Tonight’s show is a smorgasbord… from violence & US weapons in Mexico, to corruption in the U.S., to a resolution ensuring that citizens retain a right to videotape law enforcement pros on the job.
Our favorite reporter Bill Conroy joins us to discuss these and more…
About the Guest:
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
His investigative reporting over the past five years has focused on corruption and discrimination within federal law enforcement agencies.
He is also a journalist for Narco News. His investigative pieces, particularly those on the House of Death, have made him our most-favored guest.
Power and Corruption in the Country’s Greatest Police Force
On the heels of a botched car bombing attempt in Times Square – Mike and Mark are joined by author and veteran reporter Leonard Levitt to talk about the relationship between the NYPD and Federal Inteligence agencies, and much much much more.
About the Guest:
From 1995 to 2005, Leonard Levitt wrote the column “One Police Plaza” for the newspaper Newsday about the New York City police department. Before joining Newsday, he worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Detroit News, as a correspondent for Time Magazine, and as the investigations editor of the New York Post. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Esquire and the New York Times magazine.
Levitt is the author of six books, the most recent of which is NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country’s Greatest Police Force. He received the 2005 non-fiction Edgar Award for Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder.
A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia School of Journalism, Levitt served two years in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, East Africa, and has been the recipient of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for the Humanities.
An expert in the field asks whether they should be called The “Federal Bureau of Invention”.
After repeatedly fingering the “wrong guy”, the final FBI investigation of an incident that terrified an already-terrified nation leaves more questions than it answers.
It was, by many accounts, the most extensive investigation in the history of the FBI – but there are many, including members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, who aren’t satisfied with the final result.
“…the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a ‘lone nut.’ The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins’ RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were “ruled out” as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy…”
This from Dr. Meryl Nass – an expert in the subject.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Dr. Nass about the case.
Professional chronology:
BS Biology 1974, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Lab Technician 1974-1976, Immunology Department. John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australia
MD Degree 1980; attended New Jersey Medical School 1976-78, attended University of Mississippi Medical School, 1978-80
Birth of two children, 1980 and 1981, with part-time work as medical consultant for Social Security Disability, 1980-1982
Internal Medicine Residency 1982-5, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi
Emergency Room Physician 1985-1999, Parkview Hospital, Brunswick ME (2 years), Wing Hospital, Palmer MA (10 years), Farren Hospital, Turners Falls MA (1 year) , Franklin Medical Center, Greenfield MA (1 year)
Instructor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Department of Internal Medicine, 1989-1993
Internal Medicine Physician 1993, Kaiser Permanente, Amherst Massachusetts; 1999-2002 solo practitioner, Freeport, Maine
Removal of spinal cord meningioma 2002, necessitating closure of my solo practice
Internist and Hospitalist 2003-present, Mount Desert Island Hospital, Bar Harbor, Maine
Continue reading The Anthrax attacks and the FBI investigation
The Scarpa Mob Family, The FBI, And A Story of Betrayal
A sensational, epic true story of a modern Mafia dynasty, by an author with incredible inside access to both the Mob and the FBI.
The Scarpas were a Mafia dynasty led by Greg Scarpa Sr., a man addicted to murder. His son, Gregory Jr., a promising athlete, worshipped his ruthless father, and was slowly drawn into his dark world. What only father and son knew was that for thirty years Scarpa Sr. was an FBI informant. For decades, his connection to the FBI granted him a virtual license to kill. But when facing arrest in the late 1980′s, Scarpa asked his son to leave his wife and children, and take the rap for his father.
After years in prison, in 1995, Gregory Jr, imprisoned alongside Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, agreed to extract information from Yousef in exchange for leniency, furnishing the FBI with detailed intelligence on what would result in 9/11. Incredibly, Greg’s desperate warnings were unheeded, and he was sentenced to forty-years-to-life at the notorious ADMAX. There he would supply the FBI with intelligence on Oklahoma City bomber and fellow prisoner, Terry Nichols. Again his contribution was ignored, and Gregory Jr. remains at ADMAX, where he believes he will one day be murdered.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with author Sandra Harmon about this amazing story.
About the guest:
Sandra Harmon, author of “MAFIA SON, the Scarpa Mob Family, The FBI, And A Story of Betrayal”, has had an extraordinary career as a best-selling author, journalist, television writer, producer and film maker. .
She wrote and produced the television movie, “Fast Friends” for NBC, which was based on her own experiences as a writer on “The Dick Cavett Show”. The film starred Dick Shawn as a popular talk show host who goes berserk on stage and is replaced by a young, unknown comedian, played by David Letterman. At the time, Letterman was himself an unknown comedian until Sandra discovered him and cast him in her film.
Sandra also produced the highly acclaimed “Promises to Keep” a CBS television movie starring Claire Bloom and Robert Mitchum, Mitchum’s real son, Chris Mitchum and his grandson, Bentley Mitchum. “Promises To Keep” tells the story of a family in crisis who finally come together when the grandfather makes amends, and in a case of reality imitating art, the shooting of the movie brought together the Mitchum family, who had been estranged for many years.
Sandra’s popular first novel, the critically acclaimed, “A Girl Like Me”, was published by Dutton Books in hardcover and Bantam Books in paperback. Norman Mailer wrote, “So let us welcome Sandra Harmon to the novelists. She begins with two splendid qualities. She is beautiful, and so we may depend on her to have much original material, and she is honest – the eye from which she writes is the eye to which it happened.”
Sandra is also the co-author of the internationally known, runaway best-seller, “Elvis and Me” – (the story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley – written with Priscilla Presley ) – which sold nearly one million copies in hard cover and three million in paperback and was, according to The Wall Street Journal, the tenth largest seller of the l980′s, occupying the #l spot on the New York Times Best seller listfor more than fifty weeks in both hard and soft cover.
Adapted for television by ABC,TV, “Elvis and Me” was then turned into one of the network’s highest-rated four hour miniseries of all times, putting the paperback of “Elvis and Me” back on the best-seller list.
Sandra next wrote the best-seller, “Getting To I Do”, in which she taught women everywhere, how to find the “right man”, begin a healthy sexual relationship, and get engaged, by the end of the first year.
This was followed by the sequel; “Staying Married and Loving It!” which teaches couples how to maintain a loving, erotic, successful long term relationship.
“This is the most dangerous man I have ever met.
We cannot let this man out on the street.”
—Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, 1997
In the years leading to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. A former Egyptian army captain, Mohamed succeeded in infiltrating the CIA in Europe, the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, and the FBI in California—even as he helped to orchestrate the al Qaeda campaign of terror that culminated in 9/11. As investigative reporter Peter Lance demonstrates in this gripping narrative, senior U.S. law enforcement officials—including the now-celebrated U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who personally interviewed Mohamed long before he was brought to ground—were powerless to stop him. In the annals of espionage, few men have moved between the hunters and the hunted with as much audacity as Ali Mohamed. For almost two decades, the former Egyptian army commando succeeded in living a double life. Brazenly slipping past watch lists, he moved in and out of the U.S. with impunity, marrying an American woman, becoming a naturalized citizen, and posing as an FBI informant—all while acting as chief of security for Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Known to his fellow terrorists as Ali Amiriki, or “Ali the American,” Mohamed gained access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal while brokering terror summits, planning bombing missions, and training jihadis in bomb building, assassination, the creation of sleeper cells, and other acts of espionage.Building on the investigation he first chronicled in his previous books, 1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up, Lance uses Mohamed to trace the untold story of al Qaeda’s rise in the 1980s and 1990s. Incredibly, Mohamed, who remains in custodial witness protection today, has never been sentenced for his crimes. He exists under a veil of secrecy—a living witness to how the U.S. intelligence community was outflanked for years by the terror network. From his first appearance on the FBI’s radar in 1989—training Islamic extremists on Long Island—to his presence in the database of Operation Able Danger eighteen months before 9/11, this devious triple agent was the one terrorist they had to sweep under the rug. Filled with news-making revelations, Triple Cross exposes the incompetence and duplicity of the FBI and Justice Department before 9/11 . . . and raises serious questions about how many more secrets the Feds may still be hiding.
A Conversation with Sibel Edmonds and William Weaver
of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
The House of Death is the story of how an informant for Homeland Security, working “undercover” under the direct control of a Bush appointed United States Attorney, operated a macabre house of horrors in which more than a dozen people were tortured to death with the informant taking part. There have been a continuing series of articles at Narco News on the subject, reported by Bill Conroy, who has been a frequent guest.
Our guests are Sibel Edmonds, a courageous whistleblower who subsequently became the Director of the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition, and William Weaver who acts as Senior Advisor to the same organization.
About the guests:
Sibel Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI’s Washington Field Office. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her issues have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege” by Attorney General Ashcroft; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy”.
Bill Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia, where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Faculty for the Institute for Policy and Economic Development and an Associate in the Center for Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and other journals. He has co-authored several books on law and political theory.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
NSWBC Files a FOIA lawsuit Against
DEA & DOJ in House of Death Case
Excerpted from a new Narco News Article by Bill Conroy:
The litigation, which (Bill) Weaver says is “part of an effort by the NSWBC” to expose the truth in the House of Death, was filed under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It alleges that Washington bureaucrats are stonewalling the release of public records that promise to further illuminate the government’s role in facilitating the House of Death bloodshed.
Among the documents Weaver is seeking from the government (that the DOJ and DEA have so far refused to release) are an internal report involving more than 40 interviews conducted jointly by a team of DEA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators as well as a tape recording made of the first murder at the House of Death.
The murder toll at the house in Ciudad Juarez reached at least a dozen over a five-month period ending in mid-January 2004. A U.S. government informant who had penetrated a Juarez cell of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes narco-trafficking organization, arranged, and in some cases participated in, the torture and murder sessions while he was under the supervision of ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor in El Paso, Texas.
DOJ attorneys currently have deportation proceedings pending against that informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, which if successful, would return him to Mexico and into the hands of the narco-traffickers he betrayed — setting up the informant to become yet another murder victim of the House of Death.
Weaver, in conjunction with Narco News, filed the initial Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with DEA in October 2005 seeking the release of public-record material related to the House of Death case. However, to date, Weaver claims in the lawsuit that the agency has “wrongfully withheld the requested records.”
27-year veteran CIA analyst and author of “Neoconned Again”, on intelligence “failures” and the war on terrorism.
Ray McGovern’s career as a CIA analyst spanned 27 years—from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush.
Ray’s responsibilities at the CIA included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief under presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. During the mid-eighties, Ray was one of the senior analysts conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. At his retirement ceremony Ray received the Intelligence Commendation Medal.
In January 2003, after it had become clear that intelligence analysis was being corrupted by political pressure to “justify” an unprovoked attack on Iraq, Ray helped create VIPS – Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. VIPS now includes over 50 former professionals from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Army Intelligence, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other US and Allied intelligence agencies.
In addition to co-authoring most of VIPS memoranda, Ray has published a number of articles and op-eds. These have appeared in newspapers around the country and in Europe. Many of Ray’s more recent articles have been published in the Miami Herald, as well as posted on TomPaine.com, Truthout.com, Commondreams.org, Counterpunch.org, Antiwar.com and other websites.
In late 1996 / early 1997, Mike Levine and 3 fellow federal agents with CIA, FBI and DEA, came together for a broadcast, whose purpose was to warn America that those agencies whom we were trusting to protect us against terrorism were too inept and badly run to do the job - and that mainstream media’s inability to sound the alarm and an easily manipulated congress, would ensure that ‘horrific terrorist acts and the loss of our rights as citizens, would surely follow.’ Hear those prophetic words now, because nothing has changed.
While the fidelity of the actual recording leaves much to be desired, the conversation is striking to say the least. It predicts much of what has since come to pass.
It is, in many respects, one of the most important broadcasts in the history of the show.
The three participants:
Dennis Dayle – DEA
He began his federal career working for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in Chicago, a forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he continued to distinguish himself. From the mid-1970s to 1980s, Dayle led investigations into international drug smuggling for the DEA, heading up Centac, which were chronicled in 1986 in a best-selling book, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace, by James Mills.
Ralph McGehee – CIA
a 25 year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency enlightened us with this following paragraph from his 1983 book “Deadly Deceits,” which edifies a familiar pattern of deception that we have witnessed but we never understood. He stated the following about the CIA:
“The CIA is not an intelligence agency. In fact, it acts largely as an anti-intelligence agency, producing only that information wanted by policymakers to support their plans and suppressing information that does not support those plans. As the covert action arm of the president, the CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the U.S. public, to mold opinion. It employs the gamut of disinformation techniques from forging documents to planting and discovering “communist” weapons caches. But the major weapon in its arsenal of disinformation is the “intelligence” it feeds to policymakers.
Instead of gathering genuine intelligence that could serve as the basis for reasonable policies, the CIA often ends up distorting reality, creating out of the whole cloth “intelligence” to justify policies that have already been decided upon. Policymakers leak this “intelligence” to the media to deceive us all and gain our support.”
Wesley Swearingen – FBI
Former FBI Special Agent from 1951 to 1977, M. Wesley Swearingen wrote “FBI Secrets”. This important work traces his FBI career in “domestic counter-intelligence” from the time he signed on after World War II to his retirement and beyond.
Swearingen began his career doing “black bag jobs” on Communists in Chicago. In Kentucky and New York City, he spent years doing serious criminal investigations, which had been his goal in joining the FBI. But J. Edgar Hoover fixated on the threat posed by such groups as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen – Swearingen is more explicit than most on the FBI’s unconstitutional role in an important pattern of political corruption and illegal repression of U.S. Civil Rights in the 1960s, under his one-time mentor, Hoover.
He is interviewed in the documentary films All Power to the People! and The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
The episode runs 2.5 hours, and it’s worth every minute.
“In 1996, four former agents with CIA, FBI and DEA, came together for three-hours of broadcast whose purpose was to warn America that those agencies whom we were trusting to protect us against terrorism were too inept and badly run to do the job, and that mainstream media’s inability to sound the alarm and an easily manipulated congress, would ensure that ‘horrific terrorist acts and the loss of our rights as citizens, would surely follow.’ Hear those prophetic words now, because nothing has changed.”
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
From 1995 to 2005, Leonard Levitt wrote the column “One Police Plaza” for the newspaper Newsday about the New York City police department. Before joining Newsday, he worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Detroit News, as a correspondent for Time Magazine, and as the investigations editor of the New York Post. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Esquire and the New York Times magazine.
Professional chronology:
Sandra Harmon, author of “MAFIA SON, the Scarpa Mob Family, The FBI, And A Story of Betrayal”, has had an extraordinary career as a best-selling author, journalist, television writer, producer and film maker. .
27-year veteran CIA analyst and author of “Neoconned Again”, on intelligence “failures” and the war on terrorism.
