-Caveat Lector-
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ynr Chyldz Wyld" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 10:50 PM
Subject: Re: [CTRL] Jim Marrs-What a difference a day (or two) makes
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> From: "NSA" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > Perhaps an exploding implant? ;-)
> >
> > Prolly a burst blood vessel .... maybe too much "thinking" June ...
>
> Perhaps. But that 'burst blood vessel' moved my earlobe flat against the
FRONT of my ear...IOW, my earlobe,
> and a good amount of cartilage above it, was pressed FORWARD over my ear
opening, which is why I actually
> thought I'd been shot with a BB gun...
>
> Ever experience getting your ears 'boxed'? That was how my ear felt, as
if something had hit it at high
> speed, pushing the lobe and cartilage forward at high speed...
>
>
> > perhaps some extra serious ... ahmmm ... ahmmm "activities" ... the
night
> > before (gggg)! ... which quite prolly would have been associated with
an
> > "EXPLODING implant!" (GGG)!!!
>
> I'm not sure what you're implying, but the only activity the night before
was coming home from work, making
> supper, watching some TV, and then going to bed because I had work the
next day.
I meant a vigorous sexual encounter. But now that i have some more info -
I'll ask my medico buddies, altho, i suppose you've already done that? ..
??? What do YOU think it was?
>
> > I am not all that familiar with US politics, but I can hardly imagine
Reagan
> > being a "Leftie," except for the purposes of SPYING on his fellows.
>
> He was, back in the 30s and 40s, which is why he was elected president of
the Actors Union. Even Jane Wyman,
> to whom he was married at the time, expressed surprise...and not a little
disgust, since she's been fairly
> left-leaning all her life...at his sudden about-face from strident leftist
to goosestepping rightist.
>
> When Reagan was elected president, much was made of this 180-degree turn,
and much speculation was done as to
> what caused it. The article where June Allyson revealed this tete-a-tete
between Reagan and Powell was not
> specifically about Reagan, it was something revealed in the course of the
interview about her life...
>
> She and Powell apparantly had dinner at least once a week with the Reagans
back in those days, and Allyson
> revealed that often Reagan and Powell would get into heated political
arguments, Reagan sticking to his
> leftist philosophy while Powell would argue his rightist opinions. So it
hardly seems a case of Powell being
> a persuasive arguer that changed Reagan. That only occured, Allyson
recounted, one specific night when after
> dinner her husband made it a point to take Reagan alone, behind locked
doors. According to her, they were
> only in the room (I believe Powell's home office) 20 to 30 minutes, and
when they came out, Reagan was
> suddenly a convert to the rightwing political spectrum, and never deviated
from it from that day...
>
> Allyson presented it as an 'odd' tidbit, and I got the feeling that
perhaps she was hinting that perhaps the
> reporter should delve into this further, but of course the reporter didn't
and the article went on to other
> subjects...
>
> So again, I wonder what it was that Powell said or did in those 20 or so
minutes, behind locked doors (and why
> lock the door, when the only other people around were his and Reagan's
wife?), that resulted in such a
> dramatic conversion, when months of after-dinner arguments had failed to
do so?
>
> June
>
Well I think you've possibly answered your own conundrum June? Reagan was
already infected with Powell's ideology, which he had dialogued and argued
with Reagan on many an occasion. Therefore, the seed planted, the sales
sizzle
delivered by Powell over a long period, Reagan could have easily been
crunched into submission within a relatively brief 20 - 30 minutes. But
obviously the
sales pitch had been delivered over a much longer period by Powell.
By the way, where was this Powell character educated?
Reagan has never appeared to be of a substantive intellect, nor a decision
maker in terms of ideological movement, and leadership. Perhaps, this was a
media distortion of him or deliberately manufactured, otoh, the media got
him
elected did they not?
To add to the notion of Reagan's imbecility and non-spontaneity, I recall
that the former Prime Minister of Australia recounts an encounter
between Reagan and Gorbachov for some heavy negotiations, Reagan is said to
have bumbled into the room and in the process stumbled and dropped a bunch
of cue cards on the floor which were basically his "script," for the meet!
Further, according to other reports, Reagan was extremely superstitious, and
consulted mediums and astrologers for his personal and politico guidance,
and was quite serious about such matters. Such a superstitious mindset,
imo, is apt to be open to psychological suggestions which could perhaps
portray him is some "messianic" or "fated" role. Certainly, the Vatican and
its agents played on this aspect of the mans superstition with reference to
the destruction of Soviet Communism for example, with his exuberant alliance
and fawning over the pope of Rome.
Also, the quackery of the "visions" of "Fatima," for example "predicted,"
the fall of Communism and the conversion of Russia to Roman Catholicism.
During the era you mention, Catholic Hitler was also on rise, and then in
power. Hitler was seen in messianic terms by the Vatican, as a hero,
crusader, and defender of it's interests, particularly against Russian
Communism. Catholic prelates throughout the world gave voice of support to
the Nazi regime. Certain purported Satanists, ala Aleister Crowley, also
circulated anti-British pro Hitler propaganda. Myth and magic were employed
to superstitionise and manipulate society.
>From my understanding, Reagan was also a religious man in terms of holding
some belief in a Christian faith, perhaps he had a "conversion" experience
and found "god?"
Perhaps a secret meeting of evangelical minds occurred, similar to this one
in the 70's,
*** James Robison, evangelist, on a secret meeting in 1980:
[In] 1979 an interesting meeting occurred, very private. Bill Bright called
and said that he and Billy Graham had talked, and they had a great concern
for the future of our country. This to me was a very significant thing. ...
He wanted to meet at the at then the Airport Marina Hotel [in Dallas] ...
They secured a floor, an' there were ten or twelve of us there [Charles
Stanley, Adrian Rodgers, Jimmy Draper, Pat Robertson, Rex Humbard Billy
Graham, Bill Bright] ...
Billy Graham said, "I believe God has shown me that unless we have a change
in America, we have a thousand days as a free nation, three years." Bill
Bright said, "I know. I heard it." Dr. Graham said, "I've just come from
overseas"; Bill Bright said, "I have too. I do not believe we'll survive
more than three years as a free nation. It's that serious." An' Bill Bright
said, "When I talk to Dr. Graham about this," I said, "Would you come meet
with these other men?" An' Pat Robertson said, "I believe the same thing"
with Charles standing there. I can just remember so well [CLAPS HANDS]; he
sort-a jus' put his hand down on the table with resolve, an' Charles Stanley
said, "I'll give my life to stop this. I'll give everything I've got to turn
this country." An' I said, "I just-- Me too, I'll die to turn this county,
I'll--whatever it takes. We can't lose the country."
And each man around the room said, "We're gonna get involved." Rex Humbard
said, "I don't--I'm uncomfortable politically, I really am, very
uncomfortable," and Dr. Graham said this: "I cannot publicly be involved. I
can only pray. I've been burned so badly with the public relationships that
I've had, associations. Ah, I can't afford it. I care so much."
We had an awesome time of prayer; it was one of the most moving things I've
ever seen. Dr. Graham, to be honest, moved us with his humility and his
brokenness. Boy, I could almost start cryin' right now. This man he wept
before God, I mean, he really did, he had such a love for God an' this
country, but he said, "My hands are tied in a lot of ways. But we're goin'
to lose the country." ***
Reagan finally appeared to have fulfilled his grooming, and long-term
Vatican dominated Christian Right agenda.
SNIP:
"The Reagan administration has been overwhelmingly the most [Roman] Catholic
in American history, and its agenda has been essentially the Vatican
agenda."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY & THE VATICAN:
POPULATION GROWTH & NATIONAL SECURITY
By Dr. [Phd.] Stephen Mumford
PREFACE
This book deals with the national and global security implications of world
population growth and urges that this growth problem be redefined in terms
different from the customary approaches. The solutions - modern methods of
contraception, abortion, sterilization, expanding opportunities for women,
sex education, and the like - are in fact gravely threatening the survival
of the Vatican, at least its political dimension.
According to Father Andrew Greeley, the Vatican leaders are concerned not so
much with the religious dimensions of the Church as with its vast worldwide
political power. The greater the number of their communicants, the greater
the power of this hierarchy. These prelates, recognizing their jeopardy,
have placed the religious dimension of the Church at risk in order to
prevail politically.
The United States National Security Council, on the other hand, in 1979 and
1980, determined that world population growth seriously threatens the
security of all nations including our own. Thus the dimensions of the
conflict are defined.
The political Catholic Church (the Vatican) is pitted against the national
security interests of the United States. Clearly, to ignore the population
problem will be to invite severe consequences and, ultimately, a complete
loss of our national security.
Thus threatened, the Vatican is resorting to desperate and bold measures in
America. Four years ago, it went to great lengths to assist in the election
of an American president, using the infrastructure created by the Catholic
bishops' 1975 Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities (often referred to as
the Pastoral Plan of Action; see, appendix two), purportedly created to
combat legalized abortion.
The Reagan administration has been overwhelmingly the most [Roman] Catholic
in American history, and its agenda has been essentially the Vatican agenda.
About 4 percent of the U.S. population is Irish Roman Catholic. Mr. Reagan's
father, like the leadership of the [Roman] Catholic Church in America, was
an Irish Roman Catholic, and his brother is a devout [Roman] Catholic. No
one doubts the president's close ties to the [Roman] Catholic Church.
In any administration, the appointments most relevant to the population
growth-security issue are national security advisor, secretary of state,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, attorney- general (responsible
for illegal immigration control), and secretary of Health and Human Services
(who sets the national example for provision of comprehensive family
planning services).
Mr. Reagan has appointed three national security advisors - Richard Allen,
William Clark, and James McFarland. All are Irish Catholic.
His two secretaries of state have been Alexander Haig, an Irish Catholic,
and George Schultz, a Catholic of German extraction.
His CIA director is William Casey, an Irish Roman Catholic, as is his
attorney-general, William French Smith.
HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler is also Irish Roman Catholic.
In a nation in which only 4 percent of the population is Irish Catholic,
this causes no small concern. Any scientist computing mathematical
probabilities will agree that the odds of this arrangement happening by
chance are nil. Now that it has become apparent that the agenda of the
Reagan administration and the Vatican are essentially the same, concern has
turned into alarm.
In his book, American Freedom and Catholic Power, published some thirty-five
years ago, the Reverend Paul Blanshard discussed what theoretically could
happen to American democracy if the Catholic Church conducted itself as it
has in most other countries in recent history, manipulating Governments at
will.
Blanshard's book was labeled heretical and rabidly anti-Catholic. Librarians
were ordered to remove it from their shelves. It was kept secretly in desk
drawers. How tragic - for both non-Catholic and Catholic Americans.
Nowhere is it clearer that the best interests of the Vatican have superseded
those of the United States than in matters concerning the population
growth-national security issue. Many knowledgeable Americans, including
Catholics, agree with another Irish Catholic American, a former secretary of
defense and World Bank president. Robert McNamara, who believes that world
population growth is a greater threat to U.S. security than thermonuclear
war. ....
Preface 3 xv
Of great importance is the fact that, like McNamara, most CathoIic Americans
do not subscribe to the Vatican position on population growth control.
Catholic Americans use the same contraceptive methods and have abortions at
the same rates as non-Catholic Americans, and they have the same desired
family sizes. Furthermore, most American Catholics deeply disagree with the
Vatican on the need for population growth control.
However, there is a cadre of devout Catholics, which, out of deep religious
conviction, follow the dictates of the Vatican, without question.
There is a smaller group of laypersons, less religious, that carry out
orders for the rewards of power and privilege.
They have been joined by certain non-Catholics-fundamentalist Christians,
Mormons, and Orothodox Jews-who are genuinely opposed to abortion, legal or
not, although they are definitely in the minority among anti-abortionists
(less than 30 percent of the activists). Other non-Catholic laypersons, such
as Senator Helms and Congressman Levin, have joined the Vatican effort
because they derive enormous power from the Vatican.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the energy, organization, and direction
of the anti-abortion, anti-family- planning, anti-population-growth-control
movement in the United States comes from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
Church.
The fears of the Reverend Mr. Blanshard are now being realized. The
president, in a speech in Hoboken, New jersey, on July 26, 1984, stated that
he was following the leadership of Pope John Paul II in determining U.S.
foreign policy in Central America in the latest efforts to save
Vatican-backed oppressive governments from popular uprisings.
The White House position paper prepared for the World Population Conference
in Mexico City (see, appendix three) is the same as the Vatican policy on
abortion, family planning, and population growth control.
The threat of the Vatican to democracy is overwhelmingly apparent in Pope
Pius IX'S Syllabus of errors (see, appendix four), as binding today as when
it was promulgated more than one hundred years ago. According to the Roman
Catholic Encyclopedia, "all Catholics are bound to accept the syllabus."
Today, before being ordained, every Catholic priest is required to swear to
support the eighty articles of the syllabus. Priests who are American
citizens have taken an oath to support a philosophy diametrically opposed to
and condemning the principles of the Constitution of the United States and
the Bill of rights.
American Catholics are certain to pay a terrible price for this intrusion
upon American sovereignty. In 1969, the so-called Soccer War was fought
between El Salvador and Honduras. This was the first war ever directly
attributed to overpopulation, a determination made by the Organization of
American States. The war was prompted by massive illegal immigration from
grossly overpopulated El Salvador into Honduras.
[ similar to later tragedy in RC dominated Rwanda & Burundi.... ]
Fifteen years later, the overpopulation problem continues to be all but
ignored in El Salvador because the Vatican demands that it be ignored. The
population today is growing at the incredible rate of 2.6 percent per year,
and the country has a doubling time of twenty-seven years. The results of
this continued growth have been general chaos, the illegal immigration of
more than 20 percent of Salvadorans to the United States, a breakdown in
social order, and destruction of the economic, social, and political
structures of the country.
This is the kind of chaos that the United States has in store if we allow
continued illegal immigration of tens of millions of Catholic Latin
Americans and others into the United States. This approach to assuming
control over the most powerful nation on earth appears to be what the
Vatican has in mind, since it represents the only significant opposition to
illegal immigration control.
The public trust in all American [Roman] Catholics is imminently threatened
by this refusal of the Vatican to respect American sovereignty. As soon as
American non-Catholics sense that this trust has been broken by a
significant number of catholics who owe their first loyalty to the Vatican,
public trust in [Roman] Catholics in general will be destroyed, albeit
undeservedly. If the Vatican proceeds with this infringement on U.S.
sovereignty, a violent reaction is already predictable.
Unfortunately, all of us will pay for the Vatican's struggle for power.
On September 12, 1984, Bill Moyers appeared with Dan Rather on the CBS
evening news. His commentary referred to the alliance between the Roman
Catholic bishops and Protestant fundamentalists. He discussed the threat of
the separation of church and state issue, which has been renewed by the 1984
presidential campaign, and placed in the strongest terms the seriousness of
this threat to America:
'We have an alternative to civil war in this country
- a holy civil war at that - and that is the Constitution.'
El Salvador and China offer us the best examples of the option Americans
will have if we continue to allow a government other than our own
democratically representative one to determine U. S. foreign and domestic
policy on population growth control activities. Either an insecure nation in
social, economic, and political chaos or a highly regimented one devoid of
many cherished freedoms may be our future. Neither option should be
acceptable to Americans. Population growth control is the only alternative.
This book is devoted to a complete discussion of the population
growth-national security threat, and each issue set forth in the foregoing
pages is discussed in depth.
STEPHEN D. MUMFORD
- END PREFACE QUOTE-
" The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics -- CIA
chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters and William Wilson,
Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican.
They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance:...."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Time
February 24, 1992
Cover Story
The Holy Alliance
1 of 2
SPECIAL REPORT
PAGE 28
Faced with a military crackdown in Poland, Ronald Reagan and John Paul II
secretly joined forces to keep the Solidarity union alive. They hoped not
only to pressure Warsaw but to free all of Eastern Europe.
By Carl Bernstein
Only President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were present in the
Vatican Library on Monday, June 7, 1982. It was the first time the two had
met, and they talked for 50 minutes. In the same wing of the papal
apartments, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini
met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Judge William Clark, Reagan's
National Security Adviser. Most of their discussion focused on Israel's
invasion of Lebanon, then in its second day; Haig told them Prime Minister
Menachem Begin had assured him that the invasion would not go farther than
25 miles inside Lebanon.
But Reagan and the Pope spent only a few minutes reviewing events in the
Middle East. Instead they remained focused on a subject much closer to their
heart: Poland and the Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe. In that meeting,
Reagan and the Pope agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the
dissolution of the communist empire. Declares Richard Allen, Reagan's first
National Security Adviser: "This was one of the great secret alliances of
all time."
The operation was focused on Poland, the most populous of the Soviet
satellites in Eastern Europe and the birthplace of John Paul II. Both the
Pope and the President were convinced that Poland could be broken out of the
Soviet orbit if the Vatican and the U.S. committed their resources to
destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed Solidarity
movement alive after the declaration of martial law in 1981.
Until Solidarity's legal status was restored in 1989 it flourished
underground, supplied, nurtured and advised largely by the network
established under the auspices of Reagan and John Paul II. Tons of
equipment--fax machines (the first in Poland), printing presses,
transmitters, telephones, shortwave radios, video cameras, photocopiers,
telex machines, computers, word processors--were smuggled into Poland via
channels established by priests and American agents and representatives of
the AFL-CIO and European labor movements. Money for the banned union came
from CIA funds, the National Endowment for Democracy, secret accounts in the
Vatican and Western trade unions.
Lech Walesa and other leaders of Solidarity received strategic advice--often
conveyed by priests or American and European labor experts working
undercover in Poland--that reflected the thinking of the Vatican and the
Reagan Administration. As the effectiveness of the resistance grew, the
stream of information to the West about the internal decisions of the Polish
government and the contents of Warsaw's communications with Moscow became a
flood. The details came not only from priests but also from spies within the
Polish government.
Down with Yalta
According to aides who shared their leaders' view of the world, Reagan and
John Paul II refused to accept a fundamental political fact of their
lifetimes: the division of Europe as mandated at Yalta and the communist
dominance of Eastern Europe. A free, non communist Poland, they were
convinced, would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire; and if
Poland became democratic, other East European states would follow.
"We both felt that a great mistake had been made at Yalta and something
should be done," Reagan says today. "Solidarity was the very weapon for
bringing this about, because it was an organization of the laborers of
Poland." Nothing quite like Solidarity had ever existed in Eastern Europe,
Reagan notes, adding that the workers' union "was contrary to anything the
Soviets would want or the communists [in Poland] would want."
According to Solidarity leaders, Walesa and his lieutenants were aware that
both Reagan and John Paul II were committed to Solidarity's survival, but
they could only guess at the extent of the collaboration. "Officially I
didn't know the church was working with the U.S.," says Wojciech Adamiecki,
the organizer and editor of underground Solidarity newspapers and now a
counselor at the Polish embassy in Washington. "We were told the Pope had
warned the Soviets that if they entered Poland he would fly to Poland and
stay with the Polish people. The church was of primary assistance. It was
half open, half secret. Open as far as humanitarian aid--food, money,
medicine, doctors' consultations held in churches, for instance--and secret
as far as supporting political activities: distributing printing machines of
all kinds, giving us a place for underground meetings, organizing special
demonstrations."
At their first meeting, Reagan and John Paul II discussed something else
they had in common: both had survived assassination attempts only six weeks
apart in 1981, and both believed God had saved them for a special mission.
"A close friend of Ronald Reagan's told me the President said, `Look how the
evil forces were put in our way and how Providence intervened,'" says Pio
Cardinal Laghi, the former apostolic delegate to Washington. According to
National Security Adviser Clark, the Pope and Reagan referred to the
"miraculous" fact that they had survived. Clark said the men shared "a unity
of spiritual view and a unity of vision on the Soviet empire: that right or
correctness would ultimately prevail in the divine plan."
"Reagan came in with very simple and strongly held views," says Admiral
Bobby Inman, former deputy director of the CIA. "It is a valid point of view
that he saw the collapse [of communism] coming and he pushed it--hard."
During the first half of 1982, a five-part strategy emerged that was aimed
at bringing about the collapse of the Soviet economy, fraying the ties that
bound the U.S.S.R. to its client states in the Warsaw Pact and forcing
reform inside the Soviet empire. Elements of that strategy included:
-- The U.S. defense buildup already under way, aimed at making it too costly
for the Soviets to compete militarily with the U.S. Reagan's Strategic
Defense Initiative--Star Wars--became a centerpiece of the strategy.
-- Covert operations aimed at encouraging reform movements in Hungary,
Czechoslovakia and Poland.
-- Financial aid to Warsaw Pact nations calibrated to their willingness to
protect human rights and undertake political and free-market reforms.
-- Economic isolation of the Soviet Union and the withholding of Western and
Japanese technology from Moscow. The Administration focused on denying the
U.S.S.R. what it had hoped would be its principal source of hard currency in
the 21st century: profits from a transcontinental pipeline to supply natural
gas to Western Europe. The 3,600-mile-long pipeline, stretching from Siberia
to France, opened on time on Jan. 1, 1984, but on a far smaller scale than
the Soviets had hoped.
-- Increased use of Radio Liberty, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to
transmit the Administration's messages to the peoples of Eastern Europe.
Yet in 1982 neither Reagan nor the Pope could anticipate the accession of a
Soviet leader like Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and
perestroika; his efforts at reform unleashed powerful forces that spun out
of his control and led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The
Washington-Vatican alliance "didn't cause the fall of communism," observes a
U.S. official familiar with the details of the plot to keep Solidarity
alive. "Like all great and lucky leaders, the Pope and the President
exploited the forces of history to their own ends."
The Crackdown
The campaign by Washington and the Vatican to keep Solidarity alive began
immediately after General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on Dec.
13, 1981. In those dark hours, Poland's communications with the noncommunist
world were cut; 6,000 leaders of Solidarity were detained; hundreds were
charged with treason, subversion and counterrevolution; nine were killed;
and the union was banned. But thousands of others went into hiding, many
seeking protection in churches, rectories and with priests. Authorities took
Walesa into custody and interned him in a remote hunting lodge.
Shortly after Polish security forces moved into the streets, Reagan called
the Pope for his advice. At a series of meetings over the next few days,
Reagan discussed his options. "We had a massive row in the Cabinet and the
National Security Council about putting together a menu of counteractions,"
former Secretary of State Haig recalls. "They ranged from sanctions that
would have been crushing in their impact on Poland to talking so tough that
we would have risked creating another situation like Hungary in '56 or
Czechoslovakia in '68."
Haig dispatched Ambassador at Large Vernon Walters, a devout Roman Catholic,
to meet with John Paul II. Walters arrived in Rome soon after, and met
separately with the Pope and with Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican secretary
of state. Both sides agreed that Solidarity's flame must not be
extinguished, that the Soviets must become the focus of an international
campaign of isolation, and that the Polish government must be subjected to
moral and limited economic pressure.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, the Pope had already advised Walesa
through church channels to keep his movement operating underground, and to
pass the word to Solidarity's 10 million members not to go into the streets
and risk provoking Warsaw Pact intervention or civil war with Polish
security forces. Because the communists had cut the direct phone lines
between Poland and the Vatican, John Paul II communicated with Jozef
Cardinal Glemp in Warsaw via radio. He also dispatched his envoys to Poland
to report on the situation. "The Vatican's information was absolutely better
and quicker than ours in every respect," says Haig. "Though we had some
excellent sources of our own, our information was taking too long to filter
through the intelligence bureaucracy."
In the first hours of the crisis, Reagan ordered that the Pope receive as
quickly as possible relevant American intelligence, including information
from a Polish Deputy Minister of Defense who was secretly reporting to the
CIA. Washington also handed over to the Vatican reports and analysis from
Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a senior member of the Polish general staff, who
was a CIA informant until November 1981, when he had to be smuggled out of
Poland after he warned that the Soviets were prepared to invade if the
Polish government did not impose martial law. Kuklinski had issued a similar
warning about a Soviet military action in late 1980, which led the outgoing
Carter Administration to send secret messages to Leonid Brezhnev informing
him that among the costs of an invasion would be the sale of sophisticated
U.S. weapons to China. This time, Kuklinski reported to Washington, Brezhnev
had grown more impatient, and a disastrous harvest at home meant that the
Kremlin did not need mechanized army units to help bring in the crops and
instead could spare them for an invasion. "Anything that we knew that we
thought the Pope would not be aware of, we certainly brought it to his
attention," says Reagan. "Immediately."
The Catholic Team
The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics--CIA chief
William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters and William Wilson, Reagan's
first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship
as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their
church combined with their fierce anticommunism and their notion of American
democracy. Yet the mission would have been impossible without the full
support of Reagan, who believed fervently in both the benefits and the
practical applications of Washington's relationship with the Vatican. One of
his earliest goals as President, Reagan says, was to recognize the Vatican
as a state "and make them an ally."
According to Admiral John Poindexter, the military assistant to the National
Security Adviser when martial law was declared in Poland, Reagan was
convinced that the communists had made a huge miscalculation: after allowing
Solidarity to operate openly for 16 months before the crackdown, the Polish
government would only alienate its countrymen by attempting to cripple the
labor movement and, most important, would bring the powerful church into
direct conflict with the Polish regime. "I didn't think that this [the
decision to impose martial law and crush Solidarity] could stand, because of
the history of Poland and the religious aspect and all," Reagan says. Says
Cardinal Casaroli: "There was a real coincidence of interests between the
U.S. and the Vatican."
The major decisions on funneling aid to Solidarity and responding to the
Polish and Soviet governments were made by Reagan, Casey and Clark, in
consultation with John Paul II. "Reagan understood these things quite well,
including the covert side," says Richard Pipes, the conservative Polish-born
scholar who headed the NSC's Soviet and East European desks. "The President
talked about the evil of the Soviet system--not its people--and how we had
to do everything possible to help these people in Solidarity who were
struggling for freedom. People like Haig and Commerce Secretary Malcolm
Baldrige and James Baker [White House chief of staff at the time] thought it
wasn't realistic. George Bush never said a word. I used to sit behind him,
and I never knew what his opinions were. But Reagan really understood what
was at stake."
By most accounts, Casey stepped into the vacuum in the first days after the
declaration of martial law in Poland and--as he did in Central
America--became the principal policy architect. Meanwhile Pipes and the NSC
staff began drafting proposals for sanctions. "The object was to drain the
Soviets and to lay blame for martial law at their doorstep," says Pipes.
"The sanctions were coordinated with Special Operations [the CIA division in
charge of covert task forces], and the first objective was to keep
Solidarity alive by supplying money, communications and equipment."
"The church was trying to modulate the whole situation," explains one of the
NSC officials who directed the effort to curtail the pipeline. "They [church
leaders] were in effect trying to create circumstances that would head off
the serious threat of Soviet intervention while allowing us to get tougher
and tougher; they were part and parcel of virtually all of our deliberations
in terms of how we viewed the evolution of government-sponsored repression
in Poland--whether it was lessening or getting worse, and how we should
proceed."
As for his conversations with Reagan about Poland, Clark says they were
usually short. "I don't think I ever had an in-depth, one-on-one, private
conversation that existed for more than three minutes with him--on any
subject. That might shock you. We had our own code of communication. I knew
where he wanted to go on Poland. And that was to take it to its nth
possibilities. The President and Casey and I discussed the situation on the
ground in Poland constantly: covert operations; who was doing what, where,
why and how; and the chances of success." According to Clark, he and Casey
directed that the President's daily brief--the PDB, an intelligence summary
prepared by the CIA--include a special supplement on secret operations and
analysis in Poland.
The Pope himself, not only his deputies, met with American officials to
assess events in Poland and the effectiveness of American actions and sent
back messages--sometimes by letter, sometimes orally--to Reagan. On almost
all his trips to Europe and the Middle East, Casey flew first to Rome, so
that he could meet with John Paul II and exchange information. But the
principal emissary between Washington and Rome remained Walters, a former
deputy director of the CIA who worked easily with Casey. Walters met with
the Pope perhaps a dozen times, according to Vatican sources. "Walters was
sent to and from the Vatican for the specific purpose of carrying messages
between the Pope and the President," says former U.S. Ambassador to the
Vatican Wilson. "It wasn't supposed to be known that Walters was there. It
wasn't all specifically geared to Poland; sometimes there were also
discussions about Central America or the hostages in Lebanon."
Often in the Reagan years, American covert operations (including those in
Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Angola) involved "lethal assistance" to insurgent
forces: arms, mercenaries, military advisers and explosives. In Poland the
Pope, the President and Casey embarked on the opposite path: "What they had
to do was let the natural forces already in place play this out and not get
their fingerprints on it," explains an analyst. What emerges from the
Reagan-Casey collaboration is a carefully calibrated operation whose scope
was modest compared with other CIA activities. "If Casey were around now,
he'd be having some smiles," observes one of his reluctant admirers. "In
1991 Reagan and Casey got the reordering of the world that they wanted."
The Secret Directive
Less than three weeks before his meeting with the Pope in 1982, the
President signed a secret national-security-decision directive (NSDD 32)
that authorized a range of economic, diplomatic and covert measures to
"neutralize efforts of the U.S.S.R." to maintain its hold on Eastern Europe.
In practical terms, the most important covert operations undertaken were
those inside Poland. The primary purposes of NSDD 32 were to destabilize the
Polish government through covert operations involving propaganda and
organizational aid to Solidarity; the promotion of human rights,
particularly those related to the right of worship and the Catholic Church;
economic pressure; and diplomatic isolation of the communist regime. The
document, citing the need to defend democratic reform efforts throughout the
Soviet empire, also called for increasing propaganda and underground
broadcasting operations in Eastern Europe, actions that Reagan's aides and
dissidents in Eastern Europe believe were particularly helpful in chipping
away at the notion of Soviet invincibility. [continued]
End 1 of 2
Time
Cover Story
February 24, 1992
SPECIAL REPORT
2 of 2
The Holy Alliance
As Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, a member of the House Intelligence
Committee from 1985 to 1990, who was apprised of some of the
Administration's covert actions, observes, "In Poland we did all of the
things that are done in countries where you want to destabilize a communist
government and strengthen resistance to that.
We provided the supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine
newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice.
And working outward from Poland, the same kind of resistance was organized
in the other communist countries of Europe."
Among those who played a consulting role was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a native
of Poland and President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. "I got
along very well with Casey," recalls Brzezinski. "He was very flexible and
very imaginative and not very bureaucratic; if something needed to be done,
it was done. To sustain an underground effort takes a lot in terms of
supplies, networks, etc., and this is why Solidarity wasn't crushed."
On military questions, American intelligence was better than the Vatican's,
but the church excelled in its evaluations of the political situation. And
in understanding the mood of the people and communicating with the
Solidarity leadership, the church was in an incomparable position. "Our
information about Poland was very well founded because the bishops were in
continual contact with the Holy See and Solidarnosc," explains Cardinal
Silvestrini, the Vatican's deputy secretary of state at that time. "They
informed us about prisoners, about the activities and needs of Solidarity
groups and about the attitude and schisms in the government." All this
information was communicated to the President or Casey.
"If you study the situation of Solidarity, you see they acted very cleverly,
without pressing too much at the crucial moments, because they had guidance
from the church," says one of the Pope's closest aides. "Yes, there were
times we restrained Solidarnosc. But Poland was a bomb that could
explode--in the heart of communism, bordered by the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Too much pressure, and the bomb would go
off."
Casey's Cappuccino
Meanwhile, in Washington a close relationship developed between Casey, Clark
and Archbishop Laghi. "Casey and I dropped into his [Laghi's] residence
early mornings during critical times to gather his comments and counsel,"
says Clark. "We'd have breakfast and coffee and discuss what was being done
in Poland. I'd speak to him frequently on the phone, and he would be in
touch with the Pope." Says Laghi: "They liked good cappuccino. Occasionally
we might talk about Central America or the church position on birth control.
But usually the subject was Poland."
"Almost everything having to do with Poland was handled outside of normal
State Department channels and would go through Casey and Clark," says Robert
McFarlane, who served as a deputy to both Clark and Haig and later as
National Security Adviser to the President. "I knew that they were meeting
with Pio Laghi, and that Pio Laghi had been to see the President, but Clark
would never tell me what the substance of the discussions was."
On at least six occasions Laghi came to the White House and met with Clark
or the President; each time, he entered the White House through the
southwest gate in order to avoid reporters. "By keeping in such close touch,
we did not cross lines," says Laghi. "My role was primarily to facilitate
meetings between Walters and the Holy Father. The Holy Father knew his
people. It was a very complex situation--how to insist on human rights, on
religious freedom, and keep Solidarity alive without provoking the communist
authorities further. But I told Vernon, `Listen to the Holy Father. We have
2,000 years' experience at this.'"
Though William Casey has been vilified for aspects of his tenure as CIA
chief, there is no criticism of his instincts on Poland. "Basically, he had
a quiet confidence that the communists couldn't hold on, especially in
Poland," says former Congressman Edward Derwinski, a Polish-speaking expert
on Eastern Europe who counseled the Administration and met with Casey
frequently. "He was convinced the system was falling and doomed to collapse
one way or another--and Poland was the force that would lead to the dam
breaking. He demanded a constant [CIA] focus on Eastern Europe. It wasn't
noticed, because other stories were more controversial and were perking at
the moment--Nicaragua and Salvador."
In Poland, Casey conducted the kind of old-style operation that he relished,
something he might have done in his days at the Office of Strategic Services
during World War II or in the early years of the CIA, when the democracies
of Western Europe rose from the ashes of World War II. It was through
Casey's contacts, his associates say, that elements of the Socialist
International were organized on behalf of Solidarity--just as the Social
Democratic parties of Western Europe had been used as an instrument of
American policy by the CIA in helping to create anticommunist governments
after the war. And this time the objective was akin to creating a Christian
Democratic majority in Poland--with the church and the overwhelmingly
Catholic membership of Solidarity as the dominant political force in a
postcommunist Poland. Through his contacts with leaders of the Socialist
International, including officials of socialist governments in France and
Sweden, Casey ensured that tactical assistance was available on the
Continent and at sea to move goods into Poland. "This wasn't about spending
huge amounts of money," says Brzezinski. "It was about getting the message
out and resisting: books, communications equipment, propaganda, ink and
printing presses."
Look for the Union Label
In almost every city and town, underground newspapers and mimeographed
bulletins appeared, challenging the state-controlled media. The church
published its own newspapers. Solidarity missives, photocopied and
mimeographed on American-supplied equipment, were tacked to church bulletin
boards. Stenciled posters were boldly posted on police stations and
government buildings and even on entrances to the state-controlled
television center, where army officers broadcast the news.
The American embassy in Warsaw became the pivotal CIA station in the
communist world and, by all accounts, the most effective. Meanwhile, the
AFL-CIO, which had been the largest source of American support for
Solidarity before martial law, regarded the Reagan Administration's approach
as too slow and insufficiently confrontational with the Polish authorities.
Nonetheless, according to intelligence sources, AFL-CIO president Lane
Kirkland and his aide Tom Kahn consulted frequently with Poindexter, Clark
and other officials at the State Department and the NSC on such matters as
how and when to move goods and supplies into Poland, identifying cities
where Solidarity was in particular need of organizing assistance, and
examining how Solidarity and the AFL-CIO might collaborate in the
preparation of propaganda materials.
"Lane Kirkland deserves special credit," observes Derwinski. "They don't
like to admit [it], but they literally were in lockstep [with the
Administration]. Also never forget that Bill Clark's wife is Czechoslovak,
as is Lane Kirkland's wife. This is one issue where everybody was aboard;
there were no turf fights or mavericks or naysayers."
But AFL-CIO officials were never aware of the extent of clandestine U.S.
assistance, or the Administration's reliance on the church for guidance
regarding how hard to push Polish and Soviet authorities. Casey was wary of
"contaminating" the American and European labor movements by giving them too
many details of the Administration's efforts. And indeed this was not
strictly a CIA operation. Rather, it was a blend of covert and overt, public
policy and secret alliances. Casey recognized that in many instances the
AFL-CIO was more imaginative than his own operatives in providing
organizational assistance to Solidarity and smuggling equipment into the
country. According to former deputy CIA director Inman, Casey decided that
the American labor movement's relationship with Solidarity was so good that
much of what the CIA needed could be financed and obtained through AFL-CIO
channels. "Financial support wasn't what they needed," says Inman. "It was
organization, and that was an infinitely better way to help them than
through classic covert operations."
The Solidarity office in Brussels became an international clearinghouse: for
representatives of the Vatican, for CIA operatives, for the AFL-CIO, for
representatives of the Socialist International, for the congressionally
funded National Endowment for Democracy, which also worked closely with
Casey. It was the place where Solidarity told its backers--some of whose
real identities were unknown to Solidarity itself--what it needed, where
goods and supplies and organizers could be most useful. Priests, couriers,
labor organizers and intelligence operatives moved in and out of Poland with
requests for aid and with detailed information on the situation inside the
government and the underground. Food and clothing and money to pay fines of
Solidarity leaders who were brought before Polish courts poured into the
country. Inside Poland, a network of priests carried messages back and forth
between the churches where many of Solidarity's leaders were in hiding.
In the summer of 1984, when the sanctions against Poland seemed to be
hurting ordinary Poles and not the communists, Laghi traveled to Santa
Barbara to meet with Reagan at the Western White House and urge that some of
the sanctions be lifted. The Administration complied. At the same time, the
White House, in close consultation with the Vatican, refused to ease its
economic pressures on Moscow--denying technology, food and cultural
exchanges as the price for continuing oppression in Poland.
Much of the equipment destined for Solidarity arrived in Poland by
ship--often packed in mismarked containers sent from Denmark and Sweden,
then unloaded at Gdansk and other ports by dockers secretly working with
Solidarity. According to Administration officials, the socialist government
of Sweden--and Swedish labor unions--played a crucial role in arranging the
transshipment of goods to Poland. From the Polish docks, equipment moved to
its destination in trucks and private cars driven by Solidarity sympathizers
who often used churches and priests as their point of contact for deliveries
and pickups.
"Solidarity Lives!"
"The Administration plugged into the church across the board," observes
Derwinski, now Secretary of Veterans Affairs. "Not just through the church
hierarchy but through individual churches and bishops. Monsignor Bronislaw
Dabrowski, a deputy to Cardinal Glemp, came to us often to tell us what was
needed: he would meet with me, with Casey, the NSC and sometimes with
Walters." John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, whose father was born in
Poland, was the American churchman closest to the Pope. He frequently met
with Casey to discuss support for Solidarity and covert operations,
according to CIA sources and Derwinski. "Krol hit it off very well with
President Reagan and was a source of constant advice and contact," says
Derwinski. "Often he was the one Casey or Clark went to, the one who really
understood the situation."
By 1985 it was apparent that the Polish government's campaign to suppress
Solidarity had failed. According to a report by Adrian Karatnycky, who
helped organize the AFL-CIO's assistance to Solidarity, there were more than
400 underground periodicals appearing in Poland, some with a circulation
that exceeded 30,000. Books and pamphlets challenging the authority of the
communist government were printed by the thousands. Comic books for children
recast Polish fables and legends, with Jaruzelski pictured as the villain,
communism as the red dragon and Walesa as the heroic knight. In church
basements and homes, millions of viewers watched documentary videos produced
and screened on the equipment smuggled into the country.
With clandestine broadcasting equipment supplied by the CIA and the AFL-CIO,
Solidarity regularly broke into the government's radio programming, often
with the message "Solidarity lives!" or "Resist!" Armed with a transmitter
supplied by the CIA through church channels, Solidarity interrupted
television programming with both audio and visual messages, including calls
for strikes and demonstrations. "There was a great moment at the half time
of the national soccer championship," says a Vatican official. "Just as the
whistle sounded for the half, a SOLIDARITY LIVES! banner went up on the
screen and a tape came on calling for resistance. What was particularly
ingenious was waiting for the half-time break; had the interruption come
during actual soccer play, it could have alienated people." As Brzezinski
sums it up, "This was the first time that communist police suppression
didn't succeed."
"Nobody believed the collapse of communism would happen this fast or on this
timetable," says a cardinal who is one of the Pope's closest aides. "But in
their first meeting, the Holy Father and the President committed themselves
and the institutions of the church and America to such a goal. And from that
day, the focus was to bring it about in Poland."
Step by reluctant step, the Soviets and the communist government of Poland
bowed to the moral, economic and political pressure imposed by the Pope and
the President. Jails were emptied, Walesa's trial on charges of slandering
state officials was abandoned, the Polish communist party turned
fratricidal, and the country's economy collapsed in a haze of strikes and
demonstrations and sanctions.
On Feb. 19, 1987, after Warsaw had pledged to open a dialogue with the
church, Reagan lifted U.S. sanctions. Four months later, Pope John Paul II
was cheered by millions of his countrymen as he traveled across Poland
demanding human rights and praising Solidarity. In July 1988, Gorbachev
visited Warsaw and signaled Moscow's recognition that the government could
not rule without Solidarity's cooperation. On April 5, 1989, the two sides
signed agreements legalizing Solidarity and calling for open parliamentary
elections in June. In December 1990, nine years after he was arrested and
his labor union banned, Lech Walesa became President of Poland.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SNIP:
COVER STORY ............. PART TWO
SPECIAL REPORT
Page 35
"THE U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control"
In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to
alter its foreign-aid program to comply with the church's teachings on birth
control.
According to William Wilson, the President's first ambassador to the
Vatican, the State Department reluctantly agreed to an outright ban on the
use of any U. S. aid funds by either countries or international health
organizations for the promotion of birth control or abortion. As a result of
this position, announced at the World Conference on Population in Mexico
City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding from, among others, two of the
world's largest family planning organizations: the International Planned
Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
"American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican's not agreeing with
our policy," Wilson explains. "American aid programs around the world did
not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family planning. AID [the Agency
for International Development] sent various people from [the Department of]
State to Rome, and I'd accompany them to meet the president of the
Pontifical Council for the Family, and in long discussions they finally got
the message. But it was a struggle. They finally selected different programs
and abandoned others as a result of this intervention."
"I might have touched on that in some of my discussions with [CIA director
William] Casey," acknowledges Pio Cardinal Laghi, the former apostolic
delegate to Washington. "Certainly Casey already knew about our positions
about that."
The Administration consulted with the Vatican on other matters as well. In
Lebanon, the Reagan Administration adopted policies favoring the interests
of the church and Maronite Christians. On several occasions, Casey used
church channels to deal with the contras, though the Vatican itself took no
official position on the war in Nicaragua. (Indeed, the Pope issued numerous
appeals for peace in Central America and implicitly criticized the U.S. for
prolonging the conflict.) Cardinal Laghi, who had served in Nicaragua in the
early 1950s as secretary at the Apostolic Nunciature in Managua, played a
key role by assuring contra leaders that the Administration delivered on its
promises.
END 2 of 2
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