Tag Archives: william colby

Was Pegasus behind the murder of Bill Colby?

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Links added on May 15, 2013

[I think I originally had links, but they seem to have vanished so I’m adding them back.]

Update:

Journalist Christopher Ruddy has also written about the death of Bill Colby while he (Colby) was employed at “Strategic Investment” a newsletter edited at the time by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg and thus affiliated to Agora Inc.

[Note: the passage “edited…..and thus” was added on May 15, 2013].

Ruddy, an investigative journalist, was originally hired by SI’s James Dale Davidson to investigate the Vince Foster murder death [corrected, May 15, 2013], which Davidson believed was linked to Bill Clinton.

[May 15, 2013 Clarification: Ruddy was funded by right-leaning financier Andrew Mellon Scaife, who later backed NewsMax, the publishing company, of which Ruddy later became the CEO. He was also backed by Joseph Farah, founder of the  conservative Western Journalism Center. But it was Davidson who funded and circulated Ruddy’s influential video of the Foster death, Unanswered: The Death of Vincent Foster.”]

In writing about Colby’s death, Ruddy implies that there is significance in Colby joining SI. He believed SI gained a high profile by carrying the DCI’s name and gave Colby’s name greater recognition. Colby had already annoyed Agency staff by his revelations about past CIA misdeeds. Ruddy seems to imply that Colby’s death had something to do with this.

What Ruddy doesn’t mention is that there is equal evidence that others in government had as much motive to silence Colby as Clinton did, for example, figures like Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig.

Haig was on the board of News Max, of which Ruddy was at one time is [May 15 – correction] the chief editor and CEO.

Whether Colby’s arrival at SI lent it credibility and thus lent credibility to Davidson’s and Ruddy’s accusations against Clinton, who then had Colby terminated; or whether Colby was killed because of Operation Red Rock, by those who ordered that operation (Nixon, Kissinger, Haig); or whether the reason lies elsewhere,  Colby was evidently murdered, and did not commit suicide, as a son of his, Carl Colby [added, May 15, 2013], now conveniently claims.

Yet another theory is that the Agency itself assassinated Colby to prevent further disclosures about certain illegal CIA operations around the time of Watergate.

Then there is the theory that Colby was taking an interest in the bizarre pedophile ring that John De Camp has written about. (See also this summary of the Franklin investigation). I admit to having a liking for this one.

Finally, some people theorize that Colby’s killing arose from the Aldrich Ames spy case.

Colby, it is claimed,  was himself spying for the Soviets and it was the FBI that disposed of him to spare themselves the embarrassment of a trial.

That would make FBI director Louis Freeh the culprit.

Not being an expert in CIA history, I am hardly qualified to judge the probability of any of these no doubt entertaining tales.

It’s not the villainy that appalls me, really.

Villains one comes across everywhere.

It’s the complete pointlessness of it all. What exactly was accomplished by espionage besides provoking more conflict and retaliation from other countries?

Nothing that couldn’t have been learned by good analysis.

Further comment:

I should state, off the bat, that I am thoroughly unsympathetic to Bill Colby, beyond the sympathy one feels toward anyone who is assassinated.

The man supervised and put through the most horrendous operations (Gladio, Phoenix, MKUltra) all in the name of the government.

He was, at very best, a deluded fool.

Given his position at the top of the intelligence services, he was much more likely to have been fully immersed in evil actions as a high-functioning sociopath, despite his religious leanings.

So, as is usually the case in politics,  both sides (the top brass who likely hunted him down and he himself),  are equally repugnant to normal human beings.

ORIGINAL POST

In “Deep Black Lies” David Guyatt describes the formation of the secretive “Pegasus” group, a cover for a deep intelligence group (Operations Sub Group) emerging out of President’s Reagan’s National Security Defense Directive No. 138 (NDSS-138) in Feb 1986.

The OSG had 3 parts: OSG 1 (anti-narcotics, headed by Ted Shackley); OSG 2 (anti-terrorism, headed by Colonel Oliver North, and, after North’s exposure in Contra-gate, by Richard Secord); OSG 3 (“alignment” – i.e.  assassinations to take care of potential problems, by Richard Secord and then Tatum).

The groups reported to the CIA, the FBI, the NSC, the DoD, MI6, Israeli intelligence, George Bush, and a British peer with expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, Lord Chalfont.

Pegasus was responsible for multiple covert operations, including the Superbills Sting, a deal between Iranian leadership, VP George Bush (a former CIA director), and Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The sting involved depositing $8 billion from the Iranians in drug-lord Pablo Escobar’s bank; then, exchanged half of that sum for twice the number of counterfeit bills from the Iranians (courtesy of a printing press and bank quality paper  gifted to the Shah years earlier).

At the end of some clever machinations, the Iranians were supplied with arms by Colonel Oliver North, the counterfeits were left safely in Escobar’s account, and Bush got a real loan on the back of the counterfeit deposit. That money he laundered through a series of banks, including the Vatican bank, to pay off various covert operations around the world.

That left President Bush finally with $3.8 billion, which went to fund the espionage, surveillance, and research apparatus of the coming New World Order.

Central to the new order would be the global drug trade, which would be in the hands of senior people in 11 different countries. In the US, the names included Bill Casey, Bill Colby, Bush, Kissinger, Haig, Secord, Gregg, North, Clinton, and others.

The most fascinating part of the story for me, however, was Tatum’s interactions with Bill Colby, the former CIA director, turned Agora Inc.  newsletter publisher, who had brought Tatum in as a deep cover agent decades earlier.

Before Tatum’s induction into the agency, Colby was CIA Saigon station chief and was organizing a highly confidential operation at the direction of the White House.

Nixon planned to withdraw from SE Asia, because of the unpopularity of the war domestically.

Afraid that the withdrawal would leave a power vacuum into which the North Vietnamese would rush (those were the days of the “domino” theory), he hoped to strengthen the resolve of local Cambodian forces under Lon Nol, against the N. Vietnamese forces, by staging a false-flag attack on military, air and civil installations in Phnom Penh, leaving behind as decoy the bodies of some North Vietnamese “Sappers.”

They would be brought in there and sacrificed by a super secret agency group, Team Red Rock.

What Red Rock members, including Tatum, were not told, was that they too were to be sacrificed. No word was to ever go back home about such a radioactive operation.

But the Red Rock team managed to spot the treachery in advance and escaped, hoping to get back to the Vietnamese border. It wasn’t to be. Their numbers thinning, they ran into the North Vietnamese and ended up tortured by Chinese and Russian interrogators.

Tatum was one of only two who survived. He was debriefed by Bill Colby, who then inducted him into the CIA, to protect him from what he claimed were powerful enemies in DC, i.e., Nixon, Kissinger and the rest of the top brass, from whom the whole criminal adventure had originated.

For the next ten years, Tatum was stationed all over the country at bases like Fort Bragg (Green Berets) and others, safe under the mentoring of Colby.

Then, when Colby retired, he called Tatum and told him to deactivate, claiming he would be in danger without his old boss to look out for him.

Tatum left and was involved in civilian life for a while, until reactivated on orders from above into the US army and from there to Special Forces aviation, through which he became involved in confidential business in the Grenada invasion.

Tatum was contacted again by Colby in 1983 and assigned a role in flying for Oliver North’s “Enterprise” – the whole-sale shipment of cocaine from Latin America (from the Colombian cartels), in return for gun-running to the Nicaraguan Contras.  The Mena airforce shipments during the Clinton era were part of this. Tatum was apparently ignorant of the actual nature of what he was shuttling back and forth. He claims he was also used by another covert group, Pegasus, at the same time.

But soon he realized the dangers and to safeguard himself started keeping records of his activities. Around the same time, he was given a list of the important figures in the global drug-trade by Barry Seal, a pilot from “Enterprise,” based in Mena airport in Arkansas. Seal later turned DEA informant and was killed, allegedly by the Colombian mafia, as retaliation for exposing it.

Before Clinton’s inauguration, Bush pardoned many of those in his circle who were likely to face prosecution imminently.

“In a very real sense, Chip Tatum’s story has now gone full circle. In March 1996, Tatum wrote to former Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby. Readers will recall that it was Colby who originally recruited Tatum into the CIA in 1971 and set him on his career as a covert intelligence operator. Since that time, Tatum developed a fondness for the super-spook, and Colby, in turn, played the role of mentor. In his letter, Tatum asked Colby to write a foreword for his book, Operation Red Rock, which he had completed just two months earlier. But there was another purpose in writing to the former DCI.

Four years earlier, when Tatum resigned his OSG command, he had volunteered to plead guilty on a felony charge in order to discredit himself. This was part of Tatum’s strategy of survival, as he was aware that one didn’t resign this particular team and remain alive for long. The fact that he had collected a body of evidence (including video and audio tapes and other related documentation) as ‘life insurance’, gave muscle to his negotiation. At that time he had not planned to reveal any of the details that he has now provided. In the event, his offer was taken up and he served a prison sentence of just over one year. That is where matters should have ended.

However, having served his sentence-thus complying with his part of the agreement-both Tatum and his wife, Nancy, were subsequently arrested and charged with another misdemeanour [sic]. Tatum got angry. His letter to Colby stated: “I have always kept my word with you. I told you that I would discredit myself. I don’t need your help to accomplish this. But to charge Nancy with a crime, and expect me to allow this, is beyond my comprehension.” He angrily continued: “I know that North and Rodríguez are the fuel for this, but haven’t you warned them that I wouldn’t sit still for this?” He then added: “I do not blame you for this; I am disappointed that you have allowed the ‘Pond Scum’ to control you!”

There then followed a warning: “The second book that I have already started will contain my movements from 1980 through today. I will not only write about the missions but about the NWO [New World Order] timetable and planned events including a chronology.” Ominously he added: “And I will name names. You must detach yourself from these people!”

Tatum then continued by outlining how he would enter evidence for his forthcoming trial and warning that if disallowed for reasons of classification, then “a Special Prosecutor will be required to investigate the information, and the videotape tells no lies.” He added: “I also had stills and an audio clip of a meeting added to the video. Out of respect for you I have kept your name out to this point, but if you don’t separate yourself from these terrorists I will have no choice but to reveal your involvement also. Either way, the group will be exposed-by the media or by the investigating committee. Either way, they’re out of gas!” Tatum closed the letter by saying: “Mr Colby-you’ve done too much for your country to be disgraced in the manner that these men will be.”

Less than two months later, the former DCI was reported missing. By Monday 6 May 1996, Colby’s body was found. It was later reported that Colby died following a “canoeing” accident on the Wicomico River, Maryland. Tatum and many others (including this writer) doubt this. Throughout his life, Colby had an all-abiding fear of water. It would have been entirely out of character for him to step voluntarily into a boat, let alone a canoe.

Despite this, Colby’s death officially remains an accident. This has come as no special surprise to Tatum, who recently stated to this writer: “I knew the OSG were bulletproof when one of our targets, a 25-year-old, was reported to have died of a heart attack. His name was Al-Jarrah.” That, however, is another story.

POSTSCRIPT

At 3 pm on Friday 4 April 1997-shortly after publication of Part 1 of this article-Chip Tatum was roused from a mid-afternoon snooze and told to report to the warden of his prison. He was informed that he was being released-less than midway through his 27-month sentence-with immediate effect, following an appellate court decision that found his conviction by Judge Adams to be illegal.”

Doug Valentine On The Empire of The Lie

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Douglas Valentine, author of several masterful books on national security and the CIA, talks to Susan Mazur about Tim Weiner´s new book on the CIA (“Legacy of Ashes”), the nexus of finance and espionage, and the propaganda campaign that lets Americans think the CIA is a force for good.

Here´s a snippet:

“Most of what Weiner writes about the CIA is already known. It’s a history book with a bias, not an expose, at least not for the Vietnam generation. He doesn’t even really get into the current Bush administration. He gives us a predictable treatment of William Casey and the Contras, when there was an incredible revival of the CIA under Casey.”

And that´s precisely what I´d say about exposes that appear in establishment outlets, even if they seem to be literary and anti-establishment (Vanity Fair, New York Times, even,  perhaps Rolling Stone, although much less so). They are less about exposing as about controlling the terms of the discourse, that is, the boundaries within which discussion can take place.

Another insight from Valentine:

“Angleton thought William Colby might be a mole. Angleton exposed the divisions within the CIA after 1966, the Colby vs. Helms factions. He also represented the literary sensibility the CIA once had, where finding secrets was like teasing the meaning out of a poem. Now we have sledgehammer spies.”

(Colby, by the way, died in a ‘boating accident’ in Maryland, on the day that a prosecutor got permission to set up a grand jury to probe the death of Frank Olson, who was involved in chemical warfare research and had been one of the subjects of the CIA´s mind control experiments. The CIA claimed Olson jumped to his death from a hotel window, although his injuries, according to the autopsy, could as well have been inflicted by a blunt instrument. I should note that at the time of his death in 1996 Colby´s name was being used on the letter head of Strategic Investments, a publication of Agora Inc. (co-owned by my co-author), according to several reports, although I can´t confirm to my satisfaction the exact status of that association. Several unconfirmed reports also link Colby to knowledge about the death (or killing, according to some) of White House deputy counsel, Vincent Foster, a preoccupation at the time, of Agora co-founder James Davidson)

More from Douglas Valentine:

“The CIA gets oodles of money from the arms business. Most of their income comes from criminal activity.

The Russian Mafia operates with a sort of impunity. And so does the Israeli Mafia. And one of the reasons they have this sort of impunity is that they’re sharing their profits with the CIA.

And I think a lot of CIA money is capital investments. They’re like movie producers. They want to overthrow the Iraqi government, they go to companies like Halliburton and others who are going to profit from the overthrow of Iraq. And like the executive producers of some movie, they get them to ante-up some cash. Telling them, don’t worry about it, the government contracts you get in return will cover your investment. Plus they have the old boy network – which now is so far flung.

Suzan Mazur: Plus some of the military contractors are organized crime and have had contracts since the 50s.

Doug Valentine: Exactly. Which bring us back to Barry Seal (Iran-Contra). Because in 1972, Barry Seal was to fly some arms and some explosives into Mexico. What the Brooklyn Drug Task Force found out is that this guy named Murray Kessler, who was involved with the Gambino family in Brooklyn, had an arms manufacturing company in New Jersey where the guns and the bombs came from.

Suzan Mazur: And some of these arms merchants also had security clearance during the McNamara and Clifford years of heading the Defense Department. They make weapons for the US government and some for whoever they feel like.

Doug Valentine: From my perspective, the spy industry and especially the arms industry, is the foundation on which the American empire is built. The United States has a military budget of I think $300 billion dollars and the CIA budget is like $50 billion – that’s a year. Together that’s bigger than the gross national product of any country in the world. And in the meantime we’re worried about 20 guys in Al-Qaeda.

[Lila: This statement is inaccurate, as both GDP and GNP in most developed countries were near or over a trillion in 2007. See current figures here. I think the author might have been misquoted on this and might have meant “many countries,”  for example, in the developing world. However, projections for 2010 place US military spending in excess of 1 trillion, if all military-related expenditures are included).

Continuing with the interview:

“Suzan Mazur: Which exploits of the agency do you consider the most diabolical – aside from the fact that one of its founding fathers molested two of his own children – and a reason why the CIA should have been dismantled years ago?

Doug Valentine: Your readers don’t want to know that answer. The most dastardly thing that the CIA has done is to wage this campaign of psychological warfare against the American people. Where the American people don’t see the CIA for a bunch of basically American KGB agents who are conducting criminal activities around the world. There’s a movie called The Usual Suspects with a much feared criminal named Keyser Soze. And Keyser is talking to a cop and he says the greatest trick that the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.

And this is what people like Weiner are doing with books about the CIA that don’t explain it for what it really is. They’re part of a propaganda machine that’s making the American people see the CIA in mythological terms as good guys, crusaders, as Lawrence of Arabia – when, in fact, they’re criminals. They’re part of THE GRAND LIE.”

My Comment

The piece is long and, for an intelligence aficionado, packed with illuminating detail. Among other things, Valentine touches on James Jesus Angleton, the most compelling of the spy masters (since he was chief of counter intelligence, I should call him chief spy hunter), the extensive role of private intelligence (which I touched on in my Abu Ghraib book), as well as the manipulation of Wikipedia, which Valentine regards as considerably influenced by the CIA.  This confirms my own long-standing observations about Wikipedia.  On crucial topics, it stays within the bounds of  debate allowed by  Western establishment interests and is very far from being an objective or quasi-scholarly affair. (I use the term Western because despite a substantial component of foreigners, the predominant interests served are the interests of the state and the military-industrial and financial industries), the most influential and powerful of which are Western. I do not use the terms capitalist, because I see the establishment as essentially a technocrat or money-managing class, working against capital formation in many respects.

And a final word, from the lips of Bill Colby himself:

“The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” [Researching the sources of this phrase, I find several sites like this claiming that it is “fake” and to be found unsourced only in a 2000 book by David McGowan, from whence it’s been repeated endlessly on the web. I’ll check up on this but for now am leaving the quote up.]

Was this tongue-in-cheek, or meant to be taken literally? You decide..