Chapter 3: The Train Salon, Public Diplomacy, and the New “Operation Mockingbird” (continued)
A note to readers: this is an old post on the archive website for Promethean PAC. It was written when we were known as LaRouche PAC, before changing our name to Promethean PAC in April 2024. You can find the latest daily news and updates on www.PrometheanAction.com. Additionally, Promethean PAC has a new website at www.PrometheanPAC.com.
The British, Using George H.W. Bush, Destroyed the First Church Committee’s Achievements: a True Crime Story and Lesson for Our Times, continued.
In the first two posts (post 1, post 2) in this series, I told you how we found out about the secret and very spooky salons of journalists and government officials, which were convened in 1983 at the Manhattan town house of Wall Street financier and rabid Anglophile John Train. They aimed to set the stage for prosecuting Lyndon LaRouche through a campaign of rancid defamations—just like similar campaigns against Donald Trump.
As with Trump, the LaRouche case received a big initial push from the British government. The first Train salon occurred six weeks after President Ronald Reagan defied his advisors by announcing his Strategic Defense Initiative. LaRouche had campaigned for this since 1978.
The current House of Representatives models its subcommittee exploring the weaponization of our government against its citizens on the Church Committee of the mid-1970s. But that Committee failed to eradicate the Secret Government—a terminal disease which, if allowed to survive, will finally kill this republic.
The Path to Eradicating the Secret Government
To accomplish their intent, the current House must expose the operations conducted under the Secret Government’s founding documents—particularly Executive Orders 12333 and 12334, NSDD 77, and those involving Project Democracy—in their various iterations from 1981 forward. These were the product of George H.W. Bush and a network of former Trotskyist neocons in the Reagan Administration which successfully reversed all of Congress’ 1970s “reforms.” Only this exercise will uproot and destroy the disease.
The Church Committee aired shocking CIA use and co-option of the national news media under Operation Mockingbird; MK Ultra’s mind control and mind altering experiments; a CIA mail-opening program involving thousands of letters authored by, or received by U.S. citizens; warrantless surveillance of journalists and other dissidents; involvement in illegal foreign coups and assassinations (including both successful and attempted instances); Operation CHAOS aimed at penetrating and steering the anti-war movement; the NSA’s Operation Shamrock warrantless surveillance program against U.S. citizens; and the raft of illegalities committed by the FBI’s COINTELPRO programs against civil rights leaders (most notably Martin Luther King) and political opponents. It claimed to reform and end these practices.
But it made major compromises in the name of “national security,” which kept poisonous deeds and programs in classified status. The more robust concurrent Pike Committee investigation by the House was both blocked and ultimately censored, its findings only published through leaks. The potentials of these investigations were successfully neutered by confessed British agent, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, and CIA Director George H.W. Bush, operating through the Ford White House.
Former CIA Director William Colby, who voluntarily revealed many CIA illegalities to the Church Committee—illegalities which were dubbed “the Family Jewels”—was never forgiven for his actions. Ford fired him and replaced him with George H.W. Bush. There is substantial reason to believe that Colby was assassinated in 1996.
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot. He barely survived the attack by John Hinckley. He never really recovered and ceded major control of his administration to Vice President Bush. In December of 1981, President Reagan signed Executive Orders 12333 and 12334 governing intelligence activities. Authored principally by Kenneth E. deGraffenreid at the National Security Council and Angelo Codevilla at the Senate Intelligence Committee, these EOs completely reversed the reforms set in the 1970s.
They are the founding documents of our current police state. Under them, all intelligence activities were to be coordinated by the National Security Council (which Bush controlled in the Reagan years) and an unaccountable bureaucratic “interagency.” Activities would be very significantly privatized, like the operations of Silicon Valley and mercenary Pentagon and similar contractors today.
The two EOs set up the regime of lawless surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency and foreign intelligence partners, like Britain’s GCHQ—the regime first revealed by Edward Snowden. Snowden specifically referred to EO 12333 as the main justification for these illicit activities. The only requirement for activation is an indication of foreign involvement. Neither warrants nor courts need be involved since the main thrust is “neutralization” or elimination of an alleged threat through means which remain classified.
The Department of Justice’s National Security Division, the component of the DOJ running these operations, is immune, by regulation, from investigation by the DOJ Inspector General. If a criminal prosecution does evolve out of this, prosecutors only need to figure out a way to launder the proceeds gained from constitutionally illegal techniques into their case files.
Activities conducted against Donald Trump under EO 12333 under the legend of Russiagate are the heart of the coup against the 45th President, but most investigations have concentrated instead on FISA abuses. The EO prevents revelation of the connection to private contractors or companies, or private media connections to official government intelligence agencies. In fact, such relationships can be lied about in order to protect “sources and methods.”
Disgusted with this turn of events, Bobby Ray Inman resigned as Deputy Director of the CIA in March of 1982. He had believed in the reforms from the 1970s and specifically referred to losing the debate about legalities and transparency concerning intelligence operations in remarks he made to the press. Inman had worked with LaRouche on operations promoting the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative to the Soviets.
In 1982, Walter Raymond, the CIA’s lead psychological warfare expert and propagandist, was detailed by CIA Director Bill Casey to the NSC. Raymond was tasked with creating a propaganda program directed at the American people in support of the administration’s intelligence and political objectives. Targeting Americans for these types of propaganda and psywar operations was formerly prohibited. Raymond’s initial focus was Central America and Vice President Bush’s illicit CONTRA cocaine-funded mercenary operation seeking regime change in Nicaragua.
In June of 1982, President Reagan went to Britain to found “Project Democracy” alongside British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Its purpose, implemented through the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Congress, was to conduct regime change operations which had formerly been conducted by the CIA, while countering alleged Soviet propaganda—now branded as “Soviet Active Measures.”
By January of 1983, Walter Raymond had authored NSDD 77, formalizing a propaganda apparatus involving the whole of government in supporting U.S. national security objectives. In other words, the government, previously banned from directing its psywar and propaganda domestically, now was allowed to do this freely.
Under this new “legal” regime, the stage was now set for the operation against Lyndon LaRouche and other regime opponents under EO 12333 and 12334.
The EO 12333 LaRouche Operation Begins
Henry Kissinger had been hysterically demanding an FBI investigation of LaRouche throughout 1982. Among other things, LaRouche had detailed Kissinger’s treasonous service to the British crown, his murderous population control strategy against the developing sector, and his bizarre sex life. The SDI proposal advanced by Ronald Reagan revealed the fraud of Kissinger’s détente and MAD nuclear policies. Henry wrote to FBI Director William Webster in August of 1982 demanding action against LaRouche after appealing to him personally during their joint sojourn at the infamous Bohemian Grove. According to former CIA Counterintelligence Director J.J. Angleton, Kissinger had also recruited Angleton to support his jihad against LaRouche. In subsequent comments to the media, Kissinger said that LaRouche’s ready access to the Reagan White House was “outrageous” and “unforgiveable.”
Like clockwork, on August 27, 1982, the British government wrote to the FBI demanding an investigation of LaRouche. They alleged that LaRouche was peddling Russian disinformation. Alert readers will remember that the British government made similar demands to the CIA about Donald Trump. They threatened to end “the special relationship” if Trump was not bagged and garroted. The British letter about LaRouche was answered by J.J. Angleton’s longtime friend, James Nolan, at the FBI. Nolan noted that LaRouche’s activities “could be propitious to Soviet propaganda interests.”
In January of 1983, Kissinger’s allies on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, David Abshire, Edward Bennett Williams, and Leo Cherne, demanded an FBI investigation of LaRouche under the Attorney General’s “guidelines or otherwise.” The “otherwise” is a cryptic reference to EO 12333.
The EO 12333 LaRouche operation had begun.
Next: Chapter 4, The Train Salons: Who Was There, What They Did