Exactly the message we need to pound on. In fact, when our own hearts
sag, we need to say it over and over and over, "We Shall Overcome!"
Carl Jarvis
On 12/1/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Perhaps Trump wouldn't sign an ADA, but just about any other President
would. It really didnn't cost H W to sign that legislation, and it made him
look very good. Remember, it was the activists who got the legislation to
his desk, just like it was the activists who got the voting rights act to
Johnson's desk. I mean, who would have expected a Texan to sign that?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2018 5:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of
State-Sponsored Terrorism
Remember the image projected by Bush supporters?
George H. W. Bush: "A Kinder, Gentler Republican".
If you wonder just how short American's memories are, just read the
following: Fifty-eight years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing
Chile's ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state terrorism
that the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to cover up.
And yet, as president, George H. W. Bush signed into law the ADA.
Who can say what drives a man to do the things he does? FDR is idolized for
his New Deal. But that New Deal excluded most persons of color, turning a
blind eye to countless lynchings. Harry Truman authorized the dropping of
two deadly Atomic Bombs, causing the murder of hundreds of thousands of
Japanese. Yet he fired general MacArthur, most likely sparing the lives of
countless American and Chinese troops.
Those reaching the top leadership of Warrior Nations are, at best, a mixture
of both Good and Evil.
Carl Jarvis
12/1/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State-Sponsored Terrorism
December 1, 2018
Fifty-eight years ago, a car-bomb exploded in Washington killing
Chile's ex-Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, an act of state
terrorism that the CIA and its director George H.W. Bush tried to
cover up, Robert Parry reported on Sept. 23, 2000.
By Robert Parry
Special to Consortium News
In early fall of 1976, after a Chilean government assassin had killed
a Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in
Washington, D.C., George H.W. Bush's CIA leaked a false report
clearing Chile's military dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the
wrong direction.
The bogus CIA assessment, spread through Newsweek magazine and other U.S.
media outlets, was planted despite CIA's now admitted awareness at the
time that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a cross-border
campaign targeting political dissidents, and the CIA's own suspicions
that the Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in Washington.
In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, 2000, the CIA officially
acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist
attack, Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset
of the CIA.
The CIA report was issued almost 24 years to the day after the murders
of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American co-worker
Ronni Moffitt, who died on Sept. 21, 1976, when a remote-controlled
bomb ripped apart Letelier's car as they drove down Massachusetts
Avenue, a stately section of Washington known as Embassy Row.
In the report, the CIA also acknowledged publicly for the first time
that it consulted Contreras in October 1976 about the Letelier
assassination. The report added that the CIA was aware of the alleged
Chilean government role in the murders and included that suspicion in
an internal cable the same month.
"CIA's first intelligence report containing this allegation was dated
6 October 1976," a little more than two weeks after the bombing, the
CIA disclosed.
Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, murdered when right-wing terrorists
blew up his car in Washington on Sept. 21, 1976. (Wikipedia)
Nevertheless, the CIA - then under CIA Director George H.W. Bush -
leaked for public consumption an assessment clearing the Chilean
government's feared intelligence service, DINA, which was then run by
Contreras.
Relying on the word of Bush's CIA, Newsweek reported that "the Chilean
secret police were not involved" in the Letelier assassination. "The
[Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb
was too crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming
while Chile's rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the
Santiago regime."
[Newsweek, Oct. 11, 1976]
Bush, who later became the 41st president of the United States (and is
the father of the 43rd president), has never explained his role in
putting out the false cover story that diverted attention away from
the real terrorists.
Nor has Bush explained what he knew about the Chilean intelligence
operation in the weeks before Letelier and Moffitt were killed.
Dodging Disclosure
As a Newsweek correspondent in 1988, a dozen years after the Letelier
bombing, when the elder Bush was running for president, I prepared a
detailed story about Bush's handling of the Letelier case.
The draft story included the first account from U.S. intelligence
sources that Contreras was a CIA asset in the mid-1970s. I also
learned that the CIA had consulted Contreras about the Letelier
assassination, information that the CIA then would not confirm.
The sources told me that the CIA sent its Santiago station chief,
Wiley Gilstrap, to talk with Contreras after the bombing. Gilstrap
then cabled back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Contreras's
assurances that the Chilean government was not involved. Contreras
told Gilstrap that the most likely killers were communists who wanted
to make a martyr out of Letelier.
My story draft also described how Bush's CIA had been forewarned in
1976 about DINA's secret plans to send agents, including the assassin
Michael Townley, into the United States on false passports.
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in a meeting at the White House
on Feb.
12, 1981. (Reagan Library)
Upon learning of this strange mission, the U.S. ambassador to
Paraguay, George Landau, cabled Bush about Chile's claim that Townley
and another agent were traveling to CIA headquarters for a meeting
with Bush's deputy, Vernon Walters. Landau also forwarded copies of
the false passports to the CIA.
Walters cabled back that he was unaware of any scheduled appointment
with these Chilean agents. Landau immediately canceled the visas, but
Townley simply altered his plans and continued on his way to the United
States.
After arriving, he enlisted some right-wing Cuban-Americans in the
Letelier plot and went to Washington to plant the bomb under Letelier's
car.
The CIA has never explained what action it took, if any, after
receiving Landau's warning. A natural follow-up would have been to
contact DINA and ask what was afoot or whether a message about the
trip had been misdirected.
The CIA report in 2000 made no mention of these aspects of the case.
After the assassination, Bush promised the CIA's full cooperation in
tracking down the Letelier-Moffitt killers. But instead the CIA took
contrary actions, such as planting the false exoneration and
withholding evidence that would have implicated the Chilean junta.
"Nothing the agency gave us helped us to break this case," said
federal prosecutor Eugene Propper in a 1988 interview for the story I
was drafting for Newsweek. The CIA never volunteered Ambassador
Landau's cable about the suspicious DINA mission nor copies of the
fake passports that included a photo of Townley, the chief assassin.
Nor did Bush's CIA divulge its knowledge of the existence of Operation
Condor.
FBI agents in Washington and Latin America broke the case two years
later.
They discovered Operation Condor on their own and tracked the
assassination back to Townley and his accomplices in the United States.
In 1988, as then-Vice President Bush was citing his CIA work as an
important part of his government experience, I submitted questions to
him asking about his actions in the days before and after the Letelier
bombing. Bush's chief of staff, Craig Fuller, wrote back, saying Bush
"will have no comment on the specific issues raised in your letter."
As it turned out, the Bush campaign had little to fear from my
discoveries.
When I submitted my story draft - with its exclusive account of
Contreras's role as a CIA asset - Newsweek's editors refused to run the
story.
Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas told me that Editor Maynard Parker
even had accused me of being "out to get Bush."
The CIA's Admission
Twenty-four years after the Letelier assassination and 12 years after
Newsweek killed the first account of the Contreras-CIA relationship,
the CIA admitted that it had paid Contreras as an intelligence asset
and consulted with him about the Letelier assassination.
Still, in the sketchy report in 2000, the spy agency sought to portray
itself as more victim than accomplice. According to the report, the
CIA was internally critical of Contreras's human rights abuses and
skeptical about his credibility. The CIA said its skepticism predates
the spy agency's contact with him about the Letelier-Moffitt murders.
"The relationship, while correct, was not cordial and smooth,
particularly as evidence of Contreras' role in human rights abuses
emerged," the CIA reported. "In December 1974, the CIA concluded that
Contreras was not going to improve his human rights performance. .
"By April 1975, intelligence reporting showed that Contreras was the
principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the
Junta, but an interagency committee [within the Ford administration]
directed the CIA to continue its relationship with Contreras."
The CIA report added that "a one-time payment was given to Contreras"
in 1975, a time frame when the CIA was first hearing about Operation
Condor, a cross-border program run by South America's military
dictatorships to hunt down dissidents living in other countries.
"CIA sought from Contreras information regarding evidence that emerged
in
1975 of a formal Southern Cone cooperative intelligence effort -
'Operation Condor' - building on informal cooperation in tracking and,
in at least a few cases, killing political opponents. By October 1976,
there was sufficient information that the CIA decided to approach
Contreras on the matter. Contreras confirmed Condor's existence as an
intelligence-sharing network but denied that it had a role in
extra-judicial killings."
Also, in October 1976, the CIA said it "worked out" how it would
assist the FBI in its investigation of the Letelier assassination,
which had occurred the previous month. The spy agency's report offered
no details of what it did, however. The report added only that
Contreras was already a murder suspect by fall 1976.
"At that time, Contreras' possible role in the Letelier assassination
became an issue," the CIA's report said. "By the end of 1976, contacts
with Contreras were very infrequent."
Even though the CIA came to recognize the likelihood that DINA was
behind the Letelier assassination, there never was any indication that
Bush's CIA sought to correct the false impression created by its leaks
to the news media asserting DINA's innocence.
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey
at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Reagan Library)
After Bush left the CIA with Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977, the
spy agency distanced itself from Contreras, the new report said.
"During 1977, CIA met with Contreras about half a dozen times; three
of those contacts were to request information on the Letelier
assassination," the CIA report said.
"On 3 November 1977, Contreras was transferred to a function unrelated
to intelligence so the CIA severed all contact with him," the report
added.
"After a short struggle to retain power, Contreras resigned from the
Army in 1978. In the interim, CIA gathered specific, detailed
intelligence reporting concerning Contreras' involvement in ordering
the Letelier assassination."
Remaining Mysteries
Though the CIA report in 2000 contained the first official admission
of a relationship with Contreras, it shed no light on the actions of
Bush and his deputy, Walters, in the days before and after the
Letelier assassination.
It
also offered no explanation why Bush's CIA planted false information
in the American press clearing Chile's military dictatorship.
While providing the 21-page summary on its relationship with Chile's
military dictatorship, the CIA refused to release documents from a
quarter century earlier on the grounds that the disclosures might
jeopardize the CIA's "sources and methods." The refusal came in the
face of President Bill Clinton's specific order to release as much
information as possible.
Perhaps the CIA was playing for time. With CIA headquarters officially
named the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the
Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency
might have hoped that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush would
free it from demands to open up records to the American people.
For his part, former President George H.W. Bush declared his intent to
take a more active role in campaigning for his son's election. In
Florida on Sept. 22, 2000, Bush said he was "absolutely convinced"
that if his son is elected president, "we will restore the respect,
honor and decency that the White House deserves."
The late investigative reporter Robert Parry, the founding editor of
Consortium News, broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. His last book, America's
Stolen Narrative, can be obtained in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).