahn 1/Germany Nurnberg 1/Ireland Shannon 2/Italy Rome ... United States of America Guantánamo Bay US Naval Air Station, Cuba 2/United States of America Teterboro 3/United States of America Washington, DC 2 ...

One of the key companies involved in the rendition flights was Aero Contractors. Pacifica's Amy Goodman heard tell of Aero's renditions, and ...

AMY GOODMAN: And where did they fly Maher Arar out of from the New York area?

STEPHEN GREY: He was flown out of the local airport here in New Jersey, Teterboro, picked up there. There was an FBI involvement in that particular operation, because it came out of New York, the U.S. airspace. So it wasn't a sort of typical rendition. He was flown from Teterboro to Dulles Airport, where a new team took over. And then he was flown from there to - via
Athens - sorry, via Rome in Italy, and then the plane then landed in Jordan. At that point, I think, the CIA took over.

He was then taken - he was beaten in Jordan, and then he was driven over the border into Syria to this place. You’ve mentioned the Palestine Branch. It’s one of the worst interrogation centers in the world. And what I found [is] that he wasn't the only person that had been sent there by the United States. Up to seven other prisoners were sitting in these same cells about the size of graves, three-foot wide, six-foot wide. And up to seven other prisoners there at the time had all been sent there by the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Are they still there?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, some of them are. I mean, the whole story of this rendition program is that there are only a few people who have emerged to tell their stories, and so many others have DISAPPEARED completely. We don’t know where they are. There’s no accountability as to what’s happened to them.32

Residents of Teterboro might also have a few questions to ask the CIA about the mentor of Mohammed Atta:

RUDI DEKKERS

CIA PLANE REPEATEDLY TAKING OFF AND LANDING AT TETERBORO OWNED BY WALLY HILLIARD

According to European sources who were instrumental in assisting the Council of Europe in its investigation of CIA rendition flights and secret prisons in Eastern Europe, the CIA's Learjet 35A, owned by Aircraft Guaranty Corporation, a brass plate located at 515 N. Sam Houston Parkway East, Suite 305, Houston, Texas, and flying with tail number N35NK, has used Billund, Denmark as a base of operations. Until June 2004, the plane was owned by Wally Hilliard's Plane 1 Leasing Co. of Naples, Florida. Plane 1 Leasing is owned by WALLY HILLIARD, the business partner of Rudi Dekkers,
whose Venice, Florida-based Huffmann Aviation flight school helped train Mohammed Atta to prepare for the 9-11 attack. N35NK made a flight to Guantanamo in April 2004.

9/24/2003 KTEB USA Teterboro, NJ KLBB USA Lubbock, TX
N35NK Learjet 35A, Aircraft Guaranty

N35NK has also been leased to Nordic Aviation Contractor at St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport in Florida. The home headquarters of Nordic Aviation in
Billund, Denmark. In 2005, N35NK was re-leased to JetSmart of Connecticut and is now on sale for $2,395,000.33


Concerned residents of Teterboro may also want to write their congressmen about the nature and extent of black operations launched at the airport, particularly those involving black-market guns-'n'-drugs:

US: Secret Task Led to Web Of Firms; Virginian Ran Covert Missions
Washington Post
March 22, 1987

... ANMC provided consulting services for Southern Air Transport of Miami. A Southern Air spokesman said last week that a Gadd company acted as a broker and occasionally was paid a commission for finding charter business for Southern. Southern Air officials have said that the company performed some maintenance work on the aircraft that was shot down Oct. 5 in Nicaragua, which led to public disclosure of the contra resupply operation.

According to a former official of Executive AIR FLEET [where Hanjour took his training?] at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, Gadd's companies contracted for 100 to 150 hours of domestic air charter service a year, at a rate of $ 3,400 an hour for such small, fast, long-range passenger planes as Gulfstreams II.

By 1985, ANMC assets had increased to $ 680,466, up 10-fold from the previous year, and Gadd's EAST had assets of $ 386,308, according to Delaware franchise tax records.

Employes of ANMC were mostly former military men with security clearances, trained not to ask too many questions, according to some of those employes. But by early 1986, it was evident even to them that Gadd was involved in some highly sensitive projects.

According to a report in Knight-Ridder newspapers, persons responding to an ANMC recruiting ad in the Dec. 2, 1985 Air Force Times were told by Gadd that they would be given a stateside job with the company only after working for six months in Honduras.34

[To be continued ... ]



--
NOTES

27) Mae Brussell notes, Michael Sayers & Albert E. Kahn, "Sabotage! The Secret War Against America," Harper, 1942.
http://www.maebrussell.com/
Sabotage/Sabotage%20outline.html

28) http://www.cooperativeresearch.org
/context.jsp?item=a0301paterson

29) http://www.airfleettraining.com/

30)
http://www.house.gov/rothman/
SRR%20Clips/04%20April/041005_
Teterboro_Bergen%20Record.htm

31) "RESEARCH ON THE PLANES USED BY THE CIA"
http://www.statewatch.org/news/
2006/jun/ep-cia-inq-research-
report-Rapporteur.pdf

32) Amy Goodman interview, Democracy Now!, "Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program," Pacifica Radio, October 19th, 2006.
http://www.democracynow.org/
article.pl?sid=06/10/19/1347246

33) Wayne Madsen.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.
com/2006_06040610.php

34) http://www.warprofiteers.
com/article.php?id=11201

Monday, October 30, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash, Part 4 Supplemental: Illicit CIA Arms Trading & an Airplane Crash in Miami Identical to Teterboro (Only Worse)


A PLANE USED FOR ILLEGAL ARMS SHIPMENTS CRASHED IN MIAMI

CAUSE: IMPROPER BALANCE
(See part four concerning the Feb. 2, 2005 Teterboro Crash)

SEARCH TEXT FOR REFERENCES TO THE CIA

http://www.ntsb.gov/speeches/
former/hall/jh981007.htm

Remarks of Jim Hall, Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board, before the Airline Dispatchers Federation Symposium, Washington, D.C., October 7, 1998:

... weight and balance. We recently completed an investigation of last year’s crash of a Fine Air DC-8 cargo flight in Miami. The aircraft was improperly loaded and had a center of gravity at the aft limit or slightly beyond the limit, coupled with an incorrect elevator trim setting that led to the loss of control of the aircraft. Because Fine Air is a supplemental cargo carrier, it didn’t have aircraft dispatchers, just flight followers...
--------------------
Cargo jet crashes, careens across busy Miami street

"It looked like a napalm bomb going off," said Metro Dade Police Detective Ed Munn. Flames flickered on the scorched carcasses of several vehicles in the parking lot of the mall, called International Airport Center. The building itself was also heavily scorched as the blazing fireball skidded to a stop in the parking lot.

"Everybody was yelling 'Run! Run! Run!'" said Mildred Marquez, who works in the building. "We didn't know it was an airplane. There was so much black smoke."

"The noise was unbelievable," said Bruce Wilson, another witness. "I didn't ... realize it was an airplane."

Cargo well within weight limits

... However, at a briefing Thursday afternoon, a spokesman said that Fine Air had leased the plane to a company tentatively identified as Aeromart....
In 1995, it was accused by the Peruvian government of chartering a plane that was used to TRANSPORT WEAPONS TO ECUADOR during a border war between the two countries. The FAA INVESTIGATED, BUT DID NOT FIND SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE to warrant any action.
-------------------
ABOUT THE "INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE" OF ILLICIT *CIA* WEAPONS SHIPMENTS ...

ARGENTINE GOVERNMENT EMBARRASSED BY WEAPONS SALE TO ECUADOR

http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/news/notisur
/h95/notisur.19950331.html#a2

... In early March, press reports in Lima and Buenos Aires reported that an arms shipment from Argentina had been delivered to Ecuador in violation of the embargo. At first, Argentine officials said the arms had been sold to Venezuela through an international arms dealer. However, Venezuela insisted it had never ordered the weapons. In addition, on March 11, Venezuelan Defense Minister Moises Orozco said a document presented by the Argentine defense minister certifying Venezuela as the final destination of the shipment bore a forged signature of Venezuelan army Col. Edgar Tomas Millan Zabala. According to Orozco, the documents lacked the
appropriate seals from the Ministry of Defense and the arms procurement office.

Orozco later said the arms dealer could have rerouted the arms to Ecuador without the knowledge of Argentine officials. The Buenos Aires daily Clarin, however, said its investigations showed that the Argentine air force, the manufacturer, and customs officials all knew the shipment was headed for Ecuador.

The purchase order, for US$33 million worth of arms, is dated Dec. 5, 1994, and two shipments left Argentina on Feb. 17 and 18. The remaining two shipments were suspended after Peruvian intelligence officials protested that arms were being sent to Ecuador.

The arms were manufactured by the Argentine state firm Fabricaciones Militares and sold through a US-owned company, Hayton Trade, with offices in Montevideo. Milton Alexis Pirela Avila, a Hayton executive from Venezuela, has been arrested in Venezuela and charged with fraud. The arms were shipped via Fine Air, another US-owned company. Hayton Trade,
which had a two-year contract to represent Fabricaciones Militares in Venezuela, sent a letter to the Clarin denying buying weapons from Argentina and passing the blame off on Fine Air, which transported the weapons.

http://www.nisat.org/publications/armsfixers/Chapter6.html

THE ARMS FIXERS

... It was reported that the secret presidential decrees had authorized the state-owned company Fabricaciones Militares (FM) to sell weaponry via the private companies, Hayton Trade SA and Debrol SA. These latter two companies were based in Uruguay and acted on behalf of a retired lieutenant colonel of the Armed Forces of Argentina, Diego Palleros.29 Palleros, however, never imported the arms into Uruguay, nor were they ever shipped to Venezuela, Bolivia or Panama. Instead, the arms ended up in Ecuador, Bosnia and Croatia. It also seemed that only part of the weapons were sold by FabricacionesMilitares, and that critical amounts of ammunition were sold directly from the arsenal of the army or from international arms smugglers. The newspaper La Nacion also revealed that the amounts of weaponry sold could never have been covered by the authorized sums of money mentioned in the presidential decrees. 30

Vital links in the chain were that the companies in Uruguay acting on behalf of Palleros had first sold the weapons to the Caribbean Group of Companies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,31 and then sold them to a broker in Ecuador using the company Pro-defensa. Similar brokering arrangements were used in the dealings with Croatia.32

For one of the shipments to Ecuador, which was based on an end-user certificate for Panama, three aircraft of a US air-freighting company, FINE AIR, flew cargoes of 5,000 FAL assault rifles and 75 tons of ammunition from Buenos Aires on 17 February 1995.33 Despite a cable to Argentine authorities from the Peruvian intelligence service on 14 February, this illegal shipment was not interrupted.34 ...

http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/news/notisur/
h98/notisur.19980918.html

ARGENTINA: SCANDAL RELATED TO ARMS SALES DAMAGES ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT CARLOS MENEM

... Meanwhile, on Sept. 14, a Peruvian judge asked the US to lift the BANK SECRECY on a Houston account of Fine Air, one of the companies that transported the illegal arms shipments to Ecuador. Judicial sources said Judge Marco Lizarrago requested access to information in the accounts because it could show deposits for the payment of the arms shipments.

Argentina's Ambassador to Peru Abel Posse said "it's probable" that other high officials from the Argentine Foreign Ministry will be among those responsible for the arms sales to Ecuador. Posse said that "already three very high officials have paid with their jobs, and, in the case of Oscar Camilion, his career." [Sources: Associated Press, 09/03/98; Reuters,
09/03/98, 09/06-08/98, 09/13/98; El Nuevo Herald (Miami),
09/11/98, 09/14/98; Clarin (Argentina), 09/15/98; Spanish news
service EFE, 09/13/98, 09/14/98, 09/16/98]
-----------------
International arms broker Jean-Bernard Lasnaud

"A former U.S. intelligence agent stationed in Latin America tells FRONTLINE/World he has confirmed that Lasnaud has been a CIA ASSET 'since the IRAN-CONTRA days,' but says it is unclear whether he still has that status... "

"Argentinean prosecutors wonder, then, why the U.S. never arrested Lasnaud, an arms dealer accused of secretly brokering weapons smuggled around the world.... "
--
May, 2002 FRONTLINE/World: "I'm going to give it up and buy a hot dog stand in New York City."

Behind his carefree appearance, Lasnaud is a most wanted man. He is sought by Argentina and Interpol in connection with a massive illegal arms trafficking case, and he has been formally accused in European courts of arms smuggling and attempted fraud. Despite nearly three years' of arrest requests from Argentinean jurists, U.S. authorities have let him live peacefully in South Florida. Then, in the spring of 2002, Jean-Bernard Lasnaud disappeared.

A French citizen by birth, Lasnaud has made South Florida his home for more than a decade. Personable and easy-going, he was in the business of selling tanks, rocket launchers and SCUD missiles from a luxury condo in a gated South Florida community. With the proper paperwork, a customer can still order a fighter plane or a 400-bed field hospital from Lasnaud's Web site.

According to Lasnaud's estimate, his Caribbean Group of Companies sells between $1 and $2.5 million of merchandise a year.

Lasnaud insisted his business is just like any other.

"Of course I am completely legitimate," he said. "Why else would I be selling on a Web site, where everybody can see? You can see my licenses right there. And not just anybody can buy from me. You have to have the proper papers, certificates approved by the State Department."

With a sporty bow tie and an easy smile, Lasnaud does not look the image of a shady arms dealer. In January, his name was posted plainly at the gate of his residence near Fort Lauderdale.

"No. I am a husband and a father," he insisted when approached at his home for an interview. After some initial pleasant exchanges, Lasnaud grew tired of reporters' requests and said he did not want to discuss his arms business in South America. "That's old news," he said.

Over the years, Lasnaud, 60, has been sought on a number of arms-related charges - mostly allegations of embargo violations and financial fraud - in France, Belgium and Argentina. A Belgian newspaper reported in 1983 that Lasnaud was convicted in absentia for illegal arms trafficking. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but the newspaper said police could not find him. A few years later, he showed up in the United States.

Lasnaud now stands accused in Buenos Aires courts of brokering sales of Argentinean weapons to Croatia and Ecuador from 1992 to 1995, in violation of U.N. and international embargoes.

As a result, in 1999 Interpol issued a "red notice" for Lasnaud, a high-priority request for immediate arrest and extradition. "An Interpol red notice is the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today," says the U.S. Justice Department Web site. A red notice has been issued for Osama bin Laden -- and for hundreds of accused arms dealers, murderers and drug traffickers most people have never heard of.

For nearly three years, the Justice Department has deviated from standard extradition procedure and has refused to arrest Jean-Bernard Lasnaud, curiously citing lack of evidence. Argentinean prosecutors are stunned at this refusal; a documentary trail of faxes, money transfers and email points to Lasnaud's knowledge and participation in the sales.

Now it may be too late for the US to arrest him. After years of living freely in the U.S., Lasnaud appears to have gone missing. His former attorney Kenneth Warner says he hasn't heard from Lasnaud since March, and Warner confirms that Lasnaud has moved out of his condo. In early May, his phone was disconnected. Caribbean Group was handed over to the care of a Miami man named Seyed Moghani, who says that Lasnaud is in France. "He still owns the business," Moghani says, and customers can still place orders via fax.

On May 14, Lasnaud told FRONTLINE/World via email, "I am traveling out of the U.S. for the time being." He added, "I have nothing to declare and I do not wish to answer to any questions."

A source at Interpol headquarters in France says that travelling internationally with a red notice is "highly unusual."

The Argentina and Ecuador Deals

Between 1992 and 1995, Argentina's President Carlos Menem signed several decrees authorizing sales of Argentine-made arms to Uruguay and Panama. But the true destinations were Croatia, which was under a U.N. arms embargo, and Ecuador, embargoed by the 1945 Rio Accord because of its ongoing war with Peru.

In all, more than 6,500 tons of small arms and ammunition found its way to wars in the Balkans and the Andes, for fees totaling $100 million or more. Investigators estimate that half the money went for bribes.

Witnesses testified that Jean-Bernard Lasnaud was seen at the Port of Buenos Aires, inspecting one of the shipments bound for Croatia. But the most significant documentary evidence against him surfaced from Argentina's Ecuador deals.

Lasnaud is accused of brokering the sale of more than 70 tons of rifles and ammunition to Ecuador. To facilitate the deal, he partnered with Navy Capt. Horacio Estrada, who has been accused of torture and murder during Argentina's "Dirty War."

It was a sweet deal gone bad. In February 1995, three shipments of what turned out to be old and defective weapons were flown to Quito. Rifles were missing their cleaning mechanisms and bayonets. Boxes were stamped with recent dates, but the ammunition was manufactured as far back as 1972.

The Ecuadorian military was outraged. Lasnaud and Estrada scrambled to apologize. In a handwritten fax, Lasnaud and Estrada offered Russian anti-tank missiles to make up for their faux pas. The apology was apparently accepted, because Estrada received a transfer of $1.85 million from the Junta de Defensa Nacional de Quito. He had already issued a payment of $22,000 to Lasnaud a few days earlier.

By July 1995, Ecuador tried to cancel the balance of its contract with Lasnaud's Caribbean Group, but 9.2 million cartridges were already on their way to Quito. This time the supplies came from Iran, because Argentina was attracting too much press. Details of the deal had leaked just days after the weapons landed in Ecuador. It now appears that the Ecuador sale was an attempt by a relative of President Menem to turn the dregs of Argentina's arsenal into quick cash. It was a sloppy deal that thrust a reluctant Lasnaud into the international spotlight.

DEATH OF A WITNESS

Three years later, in 1998, Lasnaud was home in Florida, still brokering helicopters, small arms and anti-aircraft missile launchers with his partner Estrada. But in August 1998, Estrada was interrogated by an Argentinean judge for his role in the Croatia and Ecuador sales. Estrada issued a written statement to the court insisting that although he knew Lasnaud, they never completed a business transaction together.

Four days later, Estrada was found shot dead in his Buenos Aires apartment. Police investigators ruled the death a suicide. They found 92 e-mail messages from Lasnaud in Estrada's computer, all sent during the previous week and a half.

One last email message urgently requested shipment of 1,500 rifles to Sierra Leone, where arms to rebel forces have been embargoed since 1997. Lasnaud signed off with, "Funds are available for this operation immediately. Best Regards, Juan."

Estrada never read Lasnaud's final request. He was already dead.

"Arrest first, ask questions later"

The Lasnaud case is part of a matrix of arms sales, corruption scandals and terrorist bombings that have helped destabilize Argentina in recent years. It was Argentina's ongoing investigations into those events that led to Interpol's red notice for Lasnaud. Buenos Aires courts have looked to U.S. law enforcement for assistance in its investigations, but the requests seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

Six months after the September 11 attacks, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told a gathering of Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General of the Americas that he applauded efforts to combat arms smuggling, and he stressed the importance of mutual assistance in extradition cases, "because only the criminals will benefit from restrictions on our ability to cooperate." Despite the tough talk, the U.S. has been inconsistent in enforcing weapons laws at home. While some international arms dealers such as Victor Bout are high-priority targets of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, others such as Lasnaud don't seem to make it onto the radar screen. Typically, when Interpol issues a red notice, the Justice Department "arrests first and asks questions later," as one law enforcement official put it. Standard extradition procedures are followed even in minor cases. For instance, in 1992, Miami resident Pablo Vitaver was handcuffed, arrested, jailed for 40 days, and voluntarily extradited in response to an Argentinean judge's request. The charges? Vitaver owed $76 to a client in Buenos Aires.

Argentinean prosecutors wonder, then, why the U.S. never arrested Lasnaud, an arms dealer accused of secretly brokering weapons smuggled around the world.

Jeffrey Denner, a criminal defense attorney who helped rewrite the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, says that it is common procedure to make an immediate arrest in such cases, because the aim is to make sure the suspect doesn't flee.

At that point, Denner says, questioning the other country's evidence is rare. "It's not up to us to decide whether he's guilty under Argentinean law. There's some basic due process that has to be covered, but beyond that, it's just not something we look into, ever." Typically, it is only after the arrest that the foreign evidence is examined in an extradition hearing before a magistrate judge.

Northwestern University professor and international law expert Anthony D'Amato says that determining "sufficient evidence" is up to each country, but asking for it up front is rare. "There's no particular evidence rule," says D'Amato. "When it hasn't even gotten to the stage of a magistrate and it's just being done by the police, nobody has to be convinced of anything -- unless, as I suspect here, the U.S. doesn't want to be convinced."

D'Amato says the procedure usually only varies when "there's some political reason why the U.S. doesn't want to do it. Because normally, the State Department is super-vigilant about dealing with these cases."

"The interesting aspect," says Jeffrey Denner, "would be whether he's cooperating with the U.S. government or some of our allies, and that's why they're not doing this."

U.S. "Winked" at Arms Sales

National interests were apparently at stake in some of Lasnaud's deals. Dr. Daniel Nelson, a former arms proliferation consultant to the State Department, was in Croatia during the time of the sales. Nelson says that in the early 1990s, the US was in favor of arming Croatia but did not want to openly violate the U.N. embargo; instead, officials simply "winked" at weapons shipments from Argentina, South Africa, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine and Iran.

"U.S. people were engaged in trying to find sources [to get arms to Croatia] - Islamic, and those that weren't. And Argentina was one of those," Nelson says.

The State Department initially denied knowledge of Argentina's embargo violations.

"[Ambassador Peter] Galbraith and the U.S. Embassy knew about that," says Nelson. "To suspect that they did not know about the Argentina deals, when Argentineans were speaking Spanish in the Croatian Defense Ministry, is ridiculous."

Galbraith later admitted that while the U.S. did not openly endorse violating the U.N. embargo, he did tell the Croatians to "pay attention to what I did not say. ... It was meant to mean that we were not objecting."

Another possible explanation emerged in a recent F.B.I. investigation of Lasnaud's son, Alexandre, for unrelated charges. In a tape made as part of that undercover investigation, Alexandre bragged to an informant that his father collaborated with the CIA. He claimed he and his father were attempting to buy Chinese radar equipment for the U.S. military.

"What we're ordering, okay, is top secret, top secret sh-[that] the United States Military, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy want," Alexandre Lasnaud said, according to the transcript. "But it's not something that they publicize all over the world, saying we are seeking this, okay? ...They talked to my dad yesterday and they reiterate, we need this thing fast."

"It's [not] something that the Democrats and Congress would understand -- that the United States Army is paying people to purchase foreign military items -- even though it's for the purpose of training American troops."

Jean-Bernard Lasnaud is authorized to do business with the U.S. government and he proudly publishes his Defense Logistics Information Service license number on his Web site. "Government bids welcomed," reads the home page, under a "God Bless America" icon. An ownership trace of aircraft offered for sale on the site confirmed that at least one tanker-refueler plane is registered to the U.S. Air Force.

A former U.S. intelligence agent stationed in Latin America tells FRONTLINE/World he has confirmed that Lasnaud has been a C.I.A. asset "since the Iran-Contra days," but says it is unclear whether he still has that status.

"Lasnaud certainly fits the profile," a former U.S. Customs official in the Miami area agrees. "He's probably either [a C.I.A.] asset or he's an informant for Customs or some other agency."

Sources from the criminal defense bar, the National Security Council, U.S. Customs and intelligence agencies agree there are only a few reasons that the Justice Department would not follow its normal procedure when faced with a red notice: it could be plain old bureaucratic incompetence; the subject has been or is an active informant in a criminal matter; or he is performing work deemed vital to U.S. national security.

For example, in 1986 agents from U.S. Customs and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms impounded an Air National Guard Huey helicopter found in arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian's hangar, bound for El Salvador. But authorities dropped all charges. The reason, according to a U.S. Customs source, is that Soghanalian was providing information to U.S. intelligence.

Another source in the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami says that when the Justice Department does not honor a red notice in the usual procedural manner, there "must be something else going on" related to U.S. national security or U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Invisible Man

Whatever the reasons for American reluctance to arrest Lasnaud, Argentina has not given up its effort to prosecute him. Even in the midst of economic crisis, the arms case remains a priority. In 2000, ex-president Carlos Menem and other top officials were investigated and placed under house arrest for their suspected roles in the arms deals. Although Menem was set free by a friendly Supreme Court last November, that decision was recently overturned and a new investigation of the former president has been ordered. In April, former finance minister Domingo Cavallo was arrested in connection with the arms sales. Three separate cases have been combined into one, and the Interpol arrest request for Lasnaud remains in force.

According to the Department of Justice Criminal Division spokesman Bryan Sierra, the department stands by the original claim made by the division's Office of International Affairs -- that there is insufficient evidence Lasnaud knew the Ecuador shipments contained weapons. Yet it seems unlikely that U.S. investigators have not seen the fax and documents FRONTLINE/World has obtained that indicate otherwise.

If nothing else, U.S. law enforcement's response has been confusing. U.S. Customs weapons investigators in Lasnaud's own neighborhood knew myriad details of the Argentina deals, but say they've never heard of Lasnaud. Meanwhile, officials in Customs headquarters in Washington acknowledge that they do know who he is. An assistant U.S. attorney initially expressed interest in the case, but after checking with colleagues said he could not meet with reporters. "I don't know what to tell you," he apologized. "Sorry I can't help more."

Now Lasnaud may be gone for good. A former intelligence agent says, "The fact that he was here bothers me. The fact that he got out with a red notice on him bothers me even more."

Dr. Graciela Abreu of the Argentinean embassy in Washington was perplexed as to why the Department of Justice never arrested Lasnaud. "We wanted to prevent this guy from leaving the country," she says. Although the Interpol notice remains in effect, Argentina cannot request extradition without knowing where Lasnaud is.

When a cameraman for the Center for Investigative Reporting spotted Lasnaud in a parking lot last December, he called out, "Are you Mr. Lasnaud?" Startled, Lasnaud smiled and answered mischievously, "But it's not me." With that, he drove off, a bright American flag on his windshield, looking just like any other patriot in times of terror.

Six months later, the arms baron of Ft. Lauderdale may be set to become the target of an international manhunt.


--------------------
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19970807-0&lang=fr
cident

languages:
Statuts:
Enquête Officielle
Date:
07 AOU 1997
Heure:
12:36
Type/Sous-type:
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-61F
Operator:
Fine Air
Immatriculation:
N27UA

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19970807-0&lang=fr

... Investigation showed that the center of gravity resulted in the airplane's TRIM BEING MIS-SET [see part four for Teterboro crash details] by at least 1.5 units airplane nose up, which presented the flightcrew with a pitch control problem on takeoff.

PROBABLE CAUSE: "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident, which resulted from the airplane being misloaded to produce a more aft center of gravity and a correspondingly incorrect stabilizer trim setting that precipitated an extreme pitch-up at rotation, was (1) the failure of Fine Air to exercise operational control over the cargo loading process; and (2) the failure of Aeromar to load the airplane as specified by Fine Air. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the FAA to adequately monitor Fine Airs operational control responsibilities for cargo loading and the failure of the FAA to ensure that known cargo-related deficiencies were corrected at Fine Air."
-----------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Air

Details of the Fine-Air Crash

On August 7, 1997, Fine Air flight 101, a Cargo DC-8-61F registration # N27UA, en route from Miami to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, suffered sudden movement of cargo materials in the aft cargo hold while on take off. The aircraft's nose rose steeply due to the sudden uneven weight distribution caused by shifting boxes of denim material that had not been securely fastened. The pilots, departing out of the former Runway 27R (now 28L) attempted to recover but the aircraft stalled and crashed onto a field adjacent the Miami City Rail Yard less than a mile from the airport. The aircraft missed two factories, a commercial building, and the Budweiser Distribution Center in unincorporated Miami, Florida between the populated residential suburbs of Miami Springs and Doral, FL. It skidded across the field and onto NW 72nd Ave, a roadway that is typically full of traffic. Fortunately, the crash occurred at 12:01 PM, a time when NW 72nd Ave was free of traffic. The plane's wreckage skidded quickly across the roadway and onto the parking lot of a commercial mini-mall across the street from the empty field; it took out 26 cars in the lot. Inside one of the cars sat a man who had just arrived back at his shop in the mini-mall after picking up lunch for his wife and himself. He was unable to make it out of the car and was caught up in the fireball that engulfed the multi-lane avenue, field, and parking lot. The plane's wreckage fell four feet short of the entrances to three shops. It missed two occupied cars and a truck that were waiting for the traffic signal at the intersection of NW 31st Street and NW 72nd Avenue, less than 30 yards away. The only deaths were those of the three crew members, a company security guard on the flight, and the man in the parking lot. In the minutes following the crash, police were alerted to a fire at NW 72nd Ave, only to discover it was a plane crash. For nearly 45 minutes, mixed reports claimed the plane was a passenger flight, but within the hour the control tower at MIA confirmed it was Fine Air Cargo Flight 101.

In 2000, Fine Air filed for bankruptcy and soon after, it was merged into Arrow Air, another cargo airline. Both airlines still use their respective names.

Fine Air has hubs in Miami International Airport, Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta and Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico. It operates DC-8 and Lockheed L-1011 type of jets, and it has a contract with model airplane manufacturers Gemini Jets and Flight Miniatures to produce toy models of its airplanes.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash, Part 4: Flight Lesson


By Alex Constantine

In our hypothetical example (part three) - CIA-Republican terrorist facing criminal charges plots to crash a plane to silence witnesses - it's assumed that this practice is fairly common. Is it?

Families of the victims in this documented instance have their own perspective: "Havana, Oct 3 (Prensa Latina) Cuba investigators held Tuesday the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) responsible of the explosion in mid-air of a Cuban airplane with 73 people aboard in 1976.... "20

Pan Am 103 was destroyed by CIA-Republican terrorists facing criminal charges, too. Look not to Libya, but to "Coreans": "... It was the McKee team that reportedly uncovered evidence that a 'rogue' CIA unit called COREA, based in Wiesbaden, was doing business with Monzar Al-Kassar [Adnan Khashoggi's co-conspirator in the Iran-contra scandal], Syrian 'arms dealer and drug trafficker'. Al-Kassar 'was part of the secret network run by US Lt. Colonel Oliver North.' Outraged that COREA was doing business with a Syrian 'who made money from drugs/arms/terrorism', the McKee team 'decided to fly to CIA HQ in Virginia to expose COREA'. They flew on Pan Am flight 103 ... "21

Dorothy Hunt. Carmel researcher Mae Brussell found that she was carrying a fat bundle of cash with consecutive serial numbers ... "Dorothy Hunt, the wife of convicted White House 'plumber' E. Howard Hunt, was killed, along with 41 other people, when United Airlines Flight 553 crashed near Chicago's Midway Airport on Dec. 8, 1972. Mrs. Hunt, who, like her husband, had worked for the CIA, was allegedly carrying $100,000 in "hush" money so her husband would not implicate White House officials in Watergate. The day after the crash, White House aide Egil (Bud) Krogh was appointed Undersecretary of Transportation, supervising the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Association — the two agencies charged with investigating the airline crash. A week later, Nixon's deputy assistant Alexander Butterfield was made the new head of the FAA, and five weeks later Dwight Chapin, the president's appointment secretary, was dispatched to Chicago to become a top executive with United Airlines. The airplane crash was blamed on equipment malfunctions."

Langley patriots consider aviation a well-stone of assassination politics. Ron Brown might look into it if he was alive. And if your wife or children are on board - who's to know? A CIA-Republican terrorist has no regard for human life (he is a totalitarian gestalt of armed "conservative principles," and empathy is for weepy liberals).


This is a fine science. It doesn't necessarily stoop to wild-eyed Saudis with box-cutters or radio bombs planted in the cargo hold - that's for show. There are more subtle means. As in the martial arts, the CIA-Republican terrorist looks for a weakness to exploit:

"Weight Is Focus of Plane Safety" - New York Times.22 American Airlines has a web page on weight factors here:

http://www.americanwaymag.com/aw/issue/vantage_point.asp?archive_date=9/1/2004

The distribution of weight is a critical factor in any airplane flight. A miscalculation can be fatal, and there are standard formulae used by every pilot before every takeoff to determine if the plane is balanced properly. The NewsReleaseWire stie published a story the day after the Comair crash that makes this same point:

"Passenger Obesity as a Contributing Factor in Commuter Airplane Crashes

"In January 2003 an Air Midwest Beech 1900 with 19 passengers aboard failed to gain altitude quickly enough and crashed into an airport hanger during takeoff in Charlotte, North Carolina. All passengers and crew died in the incident. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that Air Midwest used "substantially inaccurate weight and balance calculations for company airplanes," which were based on incorrect "average passenger and baggage weights ... "23

Aviation News recently had a story on a plane brought down by its weight and distribution of the same: "MAY 2006: weight distribution factor in West Caribbean MD-82 accident - French newspaper Le Figaro, quoting an anonymous source, reported that the West Caribbean MD-82 that crashed in Venezuela, August 2005, was overloaded. It reportedly had a takeoff weight of 70,300 kilos, where mtow is 67,600 kilos. The cargo was badly distributed as well..."24 An airplane has a center of gravity and this must be respected or ...

There's this: "'A weighty issue. And a balancing act too' - [A] commuter airliner has all chairs occupied as the Captain rotates. After a brief normal flight profile the nose of the airplane pitches up to the extreme. After a breathtaking stall the airplane plunges back onto the airport surface killing all on board. What happened here? ... Because the flight was full, and standard passenger and baggage weights were used, there is a possibility that the aircraft was severely overweight and out of CG. The second possibility is that the baggage in the aft cargo bay shifted after rotation creating an extreme aft CG. Lastly, there is a potential mechanical problem in the elevator mechanism itself."25

Back to Teterboro, New Jersey:

First Findings See No Brakes Used in Most Of Jet's Path

"The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash of a corporate jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on Wednesday, said yesterday that its findings indicated no braking system was in effect until the plane was 5,000 feet along the 6,013-foot runway. NORMALLY, A LIFTOFF TAKE PLACE AROUND 3,000 FEET ..."

The plane did not lift-off at Teterboro because, according to the NTSB, the baggage was improperly loaded.

But before turning to the matter of airfoil balance, this factor, raised over a year before the tragedy at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport, is significant:

"NORMALLY, A LIFTOFF TAKE PLACE AROUND 3,000 FEET."

Hold that thought. Don't forget it.

The cause of the Teterboro crash was reported by the New York Times on March 24, 2005:

"Plane in Crash Was Imbalanced, Investigators Say"

The corporate jet that crashed into a warehouse in Teterboro, N.J., last month with 11 people on board was carrying too much of its weight in front, federal investigators said in a preliminary report released yesterday ..."26

Excess baggage loaded toward the front of the plane weighed down the nose. The jet was unable to lift and take flight. The pilot thought it was a "malfunction" initially (see part two), but the failure to lift off the tarmac was due to baggage load distribution. It was that simple. The plane accelerated on runway six, reached 3,000 feet ... but gravity held the nose down and the jet would not disengage from the tarmac. The pilots attempted to take-off for another 2,000 more feet ... it stubbornly refused to go airborne. At 5,000 feet they hit the brakes and aborted the flight. Too late.

The plane shot off the end of the runway, across the street and into the warehouse.

The baggage was loaded on the illegal charter flight by Darwin Deason's tiny DDH, Inc. He owned the jet and the charter company. Was the flight deliberately sabotaged by the CIA's ranking contract torturer? You come to realize that this may be the only possible explanation by considering that - before ANY flight - a trained pilot calculates the weight of passengers and luggage to determine if it is safe to fly. AND there are standard calculations for weight distribution. The pilot does not want to die. He knows that if the weight and balance of the plane is off, he and his passengers could perish. So he is certain before setting off down the runway that all weight factors are correct.

The pilots at Teterboro did their calculations. They assumed the plane was loaded by professionals and properly balanced. Satisfied that it was safe to fly, they headed out, unaware that the plane had been disabled. There was sufficient appearance of wrong-doing here to blind a saint. The cargo loaders knew their jobs, and the balance of the plane is ALWAYS a critical issue before take-off. The pilots were confident that the trim was correct and expected the plane to lift-off. Did DDH employees - a sample of whom we've already visited at Guantanamo Bay - deliberately pile cargo toward the front of the plane, and feed false data to the pilots? How else to account for the ludicrous mishap at Teterboro?

It is far more probable that the cargo was loaded improperly by design than human error - it was all piled toward the front, and that's how a trained CIA-Republican terrorist would commit mass murder.

[To be continued ... ]

NOTES

20) Anon., "Cuba: CIA Sabotaged Cuban Plane - Terrorist act of 1976 was at agency's behest," Prensa Latina, 03 October 2006."
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news.asp?ItemID=872

21) http://spookterror.blogspot.com/2005/08/lockerbie-bomb-london-bombs.html

22) Mae Brussell, "30 Watergate Witnesses Have Met Violent Deaths," Midnight, July 12, 1976.
http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Watergate%20Deaths.html

23) Mark Schrimsher (president, CalorieLab, Inc.), "Passenger obesity as a contributing factor in commuter airplane crashes (backgrounder)," August 28, 2006.
http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ReleaseDetail&ID=13628

24) http://aviation-safety.net/news/news.php?field=datumcode&var=200605%25

25) http://stoenworks.com/A%20Weighty%20Issue.html

26) Patrick McGeehan, "Plane in Crash Was Imbalanced, Investigators Say," New York Times, March 24, 2005.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_transportation_safety_board/index.html?s=closest&query=TETERBORO%20(NJ)&field=geo&match=exact

Friday, October 27, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash, Part 3: Darwin's Devolution and CIA-Republican Terrorism 101


By Alex Constantine

At this point, hard questions come begging. Did executives of ACS orchestrate the Teterboro crash? (it was a "bootleg" charter and only a select few knew about it: Deason, his fellow DDH officers, the nameless Kelso employees on the plane, their three guests. It was a hushed-up flight. This narrows the list of possible suspects, if indeed the plane was sabotaged, and this is the topic of part four.) Complicity might be easier to establish if the identities of the Kelso & Co. officers on that illegal DDH charter were known. Spokespeople for Kelso and Deason's DDH stone-walled reporters. So you begin with secrecy, and that speaks ... maybe volumes.

Deason knows a thing or two about corporate turpitude, but is he capable of murder?

A profile of the ACS founder, published in D (for Dallas) Magazine in 2003, is revealing ... it wasn't illustrated by Goya, but could have been:

"Accounts differ as to what exactly happened aboard the Cartoush II during its pleasure cruise in the Bahamas in September 2001. Darwin Deason denies that he threatened to kill the chef. Others claim he did. 'There certainly was a threat of getting a gun and doing something,' says one person intimately acquainted with the details of the incident. As for the chef, he isn't saying much."

Deason's guests on this voyage included ex-Cowboy punter Mike Saxon, Carter Abercrombie of Dallas, and their wives. The yacht sluiced along the Exuma island chain, the sun was high "when the trouble started." Deason "flew into a rage. 'The guy was definitely having a psychotic episode,' says a source. He began yelling at the chef, Vinny Feola, who locked himself in his quarters. As the standoff dragged on for hours, the ship's captain, Don Hopkins, worked the satellite phone, frantically trying to reach someone back in Dallas who could mollify Deason. Another source says that Deason pulled Saxon and Abercrombie aside and asked them, 'Would you guys be willing to beat the shit out of the chef for me if I asked you to?'"18 (Later, Deason couldn't recall exactly what had incited him, but grumbled that the chef had been "insubordinate.")

Deason's tirades shrink in comparison to the violence he commits as a CIA contractor. Lest we forget the torture charges, People's Weekly World reported in 2004 that the CIA torture scandal was in fact the ACS torture scandal: "According to the Springfield, Va.-based Federal Times, ACS in 2002" – a year BEFORE Lockheed bought out ACS Government Services – "provided 30 intelligence analysts and 15 to 20 INTERROGATORS for the U.S. Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

The feds and ACS execs attempted to keep a lid on the deal for obvious reasons. At the time, violations of the Geneva Convention didn't have the blessing of congress. They conspired to keep it covert "because the $13.3 million contract states that ACS was to provide technology services to the government, not interrogators and intelligence analysts. According to the Federal Times, the U.S. Southern Command contacted the GSA in October 2002 for help in hiring interrogators for the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The GSA put the contract up for bid, but not as an intelligence-gathering contract." There was a cover story. "Instead, the contract stated that that GSA was seeking information technology workers to assist with a project that the U.S. Department of Interior was overseeing at Fort Huachuca, Ariz."19

It can safely be said that Deason, founder of ACS, a "tightly-knit organization" of spooks and "interrogators," is capable of extreme, second-hand violence. When the CIA needed competent torturers, to whom did it turn? The Special Forces, Sandanista death squads, the School of the Americas? It turned to a scandal-ridden computer company in Dallas. This isn't to say that he was responsible for Teterboro or the Lexington crash, but he was capable of it.

Hold that thought.



CIA-REPUBLICAN TERRORISM 101

Theoretical problem - you are a a CIA-Republican terrorist and your well-financed cell intends to bring down an airplane to kill off troublesome witnesses. You might hire a "mechanic" to sabotage the fuel line, short-circuit the flight controls, plant a radio-bomb in the cargo hold - but these forms of subterfuge might be detected in the post-crash forensic investigation. You might call a favor from Pakistan's ISI, arrange to have a suicide-bomber on board. But suicide-bombers are mentally erratic and explosive residue is traceable. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal might connect the dots, and you've been wary of the press since last year's gay sex scandal, not to mention the stock manipulation and torture charges hanging over your head.

What to do?

Destroy the plane without messy explosives and undependable suicide-bombers.

Clue: It only takes a "MOMENT." (Any trained pilot will know the answer immediately.)

The solution will be revealed in part four.

[To be continued ... ]

NOTES

18) Tim Rogers, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless," D Magazine, June 1, 2003.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/
articles/mi_qa3862/is_200306/
ai_n9293138

19) Jeremy Ryan, "Contractor Probed on Guantanamo Deal," People's Weekly World Newspaper, August 12, 2004.
http://www.pww.org/article/
articleview/5604/1/227/

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash: Part 2: The Teterboro Incident

Had he lived, it's certain that Fenton Dawson, a government liaison at ACS, would have been called as a witness in any federal probe into the litany of illegalities that the company had racked up, including stock fraud, domestic spying, torture at "Gitmo," votescam, even a possible role in 9/11, any or all of these excesses ... assuming, of course, investigation and perhaps even renovation of Bush's congressional Mustang Ranch by an incoming Democratic majority ...

My God, you think ... forty-eight unsuspecting passengers on that flight may have been murdered to silence a witness to a multitude of crimes. (At this point, you naively assumed there was only one passenger on board with a security clearance.) The motive was transparent: If anyone knew where the bloody ACS/CIA bones were buried, it was a government point-man.

But shallow media reports weren't much help ... "Dawson graduated from Trigg County High School in 1978 and worked in Lexington for Affiliated Computer Services ... the 46-year old was headed to Washington on business ... " The business that ACS does is grounds for a protracted prison sentence in most civilized countries.

Why precisely did Dawson leave home in the middle of the night to board Flight 5191? Didn't other press reports state that he was headed for an unspecified "conference," or "seminar," in DC? The questions left begging were aggravating. So were the newspaper reports, the fake caring. "' ... ACS is a tightly-knit organization, and we are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our employees ...'" To read the newswire stories, you'd think that Dawson worked for Human Rights Watch. ACS is a vote-rigging, bribing, Islamo-torturing, techno-fascist, criminal business empire with ties to the pyramidal eyes of both parties, a CIA front run by a pair of former Dallas S&L thieves with Total Information Awareness Disorder.

And ruptures of scandal at ACS were sinking the ship:

Fraud: North Carolina Terminates $171 Million Medicaid Contract with ACS - The state alleges breach of contract by ACS; ACS responds with legal action. ... said Kevin Lightfoot, vice president of corporate communications at ACS. ...
www.techspend.com/.../document.php?dA=northcarolinaterminates& PHPSESSID=1e88c4f6cd2705577b450f62d52421d8

ID theft: Another week, another identity theft scandal: ... computers from the offices of Motorola’s human resources services provider, Affiliated Computer Sources. ...
www.consumersunion.org/campaigns/ /learn_more/002232indiv.html

Bribery: Canada: ACS, Cops Charged in Camera Bribery Scandal ... Wednesday formally charged photo enforcement vendor Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) with bribing ... www.thenewspaper.com/news/09/965.asp

Illegal lobbying and contract fixing: " ... ACS has donated $12,500 to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' campaign committee over the past three years, including the maximum $5,000 each of the past two years. ... " (Daniels subsequently reviewed a billion-dollar ACS contract, a possible conflict-of-interest.7)

The cockroaches were taking over the household.

Was there ever a company on the third planet more corrupt, pound for pound, than this one?

ACSgate is a multi-faceted beast, an octopus. It embraces the Republican Party: "Subj: NewsFlash: Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) contributed $258,275 to repubs., $0 to dems, 1995 - 2000 ... "8 The very idea ...

Break time.

The election theme will recur time and again but you had no idea and stopped to watch the morning news: "President and first lady help ‘Make a Difference...'" A presidential plug. That's all you need at the break of dawn. ‘Today’ host Matt Lauer talks to George and Laura Bush about the rebuilding efforts and their help delivering a Habitat for Humanity house ... "

Well, at least he isn't a full-time pariah - there's still time for charitable pursuits, you tell yourself. Break over, back to work. Bush's supposed altruism and Lauer's nasal voice fade to background babble.

Our ACS data mining on the Internet proves to be a highly-constructive process:

ACS Officer Looted a Savings-and-Loan
August 16, 2006

The ABCs of ACS Lawsuits
Filed under: News You Can Actually Use, Actually

"... There’s more information regarding a failed savings-and-loan in which Deason was involved with ... J. Livingston Kosberg. The two also were involved in an ACS spin-off that filed for bankruptcy in Dallas federal court in 2001 and a lawsuit over its demise, which resulted in a cash settlement–with Deason himself paying out $3 million...."

The miscreant's crimes followed him to the computer business: "ACS Adds SEC Investigation To Bribery Charges, Other Woes."9

This thriving computer company and criminalized sectors of government were symbiotic.

Do they still do background checks in the District of Columbia? "Lawrence C. Hale is the Chief Information Security Officer for ACS. He joined the Company in January 2005 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where he served as deputy director of the National Cyber Security Division's Computer Emergency Readiness Team.... While at the Pentagon, he was a member of the Joint Staff Information Operations Response Cell during a number of cyber events and exercises that helped shape the U.S. government's computer security policy...."10

Our ACS crime-data mining goes on ... the surfeit of ill-gotten profits - but you're looking for specific answers to the death of Fenton Dawson and 48 others. Then you find this - A PRIOR PLANE CRASH: "... ACS recently said it plans to sell a corporate jet it originally purchased from a firm owned by ACS founder and chairman Darwin Deason. The firm, DDH Aviation, has fallen under the scrutiny of the Federal Aviation Administration as part of an investigation into a February 2005 crash at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport that injured 20 people. The jet is owned by DDH ..."11

The downed flight was a "bootleg," a violation of aviation law. The Dallas Business Journal reported in July 2005 that it's "not uncommon for owners of expensive business jets to put their planes to work earning revenue - without benefit of obtaining a Part 135 certificate - by flying others in what the industry calls 'bootleg' charter flights." There are "numerous other variations on that theme that are equally ILLEGAL, according to industry sources ..." Another broken law to throw on the ACS stockpile.

The Dallas Business Journal reported on July 10, 2005 that DDH "declined to comment." Curiously enough, the Federal Aviation Administration, in a July 8th letter to Platinum Jet Management, proposed a fine of $1.86 million, "which in the industry is considered unusually large." But the plane's owner was not touched by the FAA: "Deason's company that owned the aircraft - DDH Operating Ltd. - has not been cited by the FAA for any violations."12

The Teterboro crash was similar to the Lexington disaster: A CL-600 Bombadier (The Comair plane was also a Bombadier) corporate jet bound for Chicago with 12 people on board shot off runway no. 6 during take-off early in the morning, about 7:23 am, colliding with two automobiles on Route 46, leaving two people with serious head trauma, and plowing through a wall at the Strawberry Clothing Warehouse across the highway. The jet skidded across Route 46. Further casualties were prevented only by the red light at Huyler Street, where 20 to 30 westbound vehicles waited for the light to change. The passengers were injured and doused with jet fuel but managed to walk away, despite the fires that erupted at the clothing store.13 (The Teterboro Airport would be in the news again on October 11, 2006 when Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle and Tyler Stanger, his flight instructor, would take flight there in a Cirrus SR20 en route to Tennessee, only to collide fatally 13 minutes later with the Belaire condominium at 524 East 72nd Street.)


Many in the media assumed, because the temperature was 20 degrees that morning, the cause of the crash was "ice." But according to NTSB staff and wire reports, "Investigators said Thursday [February 3] they have found NO EVIDENCE OF ICE on the wings of a corporate jet that skidded off a runway, crossed a busy highway and slammed into a warehouse. [....] None saw any evidence of ice on the wings or other surfaces of the plane, the National Transportation Safety Board said."14

John Kimberling of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the pilot, told investigators that the plane's controls "MALFUNCTIONED," forcing him to abort takeoff.15 Now we are looking at the possibility of sabotage.

"Five of the passengers aboard the runaway CL-600 were employees of Kelso & Co., a private-equity investment firm with offices at 320 Park Ave. in Manhattan, and three were business associates, company officials said."

AP reported that day after the accident, "Kelso & Co. DECLINED TO IDENTIFY THE FIVE EMPLOYEES and three guests on board."16 Why?



Kelso & Co. is another firm with considerable political influence. In 1999, K&C donated $7,000 to the short-lived Dan Quayle presidential campaign.16 "Quayle surprised everybody in the most positive way with his insights, judgments and ability to net out the issues," Joseph S. Schuchert Jr., chairman of Kelso & Co., explained to Business Week in October 2005.17

Once again, you think, contemporary physicists must be correct in assuming the existence of a quantum dimension parallel to our own. And it was right there in the pages of the media all along, hiding in plain sight ...

[To be continued ... ]
--
NOTES

7) AP story, "Company vying for $1 billion state contract had problems elsewhere," August 20, 2006.

8) http://www.dnovus.com/companynews.asp.

9) http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181501504.

10) Paul McDougall, "ACS Adds SEC Investigation To Bribery Charges, Other Woes," InformationWeek, Mar 7, 2006. http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:oEVms9sgYMwJ:www.acs-inc.com/about/bios/larry.html+%22Lynn+Blodgett%22+and+HOMELAND&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6

11) Ibid.

12) Ibid.

13) The National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination, "NC4 INCIDENT MONITORING CENTER FEATURED INCIDENT: "Teterboro, NJ Plane Crash," http://www.nc4.us/nc4/NJPlaneCrash.php.

14) See: http://mirrorh.com/timeline2005.html

15) Anon., "Pilot in Teterboro crash goes home," PhillyBurbs.com. Feb/18/2005.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/articlePrint.cfm?id=452359

15) AP release, "Authorities Probe N.J. Plane Crash," cf. FoxNews.com, February 3, 2005. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146275,00.html

16) Press release, Center for Responsive Politics, "BUNDLES PROLIFERATE IN LATEST PRESIDENTIAL FILINGS," July 22, 1999.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/july22_99_release.htm

17) Anon., "They're Not Telling Quayle Jokes At Cerberus," Business Week, October 3, 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_40/b3953117.htm

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The Lexington Comair Crash, Part One: The Hand on the Datastream

By Alex Constantine

Monday morning, weekend already fading into memory. There is an ache impaling the axis of your brain. You head for the corner coffee shop, order a large. A layer of innocence is about to be stripped away from you like a coal deposit at a Pennsylvania butte but you have no idea and pick out a muffin.

A ruffled newspaper waits at a table. You're drawn as you sit down to the front-page story on a plane crash near Lexington, Kentucky. No lights on the runway, All passengers dead. What?

There is a book about the locale, Sally Denton's Bluegrass Conspiracy. You recall some of the details ... CIA-trained police, cocaine, political murders.

Who'd think to find so much political intrigue in stove-pipe country? Off the beaten path. The very idea.

The governor at the time was involved in the Bluegrass scandal, and a criminal network with ties to Oliver North and Adnan Khashoggi. They were known as "The Company."

But this downed commuter jet in horse country had nothing to do with all that ancient history, you tell yourself, stirring in a little raw sugar.

The plane taxied on the wrong runway ... heart-breaking. You imagine the plane rolling down a black, short runway ... the moment when the headlights caught the fence, the trees, the furious attempt to rise clear of them before the quake of rent metal from below ...

The lone dispatcher had been distracted by paper work. A series of ludicrous errors. Pointless horrors, meaningless existence.

The authorities ruled out foul play.

You take the paper cup and newspaper, push through the doors into the autumn sunlight, content that life - now seasoned by a warm neuro-toxic glow - is merely meaningless and bleak, tainted not by foul play but common human failings.


Two days pass. You watch the news, back to the murky runway, the 40-degree error in take-off heading, the burning plane. That flight number ... 5191.

You pick a name from the Flight 5191 passenger list, Fenton Dawson, and do a Google search ...

Dawson is survived by his wife and had two children.

He had a steady job.

Fenton Dawson: ACS employeee
was en route to Washington

Fenton Dawson, who worked for Affiliated Computer Services in the government solutions department, was on his way to a business conference in Washington, D.C., when Flight 5191 crashed...1

Affiliated Computer Services ... ACS ... a company currently under investigation by the Justice Department for back-dating stock options. Fenton Dawson, the government liaison at ACS, was on his way to Washington to attend a conference – other sources said seminar, minor difference – and the pilots tried to take off on the wrong runway. A horrible, pointless death among many.

The founder and chairman of the ACS board is Mr. Darwin Deason, a generous contributor to the Republican Party. Deason's "partner in crime" at ACS, and a ranking company director, is J. Livingston Kosberg - a former S&L thief. Pete Brewton, in The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, wrote: "Gibraltar Savings, whose chairman, J. Livingston Kosberg, was a prominent fund-raiser in Texas for the Democratic Party."2

Patriots. And "prominent," too. Their company lost a government solutions man on August 27, 2006 - no one will ask him what he knows about back-dating stock options or anything else. Ponder that one. A flush of a suspicion freezes your gaze for a moment. Back to the Internet, take another look at that S&L, get to know the pre-history of Fenton Dawson's employer. At Gibralter Savings down in Dallas, there was this nasty business ...

"ROBERT STRAUSS, Dallas attorney; U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; friend of George Bush and former business partner with James A. Baker III; he and his son, Richard, were involved in a number of failed Texas S&Ls, including Lamar and Gibraltar." -
http://www.freewebs.com/ciascams/

Yes, "ciascams." Gibralter, like the other S&L heists of the '80s, was a CIA/Mafia operation.

CIA/Mafia, like ACS, with "prominent" friends at the pinnacles of both political parties. Dawson must have known many of them.

A little searching on the net turns up another interesting connection to ACS - the destruction of the World Trade Center, or at least the plotline. ACS approved the change in Mohammed Atta's visa status in the US from tourist to student, according to the testimony of Huffman Aviation CEO Rudy Dekkers, and Tom Blodgett, a managing director at ACS, before the Kean Commission.3

How far, exactly, was ACS involved in CIA business? The GovExec website reports, "in November 2003, Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. acquired a government contracts division of Affiliated Computer Services Inc., a smaller firm, headquartered in Dallas, with DEEP CONNECTIONS TO THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES."4 The very idea.

The intimate bond was apparent when it emerged that it was an ACS division purchased by Lockheed responsible for torture at Guantanamo Bay.5

What a busy little computer company.

One week before the Comair crash in Lexington, on August 20, 2006, the Associated Press released a story on the "ACS Bribery and Federal Contract Fixing" scandal: "Affiliated Computer Services Inc., one of the companies negotiating with the Family and Social Services Administration for a state welfare eligibility contract worth an estimated $1 billion over 10 years, formerly employed FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob." But most significantly, "Privately-owned" ES&S and Sequoia voting machine concerns are effectively controlled by the same company - Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of
Dallas, Texas."

And it was an election year, too.

While digging about, you will find an anonymous blogger who observes that ACS and ES&S are "a major player in providing technology services to the US court system, USPS, DOT, FCC, the US Senate, the White House, and several other government agencies.... What does this mean? It's an interesting concentration of power. If one controls the datastream of an organization, one has a great deal of knowledge of what it's really doing. Actually, in this case, it would be interesting to know the relationship between ACS and the GOP and/or the Bush family."6

Fenton Dawson was just the man to know all about that relationship. But he's dead ...
--

NOTES

1.)
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/15385951.htm?source=rss&channel=kentucky_news

2) Brewton,P. The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush, 1992,
p. 241.

3) Library of Congress release:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2002_h/hju78298_0.htm#7
- "TESTIMONY OF TOM BLODGETT, MANAGING DIRECTOR,
BUSINESS PROCESS SOLUTIONS, AFFILIATED COMPUTER
SERVICES, INC.," and "TESTIMONY OF RUDI DEKKERS, CEO,
HUFFMAN AVIATION INTERNATIONAL, INC."

4) Shane Harris, "Intelligence Inc.," May 15, 2005,
http://www.govexec.com/features/0505-15/0505-15s1.htm.

5)
http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/03-09-05/discussion.cgi.53.html.

6) Anon., "A Parable of the US 2000 Election,"
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/vote2000.html.

Monday, October 23, 2006

The Covert War Against Buffy Sainte-Marie

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.
cfm?id=1096413425

From: KOLA
Date: 08/05/06 13:47:47
Subject: [KOLANews] Buffy Sainte-Marie's censored sounds.

Buffy Sainte-Marie's censored sounds

Posted: August 05, 2006
by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today

PHOENIX - Nearly two decades after Cree singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie's song ''Universal Soldier'' was released and shipments of her records mysteriously disappeared, the truth of the censorship and suppression by the U.S. government became public.

Now, in federal court, Charles August Schlund III stated he is a covert operative and supports Sainte-Marie's assertions that the United States took action to suppress rock music because of its role in rallying opposition to the Vietnam War.

Sainte-Marie says she was blacklisted and, along with other American Indians in the Red Power movements, was put out of business in the 1970s.

''I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that [President] Lyndon Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationary praising radio stations for suppressing my music,'' Sainte-Marie said in a 1999 interview with
Indian Country Today at Dine' College.

''In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked,'' Sainte-Marie said.

In an affidavit to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit against President George W. Bush and others, Schlund alleged he has been tortured in his attempts to reveal the truth about the Bush family's manipulation of U.S. voting results and the Drug Enforcement Agency's covert drug supplies to black communities.

Detailing the assassinations of the Kennedys and exposing the ''Don Bolles'' papers, named after the murdered Phoenix news reporter, Schlund said he remains alive today because of FBI protection.

Schlund, who said he previously worked in the covert drug operations in Phoenix, said rock music posed a threat to the United States and played a role in opposition to the Vietnam War.

In his federal court affidavit, Schlund said he has knowledge of ''the detailed plans for the break-up and destruction of rock n' roll music including the assassinations of many people to achieve their goals. The detailed plans to replace rock n' roll music with all-American music called country western.''

''This massive CIA and DEA covert operation was being conducted to stop political overtones in the rock n' roll music and to stop foreign influences on Americans caused by the exposure to foreign music. This operation was conducted because the Rockefellers had lost the Vietnam War because of the protest that was in part directly linked with rock n' roll music. In these files, the Rockefellers had needed the natural resources of Vietnam for the expansion of their corporate empire and they blamed the loss of the war in part on rock n' roll music.

''The assassinations started long before Vietnam but the plans to replace rock n' roll with country western music started during the Vietnam War and have continued to the present,'' Schlund stated to the court.

In his federal court affidavits filed in Maricopa County in Arizona, Schlund also stated that singer Buddy Holly, killed in an airplane crash in 1959, was considered a threat to the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Sainte-Marie said she cut a singular path as she was being censored in the '60s and '70s.

''I usually didn't do what other people did. You didn't find me at peace marches. I was out in Indian country.''

Earlier, a young Bob Dylan heard Sainte-Marie sing in Greenwich Village and recommended she perform at the Gaslight, another hangout of the avant garde. Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley and Tracy Chapman were among those soon recording her lyrics. On the road, she traveled the world and received a medal from Queen Elizabeth II.

During this time, Sainte-Marie was selling more records than ever in Canada and Asia. But in the United States, her records were disappearing. Thousands of people at concerts wanted records. Although the distributor said the records had been shipped, no one seemed to know where they were.

One thing was for sure: They were not on record store shelves.

''I was put out of business in the United States.''

Later, Sainte-Marie discovered the censorship and pressure applied to radio stations by Johnson during the Vietnam era, particularly toward ''Universal Soldier'' during the anti-war movement.

Sainte-Marie said Native people were put out of business, not just because they were succeeding in Indian country, but because they were succeeding in the broader community. She and others were a threat to the moneymakers of concert halls, uranium and oil, she said.

Then, fellow activist and Santee poet John Trudell's wife, mother-in-law and children were burned to death in a mysterious house fire shortly after Trudell burned an American flag in Washington, D.C., Feb. 11, 1979.

''I was just one person put out of business. John Trudell is just another person whose life was put out of business. Anna Mae Aquash and Leonard Peltier were put out of the living business - we were made ineffective,'' Sainte-Marie said of slain American Indian Movement activist Aquash and imprisoned Peltier.

But Sainte-Marie continued with her music and efforts with children after becoming a familiar face on ''Sesame Street.'' In the 1990s, from her home in Hawaii, she created the Cradleboard Teaching Project to link American Indian students with other students online around the world.

Remembering the 1970s and Trudell, Sainte-Marie said, ''We just kept chugging on. We kept coming to Indian country. We didn't worry about the fortune and fame because we went with our sincerity, our hearts and with our friends.''

Those years, however, were filled with pain.

''It was hard - seeing people hurt,'' she said.
---
© 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today.

The Man Who Tried to BLOW UP Martin Luther King, Part One

"Gilbert's credentials were unorthodox, to say the least. He had a 1965 conviction for possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite, with which he had planned to blow up a stage where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was making a speech. ..."
---
http://www.komotv.com/news/
printstory.asp?id=35278

FBI Task Force Raids Two Seattle Homes
February 15, 2005
By Michelle Esteban

SEATTLE - Federal agents and Seattle police have arrested a known white supremacist who once spent time in prison for plotting to kill Martin Luther King Junior.

But now he's charged in connection with a Seattle federal gun raid. Two other Seattle men were also arrested.

FBI and The Federal Joint Terrorism Task Force searched two boarding houses in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood Tuesday morning, surprising tenants who live there, but are not connected to the charges.

"I heard police yelling in the house, next thing we know we've got SWAT with guns in our faces," said Ellen.

She was too afraid to give her full name, but says 65-yaer-old Keith Gilbert, a former leader in the Aryan Nations, is her landlord.

"All we ever heard from Keith is if you have problems, let us know. We have people who can take care of these things. (I) just thought it was an old man talking," says Ellen.

"My dad is not a terrorist," says Joshua Gilbert, Keith Gilbert's son. "We have property, we rent rooms to people, that's it."

But the FBI and terrorism task force says there's much more. They pulled countless assault rifles, semi automatic firearms and ammunition from Gilbert's basement. From his house alone, they confiscated more than 180 boxes of evidence.

KOMO 4 News crews counted nearly 100 rifles and hand guns. FBI agents arrested Keith Gilbert and federal prosecutors charged him with possession of two machine guns, two AK-47's and possession of an unregistered rifle.

"I'm not aware of any machine guns in the house, I don't own any, I don't know of him having any. If they found any, it would be a real surprise to me," says Joshua Gilbert.

Some neighbors said they weren't surprised. They said they've heard rumors, but never any proof.

"No, it's not real shocking to me, I know enough about the guy that it doesn't surprise me," says Mike Benneck, who works at a nearby fruit stand.

So far, only three suspects are in custody. But there could be more. While Gilbert faces gun-related charges, his neighbor William Heinrich, who rents a room in a boarding home across from Roosevelt High School, is also facing gun charges.

"We thought it was a little hinky that he had five locks on his door, ya know, didn't want anybody in his room ever," Ellen said of William Heinrich. FBI agents also found weapons in his room.

He and Gilbert are friends, but federal agents think they're business partners in an illegal gun ring.

"I never heard him dealing in guns or selling guns or doing anything like that at all," says Blake Sisley, a neighbor and business owner.

A third suspect, Preston Hejna, also of Seattle is charged with conspiracy to transfer five pounds of C4 plastic explosive that prosecutors said had no
detection agent.

Federal prosecutors say the suspects' motive was money, and do not believe the illegal firearms have any white supremacy connection.

If convicted, Gilbert is facing 50 years in prison. He and Heinrich are felons and not allowed to own firearms.

Wednesday, the FBI arrested a fourth suspect and is still looking for a fifth.
---------------------------
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
/html/localnews/2002182455_weapons17m.html
Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Two play key role in white supremacist's rise
By Maureen O'Hagan and Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporters

Property manager Keith Gilbert somehow managed to grab inordinate attention in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood even before his arrest Tuesday on federal weapons charges.

A key to Gilbert's influence in the neighborhood was his relationship with Hugh and Drake Sisley, two brothers who own dozens of properties in the area. The relationship has since soured, but the influence remains, neighbors say.

"The guy should have been a nobody, he should have been run out of town on a rail," said Pat Strosahl, former president of the Roosevelt Neighborhood
Association. "But they gave him a position of responsibility and allowed his thuggishness to essentially represent them."

On Tuesday, Gilbert, 65, was arrested for allegedly selling two machine guns to an informant working for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Federal agents also removed dozens of weapons and ammunition from his home.

Also Tuesday, Gilbert's friend and neighbor, William D. Heinrich, 50, was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Meanwhile, authorities arrested two more men — John Hejna and Alen J. Long — in a related case involving the sale of plastic explosives. A third man in that case, Barton Carter, is still at large.

Authorities said the arrests do not appear to be related to any plots.

Upon Gilbert's arrest, neighbors cheered. And they wondered what took authorities so long. Gilbert met the Sisleys about 15 years ago, when Hugh Sisley needed help managing his properties, according to Sisley's lawyer, David Vogel. The Sisley brothers owned three full blocks of the neighborhood, mostly single-family homes converted into multi-family units.

Hugh Sisley didn't return calls yesterday.

Gilbert's credentials were unorthodox, to say the least. He had a 1965 conviction for possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite, with which he had planned to blow up a stage where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was making a speech. In the 1980s, Gilbert was convicted in Idaho on charges related to sending hate mail to an adoption agency that placed black children with white families.

He became a devotee of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, although the two had a falling-out and Gilbert formed his own white-supremacist organization, the Socialist Nationalist Aryan People's Party.

In prison, Gilbert honed his skills as a jailhouse lawyer — which held a certain appeal for Hugh Sisley, Vogel said. Sisley saw himself as providing low-income housing that wasn't otherwise available in the neighborhood, and, as such, upkeep wasn't necessarily going to be part of the deal.

According to former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, the Sisleys became "legendary" for their run-down properties and resisted all efforts to bring them up to code.

Hugh Sisley saw in Gilbert a fellow outsider, someone who could help him fight off the encroachment of government into their business affairs, Vogel said.

Drake Sisley described Gilbert as "ornery," a man who was surprisingly good at navigating cyberspace and finding valuable bits of information about zoning codes and building laws. "He's not stupid, he's obnoxious," Drake Sisley said. "He's an in-your-face kind of guy."

The combination of dozens of run-down properties and Gilbert's criminal background caused no end of trouble, Sidran said. "Gilbert introduced a level of fear and intimidation into the relationships with tenants and with the neighbors," Sidran said. Gilbert would "yell in the middle of the back porch and just raise hell" if someone let a housing inspector into one of the Sisleys' properties, said Sonny Warner, who lived in a property Gilbert managed.

Gilbert walks with a limp, keeps his beard unruly and wears his hair long and straggly.

Acquaintances comment on his bad teeth, his confrontational personality and his racist beliefs. Other descriptions are even worse.

Neighbors say Gilbert's image was solidified by his walking around with a German shepherd and carrying a pistol.

Sometimes the intimidation was done through the courts. Gilbert sued tenants, building inspectors, city officials and neighbors, sometimes for millions of dollars. In one federal lawsuit, he claimed his constitutional rights had been violated when a city inspector stepped on his front porch. In another, he accused an inspector of breaking and entering, even though the inspector was invited in by a tenant. Another time, he claimed the city was carrying out "class warfare" in its inspection process.

Gilbert filed so many frivolous claims that U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein barred him from suing any city officials without her explicit permission. He then filed a lawsuit against her.

A similar prohibition was filed in Idaho a decade earlier.

Although the frivolous claims were ultimately dismissed, the strategy could be costly and stressful to those he sued.

Meanwhile, Hugh Sisley began to realize "he was making a lot of enemies" thanks to Gilbert, Vogel said. He also began to suspect he wasn't getting all the money he was due from Gilbert.

Drake Sisley had similar thoughts: "When he was taking care of my properties, he shoveled the problems aside, combined them and multiplied them."

The brothers in recent years have backed away from their relationship with Gilbert, Vogel and Drake Sisley said.

According to court papers, a man who lived near Gilbert agreed to wear a recording device and buy weapons from Gilbert as part of a federal
investigation into his activities. The informant, who is not identified in court papers, was Hugh Sisley's tenant, a man Sisley knew and trusted, according to Vogel.

"He [Hugh Sisley] finally realized Keith was taking advantage of him," Vogel said.

Gilbert remains in federal custody, charged with selling automatic weapons to an undercover informant and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
--------------------------
http://nord.twu.net/acl/dawsongilbert.html

Drastic changes to government are underway across the globe. By the year 2020 we will all be governed by a new system of law.

A common citizen's guide to the Emerging Supra-National Empire

What does Keith Gilbert have to do with the Dawson lawsuit?
by Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich, February 21, 2005

Appelate Brief for Dawson v. The City of Seattle

Keith Gilbert was a primary reason the appelate court ruled in favor of the Seattle Police Department's policy of detainment.

Update September 13, 2006:

Who is Neo-Nazi Keith Gilbert? Is it just a coincidence that Daniel Pipes links Gilbert and the Aryan Nation to Islamic jihad? We're getting lots of hits on this page again, is Keith Gilbert's name back in the news? (Why would someone from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation be looking for websites referring to Keith Gilbert?) If he's back in the news, I can't find anything recent. But I did find this excerpt from a chronicle called "Conspiracy Nation, Vol 1 #92."

There is an odd postscript to the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. A few days, in fact four days, after Malcolm X was assassinated, that was February 21st, 1965, there was an abortive attempt
to assassinate Martin Luther King as well. Martin Luther King was attending a movie in Los Angeles and police received a tip and they discovered a large
dynamite bomb at the theater, which had it gone off, would have certainly killed Dr. King and virtually anyone else in that theater. Eventually an American neo-Nazi named Keith Gilbert, was convicted of this assassination attempt on Martin Luther King. Gilbert maintained that while in prison, he was receiving support from very powerful forces. It later came to light that he was receiving money and that the individual he was receiving money from was a fellow named Loren Eugene Hall, himself a paramilitary white
right-winger and white-supremacist who had been one of the main informants for then Reagan legal-counselor Edwin Meese concerning the case of Edgar Eugene Bradley. Edgar Eugene Bradley was sought by Jim
Garrison in New Orleans in connection with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Edgar Eugene Bradley was a resident of the state of California. Garrison filed an extradition request, then deputy state attorney general Charles A. O'Brien (sp) reviewed the Garrison extradition request, recommended that it be granted. Activity on the Garrison extradition request for Bradley was delayed by then-governor Reagan until after Richard Nixon was elected president and then was turned down without comment. The Edgar Eugene Bradley extradition request was handled for Reagan by then Reagan legal advisor, legal counsellor Edwin A. Meese, who later, of course, became attorney general of the United States and who also was a highly ranked intelligence officer with the Army reserve, both then and now.

The guy who Ed Meese dealt with primarily was a former CIA operative in connection with the anti-Castro Cuban activities and a white-supremacist named Loren Eugene Hall, who in 1989 incidentally, was indicted for running a methamphetamine ring in Oklahoma. His son, Loren, Jr., who was also indicted and named in the indictment, stated at a press conference that the entire methamphetamine ring was being used to channel funding to the contras. That, by the way, from the Dallas Morning News of September 13th of 1989. It was this guy who was providing financial support to Keith Gilbert while he was in prison for having placed this huge dynamite bomb in an L.A. theater four days after Malcolm X was assassinated in New York. Now Keith
Gilbert eventually became one of the top lieutenants for Richard Gernt (sp) Butler, the head of the Aryan Nations compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. Later Keith Gilbert broke with Butler and established his own compound a few miles down the road.

Interesting enough, Keith Gilbert was linked to a fellow named Michael Wayne. Michael Wayne's name came up in connection with the assassination of Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. A Michael Wayne was known to have been at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, asking what route senator Kennedy was going to take to exit from his press conference. Michael Wayne was also
a very, very close, not a double, but he resembled very closely Sirhan Sirhan, the patsy in the Robert Kennedy assassination. The individual generally cited
by most investigators as actually having pulled the trigger on Robert Kennedy was a white supremacist named Thane Eugene Caesar who worked for Lockheed's Burbank facility, and specifically worked in the top
secret area associated with the CIA's U-2 project.

Oswald also was affiliated with the U-2. Caesar was working as a security guard for a security service in the Ambassador Hotel the night of the shooting. He was a documented white-supremacist and, again, he worked
in the Lockheed Burbank facility and another engineer in Lockheed Burbank was Richard Gernt Butler, one of whose top lieutenants was Keith Gilbert, whose name was linked in L.A.P.D. files to Michael Wayne, a Sirhan double, who was in the Ambassador Hotel. And again, it was Keith Gilbert who was convicted of this attempt on the life of Martin Luther King four days after Malcolm was killed. Not that that necessarily proves anything, but when you take those coincidences in combination with the enormous number of evidenciary tributaries linking various aspects of our assassinations and political assassinations, it is pretty clear that this is more than just coincidence, and I personally have always felt that the Keith Gilbert-Richard Gernt Butler-Thane Eugene Caesar, Malcolm X assassination-Martin Luther King assassination-Robert Kennedy assassination link has never been properly investigated.

It is also worth noting that the people who brought the Sirhan family into the United States were college friends and political associates of Richard Nixon, who was a prime beneficiary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the director for security for Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign was a fellow named James Golden, who was on leave from his position as director of
security for the Lockheed Corporation, at which Thane Eugene Caesar was employed. And again, that does not prove anything either, but when you examine this country's political assassinations, be it the assassinations of the Kennedys or Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X, Incidentally there is an echo which comes forward right to this day. One of the main civil rights leaders of the early '60s, Medgar Evers (sp) the field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he was assassinated in 1963, a few months before Kennedy was assassinated. A white-supremacist named Byron de La Beckwith (sp) has been indicted for his assassination and is going to stand trial. He has been able to wiggle out of this so far. When Byron de La Beckwith was seeking to avoid indictment for the assassination of Medgar Evers, much of his political support came from former Major General Edwin Walker. Edwin Walker had been a divisional commander in Germany and was replaced by John Kennedy because Edwin Walker was violating Army regulations by obliging his troops to study the "Blue Book" of the John Birch Society. It is a violation of U.S. military regulations to force your troops to study political doctrine. Edwin Walker was fired by John Kennedy. He then came to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area where he became a protege of H.L. Hunt and in the fifth volume of the 26 volumes of Warren Commission testimony and exhibits, it is revealed, or it is documented that, Edwin Walker's John Birch Society cell was used as a vehicle for bringing military intelligence agents over from Munich, Germany to operate at the field level in the assassination of John Kennedy.

More...

Based on Gilbert's reputation, the City originated the "our cops are wimps" line of defense in Dawson. The Dawson clients did not live in a Keith house. The City's attorneys claimed Seattle COPS were either so afraid of Gilbert they had to take all his neighbors at Todd's houses hostage.. or .. they're so afraid of everyone they have to take everyone hostage. The Dawson raid was a training exercise in "serving warrants." According to Seattle's training notes from Tacoma Cares, detainment is a routine method of accompanying inspectors on searches if gangs are suspected.

Keith Gilbert used the handle "Diesal". I suspected it when I began following his posts on a Gun discussion board that led people to us. He said he was from Seattle, and I suspected it was him, even though the style of writing was nothing like the insane babbling he wrote in all his lawsuits against Seattle government.I found it disturbing that Gilbert was introducing my work on communitarianism, a topic about which he knows nothing. Unlike the Gilbert I knew,"Diesal" seemed to have a much better grasp of
English, he appeared quite literate. Like Etzioni (another former terrorist), Gilbert does not appear to have written everything he put his name on. One member from the forum where he linked to us pasted in the federal charges against Gilbert.