-Caveat Lector-
an article from:
Blacklisted News, Secret History . . . From Chicago, '68, to 1984
�1983 Youth International Party Information Service
Bleecker Publishing
POB 392
Canal St. Station
New York, NY 10012
ISBN 0-912873-00-0
-----
Some old news but very interesting.
Om
K
-----
Despite the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA and Attorney General Levy's
"stringent" FBI guidelines, all the revelations of assassinations and worse
did little but make the police state more cautious, more careful about their
cover stories.
Note that this material surfaced in Y.T. [Yippie Times] 4 or 5 years prior to
the publication of The Great Heroin Coup.
DEA Shopped for Assassination Gear
by AJ Weberman
When the FBI found out that I had been mistakenly given a copy of the
documents reproduced in this article by a secretary at the Federal Court
House, they attempted to steal them back from me at the Miami Airport!!
The Miami Field Office of the FBI had already developed an intensive fear of
my research, ever since I discovered a misfiled secret document indicating
that Frank Sturgis and Jerry Buchanan had acted as confidential informants in
the trial of pot smuggler Ken Burstine. Burstine's conviction led to the
indictment of about 50 other people including Mitchell Livingston Werbell III,
the de facto head of the CIA's Unconventional Assassination Weapon's Division.
(When Burstine died in a mysterious airplane crash shortly before he was
scheduled to testify most of the indictments were dropped and Werbell was
acquitted)
This was why they had the phone where I was staying tapped and when I made my
return reservations, they alerted their two sleazy Special Agents who are
permanently on duty at Miami Airport; the upshot of it was that they were able
to rip me off for a mess of CIA documents but I didn't let the WERBELL EXHIBIT
DOCUMENTS presented here out of my sight for a second!
Clarence the Bozo Kelly, and his brigade of Keystone Cops were not able to
stop the publication of these secret Watergate documents, the first of which
deals with secret interviews between Senator Welker, his aide Peter Kinsey and
Lucien Conein. Lucien Conein at age 17 fled his hometown in Kansas to join the
French Foreign Legion during World War II. He worked for OSS in France where
he lived and fought with the Corsican Brotherhood which was part of the
resistance. The Brotherhood is an underworld organization deeply involved in
the drug trade which is sometimes considered more dangerous than its Sicilian
counterpart, the Mafia.
After the liberation, Conein parachuted into Vietnam to join an OSS Team
fighting the Japanese alongside Ho Chi Minh, and General Giap. In 1954 he was
back in Vietnam fighting his old allies as one, of General Edward Lansdale's
Special Forces Team. He helped Diem consolidate power in Vietnam, but in 1963
he was the U.S. Embassy's liaison with the cabal of generals who murdered him.
Although Conein married a Vietnamese woman, and was on intimate terms with
most of the Vietnamese high command, he was sent back to Washington since most
of the CIA considered him unstable. He soon returned to Vietnam as part of an
elite counterinsurgency team which included Daniel Ellsberg. It was this
association which brought him to the attention of the White House consultant
E. Howard Hunt, who happened to be an old OSS colleague of Conein's. Hunt
consulted with Conein about some forged telegrams which implied that Kennedy
ordered the assassination of Diem. As a reward for his cooperation Conein was
given a job within the Drug Enforcement Administration as a representative of
the CIA.
He was eventually promoted to Head of Special Operations of the Strategic
Intelligence Section of the DEA.
Conein's remark upon viewing the B.R. Fox Catalogue of assassination equipment
that "This guy Mitch is one of the craziest S.O.B.'s that I have ever met" is
significant since it indicated that Werbell was synonymous with the B.R. Fox
Co., whose owners were Barbara Fox and Michael Morrissey. Morrissey replaced
Bernie Spindel, Barbara's husband, after his death in 1971. Spindel achieved
notoriety in the mid-1950's when it was revealed that he acted as a bugging
and wiretap specialist for Jimmy Hoffa. Conein goes on to claim that the B.R.
Fox Co. was legally licensed and was doing work for the government. In reality
the B.R. Fox Co. was part of the U.S. government, an appendage of the C.I.A.
Bernie Spindel was one of their agents who worked closely with Jimmy Hoffa,
whom the CIA supported!
In 1974 the B.R. Fox Co. shared an office with Mitch Werbell in the LaSalle
Building on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. This was during the period
that Werbell was negotiating a bizarre arms deal with Robert Vesco, the
fugitive swindler in Costa Rica. Werbell agreed to sell Vesco his entire stock
of 2,000 silencer/machine guns, but he was unable to get an export license, so
he instead agreed to build a sub-machine gun in Costa Rica. Located just below
Werbell was a strike force of 12 CIA agents put together by Conein for
paramilitary operations against international drug smugglers.
Conein says he "did not know why someone would try to sell him assassination
equipment," as if murder was the last thing on Conein's mind. This is
nonsense. Conein's job with the D.E.A. involved finding international drug
traffickers and summarily executing them. Peer Da Silva, who was Conein's boss
as Saigon Station Chief after the Diem assassination said, "You have got to
start out with the premise that Lou Conein is crazy. He worked with me in
Vietnam, if work is the word. We have all kinds of villains and rogues
involved as well as heroes, and within reason if you keep them under control,
then people like him can do things that other people cannot do and that is how
they survive."
Conein himself told journalist George Crile III that the DEA "has no cover as
far as breaking laws and after the damn Church Committee we will have even
less. You cannot do it because 12 or 13 years later you might have to stand up
there with your balls exposed."
MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILES FROM
PETE KINSEY (AIDE TO SENATOR WEICKER) SUBJECT: INTERVIEW WITH LUCIEN CONEIN
On January 21, 1975 Senator Weicker and I interviewed Col. Lucien Conein who
is currently head of special operations of the strategic intelligence section
of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Conein said that he retired from the CIA in July of 1968. In 1969 he went to
South Vietnam on his own where he tried to make some money through his
connections there. Being unsuccessful, he returned to the U.S. in early 1971.
He went to France for six weeks with his wife and returned in April 1971. In
late 71, early '72 he was contacted by the White House regarding his knowledge
of drugs in SE Asia. Egil Krogh was the first person to talk to Conein about
this and asked him what he thought about the drug situation and what would he
do if he had the' responsibility for counteracting it. In response, Conein
prepared a paper outlining his ideas which he gave to Krogh.
On another occasion, Krogh asked Conein about how to go about setting up a
drug intelligence organization, explaining that although the White House was
getting inputs from Customs and BNDD, he wanted an outsider to take a look at
it. Conein wrote another paper stating that trafficking organizations had to
be penetrated using basically the same clandestine means which had generally
been employed by the CIA in SE Asia.
About the time of the release of the Pentagon Papers, Conein said he got a
call from an acquaintance, Howard Hunt, who said he wanted Conein to come to
the White House to talk to him. This occurred in early July 1971. Hunt told
Conein that he was working for the President and that anything that was said
between them would be covered by executive privilege. Hunt interviewed Conein
at the White House and asked him about, Ellsberg whom Conein had worked with
in Vietnam. Conein told Hunt that Ellsberg had been highly thought of while in
Vietnam, in fact, so highly thought of that Ambassador Porter had taken him on
his staff. (Note: this was the meeting Hunt had installed the tape recorder
under the couch and then sat on it).
Conein said he was surprised when the camera crews arrived at his house the
day of the Pentagon Papers release. Conein said Bill Gill of ABC handed him a
copy of The New York Times and had underlined Conein's name in the numerous
places it appeared. Conein told Gill that he couldn't talk to him because of
the security agreement he had entered into with the CIA when he had left.
According to Conein, Gill then said that he knew a security man at the CIA
that he would call to see if permission could be given for Conein to talk.
Conein said that Gill called this man using Conein's phone. The CIA called
Gill back a while later and told him that Conein could not talk. Conein said
that in those days you thought "holy hell" would fall on you if you talked.
Conein said he had never had any contact with Kissinger but that he had met
his principal aides. He had known Haig from his days in Vietnam and recalled
John Lehman's name. He said there were others but he couldn't remember their
names. Conein said that Hunt had not found him in a shopping center on his way
out of the country. Hunt had been trying to call him at home but Conein had
changed his phone to an unlisted number so Hunt had difficulty in reaching
him. Conein said, however, that Hunt called him at home. Conein said that
after Gill had left, the CIA called him and asked if the press had left. When
Conein told them that they had, the CIA told Conein to meet them in a bowling
alley behind a McClean shopping center. Conein said he met the CIA people at
the bowling alley where he was given a sealed envelope. He took the envelope
home and opened it and found $500 in 20's. Conein said he laughed, threw the
money in the air and said to himself, "Where the hell can I go on $500?" with
a wife, 3 kids, dogs, etc. Conein said that he called the CIA security man and
told him that he was not a CIA paid agent and that he was not leaving. He
wrote a note returning the $500 to the CIA and signed it "Luigi."
During the time the white paper on the Diem coups was being prepared by NBC,
Conein said he was called and told that the White House was interested in
Conein being interviewed. Conein said that he contacted the CIA security
people who gave permission for him to do the interview. Conein said that the
White House wanted him to say who had actually engineered the Diem
Assassination. Conein said that he would not do it�that his interest in the
story was what the CIA had done to prevent the assassination. He did say that
the interview, which was aired in Dec. of 1971, did not come out the way it
should have.
Conein said that in January of 1972, Krogh called him to the White House and
told him that they had some other work for him and that they would pay him for
it. The work involved writing two more papers relating to international drug
trafficking. After that Krogh told Conein that they could no longer keep him
at the White House and asked him if he was interested in going to BNDD or
Customs. Conein said he selected BNDD because it was related to his field of
expertise. Ingersoll interviewed Conein in June 1972 after which BNDD
intelligence took Conein on as a consultant until they offered him a permanent
position in December of 1972.
Conein said he had never met Colson or John Scalin. He said he learned of
Colson posing as Fred Charles in the telephone calls as a result of the
Watergate testimony.
Conein said he never denied having seen the cables forged by Hunt. He said
that there were a stack of cables�all with Top Secret classifications. He
didn't read them because he did not have a security clearance. Conein said he
only saw the forged cable much later at a meeting with Lambert of Life
magazine. Lambert had called him and said that he had a document that he
wanted Conein to see. Conein met him and Lambert showed him the cable. Conein
said when he saw it that, if it were true, that he (Conein) had been played
for a patsy by Henry Cabot Lodge. Conein said after that he went home and on a
green (secure) phone called Colby at the CIA and told him of the cable and its
implications. Colby said he had never seen the cable either. Conein said the
cable showed complicity of the White House in instructions to Lodge to have
Diem assassinated. However, according to Conein, Lodge would have had to have
been awake at 6 am and he knew that Lodge never got up at 6 am.
Conein said that the BNDD-CIA agreement was terminated in July of 1973.
Conein said he never saw Ehrlichman.
Conein said that after Nixon's big meeting on narcotics in 1972, the CIA
formed a narcotics unit to coordinate intelligence activities. He said that
for example, the CIA in Laos in 1971 were not concerned about drug traffic,
but that when Nixon stepped up efforts against international traffickers,
action was required. Coordination was also required. Krogh was the coordinator
at the White House and chaired the committee responsible for coordinating
agency efforts.
At BNDD (now DEA) Conein worked in strategic intelligence. His first job was
to start assembling the necessary information to develop patterns of
trafficking organizations. Conein is now heading up the special operations
section which involves training individuals to go into a country (with that
country's approval) to gather intelligence on trafficking organizations.
Conein said that the DEA man establishes the operation and when the host
country approves, he goes in-country and works with the host country's
authorities. Conein said that this may involve recruiting in-country nationals
and supplying and training them in the use of electronic bugging and camera
equipment. Conein said that he has three men on his staff and 14 individuals
in various stages of training.
When Weicker showed Conein the B.R. Fox catalogue of assassination equipment,
Conein said "Yes sir ... boy this is something ... This guy Mitch is one of
the craziest SOB's I've ever met." Conein said that about a year ago he was
looking for some specialized 50 cycle bugging devices for use overseas. He
said that Mike Morrissey of B.R. Fox made such equipment. He said that when
Morrissey was demonstrating the bugging equipment he also brought in some
assassination devices. Conein said he didn't buy any�that he wouldn't own one.
Conein said he did not know Barbara Fox Spindel and could not recall ever
hearing of Bernie Spindel.
Weicker said that from reading the cover memo, it sounded like Morrissey was
making the equipment especially for Conein. Conein said that was not true and
that he would go under oath. Conein said that he has never had this type of
equipment. Conein said he never showed any interest in the ASTRO line of
equipment.
Conein said that in April or May 1974 he ordered bugging equipment from B.R.
Fox for use overseas. The equipment included 3 telephone bugging devices and 3
receivers. He said he still had the equipment since it had never been decided
not to use it.
Conein said that he first met Morrissey in 1973. At the time Morrissey had
developed a Kel unit in the shape of a large belt. Conein said he met
Morrissey in the Rosslyn area where Morrissey had an office. He told Morrissey
to send the belt over to Justice for them to look at. The belt was returned to
Morrissey because it was too heavy to use. Conein said he met Morrissey again
in April or May of (?) and told him he was interested in listening devices.
Conein said he met Morrissey a total of four or five times. He said that DEA
ordered the bugging equipment from him but that he was not very reliable
because he did not deliver on schedule.
Conein said that he and Mitch Werbell had been in the OSS together in China.
He said that Werbell was an armaments manufacturer and that he had been to
Werbell's plant outside Atlanta on two occasions. He said that Werbell was a
big wheeler-dealer and that on one occasion had wanted Conein to go to London
for him to arrange purchase of scrap from South Vietnam. Conein said that
Werbell has a fantastic weapons collection including thousands of silencers
for machine guns.
Conein said that Morrissey demonstrated the bugging equipment, but another man
demonstrated the assassination devices. Conein said that over the years lots
of people have shown him lots of devices of this sort, but he remarked that he
was intrigued with these devices because they were triggered electronically
instead of chemically, Conein remarked that a lot of people think that once
you have been in the CIA you're always in the CIA.
Conein told Senator Weicker that he should ask for an FBI investigation and
that he would voluntarily take a polygraph test. The only correspondence
Conein said he had with Morrissey that he could recall was a letter of
confirmation under title III of the wiretap statute that the equipment
(bugging) would be used for law enforcement purposes. Conein did not know why
someone would try to sell him assassination equipment. He said that there were
a lot of people who thought he was more involved in things at the CIA than he
really was. Weicker asked Conein if he had launched an inquiry after seeing
the demonstration of assassination equipment. Conein said he had not�that B.R.
Fox was legally licensed and doing work for the government. Conein said that
the only agency he could think of which would be interested in the ASTRO
equipment would be one of the covert arms of the CIA. Conein also mentioned
that he told Morrissey after the demonstration that if organized crime ever
got any of that equipment they would have a field day. Conein said that
another man from his office by the name of Searle ("Bud") Frank was with him
at the time of the demonstration.
I called Frank at his office at DEA and asked him if he would come join us in
the meeting. Mr. Frank arrived and discussed his version of the meeting with
Morrissey, which essentially confirmed what Conein had told us. Frank said the
equipment was demonstrated in an office on Connecticut Avenue outside of DEA
headquarters. Mr. Frank said he took an academic interest in the assassination
equipment because he had never seen such equipment before. Frank feels that
Morrissey may have demonstrated the ASTRO equipment as a way of testing the
waters or expressing professional pride. Frank said the meeting lasted about
an hour and a half. Frank had no recollection of Morrissey saying that he had
sold the assassination equipment to any other Federal agency. Frank said he
had the feeling that Morrissey's firm was with another arm of the government.
Frank said that the DEA had never approved the ASTRO equipment or its
applications. He said it was raised in informal discussions among the agents,
but the superiors said that in no instance would such equipment ever be used.
He said that as a result of recent Supreme Court decisions regarding
wiretapping, it was decided that the bugging equipment they had purchased from
Morrissey could not be used overseas.
At Senator Weicker's suggestion, Conein placed a call to Morrissey's office at
the Watergate. Morrissey was out and Conein left word for Morrissey to call
him. Conein said he would either have Morrissey contact me directly or he
would get back to me after setting up a meeting.
The interview concluded at 3:00 p.m.
The second set of documents concerned an interview Pete Kinsey had with
Michael Morrissey. Notice how Barbara Spindel was given a job as secretary at
the National Commission on Water Quality, which backs up my contention that
B.R. Fox Co. was actually part of the U.S. Government. Morrissey hints at this
when he says that the CIA used to have its own laboratory in which they
manufactured assassination equipment but that this was no longer the case.
Morrissey had been widely quoted as saying that he put together the catalogue
of assassination devices at the request of Conein, but at this interview he
retracted the statement in a half-assed manner.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILES
FROM: PETE KINSEY
SUBJECT: INTERVIEW WITH
MICHAEL MORRISSEY
On January 22, 1975, I met with Michael Morrissey in his office at the law
firm of Reges & Zeiger, Suite 850, Watergate 600, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Morrissey began by saying that he had been involved in the B.R. Fox
company as a means of providing income while he was attending law school.
Morrissey said that he had known Bernie Spindel from the early sixties and
after his death in February 1971, he and Spindel's wife�Barbara Fox
Spindel�decided to continue the business as equal partners. Morrissey said
that B.R. Fox went out of existence in November of 1974. In April of 1974,
Barbara Fox Spindel had taken a full time job as a secretary at the National
Commission on Water Quality. Morrissey said that he had a degree in electrical
engineering but that he has chosen law as his profession over engineering.
Morrissey said that around May of 1973, he brought a belt transmitter to the
Department of justice for them to look at. He recalled that Lucien Conein was
one of the individuals who would be looking at the equipment. He said that he
knew that Conein was a high official in the Justice Department's Drug
Enforcement Administration.
He said that some time after that Mitch Werbell, who at that time had an
office on Connecticut Ave., contacted him and said that he had a friend who
was interested in seeing electronic bugging equipment. Morrissey said that he
went over to Morrissey's office where he gave a demonstration of the bugging
equipment to Conein and another man who was with him. When I asked him if he
demonstrated any of the equipment in the Astro catalogue, he said he
"imagined" he did. I asked him why he thought Conein would be interested in
such equipment and he replied that Conein was a high justice Department
official and he wanted to show him a lot of things to demonstrate his
capabilities.
Morrissey said that he thought that Eric Spindel, Barbara Spindel's son, had
been with him at the demonstration, but he could not recall for sure. He said
that Spindel was in school in New York and that his phone number was
(212)691-2412. When I called that number the next day I got a recording saying
the number had been disconnected.
Morrissey said that he knew that Werbell was in the armaments business and
that he had had the Connecticut Avenue office for only a few months, from
which he was trying to sell certain electronic scanning devices. He said that
Werbell never showed any interest in the Astro equipment . . . He also said
that Conein showed no interest in the assassination equipment at the
demonstration. When I pressed him as to why, if Conein had no interest, he
wrote in the cover memo to Werbell that the Astro equipment line was developed
only after working with Conein, Morrissey said that although Conein showed no
interest at the demonstration, he was not sure Conein was disinterested. In
other words, Morrissey said that he did not interpret Conein's lack of
interest as necessarily a dead end.
Morrissey said that he had not contacted any other agencies in an effort to
market the assassination equipment. He said that although he had sold bugging
equipment on one occasion to the CIA around December of 1971, he had never
inquired of the CIA as to whether they were interested in the assassination
equipment. Morrissey said that the only formal contacts he had had with Conein
that he could recall were the demonstration and the time he delivered the
equipment. He did say that he might have run into Conein in a bar.
Morrissey was interested in how we had come by our copy of the catalogue. He
said that he had made only two copies�one for Conein and one for Werbell. He
said that he had given a copy to Werbell only because Werbell had made the
contact with Conein.
Morrissey said that he had run into people who said that the CIA had its own
laboratory which made assassination equipment, but that the laboratory had
been dissolved and the CIA now goes to outside sources for such equipment. He
said that people told him that the CIA uses such equipment in Southeast Asia.
When I asked him what people, Morrissey said that he didn't have any names
offhand, but that he generally knew the CIA used such equipment.
Morrissey said that Conein had no knowledge prior to the demonstration of his
capabilities to manufacture assassination equipment. When I asked Morrissey
why he had made such equipment, he said that what he was really attempting to
show were his capabilities to manufacture sensitive electronic triggering
devices which might be of interest to the Bureau of Mines or the Atomic Energy
Commission. When I told him that he sure had a funny way of packaging his
wares, he said he was not surprised that it had raised some concern.
Morrissey said that he had never actually tried any of his assassination
devices using explosives. He also said that the devices which he had
demonstrated to Conein had been disassembled into component modules.
-YiPster Times, February '77
pps. 85-89
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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