From: jd@homxc.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: CHRISTIC REVEALS C.I.A.'s TREASON, Condoned by Congress & Mass Media
Keywords: Christic Institute, CIA Director Gates, CIA crime wave
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:25:09 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

Kerry Miller made the following transcript from an off-the-air tape 
recording which I made of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
                         WBAI-FM (99.5)
                         505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                         New York, NY 10018    (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
This is Undercurrents, with Robert Knight in New York. Today we'll
be looking into the beginning of the hearings of Robert Gates for
Central Intelligence Agency Director with the man who correctly
predicted his nomination, Daniel Sheehan of the Christic
Institute... He now joins us from Washington, where he is the lead
attorney for the Christic Institute, which will be familiar to
listeners for its work on the Iran Contra affair, the sanctuary
movement, the dirtier moves towards fascism in this country, and
the clandestine control of populations here and abroad.
       Danny, this is the beginning of the week for the hearings on
Robert Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence. In today's
"New York Times," Senator Boren says he is among those who have not
made an "early negative judgement;" that there is no "smoking gun."
What is your estimate of this nomination?

DANIEL SHEEHAN:
The difficulty in these nominations is in trying to relate
objective reality to the fictions -- and fantasies -- that the
executive branch projects, which many members of Congress are
prerfectly willing to endorse even though they know that they are
false.
       That, of course, is what the entire realm of the CIA is all
about, so the objective reality of this is perfectly clear: Robert
Gates was intimately involved in covering up, concealing, and lying
to the United States Congress about the activities of the CIA in
supporting the illegal weapons to the Contras, and, of course, in
selling arms to the Iranians, to the Hezballah, and also the
diversion of profits from the TOW missiles to the Contras.
       All of these are major issues that any logical body that
was analysing Robert Gates would cause to reject him, but the fact
of the matter is, that many of the same facts are obtained with regard
to Donald Gregg, the National Security advisor to George Bush when
he was Vice-President. When the information which was objectively
put forth for the Senate showed that he was directly involved in
helping to supervise the criminal weapons shipments to the Contras,
and had lied regularly about it, they went ahead in the Senate and
confirmed him anyhow, saying such bizarre things as, "Don Gregg
told as much of the truth as he could, under the circumstances" or
"No evidence of an admissible nature will surface in any criminal
trial to show that he was guilty of criminal conduct, so since the
Vice-President has assured us that he didn't do this, we'll have to
nominate [sic] him." That is the major problem! one could go on at
some length, laying out the objective evidence showing that Robert
Gates was thoroughly involved in this, that he knew about it and
lied.
       I happen to be in a personal position of knowing for an
absolute certainty that he knew, because I personally briefed Ken
Ferguson, who was deputy to Bob Gates, on April 14, 1986, in great
detail about the illegal weapons shipments, the involvement of
high-level CIA officials, and named Vincent Canistrero of the CIA
as being intimately involved in all of this. Ken Ferguson went
right to Bob Gates and briefed him in detail. Gates was then named
Deputy Director [of Operations] of the CIA on April 17, and he
still maintained that he was never told about any of this.
       So I know that he was told, and I know that he was
intimately involved in it. I know that he personally participated
in constructing the falsified and altered chronology that was
presented by Bill Casey to the US Intelligence Committees shortly
before the scandal was exposed. So objectively, all these pieces of
data would make it perfectly clear that any legislative body with
any integrity would have to reject Robert Gates. Now when we're
talking about a legislative body possessing integrity, we're not
necessarily talking about the present US Senate, as we can of
course see from the fact that they're getting ready to ratify the
nomination of Clarence Thomas, despite his transparent lack of
abilities and competence to hold the post of Supreme Court
Justice.
       What we have to realize is that the American people need to
rise up and need to send massive amounts of telegrams to the US
Senators who are on the intelligence committee, and in the general
Senate, saying, "Look, we know positively that Robert Gates was
involved in the Contra operation. We know for certain, to a moral
certainty, that he was lying to the US Congress. For you to ratify
this man is a breach of your Constitutional oath of office."

ROBERT KNIGHT:
Danny, lets get this completely on the record. You've just made
a couple of startling statements: that you briefed his deputy, that
his deputy informed him of the Iran-Contra affair several years
ago. Let's go into that some more. Exactly what did you tell him,
when, and what evidence do you have that he was involved in the
falsification of the chronology and otherwise a liar to Congress?

DANIEL SHEEHAN:
Okay. Here's how this went, Robert. When we were developing this
evidence, as you know we had talked with a number of pilots who had
flown weapons for the Contras who had given us great details about
having met Felix Rodriguez, in being authorized to ship the
weapons in to the Contras. We had major details about this
operation.
       I was working with a man by the name of Eugene Wheaton,
a thirty-year veteran of US Army Criminal Intelligence. He was,
in fact, a Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army CID. He had been
intimately involved with the Contras. He had been brought in to
supply aircraft to the Contras to move military equipment from US
territory. He had discovered that Richard Secord was intimately
involved in running the air operations to the Contras, working
with Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, and Rob Owen, and Oliver
North. He had tried to advise those people that Secord was a
criminal and that they should not be involved with him; that
Richard Secord had been guilty of skimming millions of dollars off
the sale of weapons to the Middle East, back when he was Deputy
Comptroller of the Defense Security Assistance Agency; when he was
in the Air Force, and therefore they should not have a man of this
nature involved in the operation.
       You'll note that Eugene Wheaton did not disagree with
pursuing the operation. He was a supporter of the Contras. He just
didn't want someone he perceived to be a criminal at the top of the
operation skimming money. As he began to be more vociferous with
these people about rejecting Richard Secord, he was himself forced
out of the organization because they wanted to have Secord in
there. He then began to talk.
       He brought the information to me. I discussed it and had it
independently investigated and verified, and then he met with a
man, Carl Jenkins. Jenkins was the former CIA case officer for
Felix Rodriguez -- in fact the original case officer before Donald
Gregg -- and this man set up a special meeting at his "safe house"
out in Virginia, out by Langley, on the morning of April 14, 1986,
so that I could meet with Kenneth Ferguson, deputy to Bob Gates.
Gates had already been designated as the man who was going to be
made the new DDO -- actually a full Deputy Director of the Agency,
under Bill  Casey -- so we thought it was essential to brief Bob
Gates, to make certain that he understood there were high-level
Agency officials directly and criminally engaged in smuggling
weapons to the Contras. [This was] in blatant violation of the
Boland Amendment, which had been passed in 1984, prohibiting any
CIA officials or agents from giving any aid to the Contras, either
direct or indirect. Since this was such a blatant defiance of a
direct command from the US Congress, we suggested those [acts] were
similar to acts of treason, to be supporting some military
operation that had been expressly condemned by the US Government.
       We met with Ken Ferguson, in the safe house on Vermont
Avenue, out by Langley. In the meeting were Kenneth Ferguson and
myself. Eugene Wheaton also attended, and Carl Jenkins and a woman
by the name of Elizabeth Jenkins, who was a colonel -- a colonel at
that time in the CIA (when I had to become a full general)
who was in charge of the Psychological Evaluation Division. I
talked with her and all of them about this at great length, about
the details of all of this, describing Vincent Canistrero's
involvement (a high level CIA official,) the involvement of
Oliver North, and Rob Owen who had previously been chief
legislative aide for Senator Danforth Quayle. I told them that we
at Christic Institute were going to be filing a major Federal
Racketeering Act lawsuit.
       I told them that Robert Gates, coming in, should take
responsibility for removing all of the officials or agents who were
functioning in this criminal enterprise. We at Christic had no
intention of trying to climb over the top of the CIA, of having the
Justice Department come in to defend all the people involved. We
wanted the network stopped.

[The tape of the interview is interrupted at this point.]
                    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

|{hm        Kerry Miller   <ASTINGSH@KSUVM.BITNET>

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

    These treasonous, anti-democratic CIA criminals 
    assassinated our President, sent fifty-eight thousand compatriots 
    of my generation to be slaughtered needlessly in Vietnam, and, 
    along with the PRIVATE Wackenhut Security Corporation Gestapo force, 
    are illegally tracking and arranging to incarcerate lawful American
    dissidents into detention camps under Ollie North's unConstitutional
    Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

    If you value your human liberties -- your Constitutional rights -- 
    and if you're concerned about the liberties and rights of your 
    children and/or your children-to-be, then your conscience must dictate   
    that you oppose this fascist tide that is sweeping away the edifice 
    of our two hundred-year-old democracy, like an ocean wave might 
    sweep away a sand castle.

    Tell the Christic Institute that you support their efforts to
    defend our laws and the Constitution upon which they rest.
    Tell it to:

                 Daniel Sheehan, Lead Attorney
                 The Christic Institute
                 1324 North Capitol St., N.W.
                 Washington, D.C. 20002

John DiNardo
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
If we seriously listen to this "God within us" ["conscience",
if you will], we usually find ourselves being urged to take the
more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less.
.... Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold
back from this work. .... Like every one of our ancestors before
us, we are all lazy. So original sin does exist; it is our laziness.

                                        M. Scott Peck
                                   THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive