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From: dave@ratmandu.corp.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.conspiracy
Subject: the INSLAW case: more on Wackenhut
Keywords: Hitler's rise to power succeeded through the use of private ar-
mies
Message-ID: <1991Oct15.160142.29417@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 15 Oct 91 16:01:42 GMT
Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 180
The Wackenhut Corporation: the maturation of "private" government.
Wackenhut's Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black
told the "Washington Times"' Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: "We
are similar to a private FBI." The company's board of directors
reads like a who's who of the intelligence community.
from "The First Stone" column of the Sept. 18-24 1991 issue of "In These
Times":
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Scandal Gates
By Joel Bleifuss
As CIA Director-designate Robert Gates pleads ignorance to knowledge
of CIA misdeeds before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week,
the lawmakers might do well to remember his sworn testimony of March
March 6, 1986. At the time, CIA Director William Casey had
nominated Gates for the number-two position at the agency. In an
effort to impress the senators considering his nomination, Gates
said: "[Casey] and I have consulted extensively, even in my present
position [as deputy director for intelligence] in all areas of
intelligence policy including not just analysis and estimates but
also organization, budgeting and covert action. I will now have a
formal role in all of these areas."
If Gates really had "a formal role in all of these areas"--which
appears likely--he certainly knows more than he has let on. And
someone should ask Gates what he knows about the Wackenhut
Corporation of Coral Gables, Fla.
As the Wackenhut letterhead puts in, the company provides
"security systems and services throughout the world." As
Wackenhut's Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black
told the "Washington Times"' Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: "We
are similar to a private FBI." The company's board of directors
reads like a who's who of the intelligence community. In 1984, for
example, former Deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman, currently one of
Gates' main boosters in Washington, was a director of the company.
And among those on the 1983 board were two former FBI special
agents, one retired Air Force general, one former commander in chief
of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), one former
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former CIA Director
William Rabor, Nixon-appointed FBI Director Clarence Kelly and
former CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci (who would later become
Ronald Reagan's national security adviser). Further, the 1983 board
included Robert Chasen, a former FBI special agent who was Carter's
commissioner of customs until 1980, when he became a vice president
of Wackenhut. Also in 1980, soon-to-be CIA chief William Casey
served as Wackenhut's outside legal counsel--the same year he
managed the Reagan-Bush election campaign.
ON THE RESERVATION: It was in 1980 that Wackenhut began working
closely with Southern California's Cabazon Indians and their tribal
administrator John Philip Nichols. The "San Francisco Chronicle"'s
Jonathan Littman reported this month that Nichols, a white American
who spent years in South American, has boasted to friends about
working on the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro and the
successful assassination of Salvador Allende.
The Cabazons hired Nichols as their administrator in 1978.
Littman reports that thanks to Nichols' connections and
grantsmanship, "federal and state agencies are helping to finance
nearly $250 million worth of projects on the 1,700-acre reservation"
belonging to the 30-member Cabazon tribe. According to Littman,
these projects include a HUD and mafia-financed casino, a 1,800-unit
housing complex and a $150 million waste incinerator/power plant
that was built with tax-exempt state bonds.
But most intriguing is the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture, which
began in 1980 when the tribe was asked to design a security system
for Crown Prince Fahd's palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia. This was
followed by Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture proposals to develop
biological weapons for the Pentagon and assemble night-vision
goggles for the Guatemalan and Jordanian governments.
Why was a security firm so interested in working with a small
tribe of native Americans? One good reason can be found in a May
26, 1981, inter-office memo from Wackenhut executive Robert Frye to
the above-mentioned Robert Chasen. Frye described an 11-day
business trip with Nichols "to explore the apparent potential for
the Cabazon-Wackenhut joint venture." Frye wrote that the
reservation has "several key ingredients necessary" for a weapons
plant, including "lack of opposition by adjacent governing bodies
and `irate citizens' over the siting of such a facility."
John Philip Nichols is no longer officially running the
reservation. According to Littman, son Mark Nichols is the tribal
administrator while the elder Nichols serves as a "mental-health
counselor to Cabazon reservation employees." John Philip Nichols
lost his job because federal law prohibits convicted felons from
running casinos.
In January, 1985, Nichols was sentenced to four years in prison
for capital solicitation of murder. He served 19 months. No one
was killed in that murder-for-hire scheme. However, in 1981, Alfred
Alvarez, a Cabazon Indian tribal vice president, and two non-Indians
were murdered execution style. Alvarez's sister Linda Streeter
Dukic says her brother and his friends died because they were about
to expose mismanagement on the Cabazon reservation. Mike Kataoka of
the Palm Springs "Press-Enterprise" reports that in 1985, when
Nichols was arrested for hiring the hitman, the U.S. Justice
Department was investigating his possible involvement in those 1981
deaths. No charges were ever filed.
ANOTHER MURDER? The Cabazon/Wackenhut connection was of particular
interest to Danny Casolaro, the Washington-based journalist who was
found dead in the Martinsburg, W. Va., Sheraton on August 10 (see
"The First Stone," Sept. 4 [an earlier post in this on-line
series]). Casolaro's friends, family and professional associates
fear he was murdered--and that the crime was related to his
investigations into a series of corporate and governmental scandals.
Casolaro's brother, Anthony, told the Washington-based "Corporate
Crime Reporter," "Danny was trying to track monies Wackenhut spent
and what Danny found was that [Wackenhut] had ear-marked a half
million dollars for what they call `research.'"
Anthony Casolaro said that the money "ties in Wackenhut with this
Indian reservation and organized crime and CIA guys . . . Those
same people showed up with Inslaw and one of them shows up in the
October Surprise."
The "October Surprise" was the alleged campaign deal between Iran
and the 1980 Reagan campaign to delay the release of the U.S.
hostages held in Tehran (see "In These Times," June 24, 1987, Oct.
12, 1988 and April 27, 1991).
"Inslaw was Inslaw Inc. of Washington D.C.--a firm that has
brought suit in federal court, charging that the Reagan Justice
Department stole the company's Promis case-management software
program. Two judges has thus far ruled in the company's favor. The
suit is still in the courts (see "In These Times," May 29, 1991
["Software Pirates," an earlier on-line post in this series]).
Earlier this year, Inslaw further alleged that the Justice
Department turned the stolen software over to Earl Brian, a friend
of both former President Ronald Reagan and former Attorney General
Edwin Meese. Inslaw charges that the software was a payback for
Brian's help in arranging the October Surprise. Former Israeli
intelligence agent Ari Ben-Menashe alleges that Brian--now the head
of United Press International--was directly involved in arranging
the 1980 deal. Ben-Menashe claims that Brian "worked very closely"
on the deal with Robert Gates, who was then a top CIA official.
NO JUSTICE: Wackenhut is also linked to the Inslaw scandal.
Michael Riconosciuto--a weapons-systems designer and software
specialist--was director of research for the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint
venture in the early '80s. In a March 1991 affidavit for the Inslaw
case, Riconosciuto claimed that "in connection with [Riconosciuto's]
work for Wackenhut," he modified the stolen Promis software for
foreign sales. "Earl W. Brian made [the software program] available
to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who
was then a Department of Justice contracting official with
responsibility for the Promis software."
Videnieks, a former Customs Service official under Commissioner
Chasen, served in the Justice Department from 1981 through 1990. In
his affidavit, Riconosciuto said Videnieks had threatened to
retaliate against Riconosciuto if he cooperated with a House
Judiciary Committee probe of the Inslaw case. Seven days after
filing the affidavit (which was not, technically, part of the
committee investigation), Riconosciuto was arrested on drug-selling
charges. He is now in a Seattle jail awaiting trial.
PRIVATE SPIES The 1980s were a decade of privatization. As a for-
profit intelligence service, Wackenhut appears to have taken on the
kind of work that in earlier years the FBI and CIA would have done
(and still do), albeit illegally.
On the environmental-crime front, Wackenhut is now the object of
an investigation by the House Interior Committee. Early in 1990,
the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a consortium of seven oil
companies that run the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, hired Wackenhut to
spy on environmentalists, whistleblowers and other oil company
critics. Wackenhut tactics included setting up a phoney
environmental organization and having agents pose as reporters. It
is alleged in press reports that the company also monitored Rep.
George Miller (D-CA) whose house subcommittee has been investigating
environmental crimes allegedly committed by the consortium which is
composed of British Petroleum, Exxon, ARCO, Phillips, Unocal, Mobil
and Amerada Hess.
--
daveus rattus
yer friendly neighborhood ratman
KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life
in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating.
5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.