Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:28:02
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas...
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
What follows in the next 38 messages is a file provided by Don Ecker to ParaNet
for distribution. It was authored by Lars Hansson, an investigative journalist
who had extensive contact with John Lear and Bill Cooper over several years.
The material is controversial, however ParaNet felt it important enough to post
for information.
Provided to ParaNet Information Services for distribution.
ParaNet makes no claims to this document's veracity or accuracy.
The opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the author and
do not necessarily reflect the position or opinions of ParaNet
Information Services. This material is provided as information only.
Part One: LEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (with
apologies to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson)
by Lars Hansson
Although I knew it would somehow be inevitable, I
have been very reluctant to commit what follows to hard copy for a
number of reasons. Throughout years of uncovering all manner of
lies, treachery, deceit and betrayal by criminal elements within
the government of our country and its client regimes around the
world, I have subscribed to an unspoken code of "honor among
thieves" -- that is, to respect and protect the identity of sources
who have finally chosen to "come clean," often at great peril to
themselves or their families. What has been held reluctantly in
confidence emerges now only after the repeated blatant and
sniggering violation of that code by John Lear himself. Despite
Lear's cultivated image as a swashbuckling pilot and serious UFO
researcher, he is, in my opinion, and others', an irresponsible,
self-centered, loutish thrill-seeker who truly has no business in
the latter field, and questionable competence in the former, given
his record of hard-drinking and womanizing, at least during the
time I associated with him from 1988-1990.
Lest I be accused of self-righteousness in this regard, I have
never pretended to sanctity, but have certainly interacted with
Lear and the others mentioned herein with utmost integrity, while
he has not hesitated to portray me publicly in a much different
light. Because of the magnitude of the issues he has succeeded in
forcing before the world's attention, I believe that it is long
past the time when the public should know more of the truth about
Lear which he has so desperately been attempting to conceal. I
sincerely regret that I waited this long to bring it to their
attention myself. For someone who has made such an effort to "wake
up the masses" to the looming peril of takeover by "grey aliens
from Zeta Reticuli," which he has claimed are ensconced in
underground havens in the Nevada desert, the man has accomplished
an even more masterful cover-up of the looming peril of martial law
under the fascist masters he has willingly served for over two
decades.
The only reason I have reluctantly chosen not to publicize
Lear's involvement in the activities I am about to disclose until
now was that I had little doubt that his family would almost
certainly suffer severe negative repercussions, particularly
considering some of the principals involved. As much as I detest
melodrama, the revelations contained herein constitute a very real
threat to the reputations, and the very lives of a number of
innocent people as well as the participants.
I realize also that exposure of some of the more sordid aspects
will likely bring embarrassment and discomfort to others ensnared
in the situation. I regret this probable turn of events
tremendously, but after considerable soul-searching have concluded
that the larger issues compel me to make these disclosures.
I am truly sorry, but their boy has had numerous opportunities to
rectify the errors and has deliberately chosen instead to magnify
them. C'est la guerre. I am not making these disclosures out of
fear, or in a limp-wristed attempt to embarrass or "get back" at
John Lear. I could have chosen any number of other less-public
ways to do that long before now if that had been my desire.
Rather, I believe that it is crucial that the American people be
informed of these details in order to fully appreciate the
magnitude of the sell-out of this once-great nation which has taken
place at the hands of the weapons merchants and their willing
operatives and transportation agents, such as Lear.
While a few concerned citizens are still asking "Where was
George?" on October 19 and 20, 1980 when a shameful deal was being
made in Paris with the Iranians to keep the American hostages until
the precise moment Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, I am compelled by
conscience to inform them more fully on those who handled the
actual payoff. This payoff has been estimated by those in the know
to ultimately total upwards of $82 billion in illegal weapons
transfers over a period of nearly a decade. On a more personal
level, I am also intent on making it clear to all concerned that I
am aware of the threats Lear has been making -- including his
obsession with having me killed, according to one mutual
acquaintance.
Since I made his threats public, he has claimed that I am a
"Walter Mitty" who would like to flatter myself that someone cared
enough to feel threatened by my disclosures.
I believe, however, that Lear's fear has been genuine for some
time that I will expose his complete fraudulence on the UFO issue,
and his participation in such treasonous and criminal flight
operations over a number of years. In this regard, it is almost a
given that Lear might already have quietly made calls to his
cronies in the "trade" to whine and snivel about the numerous
secrets he bragged about to me.
Have no doubt whatsoever, that any of these people would kill
unhesitatingly to continue covering up many of the things Lear
bantered about openly to me, though he was fully aware of my
professional and political orientation from the very outset of our
contact with each other. After failing to receive so much as an
acknowledgment from various media and law enforcement contacts to
whom I made some of this information available over the last three
years, I have been heartened recently to see the harsh light of
scrutiny finally beginning to fall on such depredations by the few
honest people in power, and the rats beginning to squirm. I have
no illusions about the possible repercussions: As my fellow
investigator John Judge has said many times, "You can either face
this shit standing up or on your knees." And as Barbara Honegger
and others have documented, George Bush's "kinder, gentler nation"
has already entailed a large and growing number of mysterious
fatalities.
Despite the sincerity of my investigative efforts throughout
this period, my role and motivation have been repeatedly distorted
by those with an axe to grind, or mayhem to conceal. I have found
inspiration to continue from the old pilot's adage, "When you're
receiving flak, it means you're probably over the target!" which my
friend and mentor Lt. Col. James Bo Gritz is fond of using to
exhort his audiences to valor in the face of increasing corruption
and persecution by those in power at present.
Even John Hancock had more fearless compatriots beside him than
some of the wimps, wannabees, liars and backstabbers I have
mistakenly chosen to associate with in the past, all of whom, like
Lear and Cooper, claim allegiance to the truth and preserving our
cherished constitutional freedoms -- before they "duck and cover."
Nor do I have any illusions as to my "reward" for bearing such a
message, but given the inherent risks in working on all my
investigations, especially as I have with Gritz in publicizing
high-level U.S. Government involvement in drug trafficking,
political destabilizations and assassinations, such a consideration
has obviously been secondary.
Although I have been following the UFO phenomenon for 25 years
(and fairly intensely for the last three years), I do not pretend
to be any kind of expert on the subject. My focus in this article
will be primarily on more mundane issues related to personal
credibility and provable criminal and/or treasonous actions on the
part of the individuals named above. Those who are hoping to learn
here whether or not Bill Cooper and John Lear and others are
telling the truth about whether there really are UFOs and/or aliens
at Area S-4 of the Nevada Test Site, as they and others have
alleged, or whether MJ-12 really exists or is another elaborate
fabrication of the intelligence agencies, will have to look
elsewhere.
I do not know for a fact that either or both of them are working
in any capacity for any intelligence agency, but whether they are
or not, they certainly deserve distinguished disinformation service
medals. Whatever insights I may have acquired on the subject of
UFOs over the last three years, it is not my purpose to discuss
them in any great detail here. I have little doubt, however, that
exposure of Lear's involvement in the operations I am about to
describe will ultimately surface direct connections all the way
into the highest levels of the U.S. Intelligence Community and
beyond.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:29:02
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 2
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<..Continued from previous message>
And I have little doubt, as well, that whatever the truth is
about the reality of advanced-propulsion aircraft, the intelligence
agencies are massively involved in spewing disinformation to
confuse the issue as much as possible.
John Judge has referred to UFOs as "Unrecognized Fascist
Observatories," and if I had to place a bet, I'd say he's far
closer to the mark than Lear or Cooper. In retrospect, as you will
clearly see in what follows, I believe it is no coincidence at all
that Lear emerged from the shadows to start beating the UFO drum in
early 1987 just in time to distract public attention from the
Iran/Contra scandal which was beginning to unravel and from Lt.
Col. Bo Gritz's revelations about the complicity of high-level U.S.
officials in the heroin trade -- the same officials who were
responsible for the return of our POWs and MIAs from Southeast
Asia.
It is also well worth noting that Robert Gates, the former
Deputy Director of the CIA, whom Bush is again pushing for
directorship after he was forced to withdraw in 1987 because of his
unsavory connections with Casey and the diversion of Iranian funds
to the contras, is the scion of Gates/Firestone, the company which
bought out John's father's company, Lear-Siegler, at that time one
of the largest defense contractors in the world.
Washington insiders, however, have claimed Gates' nomination is
serving merely as a stalking dog for the eventual appointment of
Brent Scowcroft. When Bill Colby, former CIA director who openly
admitted the extermination of over 40,000 non-combatant Vietnamese
by the CIA's Phoenix Program, thanks Lear in a copy of his book,
Lost Victory, "for all your contributions," one must ask just
exactly what those contributions were, when they began and if they
have ended.
Lear admitted to me on audiotape in the summer of 1990 that his
own fellow pilots at Continental Air Services in Laos admitted
flying opium, and that it was common knowledge that Air America
pilots carried it routinely, but insisted he was not aware of the
activity at the time he was there. Leslie Cockburn's outstanding
PBS FRONTLINE TV special "Guns, Drugs and the CIA" provided
extensive testimony from a variety of participants in CIA covert
operations concerning the opium flights which essentially paid for
the "secret war" in Laos, and the parallel program of cocaine
flights which were set up in the western hemisphere to fund the
contra war in Nicaragua, and other covert operations in Central
America. The excerpt from the Cutolo Affidavit included in the
Appendix gives an excellent insight into the extent of the backing
for such operations. Furthermore, I have myself heard direct
testimony from veterans of the "secret war" in Laos who described
their disgust and revulsion at being assigned to provide security
for Air America planes while the "sticky bricks" [opium] were being
loaded onboard, and how U.S. Marine squads on patrol in the jungle
on a number of occasions -- without a word passing between them --
would open up with all their firepower on the arrogant Porter
jockeys flying the loads over the treetops.
Lear himself acknowledges in an article written about him that
"Everyone got shot down over there eventually." He experienced
such a shootdown when "Somebody hosed down the aircraft with
gunfire," and he was forced to land. I wasn't aware of the
frequency of aircraft casualties due to "friendly fire" in Laos
during the time I was communicating with Lear; I can only wonder if
he would admit it if he was aware of the actual source of hostile
fire in Laos himself.
When I began this report, I had the singular intention of
discussing only the primary issues between John Lear and me, and
had no intention to "write a book." I want to emphasize that any
such literary endeavor on my part would be far more readable, fast-
paced and genuinely intriguing. In the course of setting forth
these issues, however, many additional developments have taken
place which have compelled me to present the chronology in far more
detail than originally planned. Since I fully anticipate that
legal action may arise as a result of my statements herein, it is
presented as an affidavit, a declaration of facts, all of which
pertaining directly to Lear and me I solemnly swear to be accurate
to the very best of my knowledge. I offer no apology for what it
lacks in entertainment value. My overriding intention here is to
leave no room for doubt or distortion as to any aspect of my
dealings with Lear personally -- from the beginning to the end of
our association -- or the larger ramifications of those issues in
dispute between us. This recounting is, therefore, admittedly more
personal than my usual work.
I have not attempted to make it any more "literary" or less
"subjective" precisely for the above reasons. I hope also that it
may provide a graphic illustration for each of you as to how you
may be "sucked into" such difficulties despite your entry into such
an inquiry with the very best of personal and/or professional
intentions.
If this statement accomplishes at least that much, it will have
been worth the effort. If it helps to bring some of these men to
account for a number of extremely questionable -- if not criminally
treasonous -- actions performed under the guise of "covert policy,"
so much the better.
I want to emphasize also at the outset that in the case of both
John Lear and Bill Cooper, I alone have attempted to initiate
dialogue and have provided numerous and sincere opportunities to
resolve the issues between us, in a setting of their choice -- only
to be met with more lies, threats and insinuations in each case.
Cooper, in particular, has had no qualms about calling friends of
mine to threaten their lives over the phone in the middle of the
night.
They will verify that this took place, and you can actually
obtain an audiotape of 10 such calls he made to two individuals who
were attempting to help promote him -- I've included the ad in this
report. According to mutual acquaintances, Lear has forged
threatening notes and my signature on my letter to him, placed
several messages on his answering machine offering my phone
messages to him for sale, and most recently has discussed his
obsession with luring me back to Las Vegas to kill me.
THE TRUTH BETRAYED
Cooper, meanwhile, has devoted nearly four pages of his recently
released book to one lie after another about me concerning a rough,
preliminary videotape I made three years ago concerning an aspect
of the Kennedy assassination which he obtained from John Lear
without my permission. He also claims that Lear fingered me as a
CIA agent, and himself links me with best-selling authors Robert
Groden and David Lifton as "agents of the Secret Government."
Nothing -- and I mean nothing -- could be further from the truth.
Anyone who makes even the most feeble effort to check my personal
record will quickly learn that exactly the opposite is true. I do
not know Groden or Lifton well enough to vouch similarly for them,
but I'd bet the odds in their favor are 1,000 to 1 against
Cooper's. As I have stated publicly many times -- in person, in
print, in TV and radio broadcasts -- contrary to Cooper's lies, I
did not make the tape for either Col. Gritz or John Lear: I did not
know and had never met either one of them until a few months after
it was made. Shortly after meeting him in late May 1988, I
directed Lear to the studio where he could obtain a copy of the
videotape I had assembled, entitled The Truth Betrayed: Dallas
Revisited, after making it clear to him that it was not for
distribution, but was rushed into production from a poor-quality
4th or 5th-generation film copy.
The resulting 7th-generation video was intended to serve only as
a preliminary research tool to spur potential investors to
underwrite a thorough professional investigation into the theory
that the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer,
actually turned around and fired the fatal shot at JFK with a
handgun.
As startling as this allegation might seem on first hearing, the
two separate JFK researchers who first brought it to my attention -
- Perry Adams and David Evans -- had each spent over 15 years in
attempts to prove the charge. Adams and his research associate,
Fred Newcomb, had actually written a 500-page manuscript entitled
Murder From Within, documenting the theory in exhaustive detail.
Evans had combed the entire 26-volumes of the Warren Commission and
countless other sources to locate any potential references or
supporting evidence, particularly photographic, to prove Greer's
culpability. Although I no longer agree with them, I have nothing
but respect for their selfless, dedicated and painstakingly
thorough efforts to verify this crucial detail. Bill Cooper, on
the other hand, is a Johnny-come-lately to the debate with the
investigation skills of a P.T. Barnum and the scruples of a Vidkun
Quisling.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 10:24:00
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 3
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
And I have little doubt, as well, that whatever the truth is
about the reality of advanced-propulsion aircraft, the intelligence
agencies are massively involved in spewing disinformation to
confuse the issue as much as possible.
John Judge has referred to UFOs as "Unrecognized Fascist
Observatories," and if I had to place a bet, I'd say he's far
closer to the mark than Lear or Cooper. In retrospect, as you will
clearly see in what follows, I believe it is no coincidence at all
that Lear emerged from the shadows to start beating the UFO drum in
early 1987 just in time to distract public attention from the
Iran/Contra scandal which was beginning to unravel and from Lt.
Col. Bo Gritz's revelations about the complicity of high-level U.S.
officials in the heroin trade -- the same officials who were
responsible for the return of our POWs and MIAs from Southeast
Asia.
It is also well worth noting that Robert Gates, the former
Deputy Director of the CIA, whom Bush is again pushing for
directorship after he was forced to withdraw in 1987 because of his
unsavory connections with Casey and the diversion of Iranian funds
to the contras, is the scion of Gates/Firestone, the company which
bought out John's father's company, Lear-Siegler, at that time one
of the largest defense contractors in the world.
Washington insiders, however, have claimed Gates' nomination is
serving merely as a stalking dog for the eventual appointment of
Brent Scowcroft. When Bill Colby, former CIA director who openly
admitted the extermination of over 40,000 non-combatant Vietnamese
by the CIA's Phoenix Program, thanks Lear in a copy of his book,
Lost Victory, "for all your contributions," one must ask just
exactly what those contributions were, when they began and if they
have ended.
Lear admitted to me on audiotape in the summer of 1990 that his
own fellow pilots at Continental Air Services in Laos admitted
flying opium, and that it was common knowledge that Air America
pilots carried it routinely, but insisted he was not aware of the
activity at the time he was there. Leslie Cockburn's outstanding
PBS FRONTLINE TV special "Guns, Drugs and the CIA" provided
extensive testimony from a variety of participants in CIA covert
operations concerning the opium flights which essentially paid for
the "secret war" in Laos, and the parallel program of cocaine
flights which were set up in the western hemisphere to fund the
contra war in Nicaragua, and other covert operations in Central
America. The excerpt from the Cutolo Affidavit included in the
Appendix gives an excellent insight into the extent of the backing
for such operations. Furthermore, I have myself heard direct
testimony from veterans of the "secret war" in Laos who described
their disgust and revulsion at being assigned to provide security
for Air America planes while the "sticky bricks" [opium] were being
loaded onboard, and how U.S. Marine squads on patrol in the jungle
on a number of occasions -- without a word passing between them --
would open up with all their firepower on the arrogant Porter
jockeys flying the loads over the treetops.
Lear himself acknowledges in an article written about him that
"Everyone got shot down over there eventually." He experienced
such a shootdown when "Somebody hosed down the aircraft with
gunfire," and he was forced to land. I wasn't aware of the
frequency of aircraft casualties due to "friendly fire" in Laos
during the time I was communicating with Lear; I can only wonder if
he would admit it if he was aware of the actual source of hostile
fire in Laos himself.
When I began this report, I had the singular intention of
discussing only the primary issues between John Lear and me, and
had no intention to "write a book." I want to emphasize that any
such literary endeavor on my part would be far more readable, fast-
paced and genuinely intriguing. In the course of setting forth
these issues, however, many additional developments have taken
place which have compelled me to present the chronology in far more
detail than originally planned. Since I fully anticipate that
legal action may arise as a result of my statements herein, it is
presented as an affidavit, a declaration of facts, all of which
pertaining directly to Lear and me I solemnly swear to be accurate
to the very best of my knowledge. I offer no apology for what it
lacks in entertainment value. My overriding intention here is to
leave no room for doubt or distortion as to any aspect of my
dealings with Lear personally -- from the beginning to the end of
our association -- or the larger ramifications of those issues in
dispute between us. This recounting is, therefore, admittedly more
personal than my usual work.
I have not attempted to make it any more "literary" or less
"subjective" precisely for the above reasons. I hope also that it
may provide a graphic illustration for each of you as to how you
may be "sucked into" such difficulties despite your entry into such
an inquiry with the very best of personal and/or professional
intentions.
If this statement accomplishes at least that much, it will have
been worth the effort. If it helps to bring some of these men to
account for a number of extremely questionable -- if not criminally
treasonous -- actions performed under the guise of "covert policy,"
so much the better.
I want to emphasize also at the outset that in the case of both
John Lear and Bill Cooper, I alone have attempted to initiate
dialogue and have provided numerous and sincere opportunities to
resolve the issues between us, in a setting of their choice -- only
to be met with more lies, threats and insinuations in each case.
Cooper, in particular, has had no qualms about calling friends of
mine to threaten their lives over the phone in the middle of the
night.
They will verify that this took place, and you can actually
obtain an audiotape of 10 such calls he made to two individuals who
were attempting to help promote him -- I've included the ad in this
report. According to mutual acquaintances, Lear has forged
threatening notes and my signature on my letter to him, placed
several messages on his answering machine offering my phone
messages to him for sale, and most recently has discussed his
obsession with luring me back to Las Vegas to kill me.
THE TRUTH BETRAYED
Cooper, meanwhile, has devoted nearly four pages of his recently
released book to one lie after another about me concerning a rough,
preliminary videotape I made three years ago concerning an aspect
of the Kennedy assassination which he obtained from John Lear
without my permission. He also claims that Lear fingered me as a
CIA agent, and himself links me with best-selling authors Robert
Groden and David Lifton as "agents of the Secret Government."
Nothing -- and I mean nothing -- could be further from the truth.
Anyone who makes even the most feeble effort to check my personal
record will quickly learn that exactly the opposite is true. I do
not know Groden or Lifton well enough to vouch similarly for them,
but I'd bet the odds in their favor are 1,000 to 1 against
Cooper's. As I have stated publicly many times -- in person, in
print, in TV and radio broadcasts -- contrary to Cooper's lies, I
did not make the tape for either Col. Gritz or John Lear: I did not
know and had never met either one of them until a few months after
it was made. Shortly after meeting him in late May 1988, I
directed Lear to the studio where he could obtain a copy of the
videotape I had assembled, entitled The Truth Betrayed: Dallas
Revisited, after making it clear to him that it was not for
distribution, but was rushed into production from a poor-quality
4th or 5th-generation film copy.
The resulting 7th-generation video was intended to serve only as
a preliminary research tool to spur potential investors to
underwrite a thorough professional investigation into the theory
that the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer,
actually turned around and fired the fatal shot at JFK with a
handgun.
As startling as this allegation might seem on first hearing, the
two separate JFK researchers who first brought it to my attention -
- Perry Adams and David Evans -- had each spent over 15 years in
attempts to prove the charge. Adams and his research associate,
Fred Newcomb, had actually written a 500-page manuscript entitled
Murder From Within, documenting the theory in exhaustive detail.
Evans had combed the entire 26-volumes of the Warren Commission and
countless other sources to locate any potential references or
supporting evidence, particularly photographic, to prove Greer's
culpability. Although I no longer agree with them, I have nothing
but respect for their selfless, dedicated and painstakingly
thorough efforts to verify this crucial detail. Bill Cooper, on
the other hand, is a Johnny-come-lately to the debate with the
investigation skills of a P.T. Barnum and the scruples of a Vidkun
Quisling.
I had hoped initially that Lear might be able to help finance the
investigation I was quietly pursuing into the theory, aimed at
acquiring the best copy of the film available and thoroughly
analyzing the footage with state-of-the-art digital spectrographic
equipment to verify if the reflection in question could possibly
have been a weapon, or was, as all other researchers were
convinced, merely the reflection off the top of Secret Service
Agent Roy Kellerman's head.
There were several other aspects to the investigation as well,
including (but not limited to): locating and interviewing key
witnesses who had made statements indicating Greer had a weapon in
his hand and that they had heard gunfire and smelled gunpowder in
the presidential limousine, determining the exact source of the
bullet hole in the limousine windshield witnessed by many at
Parkland Hospital, and determining the exact source of the bullet
slug photographed in the grass on the opposite side of Elm St. from
the grassy knoll.
Securing the necessary financial backing to pursue the
investigation had been the primary purpose of assembling the video,
along with preserving the two copies of the Zapruder film Evans had
acquired. It was never intended at any time to be considered a
final statement on the issue, much less to be shown publicly and/or
distributed as such.
Whatever thought I might have had about Lear's largesse quickly
evaporated when I learned he had been cut out of his father's will,
his father being Bill Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet and the 8-
track stereo, the "Stormy Genius" who would perhaps have rivaled
Howard Hughes himself, but for his own peculiar distractions. The
reasons why Bill made and lost several fortunes, wives and
girlfriends, and was later moved to cut John out of his will are
the stuff of legend already, though I have my own suspicions. The
bottom line was that, contrary to public opinion, John Lear was
living from paycheck to paycheck at the time I met him in mid-1988
and was merely tooting the UFO horn for intellectual stimulation
and to supplement his income slightly -- or so he claimed.
After being shown the audiotapes of hundreds of hours of long-
distance calls he had made, and the phenomenal amount of UFO-
related literature he mailed out at his own expense across the
country and the world, I began quickly to have serious doubts about
where the money came from to pay for it all. But then so did
everyone else who knew John Lear, particularly given his own
admission that he had flown for the CIA in Laos and Cambodia.
Without my knowledge, however, and completely contrary to our
agreement that it would be kept private, Lear showed the tape
numerous times publicly and gave a copy to Cooper, Nippon TV and
God knows who else.
I later learned from him and Don Ecker, a writer for UFO Magazine
who attended the meeting, that when he had showed it (without
permission, of course) to a meeting of former intelligence officers
in Las Vegas in November 1988, four of them raised their hands when
he asked if any of them would have killed John Kennedy if they had
been so ordered!
As I can readily prove, I made it clear to both Lear and Gritz
in November 1988 that I was pretty well convinced at that point
that the theory was not valid, and even made arrangements for Lear
to obtain a much clearer copy of the video in order for him to see
why. Agent Greer obviously failed to immediately accelerate the
limousine out of the line of fire -- in fact, he stepped on the
brakes! -- and turned completely around twice to look at the
President -- including at the moment of the fatal head shot. He
and Agent Kellerman never left the President's body for 36 hours
afterwards. For all of these reasons and others, I have absolutely
no doubt that he was an active participant in the assassination
plot, but I simply do not believe that William Greer fired anything
at John Kennedy, nor do any of the other serious and genuine
Kennedy researchers I have consulted with at length on this issue,
not one of whom is an agent of any government, shadow or otherwise.
Along with Evans, Adams, Newcomb, and others, I would have been
extremely gratified to be able to prove otherwise, for it would
have served as a powerful lever in forcing a re-examination of the
proven facts of a wider conspiracy involving very high-level USG
officials and elements drawn from a number of other groups,
including the Mafia, Texas oilmen, anti-Castro Cubans and "ex"-
Nazis within the U.S. defense industries and intelligence
community.
Nevertheless, after a careful examination of a much better
quality copy of the film and other evidence, I am in agreement with
virtually all researchers into the Kennedy assassination that the
reflection which appears to be a gun in his hands, is, in fact,
merely the reflection off the top of Secret Service Agent Roy
Kellerman's head. I have not been frightened or threatened or
bribed by anyone into reaching such a conclusion -- merely
compelled by the facts. I informed Lear of this conclusion at the
time (and spent the next two years proving it to him), unaware that
Cooper had already obtained the tape from Lear in October 1988 and
had been showing it publicly for several months before I discovered
the fact. As a matter of fact, it was not until ten months later,
in August 1989, that I called him for the first time and shortly
thereafter met with him and his wife at their home in Fullerton,
California.
At that time we discussed his alleged experiences in relation to
the UFO phenomenon and I watched a videotape of his presentation at
the Las Vegas MUFON convention the previous month and questioned
him about his statements. At no time prior to, or during this
meeting did we discuss the Kennedy assassination, nor did he inform
me that he had the JFK video.
I did not provide him a copy or tell him where he could acquire
one, nor did he ask for, nor did I give him permission to show it
or sell it.
Had I known that he was already doing all of this at that time,
I would have ordered him to cease and desist, since I had made it
clear to all my contacts, especially Lear, that I had given up on
the theory nearly a year before.
Several people will testify to this fact without hesitation, as
will a number of Cooper's supporters who told me a couple of months
after my visit to his home that Cooper had a copy of the tape and
was showing it publicly. At that time, in late October 1989, I
confronted him over the phone about his dishonesty regarding his
use and sale of the videotape, and have since done so publicly in
print, on television, and on the radio. When he chickened out of
appearing on the TV program INSIDE REPORT, which was taped in April
and aired in May 1990, after learning that I would also be
appearing to counter him, the producers deliberately left out half
of my statement.
I had made it clear on their videotape that at the time I threw
the rough video together I believed that there was sufficient
supporting evidence to warrant a complete investigation; however,
after seeing a much clearer version of the Zapruder film,
discussing the issue with a number of other respected researchers,
and combing through the evidence at hand more closely, I had
decided by November 1988 the theory was no longer tenable, though
I had not formally proved or disproved it either way. The net
effect of the deception practiced by the show's producer, Rich
Docherty, and his wife, Janet Rose, was to make me appear to be
actively supporting the driver theory, when, in fact, they had no
doubt whatsoever that the only reason I had agreed to go on the
program was to repudiate it.
Cooper -- coward, plagiarist and liar that he is -- was the only
one out of six investigators (using the term very loosely in his
case) on both sides of the "driver theory" to back out of the
program at the very last minute.
Unbeknownst to him to this day, even though I no longer agreed
with the original proponents of the theory, Adams, Newcomb, and
Evans, I nevertheless made arrangements for them to be included in
the program, specifically to demonstrate that it was not a
frivolous pursuit on all of our parts, but that they, in fact, had
spent fifteen years each attempting to prove the theory with
exhaustive research, in direct contrast to Cooper.
After failing to produce the JFK videotape that he fraudulently
claims I gave him when I challenged him to produce it at a radio
program we did together in LA, Cooper has now resorted to having
John Lear finger me as a CIA agent in his book, while he includes
me with Lifton and "Grodin" [sic] as "agents of the secret
government." Whether or not Lear actually characterized me as
such I don't know, but given Lear's macabre sense of humor, it's
entirely possible. He routinely sent me letters on CIA stationery
to SA (Special Agent) Lars Hansson as a sick joke, obviously
produced on his typewriter. Such an asinine allegation by anyone,
however -- especially Lear -- would be laughable if it weren't so
utterly false and ridiculous, given my decade-long public effort to
expose the Agency's depredations worldwide, while he publicly
admits to having flown missions (i.e. weapons) for them for over 20
years.
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:31:04
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 4
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<..Continued from previous message>>>
Even Bill Colby, former director of the CIA, who thanked John in
his autographed copy of Lost Victory, "for your contributions," may
well have been referring to Lear's probable role in the transport
of tons of opium out of Laos into Da Nang, South Vietnam. This was
one of the major means by which the Thieu regime kept itself afloat
through distribution deals with Mafia kingpin Santo Trafficante and
CIA station chief Theodore Shackley to flood the U.S. with China
White heroin in order to pay for the "secret war" in Laos and
Cambodia.
Or perhaps Colby was merely referring to Lear's role in the
transport of unknown tonnages of weapons throughout the world for
the Agency ever since.
I've spent enough time in Las Vegas and around "spookery" to know
that either guess is a very safe bet. Colby, it must be remembered,
was the director and implementor of the Phoenix Program which
served primarily to liquidate popular opposition to the corrupt
Thieu regime in South Vietnam, as our military efforts were failing
and Henry Kissinger was jockeying for advantage at the negotiating
table in Paris.
As Douglas Valentine describes in his outstanding expose, The
Phoenix Program, despite Colby's protestations to the contrary to
Congress and media critics, his own field managers, such as Charlie
Yothers, chief of operations in I Corps in 1970, characterized the
Phung Hoang program in this way: "Sure we got involved in
assassinations. That's what the PRU [Provincial Reconnaissance
Units] were set up for -- assassination. I'm sure the word never
appeared in any outlines or policy directives, but what else do you
call a targeted kill?"
Valentine cites the article, "The CIA's Hired Killers," in
which Georgie Anne Geyer called the PRU "the best killers in
Vietnam." Comparing them to terrorists, she qualified that "our
terror" was different from "their terror," in that there was no
real political organization -- no political ideology -- behind our
terror. Their boys did it for faith; our boys did it for money."
There is also little question about the lethal ramifications of the
work I have chosen to pursue, but it is disgusting to think that
some demented demagogue like Bill Cooper may actually succeed in
inciting some fanatic with his inflammatory lies into eliminating
me as an "agent of the secret government" when I have risked my
life and liberty continuously for over a decade trying to expose it
-- and entirely at my own expense, I might add.
In Lear's case, he knows far better, and lacks the cojones, much
less integrity, to say such a thing publicly, much less to address
the other issues I have brought forth.
Lear prefers to slink around on the phone, more at home in the
shadow land of gossip and innuendo. There need be no mistaking my
position now or my background which led to it -- other than my
brief service in U.S. Customs at the Canadian Border in 1976 and
1978, and with a Sheriff's Office in Idaho before that, I have
received no monies since from any government agency whatsoever, nor
from any proprietary front.
Rather, I have helped to expose a number of them, and will
continue to do so. Recently I was told by a mutual friend, Bob
Lazar of Las Vegas, that John Lear is now apparently obsessed with
seeing me killed, and is openly discussing means by which he could
lure me to his home to provoke an incident. According to Lazar,
with whom I spoke in mid-June 1991, "Lear is actually carving your
name on his bullets. What did you do to make him so obsessed?" As
much as he might wish he hadn't told me that at this point, I
seriously doubt Lazar could deny it. We'll see. As ridiculous as
this may sound, after finding out about his infidelity at their
home during his absence in 1988, Lear's wife demanded that I tell
her where "the other woman" lived and worked so that she could
"shoot her feet off" with the .45 automatic she normally carries
with her. I refused to tell her anything, particularly something
which might have resulted in her going to prison, and stated that
fact very plainly to her at the time.
I would frankly find any threat from Lear laughable, were it not
for the fact that he has made his living for many years flying
armament all over the globe; he has owned an automatic weapons
business in Las Vegas; and he currently possesses a number of them
-- Mac 10s, Uzis and a classic Thompson .45 -- several of which are
equipped with silencers. His style, though, is to furnish them to
others. After observing first-hand some other spectacular lapses in
judgment by him in the past, I certainly would put it past him to
carry out such a threat himself, but he is not at all above
arranging to have it done. Given the far-reaching scope of these
disclosures, the phenomenal amount of money involved, the number of
covert players in the game, and the extent of the cover-up, he has
little need to lure me to Las Vegas to get the job done -- all it
would take is a phone call. Nevertheless, the issues involved here
are far too serious at this point to allow such potential threats
to deter me any further from making these disclosures.
After losing half my immediate family in the last decade and
literally dozens of my friends to "disappearances" or other
peculiar deaths, many at the hands of the kind of people Cooper and
Lear either have trained or equipped, I am well aware of exactly
what "damage control" consists of, but to remain silent is to give
one's approval to the madness.
Following my disclosure of a number of details regarding his
involvement in these activities on Radio Free America on June 13,
quite predictably, Lear has now resorted to leaving a message on
his answering service offering an audiotape of my (supposedly)
"coke-laced extortion" messages to him along with a "certified copy
of Lars Hansson's conviction for prostitution in Seattle." Lear
has claimed to radio host Tom Valentine that I was merely a
"handyman" who worked for him, and that after finding out about my
"conviction" he "had to throw me out" when I supposedly began
"coming on" to his 14-year-old daughter.
First, I do not use cocaine, and rarely drink alcohol. I have
never at any time attempted to extort money out of anyone. The
allegation regarding his daughter is an absolute, bald-faced lie,
and I seriously doubt he could force her even to repeat it, despite
her parentage.
It is precisely the type of sleazy, sophomoric response I have
come to expect from the man, and anticipated it as a given when I
notified him of my intentions to go public with this information.
Predictably, like most good Republicans, when he cannot, or rather,
dare not, respond to the facts supporting the real issue(s) at
hand, he automatically resorts to personal smear tactics. Until
this action on his part, I had chosen to leave his sordid personal
activities out of this discussion, but feel no such constraint at
this point.
For the record, it is true that I was arrested for "soliciting a
prostitute" in 1982 in Seattle in a police "sting" operation -- I
have told the story many times to friends with gusto. If I had
been guilty, I would not shrink from the fact, since I have had a
number of fairly wild girlfriends throughout the world in my
travels, until AIDS reared its ugly head, and some of our escapades
would make "purchased sex" tame by comparison. For a huge
percentage of international travelers and businessmen, journalists,
and covert operators, it is not at all uncommon to purchase the
services of a female escort to "maintain appearances" when
necessary. Lear is certainly intimately familiar with the
practice, let me assure you. I do not claim to have been a
choirboy, myself, nor do I claim to have been a gunrunner, much as
I might have liked to help out the other side in many of the one-
sided shooting matches I have witnessed in the third world. But I
have been blessed with an appealing countenance and have never yet
had to pay directly for the "services" of a female. I have
certainly paid indirectly with materialistic wives and girlfriends
-- no question of that. The simple truth that Lear is leaving out
-- in the same way that he leaves out his actual years-long
involvement in gunrunning from the UFO discussion -- is that I had
simply stopped to ask for directions from the spectacularly good-
looking female (decoy) policewoman and was actually pulling away
from the curb to leave when her undercover partners grabbed the
wheel and forced me out of the car.
Since I was driving my employer's Lincoln Continental, I at first
thought I was being rolled. As I pointed out to them, and the
property records at the police department showed, I had exactly $8
to my name in my wallet at the time (I had just returned from El
Salvador) and could not have bought even a kiss for that price --
nor was I interested in doing so. I actually went to court to
protest my innocence -- I was the only arrestee who did -- but made
the serious mistake of expecting the legal aid attorney, who was
"not available" to meet me until five minutes before the "trial,"
to tell my side of the story. She refused to present any defense
at all, especially when the female officer -- who admitted to me
later that she was pressured into it by her superiors -- repeatedly
perjured herself.
Had I had the financial resources to carry the case further, I
would not have hesitated to prove the entrapment and malpractice,
but under the circumstances I reluctantly decided to pay the
reduced fine of $25 and simply add the experience to the "lessons
learned" file.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:31:06
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 5
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>
The irony here is that Lear would try to trump up such an asinine
issue when he, his entire family, and numerous witnesses know very
well that the reason I left his home (where I had been invited as
a guest and was helping him out as a friend with repairs for which
I had to wait three weeks to be paid -- and then only half what I
was owed!) was that he had the audacity to indulge in a drunken
"afternoon delight" with a local news reporter in his guesthouse,
and was discovered "en flagrante delicto" by his daughter, and me,
while two other guests waited for him in his study. After the
"interruption," he drove off to spend the night with his regular
mistress, then left me alone with his daughter until his wife
returned from New York with the younger daughter two days later.
Before leaving for Germany the next morning, he begged me not to
tell his wife and to persuade his daughter not to tell, either, and
called me repeatedly from Europe to find out what progress I had
made in the latter regard. The only thing untoward which occurred
during the interim was that the daughter repeatedly drove their car
all over town without a license and without my permission until her
mother returned.
Try as hard as he might, I seriously doubt Lear can get anyone in
his family to state otherwise convincingly -- unless, that is, they
have been thoroughly bribed to do so.
They would never pass a polygraph on the issue, and there are
several others who know only too well what really happened. I
believe the main reason Lear has developed such an intense
antagonism against me is because he is well aware that I am aware
of, if not a witness to, at least three such episodes of adulterous
behavior on his part, which continued for nearly a year in one case
and probably cost him his job with American Trans Air.
He claimed at the time that his firing was directly due to his
activities related to UFOs, for which he has become quite well
known internationally in the last four years. I suspect, as with
much of his purported UFO revelations, that it has merely been the
cover story for murkier realities.
THE OCTOBER SURPRISE WEAPONS FLIGHTS
Far more damaging than adultery, however, was his foolish boasting
about his role in questionable weapons flights for the Reagan
Administration from Tel Aviv, Israel to Teheran, Iran in early
1981.
This occurred during our first meeting at his home a few days
after my attendance at his lecture on UFOs on May 26, 1988, in Las
Vegas, which he introduced by describing his experience as a pilot
for the CIA during the "secret war" in Laos and elsewhere. As a
freelance writer and independent investigator with a limited
background in law enforcement, I was quite interested in
questioning him further about both areas, and when I called him to
ask about meeting in person to discuss these matters, he was very
receptive and invited me to come by the next day. One cannot help
but be immediately impressed by Lear's beautiful two-story hacienda
situated at the northeast edge of Las Vegas and almost adjacent to
Nellis Air Force Base.
The view from his front yard of the entire valley just before
sunset is truly spectacular.
Likewise, the visitor to the Lear household is almost equally
overwhelmed, upon entering through the medieval-style arched door
into a lighted hallway, to emerge in Lear's expansive inner
sanctum, which he has appropriately dubbed, "the Shrine." Dark
emerald-green carpeting sets the tone for a room whose walls are
filled from floor to ceiling with photographic records of what must
have been a singularly phenomenal career as a aeronautical soldier
of fortune throughout the world.
Among the hundreds of such mementos are pictures of: Lear flying
under the Golden Gate Bridge; Lear standing with G. Gordon Liddy,
who inscribed the photo "To John, I told 'em fuckin' nothin'"; Lear
with his father, his brother, Lear Co. test pilots, his flight crew
in Egypt and Teheran, Iran; the CIA's secret base at Long Tien,
Laos (a wide-angle panorama); and, of course, Learjets,
Constellations and the SR-71 Blackbird.
To complete the overall effect, the Shrine includes a large
fireplace, his electric piano (which he plays masterfully), an
impressive audio system, an extensive library of aeronautical,
espionage/intelligence, and UFO-related books, and ammo boxes and
belts which are seemingly carelessly strewn in the corner while his
match-grade stainless-steel .45 automatic hangs in a holster from
the audio rack behind his desk.
All in all, it is truly an impressive -- albeit carefully
contrived -- atmosphere that confronts even the most jaded visitor.
Once we had moved through the obligatory anecdotes behind the wall
graphics, I was discussing the "October Surprise" weapons deals and
the sleazebags who took part in that despicable scenario in late
1980, when, out of the blue, Lear began to brag to me about his
participation as a pilot in the illegal weapons flights to Iran in
early 1981 sanctioned by the Reagan/Bush Administration. These
were conducted as part of the payoff for the Iranians' role in the
Reagan/Bush Campaign team's secret deals with the Ayatollah
Khomeini regime to delay the release of the 52 American hostages
until after the 1980 elections in order to prevent Jimmy Carter
from being re-elected.
Very much to my surprise, since I knew that several of the "team
players" in the operations had either died "mysteriously" or were
currently under indictment for their role in those operations, he
openly boasted about his participation in the flights.
Despite my obvious disgust with this revelation, Lear crowed
that "Everybody knocks the Agency for not being able to keep any
secrets. We kept that one secret for seven years!" He made a point
of showing me numerous news clippings about them that he had
collected from the Middle Eastern press, then made a rather grand
display of showing me his beautiful oak map cabinet and taking out
his navigation map of that area. The route flown by his flight
crews from Tel Aviv over Turkey to Iran was clearly and distinctly
marked on it. He explained that Turkey had insisted that in return
for allowing the planes to overfly Turkish airspace, every other
load of weapons had to be left there [other informed sources have
since provided me the names of the other members of his crew and
the name of the secret base -- Tintin -- in Turkey where the
weapons were dropped]. He then pointed proudly to a picture of him
and his cronies taken in Teheran in 1981 which was hanging on the
wall.
I was frankly quite amazed that he would be so open to a virtual
stranger about such operations for which numerous participants were
still under federal indictment and/or the subject of continuing
criminal investigations. Also, by 1988 a number of key
participants in the affair had already succumbed to mysterious
fatal ailments or other life-ending circumstances. When I
admonished him that this was actually part of one of the biggest
cover-ups of international criminality in American history and that
he was obligated to come forth publicly on this issue, he sloughed
it off as having been sanctioned by the Reagan Administration and
insisted it was of minor importance in comparison to the growing
threat of "occupation of the planet by extraterrestrials." I
couldn't believe my ears, despite the numerous reports I had
already seen concerning thousands of UFO sightings and "encounters"
with aliens. I suspected strongly that, given his acknowledged
ties to the intelligence community, he had been "persuaded" to
promote the UFO issue to distract public attention from being
focused on the many crimes of Iran/Contra scandal's perpetrators.
Despite my apprehension, I decided to maintain the contact with him
in order to persuade him to disclose the participants in the
flights publicly.
I did manage to have him discuss it with Barbara Honegger nearly
a year later, as you shall see.
As I compose this, the October Surprise issue is currently in
the forefront of the news after nearly a decade of deliberate
suppression by the Reagan and Bush Administrations and the national
media, thanks to the continuing investigation mounted by Gary Sick,
former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter during
that time period.
Though I have not seen the NIGHTLINE program, I have heard that
it has now been admitted by spokesmen for the current
Administration that perhaps the conveniently dead Bill Casey "might
have actually had a hand" in the October Surprise deals with the
Khomeini regime in October 1981. Despite Bush's continuing limp
denials, the evidence is mounting not only of such a deal, but of
his direct participation in it -- including a personal appearance
in Paris on October 20, 1980 to handle the initial payoff of $40
million -- and of the continued shipment of up to $82 billion worth
of military hardware to both Iran and Iraq by the United States
throughout their war, all of which were not only criminal
activities, but treasonous as well.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:33:06
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 6
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>
Reports of Bush's presence in Paris and participation in those
meetings by French intelligence have been almost completely
suppressed in this country, and rumors are currently abounding that
the Israeli Mossad, furious about the beating Israel was forced to
endure during the Iraq War fiasco, are threatening to release
photographs they have of Bush in Paris at that time. According to
an article in the Napa, California Sentinel, Michael Ricconosuito,
a contract CIA operative who provided testimony to the House
Judiciary Committee investigating the Pentagon's role in stealing
a $6 million software program (the INSLAW case), has recently
claimed publicly that he arranged the transfer of the $40 million
from secret Republican Committee accounts in Mexico. He was
arrested within a week after filing an affidavit in which he warned
of such a fate if he testified, and was whisked away to a
Midwestern federal prison for "psychiatric evaluation." Although I
have read and heard literally hundreds of reports concerning
contact with aliens -- including those from military sources -- I
am by no means convinced of their veracity. I decided long ago to
leave it to the self-anointed experts to rule on that subject.
However, my direct research concerning the weapons flights to Iran
and subsequent flight operations in support of the contra war and
the Marcos family have yielded virtually indisputable evidence,
which continues to accumulate on a daily basis. As the attached
brief article from a recent issue of TIME Magazine indicates, it is
becoming almost a matter of certainty that Israel not only acted as
middleman in those early weapons flights, but as our surrogate in
the Middle East for over two decades. October Surprise, Barbara
Honegger's watershed expose, Witness, by Mansur Rhafizadeh, former
head of the Iranian SAVAK in the U.S., the new book by former
Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and the October 1988
Playboy Magazine article "An Election Held Hostage" by Abbie
Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers -- which probably cost Hoffman his
life -- all recount in tremendous detail the sequence of treasonous
events which led to the delay of the hostages' release and the flow
of ultimately billions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons to Iran.
According to Hoffman and Silvers: "As early as February 1981,
Secretary of State Alexander Haig was briefed on Israeli arms sales
to Iran. In November, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon asked Haig to
approve the sale of F-14 parts to Teheran. While the proposal was
in direct opposition to publicized Administration objectives,
Sharon pitched it as a way of gaining favor with Iranian
"moderates." According to The Washington Post, Haig was ambivalent
but gave his tacit consent, with the approval of top Administration
officials, notably Robert McFarlane. "Israeli ambassador Moshe
Arens later told The Boston Globe that Iranian arms sales had been
discussed and approved at "almost the highest levels" of U.S.
Government in Spring 1981.
In fact, Reagan's Senior Interdepartmental Group agreed in July
1981 that the U.S. should tacitly encourage third-party arms sales
to Iran as a way of "advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East."
The initiative was such a significant reversal of U.S. policy that
it's unlikely that Haig would have given his consent without the
President's knowledge and approval. Haig refuses to comment. "In
November 1986, the Administration finally allowed that the Israelis
had delivered U.S. military supplies to Iran in the early Eighties.
The State Department downplayed the sales, claiming that the amount
of arms Iran received was trivial, that only $10 million or $15
million worth of non-lethal aid had reached Iran. That figure was
hotly disputed. The New York Times estimated that before 1983,
Iran received $2.8 billion in supplies from nine countries,
including the U.S. A West German newspaper placed the figure
closer to $500 million. Bani-Sadr said that his administration
alone received $50 million worth of parts. Houshang Lavi [an
Iranian arms dealer -- recently deceased] believes Khomeini got at
least $500 million in military supplies. "Lavi is [was] in a
position to know.
In 1981, he and Israeli arms dealer Yacobi Nimrodi reportedly
sold HAWK missiles and guidance systems to Iran. In April and
October 1981, Western Dynamics International, a Long Island company
run by Lavi's brother, contracted to sell the Iranian Air Force $16
million worth of bomb fuses and F-14 parts. Admiral Bobby Ray
Inman, William Casey's Deputy Director of Central Intelligence,
said that the CIA knew in 1981 that Israel and private arms dealers
were making sizable deliveries to Iran. The Reagan White House
raised no objections. "Eighteen months after Reagan took office,
Iran had received virtually all the spare parts and weapons that
Carter had refused to include in his hostage accord."
As could be expected, when I attempted to encourage John
Lear, who was so adamant about exposing the UFO cover-up, to
concentrate his efforts upon these more provable depredations of
which he had personal knowledge -- the early 1981 weapons flights
to Iran -- he found one limp excuse after another for not doing so.
His continuing line was that it hardly mattered in comparison to
the alien threat. When I asked him why the CIA would waste their
time destabilizing countless third-world countries if we faced such
a threat, he claimed, "It's a smokescreen." When I asked him why he
would risk being silenced by the various agencies which were
purportedly so intent in maintaining the UFO cover-up, he replied
that "My day isn't complete unless I've stirred the shit up
somewhere." When I then questioned why he was so immune from
persecution after all that had supposedly befallen other pioneers
in the UFO field, he chalked it up to his mother's being the
"third-largest contributor to the Republican Party."
In retrospect after three years, John Lear has certainly
succeeded mightily in the first regard -- he almost single-handedly
turned UFOlogy inside out and provoked intense debate and
confrontation which continues to rage among believers and non-
believers alike to this day. Regarding his immunity, I have little
doubt the high level of well-deserved respect accorded both his
parents in government and military circles has indeed played a
part. But I have suspected with increasing justification that his
activities may well be directly in line with what certain
intelligence agencies have directed or "encouraged" him to do --
through whatever inducement -- despite the much-ballyhooed claims
by Lear and his clones to be exposing cover-up.
During the summer of 1988, following several meetings during
which we discussed the UFO issue as well as the investigation I was
attempting to pursue concerning the "driver theory" about the
Kennedy assassination, Lear asked me to stay at his home and help
him compile his various UFO and media video footage into a
marketable format, and to prepare a series of articles concerning
his UFO-related discoveries. Since he had, in fact, acquired a
huge amount of fascinating videotaped and written material on the
subject, I readily agreed.
After helping them pour cement during my second visit, at his
wife's request, I agreed to complete several carpentry projects for
his her as well, since John's flying and research schedule had
prevented him from doing so. Until he went "off the tracks" a
couple weeks later, his wife was very pleased about this. After
spending at least half of the previous 18 years involved in large-
scale commercial and residential construction, the work they
requested was a breeze -- aside from the 120-degree heat. Prior to
beginning, I made it very clear that I would have to charge them
$15 per hour in addition to lodging, since I needed to buy a car to
replace my ailing van. They readily agreed, very pleased with the
reasonable rate, and over the next three weeks I worked over 100
hours building shutters, trimming out Lear's study, drywalling
their upper bathroom, repairing their horse stable gates and window
grilles and corral gate, pouring cement, clearing out their garage
and building wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelving and a
workbench, and retiling half their roof. The lowest bid Mrs. Lear
was able to obtain from other contractors for the roof repair was
$35 per hour, while I had to carry the tiles from the back of the
estate in a wheelbarrow and up a flight of stairs and a ladder to
the roof by myself in the 120-degree heat for less than half that
price, while they sat by the pool drinking coffee.
I point all of this out only because I had agreed to do the work
mainly to help out the Lears as friends, since I could have
obtained a fulltime position as a carpenter anywhere in Las Vegas
with little difficulty. I was forced to wait the entire three
weeks to be paid, and then only $800 -- about half what I was owed.
Lear actually had to borrow even that amount of money from his
mother. By that point, however, I was happy to take whatever they
could scrounge up and get away from them.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:34:08
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 7
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>
To add insult to injury, Lear's wife attempted to plead poverty
and induce me to accept even less than the $800 which his mother
had sent specifically for me. I refused to do so. She then turned
around a few days later and spent several hundred dollars on an air
conditioner for the doghouse I had begun building for her before I
gave up in disgust.
I DREAM OF JEANNIE
During the three-week period I spent as their houseguest, John
liked to boast about his "girlfriend," often making a point of
calling her while I was nearby. He took obvious relish in
describing to me a number of their various escapades, particularly
in San Francisco and LA, and her thrill upon being taken into the
cockpit during several of his flights. He seemed to be pretty
impressed with himself for having engineered her hiring as a flight
attendant at his airline, which handled many charters for the
Company and other defense agencies, including military troop
transport. To top it off, she was even based in Las Vegas! I'm no
prude, but I saw serious trouble ahead. It was not long in coming.
I almost automatically got in his face about it, once I realized he
wasn't kidding, since I had been through my own particular hell
along those lines with two former wives and a few girlfriends over
the years. Though I barely knew the man, I had no hesitation about
upbraiding him for being so foolish as to carelessly risk not only
losing his family -- which was virtually a certainty -- but
destroying whatever credibility he had managed to attain in the UFO
field as a result of his obviously careless philandering. I also
emphasized to him how much harm it would bring to the entire field
of responsible UFO research to inject a personal scandal into the
mix, particularly considering the built-in notoriety of his family
name, as well as the potential for the woman in question to
blackmail him at some point along the way.
He was drinking quite a bit at the time and merely sloughed it
off and mumbled something about having "white-line fever." Whether
that was a reference to cocaine or simply to the thrill of high-
speed adventure, I don't know, but I must concede that I have never
seen or heard of John Lear using any illicit drugs, at least during
the time I have known him.
Since he had broken both legs in an aerobatic accident while in
his teens, he was reduced to virtually hobbling around and
confessed that he had faked his way through his flight physicals
for some time and doubted he could do so much longer. Never
appearing to have been very athletic in all the dozens of pictures
that festoon the walls of his study from floor to ceiling, he was
also beginning to sport a noticeable paunch. It was frankly with
pity that I pictured him pursuing this woman and risking his
marriage, family, spectacular home, and national reputation for the
rather pathetic egotistical gratification of maintaining a
mistress. I had a strong precognition that my predictions would be
coming to pass in short order. I was not wrong. During this same
period, Lear had also expressed interest in helping me to track
down and interview the two witnesses who had supposedly seen
William Greer shoot Kennedy. I hung in at his place hoping that we
could at least accomplish that before all hell broke loose. We
actually came within a day of doing so, as you will see.
As a matter of fact, while I was briefly back in Santa Barbara
attempting to wrest the leads from Perry Adams, the UCSB
librarian/researcher who had first brought the theory to my
attention in November 1986, I learned that his partner, Fred
Newcomb, had actually contacted Lear's wife in a similar attempt on
their part. As anxious as I was to follow up on those leads as
quickly as possible, between Lear's overseas flights and
extracurricular escapades, and my efforts on Lt. Col. James "Bo"
Gritz's congressional campaign, nothing was accomplished along
these lines, and Fred Newcomb became impossible to reach all of a
sudden.
By this time I had pretty well concluded that the window of
opportunity had passed as far as securing the required funding and
undertaking the on-site investigation of the driver theory in time
to complete a documentary for release by late November, the 25th
anniversary of JFK's death.
After several discussions with a close friend who has been
involved in similar research for many years, I reluctantly decided
that after 25 years, a few more months would not necessarily be
that long to wait. After becoming more familiar with Gritz's
discoveries regarding drugs and POWs, I decided that it was of far
greater urgency to insure that the American public was aware of
those realities before the November elections, and had begun to
dedicate myself fully to assisting in Gritz's congressional
campaign and editing his video A Nation Betrayed.
Also during this time, in late June 1988, I had made a point of
returning to Los Angeles to attend the premiere of the film Cover-
Up, produced by the Santa Monica-based Empowerment Project, at the
Director's Guild Theater. Several months before, I had made a
number of small public presentations in an attempt to help them
raise additional funding to complete the editing, and felt a strong
sense of concern and relief that they had finally completed the
tremendously powerful expose of the Iran/Contra whitewash. Given
the recent "bombing" of the airplane carrying John Tower, who had
just before openly admitted conducting the Iran/Contra "whitewash"
for George Bush, its importance cannot be overstated.
The premiere coincided with the summary dismissal of the Christic
Institute lawsuit in Miami by former Meyer Lansky money-laundry
director Judge Lawrence King only four days before it was scheduled
to be heard.
The lawsuit, filed in May 1986, was based on injuries suffered by
ABC reporter Tony Avirgan at the bombing of a press conference in
La Penca, Nicaragua on May 30, 1984. The perpetrators were intent
on "taking out" not only recalcitrant contra leader Eden Pastora,
but journalists as well, in order to provoke widespread outrage as
a justification for a planned invasion by combined Panamanian and
U.S. Forces. Avirgan and his wife Martha Honey joined their
lawsuit with the Christic Institute's allegations under the RICO
(Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act which charged
29 members of the Contra-support network with over 25 years
involvement in gun-running, drug trafficking, assassinations and
political destabilizations.
Frustrated and disgusted with this blatant travesty of justice,
I decided to take the chance of advising Barbara Honegger,
following the screening, that I had occasion to talk with an
unnamed pilot who claimed to have made some of the early-1981
weapons flights to Iran. As expected, she was profoundly
interested in this information and immediately clamored to know
more.
I became a bit uneasy about her genuineness, however, when I
mentioned that Mae Brussell had received several death threats
after her World Watchers International programs began to air on
KPFK Radio in LA which she apparently took seriously enough to
cancel the programs.
Barbara glibly replied that Mae had merely decided she was
overextended and made up the story to get out of doing the programs
since she needed a break. I had never met or spoken with Mae, but
could not believe that she would have risked her already-strained
credibility by making up such an outlandish story just to get out
of a radio program after the years she had spent painstaking tying
so many crucial political loose ends together in a genuinely
conspiratorial web.
Despite the fact that she was reviled and disparaged by any
number of "mainstream" writers and government officials, her work
was profoundly advanced and has served as the basis for a countless
number of other researchers' published and now widely accepted
conclusions. Nevertheless, Honegger and I maintained contact
intermittently throughout that summer and fall of 1988 as she was
working feverishly to prepare her manuscript of October Surprise
for printing. She was particularly interested in verifying the
exact routes of the flights and the timing, and, understandably,
leaned very heavily on me to try and obtain such additional
information from my source.
Since by this time I had come to know Lear as a personal
acquaintance, and shortly thereafter would become a guest in his
home, and was well aware of the growing number of Iran/Contra
figures who had died "mysteriously" -- if not fortuitously for
their cohorts -- I was genuinely concerned as to the degree of risk
to Lear's well-being if I identified him to Honegger. Even though
I felt throughout this time -- and brought it up to John repeatedly
-- that he himself could be holding the "smoking gun" in the
Iran/Contra affair, he was unwilling to go public, continually
dismissing it as unimportant in relation to "the threat from outer
space." Had he been a mere interviewee to whom I had no particular
obligations, I might have gone ahead and disclosed his identity,
but I felt that this was someone I had come to know, along with his
family, and I was loathe to subject them to any serious threats.
Nevertheless, when I received Honegger's most recent October
Surprise Timeline in late July 1988, I was stunned to see that she
had actually quoted me on page 49 regarding my interview with an
unnamed pilot concerning the early 1981 weapons flights to Iran. I
was particularly disturbed about her decision to include this
reference to me without either asking or advising me beforehand,
because my statements to her, however well-motivated, were
completely unsubstantiated at that point. Lear had already
demonstrated on more than one occasion his lack of precision and
accuracy on a variety of issues; although I believed he was telling
the truth regarding his role in the 1981 weapons flights, I had
obtained no further corroboration at that point. Of more concern
to me then, frankly, was that the publication of my name almost
certainly placed me on the "watchlist" of those who were in charge
of the "October Surprise" damage-control team(s). I felt very
strongly that Honegger should have at least warned me that she
intended to include me in her timeline.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:34:08
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 8
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>
THE MARCOS GOLD MYSTERY
My concern about this issue was further increased as a result of
phone calls I received on John's behalf during his absence on
flights in Europe. One man named Vern Peoples called repeatedly in
increasingly more urgent attempts to reach Lear concerning
arrangements he was supposed to make for some "charter flights" out
of Amsterdam. Since I was Lear's houseguest at the time, I
certainly had no intention of functioning as a spy, and did not
press the man for additional details. However, after several calls
and increasing frustration with Lear's delay in making the
arrangements and notifying him, Peoples became more open and
informed me that they had a major operation underway to move many
tons of "cargo" from the Far East to Europe. He indicated that he
was counting heavily on Lear to secure the aircraft for the mission
and told me to tell Lear that "Hank" was becoming irritated at the
delay.
I did not question Peoples any further, since my concern was
simply to make sure to relay any such information as quickly as
possible to Lear when he would call intermittently from his
stopping points around the world. At one such point, after
relaying the message(s) to John, he asked me quite anxiously to
secure several documents and articles from different locations in
his study and Federal Express them to another UFO researcher, Bob
Oechsler, ASAP, and at my own expense. Although Lear had given me
free access to virtually all of the files in his study and his
garage, I had been very scrupulous about examining only those he
indicated concerned UFOs. At no time did I resort to "snooping" in
order to see what he might have "squirreled away," since I
considered it a point of honor to respect his privacy while I was
entrusted with virtually free run of the "estate." Despite
allegations he may be making to the contrary, I have honored that
trust to this day, not so much out of respect for him as for my own
code of ethics. Even so, I could not help but be amused, as I was
viewing, at his insistence, a number of the videos Lear had
acquired concerning UFOs, to come across two in particular --
"code-named" Star Virgin and Project Ginger -- which dealt with
subjects of a much more "earthy" nature.
I was not amused, however, in the course of locating the
documents he had requested I mail to Oechsler, to find a one-page
typed memo he had left lying on his desk beside his typewriter
concerning the shipment of 106 tons of gold from Guam to Zurich.
I could not help but read the entire document at a single glance,
and was immediately struck by some of the names, which included
Peoples, the man I had spoken to several times earlier, and a
rather notorious arms transporter, Henry E. "Hank" Warton, whom I
had heard of a number of times in my previous research about covert
operations and illegal weapons deals.
The Air Progress magazine article Lear wanted me to locate and
mail, entitled "Soldier of Fortune," itself included a description
of Lear's employment over a period of years as a contract pilot for
Warton in the Middle East and Africa. The first reference I'd
encountered about Hank Warton was in a Newsweek article I had been
referred to concerning the role of "former" Nazis in the continuing
weapons trade to the Third World. Warton was introduced as a
competitor in the transport of weapons ("relief") to Biafra in 1968
with none other than Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's "favorite commando"
who had plucked Mussolino from his mountaintop confinement in a
daring raid, and had also inflicted staggering losses on the Allies
during the Battle of the Bulge. Since WWII, Skorzeny had been
instrumental, along with Klaus Barbie, Martin Bormann, Josef
Mengele, and other Nazis the U.S. had helped to smuggle out of
Europe into South America, in setting up the early cocaine
importation routes into the U.S. and the early heroin connection
through Paraguay. Otto Skorzeny, who was revered by U.S. Special
Forces as their "role model in the rogues' gallery of those who got
away" according to Lt. Col. Bo Gritz, also ran a worldwide
assassination bureau called Paladin, Inc. out of Madrid, Spain for
many years, which was soft-pedaled by the Newsweek reporters as a
"real-estate firm." I knew that if Skorzeny and Warton were at
loggerheads concerning weapons supply over 20 years later, Warton
had to be one tough customer himself.
According to the 1968 articles, he was frequently described as a
"pirate," and one competitor described him as "an unscrupulous type
who wouldn't hesitate to knife you in the back."
On the other hand, after serving with distinction with the U.S.
Marines at Guadalcanal following his parents' murder by the Nazis,
his post-war exploits were viewed with "mingled fascination and
amazement" in the corridors of the State Department, even after
they revoked his U.S. passport.
Warton's Miami-based North American Trading Corp. was exclusively
devoted in 1968 to running arms and supplies into Biafra from
Lisbon, Portugal, but he was pushed out of the operation after one
of his aircraft, containing wings for two French fighter planes the
Biafran resistance was counting heavily on, mysteriously blew up in
Portuguese Guinea. The Biafrans later charged that he was in the
secret pay of their enemies and trying to sabotage their war effort
when he repeatedly failed to deliver contracted arms shipments.
Warton's exploits in this same time period are recounted in
tremendous detail, I recently learned, in the Soldiers of Fortune
volume of a special Time-Life series of books.
According to one source who has known Warton well for many
years, "That's how you can tell that the 1981 weapons flights to
Iran were a Warton operation.
Although he and his partner, Marshall Landy, are Mossad, he is
known for screwing things up like that Argentinian plane that went
down." The Argentinian cargo plane returning to Tel Aviv from a
weapons delivery in Teheran on July 18, 1981 reportedly strayed
into Soviet airspace and was shot down by a MiG-25 along the
Soviet-Turkish border.
According to the London Sunday Times, the plane was chartered by
a Swiss arms broker, who intended to sell 360 tons of military
hardware -- worth $30 million -- to the Iranian military. Three
shipments of American-made parts for M-48 tanks, which formed the
bulk of Iranian land forces, had made it through before the cargo
plane was shot down. The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied any
involvement, but several officials quietly conceded that their
agents had sold Iran parts and arms shortly after Reagan took
office. The May 1984 Air Progress article described Lear's
employment with Warton in the late 70s or early 80s carrying
"cargo" to "African locations," which both Lear and Warton have
described in person to me as CIA-sanctioned weapons- supply flights
to Somalia. The article also mentioned Lear flying for Warton's
Air Sinai a short time later. Warton had secured the contract for
four flights a week between Egypt and Israel following the Camp
David Accords. Call it a hunch, but I would not be surprised at
all if Warton (and possibly Lear) were also involved in some, if
not a major percentage, of the weapons-transport flights which were
underway during that same time period in that region. Many of the
major figures in the Iran/Contra scandal -- Maj. Gen. Richard
Secord, Deputy Director of CIA Worldwide Operations Theodore
Shackley and his flunkie Tom Clines, CIA entrepreneur Edwin Wilson,
and Pentagon Weapons Czar Erich von Marbod -- first came under the
harsh light of public and Congressional scrutiny in the aftermath
of the EATSCO (Egyptian-American Transport Service Co.) scandal in
that same time period. Secord was "encouraged" to resign as State
Department Adviser (i.e. arms broker) to the Middle East, and
shortly thereafter resigned his commission in the Air Force, while
Shackley and Clines were "encouraged" to "resign" from the CIA by
Deputy Director Frank Carlucci, for whose company Von Marbod went
to work at the same time in Geneva, Switzerland. Wilson, the only
one who actually put up the $500,000 "seed money" for the
operation, was convicted of transporting large amounts of military
explosives to Libya, where he had recruited Green Beret instructors
to train Libyan "freedom fighters." Wilson would then finger the
"terrorists" for elimination by Agency "mechanics" when they
arrived at their postings in Europe, relaying the intelligence to
William F. Buckley, then-station chief in Beirut who was in charge
of the Agency's world-wide Anti-terrorist (i.e. assassination)
Bureau, until he was kidnapped and tortured to death in Teheran.
Wilson has said in prison that "If I got 52 years for what I did,
Oliver North and Richard Secord should get 300!" There is no doubt
that Lear and Warton, at least, knew each other very well and had
worked closely.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:35:10
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 9
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>
Warton recently admitted that Lear was most anxious to work with
him during that period because he had pissed away a huge sum of
money on an impotent race for the Nevada Senate seat, and flew
every hour of overtime he could wrangle from Warton to recover the
loss. The question was, just how closely were Lear and Warton
involved in either the 1981 weapons flights to Iran, and the
planned gold shipments to Zurich?
I was frankly stunned to read, in Lear's own typed wording, that
he was supposed to secure the planes for the gold shipment for a
company in Amsterdam called Kindrich International, and that 106
tons of gold were to be flown from Guam to Taiwan, where it was to
be smelted down, and then to Zurich, Switzerland via Dubai or Abu
Dhabi. According to his memo, there were several other people
involved in the operation: Juanita Hanson was the managing
director of Kindrich International; Bob Kerkez was instrumental in
some way from West Germany; Hank Warton of Miami, Florida was in
charge of the operation; Vern Peoples in Las Vegas was in charge of
coordinating with Lear, and Jack Taggert was to receive a "10% cut"
for setting it up.
I couldn't help but wonder what Lear's slice was to be for his
participation in the deal.
My natural inclination was to bring my discovery of the memo to
his attention and ask him directly about his involvement. However,
I've been around enough "sensitive situations" to know that the
people involved -- possibly including Lear, since I didn't know him
that well at that point -- would be absolutely livid that I was
aware of any aspect of the operation. Considering the amount of
money involved, I had little doubt I would be readily expendable to
keep the operation quiet.
I had suspected Lear's motives behind his UFO "revelations" from
the beginning -- stumbling across this information was a very
strong indication that he was still heavily involved in covert
operations and was very likely using the UFO bullshit to cover up
past and present activities.
As another case in point: I had noticed also in the Air Progress
article that Lear had flown a 707 for Global International Airways
in 1983 out of Kansas City. I learned in 1990 from an article
entitled "Ripoff Savings and Loan of Colorado" by Bryan Abas in
Westword Magazine that its owner, Farhad Azima, had borrowed more
than $1 million from the Indian Springs State Bank in Kansas City,
much of which went to Global, which was widely known to be a CIA
proprietary run by Azima. The bank had received more than $6
million in deposits arranged by convicted scammer Mario Rends, a
Mob-connected loan broker who helped cause the failure of several
banks and S & Ls by demanding loans and special treatment in return
for deposits, according to charges by regulators which were
reported in the aftermath of the bank's collapse. According to
statements from a former Justice Department prosecutor to the
Houston Post at that time, he was ordered to "back off" on his
investigation into Indian Springs Bank shareholder Azima because
"Azima had CIA connections and a 'get-out-of-jail-free card.'"
Global went bankrupt not long after Lear came to work there,
listing debts of $15 million, including $280,000 to Indian Springs.
When I questioned Lear about this, he dismissed it as lightly as he
had the numerous reports about opium trafficking by Air America and
Continental in Laos and Cambodia, and the early weapons flights in
1981 to Iran.
As concerned as I was about respecting Lear's privacy, I knew
only too well from witnessing the repression in Central America
over a period of years just how much torment had been inflicted
upon the Filipinos by the Marcos regime, and how determined many
were, in cooperation with the few honest American authorities, to
bring them to justice and restore the Philippine treasure to its
government. I was compelled by conscience to send parts of the
information to selected media and law enforcement contacts around
the country, carefully leaving out any reference to Lear.
Using an alias, I personally handed the information to a well-
known ABC reporter at the studio in LA in late 1988 when I was
informed that he would be part of the press team accompanying U.S.
Attorney Rudolf Giuliani to Hawaii to bring Imelda Marcos back for
trial in New York. He promised that he would hand the information
over to Giuliani himself, but I never received a reply from
Giuliani, or anyone else.
Again in April 1990 during Imelda Marcos's trial I sent key
elements of the information to selected media outlets and the
prosecution team, but never received any response.
Knowing what I do now about the full extent of Warton's
operations over the years from his headquarters in Miami and
London, and his high-level sanctions for patently illegal weapons
transfers, as well as his methods of concealing those transfers, I
can clearly understand why the prosecutors and the media have
deliberately suppressed this information.
MUM'S THE WORD
During this period, in late July or early August of 1988, I
resolved to finish up the work I had begun at the Lear residence,
collect my earnings, buy the car, and put as much distance between
them and myself as possible.
I was working in Lear's garage building shelves and a workbench
one Sunday afternoon when he asked me to come into his study to
meet with a couple of his guests, whom I had already met at his
first lecture. While we were all talking together, another woman
who had come by earlier in the day to interview John for a local
paper reappeared and visited with us for a little while as we all
discussed various reports concerning UFO activity in Nevada and New
Mexico. Not long after arriving, she excused herself to leave.
Lear hastily jumped up to escort her out, and then did not return
for over an hour. His guests and I exchanged questioning glances,
but continued our conversation until Lear's wife called from New
York and demanded to speak to him immediately! I looked in the
garage, hoping that he might have been puttering in his new
workshop, but somehow knew that I would find him in the guesthouse.
When I entered and noticed the door to the master bedroom closed at
the end of the long hallway, I had little doubt Lear had decided to
"extend the farewell" with the lady reporter. I loudly declared
that I hated to interrupt him, but his wife was on the phone and
she demanded to speak to him "immediately." He emerged from the
bedroom a few seconds later, pulling his trousers on, barefoot,
shirtless, drenched in sweat, and completely dazed by the large
amount of alcohol he had consumed and whatever he was engaged in.
I was thoroughly disgusted and simply informed him that his wife
was waiting on the line to talk to him. I walked out and returned
to his guests in the study, hoping he "finished up" quickly, and
tried not to let on that anything was amiss. They smiled knowingly
but nothing was said. I hope it never becomes necessary to reveal
their names or those of two of the three women involved with Lear -
- I have resolutely avoided this -- but they would certainly have
to corroborate all that I have said relative to them up to this
point under oath if it were forced to come out. I don't think Lear
can put his hands on enough money to bribe them all -- their
integrity is too great to lie about this. After about another half-
hour to 45 minutes, the phone rang again and Lear's 14-year-old
daughter rushed in to say that her mother was again demanding to
speak to John. She directed me to look for him in the garage and
she headed for the guest house before I could attempt to stop her.
As I expected, she found her dad and his guest still somewhat
"engaged" in the living room, and rushed back into the house
extremely agitated.
When I heard the door slam, I headed out the back door toward
the guesthouse to find Lear and the woman emerging in a state of
confusion and heading out toward the front of the house.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:36:10
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 10
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>
The woman tried to explain to me what had happened, but I told
her it was none of my business and I preferred that she keep it to
herself. She did seem to express some genuine concern about Lear's
mental health, indicating that he seemed to be very upset and
confused about all that he was dealing with concerning his UFO
research. I thanked her for her concern and escorted her to her
car. Despite my protestations, since he was obviously highly
intoxicated, Lear jumped into his truck and drove off after her.
His other guests left at this point and his daughter and I
attempted to locate him in order to avoid his being arrested for
drunken driving. We never located him, but a humble and contrite
John Lear appeared the next morning to beg me to "handle the
situation" for him until he got back from Europe.
Apparently he had spent the night at his other girlfriend's
house rather than face his daughter. I thought very seriously
about leaving right then myself, since I knew the situation would
only get worse, but felt an obligation to Lear to look after his
place at least until his wife arrived a couple of days later.
Although I'm sure they had family friends who could have done so,
given the delicate circumstances, I felt that the less attention
drawn to their situation at that time, the better. I did feel
quite awkward about being left alone there with their teen-age
daughter, since I had not realized that was how their schedules
were going to work out until it happened, but figured that she
certainly should have a responsible adult standing by until the
other parent returned.
From my previous experience in police work, I knew full well that
I was allowing myself to be placed in a very delicate situation, in
the event Lear might have decided to have the daughter accuse me of
some improper behavior to cover his own, at some point in the
future. I know only too well from professional experience how
quickly families will close ranks behind a lie to cover for one of
the clan. Nevertheless, I stayed on and hoped for the best until
Mrs. Lear returned two days later.
At no time during the entire period of my acquaintance with the
Lears did I ever come within less than three feet of their
daughter(s), however, just for that reason. It frankly has not
surprised me following my disclosures here that he has attempted to
so charge me, but I state for the record again that nothing in any
way improper ever took place. In terms of guilt, however, one must
also ask what kind of parents would leave their teenage daughter
home alone with someone they had only known for a couple of months,
even though I conducted myself completely honorably from the start
to the finish of my dealings with John Lear. Since he is now
alleging otherwise, one must ask why he would even consider
authorizing me to act as his agent little more than a year later
(see letter of November 1989), or would introduce me in very
friendly terms to his mother after that -- I seriously doubt that
she would lie about this. During this time, July-August 1988, Lear
seemed to have become entirely preoccupied with his drinking and
his libido, and I had already begun to write him off in terms of
reliability. For someone who was fully engrossed in attempting to
get the truth out about a number of major government cover-ups
regarding UFOs, Lear's asking me to "handle it" for him was an
odious request. I knew that no matter what I did I would be damned
as the scapegoat for his affair. I did try to reason with his
daughter Alison not to tell her mother whatever she saw, since the
results would cause her mother to go predictably nuclear, and that
such a disclosure would almost certainly prove devastating for
their family. I encouraged Alison to at least wait and talk with
her father before she brought it up to her mother, which apparently
nearly happened. She certainly had no hesitation about taking
advantage of the situation, and their absence, to repeatedly drive
their Audi around town without a license or my permission. At that
stage, I figured that it really wasn't my problem, and began
packing to depart as soon as Mrs. Lear returned. Once she did,
however, she was so insistent that we finish up his workbench in
the garage that I stayed on for a few more days with a friend of
mine who had come to deliver my new used car in order to try to
help ease Lear through the difficulty.
It was during this period that I re-tiled the roof myself, since
my friend refused to work for free, and chastised me relentlessly
about my stupidity for doing so.
Unfortunately, the night before his return, Mrs. Lear allowed
Alison to get drunk, and in conversation with her mother and their
boarder, a stewardess on Lear's airline, American Trans Air, she
let the cat out of the bag.
I awoke the next morning to hear Mrs. Lear pounding on my studio
door, demanding that I tell her where the "other woman" lived or
worked so that she could go over and "blow her feet off" with her
.45. Since I was by now thoroughly disgusted with the entire
situation and had already begun packing for departure, I got up and
met with her in the kitchen, where I simply told her that I wasn't
about to help her get herself imprisoned and that the problem was
between her and her husband, not me.
Without belaboring the point, I certainly did become their
whipping boy in short order, with all manner of false accusations
tossed after me following my departure a couple of days later --
the very day John and I had planned to fly down to Dallas together
to check out the leads concerning the witnesses to the Kennedy
assassination. This all occurred in August 1988, and from that
point on I decided to pretty much cut all contact with the Lear
family, for obvious reasons.
In my haste to pack and relocate, I inadvertently tossed a cheap
$9 phone into a box with my various other office paraphernalia.
Also, a few days earlier I had set a pair of cheap pink sunglasses
I had borrowed from Lear in my open toolbox, which fell down to the
bottom. I brought the telephone back within a couple days when I
discovered it, but did not discover the glasses until months later
when I cleaned out the toolbox, at which time I made a point of
returning them personally also.
I had also borrowed -- with Lear's permission -- his copy of
America in Search of Enemies by John Stockwell for Gritz to review
while we were working on his book, leaving as "collateral" Bo's
copy of The Crimes of Patriots by Jonathan Kwitny for Lear to look
over. I mailed John's book back a few weeks later, and do not know
to this day whether he ever returned Gritz's book. Lear later
accused me of stealing his sunglasses and both he and his wife
later insisted that the Gritzs claimed I had "given" Lear's book to
Gritz. I am still amazed at the degree of distortion and
pettiness, when they all knew the true situation.
Lear also accused me of stealing his navigation map for the
flights to Iran in early 1981, and the picture of himself and his
cronies in Teheran.
I first heard of these accusations through mutual acquaintances,
and after calling Lear directly to have him repeat them, I was
actually flabbergasted at their utter falsity, and his incredible
pettiness and unbelievable audacity, considering the profound
embarrassment I could easily have caused for him without having to
resort to lies had I chosen to capitalize on his asinine behavior.
Instead, out of concern for his family and the immense respect I
hold for his mother, I said nothing at all. I did not take
anything of theirs from the house deliberately, and most certainly
did not take the map or photo.
I have no doubt whatsoever that John conveniently "lost" them,
knowing only too well how damaging such things could be as evidence
now that I was "outside the tent pissing in." I have little doubt
as well that this probably explains his newfound enthusiasm for
promoting the JFK tape right at the same time, after six months of
inattention to the issue while he was chasing his libidinal outlets
around the world.
BACK TO ABNORMAL
After washing my hands of the entire disgusting mess, I returned to
California briefly to meet personally with Dan Sheehan in Los
Angeles and Santa Barbara in order to discreetly advise him of
Lear's complete unreliability and to warn him in specific terms
about the inevitable distortion and deleterious effects of allowing
Christic to become in any way associated with the UFO issue.
Sheehan is an extremely bright and perceptive individual who has
seen the underbelly of the national-security dragon from very
close-up: consequently, our conversation was brief and to the
point.
Stephen Seagal, the martial-arts actor, was actually accompanying
Sheehan out of the auditorium in LA when I first made personal
contact. As he glared at me out of the corner of his eye, for a
brief moment I thought I might end up like one of the victims of
his martial artistry in the movies.
Fortunately, Sheehan immediately recognized my voice when I
called out to him and I was spared that experience. I then
returned to Las Vegas and began to focus all efforts on
transcribing Gritz's written and recorded notes for his book, A
Nation Betrayed, and in late October entered the video studio there
to work two straight weeks (I never set foot outside the entire
time) in producing the final rushed, crudely edited but
nevertheless powerful two-hour documentary by the same title.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:37:12
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 11
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>
It was during this time, while I was so engaged, that the two
owners of the studio, who specialized in filming stunts, came into
the studio very excitedly one evening to thrust a copy of the NOVA
Kennedy special narrated by Walter Cronkite onto the big monitor
and watch my reaction while the most startlingly clear footage I
had yet seen of the Zapruder film rolled by, in close-up on Bill
Greer.
The NOVA footage showed extreme close-ups in astonishingly clear
detail in which it could be clearly seen that Greer did not take
his hands off the steering wheel at any time during the period that
the fatal head shot was delivered to Kennedy. As I admitted to them
afterward, unless the film had been altered it was beyond question
that nothing crossed Greer's chest during this sequence and that
the reflection that Evans and Adams argued was a handgun which
extended past the back of the other agent, Roy Kellerman's, head,
was, in fact, merely the reflection off the top of "Killerman's"
head.
Even at that point I was preoccupied with finishing Gritz's video
and lamented the fact that I lacked the time or money even then to
verify the authenticity of the JFK footage on the NOVA program.
Assuming the NOVA film was unaltered -- Robert Groden, who supplied
it to the producers, swore to me later that it had not been -- it
underscored what I had sensed all along: as much as we might have
hoped that Greer had in fact been one of the gunman, thereby
simplifying the proof of official complicity in the assassination,
a far better copy of the film would reveal the factual source of
the reflection in question was Kellerman's head.
To this day, despite all that has transpired, Evans and Adams,
and thousands of "Cooperoids" adhere to their cherished theory. I
do not pretend to be infallible, much less the final authority on
the Zapruder film or the Kennedy assassination, but I can only
state what I truly believe, or know for a fact, if I have the
luxury of possessing sufficient evidence. If I truly believed that
Greer had a weapon in his hand and fired it, I would not hesitate
to state then or now such a belief.
My statement to that effect on the videotape notwithstanding,
everyone who knew me during this time knows very well that my
primary concern in making the tape and all related efforts were
directed toward trying to prove its truth or falsity.
I was not convinced of anything at the outset, and as a former
law enforcement officer, knew only too well the burden of proof
that accompanies any such theory or allegation. Lear's and
Cooper's attempt to paint me into a corner in this regard are
patently ill-informed, if not malicious, considering their complete
lack of research and cheapness in avoiding purchase of their own
film. I believe now as I did then that their efforts to promote
the "theory" were primarily oriented at undermining my credibility,
particularly because of my proximity to both Col. Gritz and the
Christic Institute, and continuing to confuse and mislead the
public. In addition, I seriously doubt Lear trusted Cooper well
enough to tell him that I also knew of his infidelity and of the
weapons and gold flights, but had no qualms in using him to further
the discreditation ploy, until Cooper began attacking him also.
Nevertheless, the question remained then -- and still does to this
day -- where did the .45 cal. bullet slug found on the other side
of Elm St. come from, and why has that slug never been officially
addressed in any of the subsequent investigations?
Both Jim Garrison in his recent book On the Trail of the
Assassins, and John Judge have addressed that issue at length.
Judge claims that the fatal headshot attributed to William Greer by
Adams, Evans, Cooper and Lear actually came from the handgun of a
gunman hidden in the manhole directly under the sidewalk in front
of Abraham Zapruder. Judge argues that this was the actual source
of the .45 cal. slug found on the other side of the street which
was repeatedly photographed.
The new movie, JFK, being filmed by Oliver Stone is reportedly
based very heavily on Garrison's book, and employs some of the most
knowledgeable and sincere people in the assassination investigation
field as consultants, I'm very pleased to report.
While I was in Dallas in Feb. 1991 en route to Florida, I was
actually able to remove the manhole cover and crawl down inside the
opening, which provides a "pillbox" type of fortification for
firing very effectively at close range at a motorcade through the
opening in the sidewalk curb.
There was also a round tunnel leading down from the manhole, but
I did not enter it to see if it was actually possible to move very
far through it. By that point, in late November 1988, however, I
was so mentally and physically exhausted, as well as impoverished
after spending nearly a year with virtually no income tracking down
all these loose ends (and after remaining awake for 72 hours
straight trying to accommodate Gritz's urgency to complete his
video and get it immediately into distribution), I decided to just
drop the entire effort for a few months and concentrate on
recovering my own personal lost ground.
To this day I have never received a single penny from any of
Gritz's books or videos, and as much as my creditors would have
loved to see some royalties, I am only glad I had the opportunity
to help make them happen, so great is the importance of their
contents to Americans, despite the admittedly ragged quality that
emerged from their rushed production. Considering that I was paid
the whopping total of $45 for producing a two-hour documentary in
two weeks, for which anyone else would have taken at least a couple
of months and charged at least $45,000, I have an absolutely clear
conscience about the professionalism and the sincerity I brought to
bear in both efforts. Although I did, in fact, contribute
significantly to the text of both his books, and spent many weeks
editing the balance, I have taken great pains in all instances to
downplay my role. When one talk-show host attempted to
characterize me as Gritz's "right-hand man" at the Center for
Action, I hastened to point out that I barely qualified as his
"left-hand man," since I had only helped with the books and tapes
and several public events publicizing his trial.
I made it clear that my contributions to his effort paled in
comparison with those of any of his Operation Lazarus teammembers
who had sacrificed years and risked their necks repeatedly in the
POW recovery efforts they had mounted, suffering over a year in
prison in one case, and various arrests, detention and threats in
several others.
I have made it very clear at all times that I am not a veteran,
and only did what I could to help him get his story out in the most
professional manner possible.
The simple truth is that I felt it was my absolute obligation
and responsibility as an American citizen to render every
assistance I possibly could to his courageous efforts.
The truth is that this commitment on my part has actually cost me
tremendously in credibility, and placed me many thousands of
dollars behind in unpaid obligations, yet I am still glad to have
done it.
I learned long ago to trust in the truth winning out in the end,
regardless of how unfair or grim things may look at the time. I
have been equally resolute about squaring up overdue accounts,
despite the exploitation of this issue by my detractors.
Shortly after I had completed Gritz's video in mid-November
1988, Lear called to invite me to his home to meet "some real
special people." I was completely exhausted myself, as well as
disgusted with him, but since I was planning on heading back to
California the next day and definitely believed it would be the
very last time I would ever set foot there, I agreed. This was to
be my first encounter with the name Bill Cooper. Lear showed me
several computer bulletin board printouts which I believe were from
Jim Speiser's net, because John was chuckling about how Speiser had
thrown him and Cooper off as a result of their "agitation." I read
one "dispatch" from Cooper outlining his credentials and assuring
John that he could vouch for at least 50% of Lear's claims. I
questioned John as to whether he thought Cooper was for real or
only trying to cozy up to him in order to make a name for himself
in the field or to perhaps use an implied association with Lear to
disinform others. Lear would later state on George Knapp's second
UFO TV special that Bill Cooper was vouching for 150% of his
claims. John indicated that he thought Cooper was on the level, and
appeared to be the genuine article in terms of his background and
credibility. I recall thinking at the time that I could really
care less, since I'd had a bellyful of all the UFO bullshit and
would leave it to all the self-anointed experts to hash it out
among themselves from there on out.
I was reminded of a brief encounter with Linda Howe a few months
earlier when she had come to meet with Lear and another former
UFOlogist friend/associate of his who also had long-standing
connections to the weapons industry and the intelligence community.
While discussing the conviction (railroading) of respected UFO
researcher, retired USAF Colonel Wendelle Stevens, Lear's friend
disturbed Ms. Howe mightily with his own inspired discussion of
pedophilia, convincing her not to share the information she had
brought with her, and resulting in a serious blowout between them.
I ended up taking her up to Lear's home where I was left to sit and
wait for four hours while they met privately in his study.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:38:12
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 12
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>>
Lear's wife refused to accompany us to dinner afterward, during
which time Ms. Howe described her meetings with military
intelligence agents a few years before during which the JFK
assassination was discussed in some detail. After relating what
they had imparted to her she was most emphatic about the wisdom of
leaving that issue alone. We parted on respectful terms, but I
resolved to do exactly that -- concentrate fully on important
issues like Kennedy's murder, and let her and the others carry the
UFO banner. It was during our conversation that night in November
that Lear became suddenly harsh with me about my remarks to a
mutual acquaintance of ours about the "Marcos gold" shipments that
he had been involved in arranging. Up to that point I didn't know
for certain that it was, in fact, Marcos's hoard that was being
moved.
I tried unsuccessfully to pretend ignorance, but Lear emphasized
that I was "playing around with something very serious," and I
should not "breathe another word about it to anyone or we could all
expect some heavy shit to come down. These guys don't fuck around,
Lars."
Knowing only too well the extreme lengths the people involved
would go to in order to keep the gold movement hushed up, I nodded
solemnly, but since the cat was out of the bag and he knew I was at
least partially aware of the operation, I questioned him as to why
he would even consider being a part of that operation, considering
that the gold had been stolen from the Philippine people. Not
knowing that I had seen his entire memo on the matter, he insisted
that the flights never came together and that he was out of it and
did not want to talk about it any further.
I changed the subject to the clear Zapruder footage I had
recently seen and pointed out to John that more and more
information was coming to light which I believed discredited the
driver theory. I pointed out specifically that nothing obstructed
Greer's chest in the footage I saw, thereby eliminating the
possibility that his left arm crossed over his chest and his right
shoulder. This meant he was unable to have fired a weapon at
Kennedy, as I had narrated on the video. Lear appeared to be
genuinely concerned and interested and I directed him to the
individuals who had the copied footage so he could also obtain a
copy to review, which he did shortly afterward. I made it very
clear that, even though I had not been able to undertake the
thorough investigation I had originally planned, all the
information and contacts I had developed at that point, which were
substantial, strongly inclined me to believe that Greer did indeed
turn around twice to look back at Kennedy, but did not fire
anything at Kennedy.
I indicated to Lear that he was more than welcome to continue
pursuing the issue if he chose to, but that I had seen enough
evidence concerning Kennedy's assassination to convince me to apply
my extremely limited resources to getting Gritz's story out to the
public and simply keeping him out of prison. As important as it
was to get the complete truth out about the hit team in Dallas in
1963, and who paid them to pull the triggers, I knew that people
like Jack Anderson, Mark Lane and Walter Cronkite commanded the
media on the issue.
Achieving similar coverage for Gritz's story in that time frame
could have proven extremely potent. I did encourage Lear strongly
to contact Robert Groden regarding the issue and to arrange to see
his much clearer copy of the original film, and provided Groden's
number to him. [Finally, in late 1990, two years later, during a
call to Groden to discuss some aspect of the assassination, he
admitted his surprise that Lear had just called him moments before
at his home in Pennsylvania, and was at that moment en route to
visit with him. Friends report that Lear now states in his
lectures that he has seen clear footage that indicates Greer was
not firing a weapon, and that he was "misled" by another researcher
into believing otherwise. If their reporting is accurate, it
indicates again the extent of Lear's lying duplicity, as well as
hypocrisy.]
Lear, of course, made no mention to me in November 1988 of
meeting with Cooper, other than a phone call or two, and made no
mention of having shared or given a copy of my JFK video to him,
either.
In fact, it would not be until almost exactly a year later that
I would find out this had actually occurred shortly before this
meeting I am now describing. Later that same evening, I met Bob
Lazar, Gene Huff, Ron Regehr and a friend of his when they arrived
at Lear's home, and we all drove out to the edge of Nellis Air
Force Base, looked around, then went back to the house and talked
for awhile before leaving. I remember being mightily impressed by
the bright young man who had given me his unique jet-car business
card, which also advertised his expertise in other advanced
scientific areas.
I would not learn until almost exactly a year later that the
person I met that night at Lear's was the same Bob Lazar who had
appeared on Las Vegas TV in April 1989 under the cover-name of
"Dennis" and claimed that he had worked on one of nine USG UFOs at
Area S-4 at the Nevada Test Site.
GRITZ 2 MADDOX 0 ARMITAGE 0 HOFFMAN -1
From that point in late November 1988 until mid-April 1989, after
returning to Santa Barbara, I devoted myself pretty exclusively to
straightening out my own domestic requirements and publicizing
Gritz's discoveries in preparation for his trial on April 18, 1989.
Along these lines, I prepared a mailer describing his indictment
and the issues behind it and mailed it out to over 5,000 groups
nationwide, at my own expense.
I also was in touch several times with Sheehan and a few other
attorneys, by phone and in person, attempting to make certain that
Gritz was completely prepared for the legal battle about to ensue.
While working fulltime, I also made several public presentations on
his behalf and set up several others for him in Santa Barbara, Los
Angeles and Las Vegas, most of which netted surprisingly decent
media coverage.
The event in LA on April 11, 1989, which yielded a front-page B-
section story in the Herald-Examiner and for which I went several
hundred more dollars in the hole -- not taking a single dime from
any of these events -- was very successful.
I returned to Santa Barbara the next day with an acquaintance
from LA to prepare and FedEx Gritz's detailed video testimony along
with a very strongly worded letter to 35 key senators and media
heads.
In the letter, I exhorted them to perform their sworn duty and
thoroughly investigate Richard Armitage, who was up for
confirmation as Secretary of the Army at that time. Anyone not
familiar with his long-term role in heroin smuggling and weapons
sales to Iraq should consult Gritz's two books and videos. A copy
of one of the letters is included with this packet, and it should
be obvious to anyone that "agents of the secret government" -- as
Cooper falsely claims I am -- rarely, if ever, take such an open
stand against known agents of the secret government.
It is worthy of special note that Richard Armitage decided to
withdraw from confirmation proceedings a few weeks after the
Senators' receipt of the videos.
It was reported in a special to the New York Times on May 26,
1989 that "Bush's Selection as Secretary of Army Withdraws to Avoid
Grilling." Midway through the article by Andrew Rosenthal, it was
stated that "It is not known whether new information had surfaced
that would have changed Mr. Armitage's mind."
I cannot help but feel, over two years later that that statement
is also a bald-faced lie, given Gritz's thoroughly suppressed but
nevertheless highly vocal charges regarding Armitage, and my own
direct contact with the senators and heads of all major national
news media. I'm surprised Cooper hasn't fingered H. Ross Perot,
himself, along with Gritz and me, since he also lobbied intensively
to keep Armitage out of that position, after confronting him two
years before in person at the Pentagon and demanding that he resign
on the spot for his involvement in large-scale heroin trafficking -
- you can read about it in the May 4, 1987 issue of TIME.
It must be noted also, whether Cooper is aware of it or not, that
Perot put up the $2 million to try to buy William Buckley's way out
of Beirut back in 1984. Buckley was the well-known CIA station
chief stationed there who was also in charge of the Agency's
worldwide assassination bureau. It has been known and reported for
some time that it was the Iranians' threat to release to the
American people the 14 hours of videotape of his confessions under
torture which prompted Oliver North and Bud McFarlane to jet over
to Teheran with the Bible, the cake and the missiles.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:39:14
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 13
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>>>
In fact, I have just received information from a very reliable
source who was the Shah's pilot at one time (after flying Mohammed
Mossadegh, the elected leader of Iran deposed by the CIA with the
help of the original Norman Schwarzkopf, out of the country), that
William Buckley also revealed under torture those responsible for
the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
As unlikely as this might seem on first hearing, it must be
borne in mind that Buckley had, in fact, been the station chief in
Mexico City during the period that a special assassination bureau
was being run under the cover of PEMEX Oil Co. Rafael "Chi Chi"
Quintero was one of the original members of the "shooter team" set
up at the request of Richard Nixon by Robert Maheu and Mafia capos
Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli in 1960 to eliminate Castro and
continued as part of the ongoing hit squad in Mexico working under
Buckley. According to the Torbitt Document (Nomenclature of an
Assassination Cabal) the FBI's Division Five (Domestic
Counterintelligence) maintained a triangular-fire training base at
Oaxaca, Mexico, under the cover of a missionary school. It has now
been established that it was his references to this fact which had
to be erased from Nixon's Watergate tapes.
Dan Sheehan of the Christic Institute, among others, has been
very emphatic on numerous occasions about Buckley's actual role in
Beirut at the time of his capture, and the true reasons for the
weapons deals which ensued. Following the Reagan Administration's
concerted attempt to shut Gritz up with the asinine passport
charge, the half-dozen or so people involved in preparing the video
testimony for the Senate Armed Services Committee ruling on Richard
Armitage's confirmation as Secretary of the Army decided they would
be taking too much of a risk themselves to sign the accompanying
letter. That's why my signature is the only one at the bottom.
I had literally driven the brakes off my car on Gritz's behalf
and lacked the gas money to get over to his trial -- much less out
of harm's way -- anyway, but I figured it was worth the effort
regardless. Whether we hang together or hang separately, I'm
hanging in until the end -- and so should you.
It is a matter of history now that the "weenie charge" of
"Misuse of a Passport" against Gritz was thrown out on the third
day of the trial, April 21, 1989.
Both the judge, Philip Pro, and the U.S. Attorney, Bill Maddox,
knew all along that it was invalid to begin with, particularly
after the U.S. Atty. in California had already rejected the case
when it was brought to him to prosecute initially. It seems that
the passport in question was actually issued to a fictitious
"Patrick Richard Clark" for the use of an undercover LAPD
intelligence officer.
Richard Patrick Clark, a staunch supporter of Gritz's POW-
recovery efforts, had given him the passport to assist him in that
undertaking.
Following the exposure of this fact in a front-page B-section
article in the LA Herald-Examiner (now defunct) following the
successful public event for Gritz which I co-produced just days
before his trial began, Maddox's case basically self-destructed in
court when Clark, an extremely astute LAPD intelligence officer
with a PhD and a rapier wit, answered Maddox's questions too
honestly and adroitly.
When Maddox snarled to Gritz's attorney as they entered the
court, "Tell your Colonel he's in my jungle now!" he was in for a
very rude surprise. Clark admitted that he himself had obtained the
passport and provided it to Gritz to assist him in his POW-recovery
efforts, and that the passport, in fact belonged to no one, since
"Patrick Richard Clark" does not exist, other than in State
Department computer files. Maddox then had no case left to
prosecute, since the charge read "Misuse of the passport of
another," when, in fact, there was no "other," and Judge Philip Pro
had no choice but to end the trial. As Gritz had candidly admitted
on numerous occasions publicly around the country, "I have misused
passports all of my adult life as a special-forces operative, just
like Jane Fonda did when she went to North Vietnam and Ollie North
and Robert McValium did when they went to Teheran in 1985 with the
Bible, the cake and the TOW missiles. The only reason I'm being
prosecuted on this 'weenie charge' is because I refused to 'play
ball' with this crowd." He admitted that his own best friend, Joe
Felter of Wedtech, had been used by the National Security aide
handling Gritz's mission to Burma, Tome Harver (code-named "Tango")
to attempt to persuade Gritz to "erase and forget" all that he had
learned in Burma, and to attempt to bribe him to do so with the
promise of a cushy job as a defense contractor in Washington, all
to no avail.
Gritz's testimony about the provision of those passports (he
carried a total of four at one time) from the special
Administrative Survey Branch of the National Security Agency was
not permitted to be entered into open court testimony because of
the restrictive provisions of CIPA (Classified Information and
Procedures Act).
In practice CIPA has become a thinly disguised tactical weapon
wielded by the government to force the defense to disclose all of
its evidence before excluding it from court proceedings.
After two years of prosecutorial delay, including forcing
Gritz to assemble his witnesses in Las Vegas from around the world
more than once, only to have the trial postponed, and hamstringing
Gritz's overseas operations by prohibiting his travel, following
the exposure of Maddox's blunder, Gritz was understandably furious
when, following the judge's decalration of his acquittal, he could
not present even a word of his defense, much less high-level
intelligence authorization for his mission.
Gritz had made these points very clear to news reporters covering
his indictment and trial from the outset. Almost as if he was
working in concert with Gritz to verify his claims, Maddox emerged
from the courtroom to snarl at Clark that "your superiors at LAPD
will hear about this!" (and, indeed, they did and put pressure on
Clark in the aftermath to punish him for his candor). In response
to a news reporter's question in front of television cameras,
Maddox shot back "George Bush called me and told me to 'Get Bo
Gritz.'" When the reporter queried whether Maddox was being
serious or sarcastic, "You're denying that. Is that what you're
saying?" he responded in a flat-toned, deapan, but adamant manner,
"No. What I'm saying is that George Bush called me and told me to
'Get Bo Gritz!" I had literally driven the brakes off my car on
Gritz's behalf traveling back and forth between Nevada and
California, and lacked the gas money even to get to Las Vegas for
the trial. But when Gritz called the day after the acquittal to
request my help in editing the trial coverage and Maddox's
statements into a new videotape, I quickly rounded up a helper and
drove all night to Nevada to obtain the raw footage, drove back all
night to LA and stayed up the entire next evening assembling a
hard-hitting 10 min. video for immediate distribution.
I was not paid a cent for the effort, but found profound
satisfaction in exposing the perfidy of the officials involved in
that travesty of justice nationwide when the national news media
deliberately ignored the story. I have derived considerable
satisfaction since upon learning that not only was Maddox not
reappointed as U.S. Attorney, but the State of Nevada was unable to
find a suitable replacement over two years later.
When a Mr. Lutfy was finally formally nominated by Rep. Barbara
Vucanovich with considerable fanfare, the next morning's news
headlines trupeted that Lutfy was strongly implicated in several
insurance fraud cases. This was only the latest in a series of
fiascos befalling the vindictive U.S. Attorney's office after the
first of Gritz's prosecutors, a Mr. Wulfson, resigned, to be
replaced by a a Mr. O'Neill, who assumed the case with a vengeance.
He left town not long after with his tail between his legs when
someone leaked to the local press that Mr. O'Neill had actually
served as a road manager for the acid-rock anti-war band from San
Francisco, Country Joe and the Fish, who immortalized the "Gimme
and F!" cheer in their classic anti-Vietnam anthem "Feel Like I'm
Fixin' to Die Rag."
It is also worthy of note, on a more tragic vein, that one of
Gritz's most respected friends and counterparts, USSF Colonel James
"Nick" Rowe, who escaped from N. Vietnam after five years in
captivity, was assassinated exactly one year to the day after the
charge was dropped against Gritz in Las Vegas Federal Court.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:40:14
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 14
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What few people know is that Rowe and three other SF Colonels
were all killed or died under questionable circumstances; that
Mossad agent Michael Harari was known to be at the place, at the
time, in three of the four deaths; and that all four were strongly
engaged in attempting to bring to public awareness the U.S.
Government's massive involvement in large-scale drug trafficking.
Rowe himself was directly in touch with 60 Minutes about the issue
in 1987, but they passed on the story as they had passed on Gritz's
story when he came back from Burma. The day after Gritz's event in
Los Angeles, I was profoundly disheartened to see the headlines
about Abbie Hoffman's supposed suicide. I found it particularly
hard to accept since I knew from my earlier discussions with
Barbara Honegger that he had been very involved with her in the
writing of his article about the October Surprise, entitled "An
Election Held Hostage," which appeared in Playboy magazine, and had
played a cameo role in Oliver Stone's upcoming movie, Born On The
Fourth Of July. He had also been very active with Amy Carter in
protesting CIA agents on college campuses, and I just couldn't
believe that he would give up so suddenly in the midst of all that
activity.
I called Honegger within seconds of reading the headline to ask
her what she knew about his death and was again quite startled to
hear her say something to the effect that "Abbie really had been
pretty depressed about his injuries" following a recent car
accident and had been in a great deal of physical pain. She more
or less indicated that the news reports were correct as far as she
was concerned, which I found very hard to accept in light of the
growing number of people who were dying mysteriously who had
anything to do with the October Surprise.
Honegger had indicated that she was making last-minute additions
and corrections to the galley proofs of her book, October Surprise,
before it went to the printers and again emphasized that if my
"friend" was willing to talk about the flights, now was the time.
In a mood of outrage and disgust with all the senseless deaths
which had been brought upon the world by the Bush crime family and
their minions, I finally decided to break down and put Honegger
directly in touch with Lear, to put the sonofabitch on the spot on
the issue once and for all.
Out of continued concern for him, in light of Abbie's death, for
his protection I had not given her his last name, and specified
that she should identify herself, her connection to me, and the
subject matter prior to entering a discussion with him. If he
chose not to pursue it, she was to hang up and forget the number.
She called me back at home the next day to advise me that they had
a very cordial and friendly extended conversation, but that Lear
had denied any involvement in the actual weapons flights, admitting
only that he had been "standing by" in Tel Aviv for several months
to make them but actually never did because the operation had been
blown after the Argentine plane had been shot down after supposedly
straying over Soviet airspace. As I expected, Lear was apparently
so flattered by her interest that he readily disclosed his entire
name and after denying his role in any such flights, they ended up
exchanging research material. I was not surprised, although I
figured John was denying it for obvious safety's sake, since it had
not actually occurred to me until I called him a few minutes later
that he actually would have lied to me about making the flights in
the first place. Believe it or not, that's exactly what he told me
when he picked up the phone. I immediately apologized for putting
him on the spot with her, but emphasized that if he was really
serious about exposing the "secret government," Honegger's book
would be a great way to do it. Since I knew for a fact that he had
two taps on his phone lines the previous summer, and that he always
records all his phone calls as well, I at first adopted a cryptic
style of speaking, not wanting necessarily to incriminate him any
further if anyone else was listening in, still concerned about his
safety.
Lear insisted that we talk openly, so I asked him point-blank:
"Well, John, what are you telling me? Were you lying last summer
when you said you made those flights and showed me the maps, and
the photographs and the articles in the Middle East press, or are
you lying now? Or both? If you're saying this now over the phone
for the benefit of our listeners, we can continue this later in
person." Lear sounded genuinely sheepish when he replied that he
had actually made up the story about his making the flights since
he knew I was "into that stuff," and thought I "would be
impressed."
He did admit that he had gone to Egypt, and later Tel Aviv,
Israel, to "stand by for orders to make the flights for three or
four months," but insisted that the orders never came.
As much as I had come to mistrust and disrespect Lear, he can be
a genuinely friendly and likable guy and does have an excellent
sense of humor.
It was very difficult to sort out how to deal with his statement.
My first thought was that he had actually made the flights, since
it was a matter of documented record that he had made any number of
other similar ones, that he had actually owned an automatic-weapons
business in Las Vegas a few years before, and that he had worked
with Warton for years. I figured that he had to deny it not only
in case anyone was listening in, but also because, if true, he
could not possibly let it get out in Barbara Honegger's eagerly
awaited book. On the other hand, he was so candid and open about
the entire matter over the phone that I actually began to consider
that he could have been so anxious to impress me at the time that
he actually would have bragged about something he never did which
could have easily gotten us both killed. He was not aware at that
point that I had actually seen his typed notes regarding the Marcos
gold shipments, but we both knew only too well all the other dirty
laundry in his closet.
At this point he again brought up my supposed theft of his
navigation map and the photograph in Teheran, and I could not help
but feel he was covering up, and he had actually "lost" them
himself to remove the evidence. Having already been through the
previous accusations regarding his phone and sunglasses, I told him
disgustedly that I had not taken anything from his house, and that
if the map and photograph were actually missing, I was only sorry
I hadn't taken them, since at least then we would both know where
they were.
To this day I have little doubt that he himself "relocated" them
to remove the evidence of his flights to Iran.
Lear then asked my permission to show the Zapruder videotape on
an upcoming interview with George Knapp on Las Vegas Channel 8 TV.
He referred to "we" several times, but never mentioned the name
Bill Cooper then.
I declined at first, but then, owing to my disorientation over
the previous revelations, very stupidly relented, stipulating
strongly that he must make it very clear to Knapp and the audience
that the person who produced the video -- I even gave him
permission to use my name -- did not believe that the driver fired
anything and that it was only a theory at best.
I demanded that he emphasize to the audience that the copy of the
tape being shown was an eighth-generation copy at best, and that no
one should form an opinion on the theory either way without looking
at a much better-quality version of the film.
I made it very clear to Lear once again that all the evidence I
had compiled thus far pointed away from the driver, and that he
should make this very clear in his discussion.
I had no idea whatsoever that he planned to appear with Bill
Cooper, nor have I seen the entire interview to this day.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:41:16
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 15
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE TRUTH -- AND A TRUST -- BETRAYED
I have wished many times since that day in April 1989 that I had
simply told John Lear to go screw himself and resumed my policy of
zero contact with him, because it was already very clear to me that
he was a gutless, lying, egotistical thrill seeker, with little or
no regard for his family or his friends, much less the gullible
public. Least of all did he appear to me to have any concern for
the hapless peasants in the third world who became the eventual
mutilated recipients of his countless lethal cargos. It was a
monumental error on my part that I did not follow my better
judgment and write him off completely at that point. This extended
recounting of our interactions is but the first step in a
continuing effort on my part to try to undo the extensive damage
which has resulted from that error. To this day I do not know
whether John Lear actually made the flights with the weapons loads
to Iran in early 1981 and/or the shipment of gold from Guam to
Zurich in late 1988. I have no doubt whatsoever that he was in Tel
Aviv at least standing by to make them under the direction of Hank
Warton, as he has admitted to both Barbara Honegger and me on more
than one occasion. My gut feeling is that he actually did in both
cases. He was certainly very pinched financially at both times, as
he was -- according to Warton's own account -- when he flew
overtime on the weapons deliveries to Somalia. Given the other
weapons flights that he has bragged about, and his "service" with
Continental in Laos, he would certainly have had no qualms about
doing so, especially for someone he had worked with previously.
Whatever the case, given also the amount of information he had
noted, and my additional discoveries, it is virtually certain that
Warton and some of the other people mentioned absolutely do know
who was in charge of the shipments and where they ended up. They
should all be contacted by the authorities and the media and
questioned relentlessly on the subject. The two reasons that I
elected to continue communication with Lear from mid-April 1989 to
September 1990 were that I knew well his almost obsessive need to
have an outlet for his "secret info" -- which I decided to simply
make use of when possible -- and the compelling information he was
absolutely intent on relaying about his "friend who worked out at
the Nevada Test Site" -- Bob Lazar. According to Lear's statements
beginning with that call in April 1989, Lazar had apparently
claimed to have been hired to work on one of nine U.S. Government
UFOs. As intriguing as that story was, it was not until seven
months later, on Nov. 6, 1989, following his call to alert me that
"Bob" was finally going to go public on Las Vegas Channel 8 TV with
newsman George Knapp, that I even bothered to put two and two
together to realize that "Bob" was the same Bob Lazar I had met at
Lear's home a year earlier. Throughout those intervening seven
months, I was busy re-establishing myself in California,
renovating my leased home and completely rebuilding the one next
door, paying off long-overdue debts and continuing my own
investigations. Lear either called me or mailed material to me
about once a week on a regular basis, giving me the latest episode
in the continuing saga of the young physicist from Area S-4, as
well as his latest theory about who really created AIDS and why.
He called me up at one point to state with certainty that the U.S.
Army did actually create AIDS at the Chemical-Biological Weapons
Research & Development Laboratory at Ft. Dietrich, Maryland by
1972, as alleged by Dr. Strecker and others. He insisted that Bob
Lazar saw the final report on the operational biological weapon we
have come to know as AIDS signed by a Naval Officer named R.M.
Donner during his extended security briefing prior to employment at
Area 51. Lear then insisted they had done so "in a final all-out
ultimatum to deprive the aliens of their food source by killing off
all humanity." I told John he was completely full of shit, and had
to be working for the Agency if they were putting him up to saying
things like that publicly. Cooper has since alleged in print that
Lear actually did make that statement on Las Vegas TV or radio (I
don't remember which). After that time, I would routinely refer to
his wilder suppositions as a "Lear Leap of Logic," my own euphemism
for bullshit. He also began to question me repeatedly about the
driver theory during this period, seemingly obsessed with its
validity by this time -- during which I patiently and methodically
emphasized to him over and over all the various elements that
simply did not stack up in its support. As I said earlier, I
smelled a rat from the beginning, and had I known he was now in
direct league with Cooper, or what they both apparently said on the
Knapp program, I probably would have moved far more swiftly and
firmly to shut them down. Again, despite Cooper's false
statements in his book, I was simply too preoccupied with
straightening out my own personal affairs in California and too
doubtful of Lear's honesty or intentions to bother too much with
following up on his activities until the fall of 1989. A case in
point is that by July of 1989, Lear was quite anxious in his
request that I help him out with preparations and logistics for the
MUFON convention in Las Vegas. He claimed that he was fed up with
the entire UFO field and wanted to make his wife happy and drop it
all, but had obligated himself as state director into sponsoring
the event and needed my help. As customary as it has always been
for me to pitch in and help a friend, rarely asking or receiving
any compensation, I simply declined that time. After careful
consideration, I made it clear to Lear and another friend in Las
Vegas whom he did recruit to help him that I had absolutely no
desire to be associated with the UFO field. What I didn't say, but
should have, was that I had no desire to do any more favors for
him, either. I think he got the message by my absence, but what
I missed, only to discover it months later, was that he took
advantage of my absence to once again show my JFK videotape to the
crowd during his "bootleg" (unsanctioned by MUFON) program. I
learned this many months later when I chanced to see a copy of the
poor-quality video made of the event. Had he asked, I would
certainly not have given him permission to show the video there.
I honestly believe his decision to do so, after I had made it very
clear to him nine months earlier my lack of belief in the theory
and my desire that he not show the video to anyone else, was a
deliberate effort to continue the discreditation ploy against me
already well-underway. Whatever the case, had I known he had done
so at that time, I would have made a special trip to Las Vegas to
confront him about the blatant violation of trust. Given the
growing number of such episodes concerning my material, and that of
many others, both Lear and Cooper are long-overdue in that respect.
I suspect in Lear's case several parental thrashings in his
formative years might have prevented a great deal of the harm he
has caused numerous others in the course of his coddled, self-
centered life. It was not until about a month later, in August
1989, that an acquaintance of mine in LA called in a highly excited
state to advise me that conspiracy researcher John Judge had
referred to me on KPFK Radio as "an FBI agent who had infiltrated
the Christic Institute in LA" to disinform them with the bogus
Kennedy videotape. He was absolutely adamant that I contact Judge
immediately to counteract the statement. I had learned by that
stage of our acquaintance to take all his inflamed reactions with
a grain of salt, but figured I should at least check it out. When
I asked him what Judge's comments were in reference to, he replied
that the topic of the interview concerned UFOs and specifically
concerned John Lear and Bill Cooper. Although it caught me out of
the blue, he relayed also that somehow my Kennedy tape had become
a major part of the issue as a result of Lear's activities, and he
emphasized that I should check it out. I attempted to contact
Judge a number of times, but he never bothered to accept my calls,
much less return them. My acquaintance indicated also that some
other mutual friends had actually attended a presentation by Cooper
in Long Beach, California, shortly before, including Barbara
Honegger, and had come away considerably disturbed by his
"everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" approach to worldwide-conspiracy
theory. Since I was planning to be visiting those friends in the
near future, I agreed to make a point of meeting with Cooper at
that time. I also agreed to, and did make several attempts to
reach Judge in Carmel by phone, but as with my earlier
correspondence, he never chose to reply. Since I had not been
involved directly with Judge or Cooper, and had only been in
sporadic contact with Lear at that point, I was quite unaware of
what had been transpiring with the Kennedy tape in my absence. I
contacted Lear first by phone, and asked him what he had to do with
Cooper. He soft-pedaled their association for the most part, as I
recall, essentially stating that Cooper seemed to be pretty much on
the level, but became highly agitated and obnoxious when he was
drunk. According to Lear, Cooper had made such a scene when he was
at the Lear home the month before that he had to ask Cooper not to
return. Whatever had actually transpired, it was very evident that
Lear did not want to go into detail about it, and since I really
didn't give much of a damn about his activities at that point, I
didn't press further. I found out a year later from several
sources, two of whom were present at the meeting, that Lear, in a
drunken state, had actually picked up his loaded .45 and apparently
was threatening to blow his brains out when Cooper actually
summoned up enough sobriety to knock the gun out of his hand and
across the room. According to these same sources, as Cooper has
alleged in his CAJI newsletter, Lear did, in fact, call a hooker up
to his house at that time also. I shall address this issue at
greater length later in this narrative. At the instigation of my
acquaintance in LA I called Cooper for the first time at his home
in Fullerton, Calif., in August 1989, and received a friendly
greeting. When I indicated that he might not know who I was
(contrary to his claim in his book) Cooper made it quite clear
that: " I know all about you. I've had you completely checked out.
I've been expecting your call for some time, Lars." I learned long
ago to beware of anyone who comes on too friendly too soon, and was
a bit wary as I described my first encounter with his name at
Lear's the previous November, the recent meeting of his attended by
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:42:16
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 16
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
my friends, and their resulting concern that I check out his
material. Cooper was actually very cordial, and indicated that he
would be more than willing to meet with me to go over his
discoveries. Again, contrary to his claims in his book and in
public, at no time during this phone call did we discuss the
Kennedy assassination at all. He did not ask, and I did not agree
to bring the Kennedy tape, or any other tape with me. I drove down
to Fullerton in the afternoon and introduced myself to Cooper and
his wife, Annie. At the outset of our meeting, Bill was quite
adamant about his distaste for Gordon Novel, who apparently had
been hovering around Las Vegas during the MUFON conference. He
emphasized that he had no desire to have anything to do with the
man, despite Novel's offer of $25,000 for Cooper's documentation.
He claimed that he had gone out and bought several new guns, and
that he had made it clear to Novel when he contacted him at home in
California that he, Cooper, would not hesitate to use them on Novel
if he came anywhere near him again. I had learned a great deal
about Gordon Novel over the years, beginning long ago. His name
has popped up repeatedly throughout the Kennedy assassination
investigation, Watergate, the John DeLorean Case, the Vicki Morgan
sex tapes, the Larry Flynt shooting and the takeover of REBEL
Magazine, the Cotton Club/Roy Radin murder scandal, and the deaths
of Mae Brussell and Col. Mitchell WerBell. By no means do I mean
to imply that Novel was involved in any or all of those scandals
and/or deaths either directly or indirectly -- other than the ones
he has openly admitted to -- but that his notoriety is extensive.
Anyone who has done any serious work in researching the Kennedy
murder quickly learns much about Mr. Novel, particularly regarding
his resemblance to both Lee Harvey Oswald and the "Umbrella Man,"
as well as his openly admitted efforts to sabotage the Garrison
investigation from the inside. It is also a matter of record which
he has discussed openly that he was hired by Charles Colson to
attempt to degauss the Watergate tapes, and according to Novel, he
would have erased them all if he had been paid sufficiently. That
Cooper at least appeared to have no great love for Novel was a
small point in his favor. He then played his videotaped segment of
the "unsanctioned" Las Vegas MUFON program which lasted about an
hour or so, after which I began to question him further about a
number of details he mentioned or that I was aware of. Cooper and
I did not discuss the Kennedy assassination at all that afternoon,
but focused on his claims about the various UFO projects such as
REDLIGHT and EXCALIBUR, his beliefs about who really runs the
world, and the attempts he claimed had been made on his life to
shut him up. I described, in turn, my own recent experiences with
Gritz and naively offered, in appreciation for his hospitality, to
give Cooper one of the two 10-min. videos I happened to have with
me which we had recently completed about his trial a few months
before in Las Vegas. I actually did pen some brief note of
encouragement -- not authorization -- to him on the cover of that
tape, but at no time did we discuss the JFK assassination during
this meeting and I certainly did not give Cooper a copy of the JFK
videotape. There was no particular attempt to avoid discussion of
Kennedy with Cooper -- it simply never happened, which is what is
so damn ironic about Cooper's absolutely false claims that I agreed
to bring a copy of the Kennedy tape to him , etc. during our
previous phone call. Cooper lies blatantly when he writes that
"Mr. Hansson informed me that he had made the video for Bo Gritz
and John Lear and that both were using it in their lectures."
Anyone who knows me knows that I did not even meet either one of
them until at least three months after I made the tape, and I never
authorized either one of them to show it publicly. At the time I
met with Cooper, I didn't even have any copies on hand since I had
completely passed on the theory nearly a year before. If I
actually had given it to him, I would certainly have no problem
admitting it, but I didn't, and would certainly not have at that
time, after dispensing with the theory and advising both Lear and
Gritz of my decision nearly a year before. Even if I had still
harbored some question about it, I would certainly not have
entrusted something so sensitive to someone I had just met, with
obvious claimed past ties to Naval Intelligence -- the very people
who were instrumental in having Kennedy killed and faking his
autopsy. Anyone who knows me well at all knows that that is simply
not my style, pure and simple. For Cooper to claim otherwise only
betrays his own fraudulence. Frankly, even after our first
meeting, I already had an instinctive distaste for the man, but
tried to give him the benefit of the doubt for his apparent
commitment to getting the truth out about unconstitutional
activities by the power elite. Had it come up at all, I would have
certainly hastened to let him know, as I had with Lear, all the
reasons why William Greer did not fire anything at Kennedy. Had I
had any indication at that time that he was "pushing that line," I
would have taken far more decisive steps to straighten him out on
the spot long before our first confrontation on the matter which
came about a couple of months later. Following his video
presentation, I was just beginning to press Cooper for some hard
documentation for his many claims when the new female editor of the
Whole Life Times arrived to begin an interview. I decided to cut
the interview short, since I doubted he would go into such detail
with her at the outset, if at all. I decided it would be great to
be on time for a change at a previously planned dinner meeting with
four friends in Santa Monica, and prepared to depart after a brief
introduction to the woman and thanking Cooper for his time. As he
was closing the door behind me he asked, "Have you spoken to
Barbara Honegger recently?" I answered, "No. I haven't talked to
her since Abbie Hoffman was killed in April." Cooper replied
mysteriously, "Ask her what she found out about the UFO at Desert
One." Up to that point I felt that Cooper was at least fairly
rational and coherent, but had a sinking feeling as I walked away
that he was another obsessed flake. I did put in several calls to
her over the next few months whenever the thought arose, but never
received a reply. What I found amusing, though, was that when I
mentioned it to Lear shortly afterward, he indicated that he and
Honegger had become quite chummy, as was also the case with Linda
Howe, and that she had actually already sent him a copy of the
chapter she left out of her book, October Surprise. I was quite
startled at that, to say the least. When I spoke with Barbara a
couple of nights before beginning this report, she indicated to me
that she had mentioned to Cooper that some of the Iranian CIA/SAVAK
agents at the site of Desert One did report seeing some type of
unusual hovering craft, but by no means indicated with any
certainty that it was a UFO/flying saucer. As with my videotape,
Cooper seized on the statement to enlarge and embellish it for his
own commercial purposes. Contrary to Cooper's statement in his book
that I contacted him shortly after he had seen the video at Lear's
in December 1988, Lear has stated on tape to me, and Cooper has
written in his own computer bulletin board message that he received
a package (which included the Kennedy tape) from John Lear in late
October 1988. There are several witnesses who will vouch that I
first met him at least ten months after that, in August 1989, and
only at the insistence of my friends in LA after I had been
referred to as an FBI agent by John Judge on KPFK Radio in LA while
he was discussing Cooper and Lear and the involvement of the
intelligence agencies in the alien/UFO conspiracy. Although Bill
Cooper became the object of a number of heated discussions with
those friends in the weeks following, it was not until early
October 1989, following several phone calls from his promotional
group in LA requesting my help in promoting his Nov. 5 event, that
I reluctantly decided to meet with them and lend what assistance I
could in one evening to their efforts. Despite my misgivings about
having anything to do with Cooper at that point, I found the group
to be informed, intelligent people of remarkable character, and was
pleased to have made the contact with them. Those I have spoken to
in the year and a half since have all come to realize what a fraud
Cooper is -- without exception -- and to repudiate their efforts on
his behalf. In one case, the person who actually loaned Cooper
$1000 to keep his family fed during that time, believing him to be
sincere, admitted surprise and disgust when he pocketed the entire
$10,000 he netted from the event and never even offered to repay
anything, much less proffer thanks for the effort expended on his
behalf. I have since come to know that person's sincerity and
veracity quite well and seriously doubt there is any attempt to be
dishonest regarding Cooper. It was during the discussion following
that meeting in late October 1989 that I learned Cooper was showing
a JFK videotape which sounded very much like mine at his talks.
Despite what Lear, Cooper or anyone else may be claiming, it was
not until then that I realized why Judge and my friends had become
so disturbed about Cooper, and why Gritz had arbitrarily begun
making the tape available earlier in the summer without consulting
me. My girlfriend at the time, who had known me for over a year
before from other investigative efforts, will readily verify my
shock upon finally learning what Cooper was up to with the tape.
I learned from Gritz and others later that Cooper had called in to
a radio program Gritz was doing earlier that summer and began to
promote his "secret tape" of the Kennedy assassination. When one
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:43:18
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 17
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[..Continued from previous message]
of the listeners (whom I have since come to know very well) called
in to request a copy, Cooper apparently became even more secretive
about it. More out of disgust than enthusiasm, since it had been
gathering dust at his house for over a year, Gritz impulsively
offered to make it available himself, along with another Kennedy
documentary, never anticipating the overwhelming number of requests
he would receive for it. I had informed Gritz of my conclusions
regarding the driver theory also during the time that I was
completing his video documentary A Nation Betrayed in Nov. 1988,
but apparently he felt it would do little harm to make the tape
available anyway, if people wanted to see it that much. It was a
colossal blunder on his part, albeit well intentioned, which has
caused me considerable grief in the aftermath, and could have been
easily averted if he had simply called me first. As soon as I
discovered this was happening, however, I contacted him immediately
and he agreed to discontinue distribution of the Dallas Revisited
videotape. I am reasonably certain he has honored that request to
this day. Apparently, however, this was the sequence of events
which led Cooper to erroneously conclude that I "had made the tape
for Gritz," when the fact is, as I've already pointed out, I did
not meet or speak with Gritz until about three months after I
hastily assembled it. After settling the issue with Gritz, I
confronted Cooper about his fraudulence a few days prior to his
public event and insisted that he cease and desist in showing
and/or selling the tape. He refused flat out, insisting that he
knew the truth about the driver theory even if I didn't or "didn't
have the guts" to stand behind my own discovery. There are so
many witnesses to my end of this entire scenario who, regardless of
their feelings toward me at this time (a number of which have been
severely damaged as a result of Cooper's lies, distortions and
misrepresentations), would not hesitate to verify my statements as
completely accurate.
Part Two: BEHOLD A PAIL OF HORSE MANURE
Bill Cooper vs. Reality
In Bill Cooper's book, Behold a Pale Horse, at the top of page 216,
he states that "In December 1988 I had a phone conversation during
which I told John Lear what I had seen in the Navy concerning the
Kennedy assassination. I told him that the Top Secret documents
stated that the act was plainly visible in a film withheld from the
public. I told John that I had been looking for a film that showed
Greer shoot JFK for 16 years but had not found one. I was shocked
and very pleasantly surprised when John asked me, "Would you like
to see it?" I, of course, replied in the affirmative and John
invited Annie and me to his home in Las Vegas. We spent four days
with John. He not only showed me the film but gave me a video
copy. I showed the video whenever I spoke to a group of people.
The film is titled Dallas Revisited. John told me that he obtained
it from a CIA acquaintance whom he was not at liberty to name. I
later found out the originator of that version of the Zapruder film
was Lars Hansson. John Lear was showing the film at every meeting
that he conducted." To answer Cooper's most outlandish insinuation
(via Lear) first: I swear before God and man, before all that is
sacred, that I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor would I ever
at any time consider becoming an intelligence agent of any sort for
the government of this country or any other, or any shadow or
parallel version. Very much to the contrary, I have worked
tirelessly and openly for over a decade to publicly expose their
illegal and treasonous operations. I have ample documented proof
of those efforts, as does the Agency, I have little doubt,
particularly after the appearance of the article in the San Luis
Obispo, Calif., Telegram Tribune in late 1986. Anyone who claims
otherwise is either a liar or a government agent himself. Unless
Cooper has very good pull with the Agency in order to fabricate
such records, there will be found no such employment file anywhere
on me, in any capacity, though I have little doubt they have a
growing file on me concerning my efforts to expose their
depredations. I am also very proud to say that -- by
conscious choice -- I have purposefully not served in any capacity
in the U.S. Armed (Corporate Mercenary) Forces or those of any
other nation at any time in my life. As the son of a U.S. Marine
who later became an NCO in the USAF (I was born in a Naval hospital
in Memphis, TN on the Marine Corps anniversary in 1952) I have
indeed lived on a number of military bases in different parts of
this country and the world, and have traveled extensively since
leaving home at 17. However, I was very early on in life put off
by the military's swaggering macho bullshit, and early on deduced
that warfare and "military defense" are for the most part an
absolute waste of the nation's (and the world's) resources. I
realized early on that it was also an unnecessary and brutal
exploitation of the underprivileged classes by the weapons-
manufacturing tyrants and their mindless uniformed henchmen, along
with their "advance men" in the shadows -- people like John Lear
and the men he works for. It would be many years later, after
majoring in college in American (Diplomatic) History and
Journalism, and an extensive study of the history of other nations
and of (overt and covert) warfare, that I would come to understand
the true reasons for war's propagation -- despite the nauseating
propaganda that invariably paves the way -- and the continuing role
of international bankers and industrialists in its promotion --
despite the overwhelming popular opposition that is so uniformly
misreported and de-emphasized in the corporate media. I have never
hesitated to inform any audience of mine, both in print, on the
radio, and in public, that I did serve as a deputy sheriff in North
Idaho for several months in 1975, and as a seasonal
customs/immigration agent in Montana in 1976 and 1978, while I was
still young enough and optomistic enough to believe that I could
"make a difference" by working through mainstream channels -- but
that's it. Neither of those positions had any connection at all to
the intelligence community. In fact, I nearly became involved in
an unfair labor practice lawsuit in 1978 against the U.S. Treasury
Department in the process. My supervisor had persuaded me to file
a complaint with the Treasury Employees' Union attorneys as a
result of highly questionable policies to which I was being
arbitrarily subjected. Although the complaint never came to court,
the union attorneys raised such a stink over the issue that
numerous inspectors and agents nationwide were provided redress for
related grievances. I was reinstated to my former grade of GS-7
and received back pay, but was thereafter subjected to every form
of harassment and intimidation by my supervisor and his bosses.
All of this occurred in the immediate aftermath of the death of my
beloved sister -- my best friend in the world -- and the loss of my
40-acre ranch on the Flathead River, and shortly before my divorce
from my wife of nearly seven years. I made it very clear to my
supervisor in front of all the other officers assembled to hear me
get chewed out and threatened into resigning, that he himself had
better get down on his knees in his USG-subsidized apartment and
pray that he had a job the next week, after I filed an unfair labor
practice lawsuit with the union attorneys who were itching for it.
I told him that if he wanted to threaten or intimidate anyone, he
had better direct his venom against the other chumps -- it was
entirely wasted on me. Years later I would find reaffirmation of
this spirit of perseverance in the face of adversity from the most
unlikely quarter -- John Lear's pal G. Gordon Liddy, who stated so
eloquently upon his release from prison a quote by the philosopher
Nietzsche in German: "That which does not destroy me makes me
stronger." On his photograph with Lear which is hanging on the
wall of Lear's study, Liddy wrote "John, I told 'em fuckin'
nothin'..." Liddy should have been kept in prison much, much
longer, but I admire his spirit of defiance. My experience with
U.S. Customs, coupled with my academic background in American
History and subsequent discoveries about USG covert (i.e. drug and
weapons) operations around the globe, convinced me once and for all
that I had no desire to continue pursuit of a long-planned career
in the U.S. Foreign Service and International Law, nor to continue
any involvement -- much less employment -- with any other agency of
the U.S. Government. I find it particularly notable that William
Cooper, who claims to have been so unnerved by his discoveries in
1971 while in the Navy that he had to go AWOL for ten days to sort
it out, after having his term of service extended by the Navy for
a year in punishment, nevertheless chose to continue working for
the "intelligence community" from 1975-1980 -- according to his own
resume! When I confronted Cooper on KFI Radio on August 4, 1990
about this fact he claimed that he decided after his exposure to
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:44:18
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 18
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[..Continued from previous message]]
the UFO-related briefing papers in 1971, or was it 1972? or 1973? -
- I think he changes the dates every time he's asked -- that he
wanted no further involvement with the U.S. Government or
intelligence services following his discharge in 1975. Yet in his
own resume he lists his "service with the intelligence community
from 1975-1980" -- a pure and simple baldfaced lie, however you
slice it! In my one meeting with him at his home in Fullerton,
California in August 1989, during our two subsequent phone conver-
sations in November 1989 and January 1990, and during our joint
appearance on KFI Radio, he refused to answer any of my questions
as to what his activities were on their behalf. Cooper has
attempted to make a second career for himself exposing "the
greatest coverup in human history," denouncing anyone as a CIA
agent or an agent of the secret government who has questioned him
in any way. I find this very disturbing and believe that anyone
who is inclined to take any of Cooper's charges seriously should
also demand and receive a detailed answer from him regarding his
post-service intelligence-related functions. Given the Agency's
unwillingness to disclose association with anyone, a disavowal from
them of Cooper is a virtual certainty. Other than the period I
have mentioned earlier, from 1975-1978, I, however, have never at
any time since served as an agent, witting or unwitting, of any
other organization, in this country or elsewhere, official or
otherwise. I wholeheartedly support the work of a number of
organizations such as the Christic Institute, Greenpeace, the
Center for Action, the Association of National Security Alumni
(ANSECA), and a number of others. However, I do not belong to a
single organization on earth, nor do I plan to. I neither pay dues
nor receive checks from any of them -- period. I will not hesitate
to lay down my life to preserve the America created by our founding
fathers -- I have risked it many times, with the scars and bullet
holes to prove it -- but not for the corrupt, multi-national
corporate thugs, murderers and drug-runners who run the American
Fourth Reich. I am also -- and have never tried to deny it -- the
creator of the short video of the Abraham Zapruder film entitled,
"The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited," concerning the theory that
Secret Service Agent/Presidential limousine chauffeur William Greer
turned and fired the fatal head shot at President John F. Kennedy.
As I have stated numerous times already, the only reason I made the
videotape was that I felt there was enough circumstantial evidence,
after consulting with two other long-time researchers of the
"theory" who are still convinced that is what actually took place,
to warrant looking into it further. Had I been able to prove that
Greer did fire at Kennedy, I would be the first person to lead the
charge to re-open the investigation on that basis, since Greer's
culpability would have ripped the lid off the Lee Harvey Oswald as
assassin lie once and for all. If I were as devious and
unscrupulous as Bill Cooper, I certainly could have sold thousands
of copies of the video myself, but it simply isn't true. Bill
Greer did turn around twice to look back at the President, and he
did step on the brakes instead of accelerating like a bat out of
hell from Dealey Plaza, and for those two undisputed reasons alone,
I do certainly believe he was in on the plot to kill Kennedy.
But I don't believe, nor do virtually all other sincere researchers
besides Cooper and the two others I mentioned earlier, that Greer
fired anything at Kennedy, and the Zapruder film is but one of many
proofs of that. God knows, I wish it were actually true that it
was Greer who fired the fatal shot -- it would certainly make all
of our efforts to get to the truth behind the conspiracy much
easier. As convenient as it might be to force that falsehood into
our scenarios, I am convinced, however, that it simply didn't
happen. I am equally convinced that Bill Cooper could care less
what actually happened as long as he can keep milking my videotape
and this manufactured conflict between us to keep selling tickets
to his events. I made the video in February 1988 in Santa Barbara,
Calif., three months before I first met or spoke with retired U.S.
Army Lt. Col. Bo Gritz and three months before I had ever even
heard of John Lear. I gave Col. Gritz a copy of the video in mid-
May 1988 hoping that he could help me secure funds or other
technical support through Mr. H. Ross Perot to conduct a thorough,
professional forensic/ ballistic investigation of the theory.
Gritz was very candid at the outset in informing me that he and
Perot were not in close communication at that point, and that I
would have to seek another avenue of contact with Perot if I was
intent on meeting with him. Gritz was visibly moved by what the
Kennedy videotape purported, but as a veteran of many years of
handling all manner of small arms, he quickly noticed as I had that
there was no apparent recoil from the alleged weapon, nor any
apparent muzzle-blast. I told him that I hoped that obtaining a
far better copy of the film than what we began with would clear up
that mystery in short order. Although Cooper claims he read in
his supposed Navy briefing papers that the weapon was an electronic
device firing a self-propelled exploding projectile loaded with
shellfish toxin, I believe that is absolute hogwash. Now that I
have pulled part of the underpinning out of his "story," I have
heard from some of his supporters that they now believe the weapon
employed was now a remotely-triggered weapon on the floor of the
vehicle. While it is true that the back seat of the limousine was
actually raised hydraulically as high as 10 inches above the others
to provide better viewing of the President, and that Greer actually
had control of the switch, I believe this new story about some
remote-control weapon is also complete B.S., whether Cooper
originated the story or not. I did not give a copy of the JFK
videotape to John Lear, but rather gave him the location of the
studio where it was produced so that he could acquire one -- to my
knowledge he is the only person who has ever done so. I never gave
a copy of the Kennedy videotape to Cooper either, nor did I direct
him to anyone else to obtain one. I myself have never sold a
single copy of the Dallas Revisited JFK videotape to anyone. I
made it very clear to both Gritz and Lear from our first meeting
onward that I was by no means convinced that the driver had
actually fired a weapon, but was intent on obtaining the best copy
of the film available and having it analyzed at the best facility
available to determine once and for all whether the reflection in
question was, in fact, a weapon, or the sunlight bouncing off Agent
Roy Kellerman's head. I made it very clear to both of them in
November 1988 that I no longer believed there was any validity
whatsoever to the driver theory; I showed Gritz much clearer
footage proving this in the video studio where I was at work
editing his documentary, A Nation Betrayed, at that time, and put
Lear in touch with people who could provide the same footage to
him. According to his statements in an audiotaped interview I
conducted with John Lear in August 1990, and according to Cooper's
own computer bulletin board statement, they actually spoke over the
phone in late October 1988. At that time Lear packaged up a number
of UFO-related documents and videos, including my JFK video, and
Federal-Expressed them to Cooper. Since they are both demonstrated
liars, I certainly would not take either of those statements as
gospel, but I believe this time frame is far more accurate.
Whether or not Cooper saw it in October or December of 1988 is
quite important, since I had made it very clear during what I had
planned to be my last meeting in late November 1988 with Lear that
I no longer subscribed to the driver theory, and had become pretty
well convinced that it was simply not valid, and pointedly steered
him to obtain a clearer copy of the Zapruder film from a local
video studio, and to consult with Robert Groden, the respected and
preeminent authority on the film. Although I gave him Groden's
phone number and address at that time, Lear did not meet with
Groden until Nov. or Dec. 1990, two years later! If, in fact, both
Lear and Cooper are lying in their earlier statements, and Cooper
first saw the video at Lear's home in December 1988, Lear was
already then well aware that I had completely discarded the theory.
Cooper says that I called him shortly afterward, but the truth is
that I did not call him until August 1989, at least 8 - 10 months
after her received a copy of my tape from Lear. I would not have
called him even then if it had not been for the urging of several
friends who were very distrubed about this actions. There are
several witnesses who can and will verify this time frame,
particularly since I put Lear in touch with two of them in order
for him to obtain the clearer footage of the Zapruder film. The
graphics on the JFK videotape, which was hurriedly produced in 45
minutes at a studio in Santa Barbara, Calif., for immediate
presentation to a small group of possible funders of the
investigation, clearly identify it as The Truth Betrayed: Dallas
Revisited. If anyone notes a similarity with the title of Gritz's
memoirs and the title of my videotape, it is because I initially
suggested the title of Mission Betrayed, but Gritz settled on A
Nation Betrayed: likewise with two of the chapters which include
Revisited in their title. I also contributed heavily to two of the
chapters in his new book, Called to Serve, and created their titles
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:45:20
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 19
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[..Continued from previous message]]]
-- Profiles in Conspiracy and The Third-World War. Whatever my
contributions to the text and the editing, however, Gritz is the
author of that book, he is the man who has lived its contents, and
I have never attempted to claim otherwise. While Cooper claims that
he had been trying for 16 years to obtain a copy of the Zapruder
film, anyone who has been a serious researcher in the JFK
assassination case has been able to obtain the same 8mm film copies
that I used directly from the U.S. National Archives, and super-8mm
film copies from a number of private researchers around the country
and in Canada quite easily, quickly, and at a very reasonable cost.
Had Cooper made any kind of serious effort during those 16 years,
or since, he could have easily acquired his own copy. It took me
exactly one day to obtain one of each once I decided to have my own
copies, and they came from each of those two sources. There is
nothing about either of the two versions of the Zapruder film I
worked with that is any different from the ones anyone else could
easily obtain from the same sources, despite all the hype and other
bullshit circulated by Lear and Cooper. I seriously doubt Cooper
had spent much time at all pondering the whodunit of JFK's murder
until he saw my videotape, given his lack of familiarity with so
many of the thousands of other crucial details involved in the
assassination, and I do believe his main consideration at that
point was primarily related to the financial possibilities my
videotape carried for him. God knows, he's certainly sold an
ungodly number of tickets on the sensational attraction of that
videotape, and has unloaded at least hundreds of copies of the tape
itself which I produced bearing his label. I must again emphasize
that I made it clear to Lear during our first meeting at his home
in June 1988, and ever since, and to Cooper in late October 1989,
after I had discovered he was showing and selling the tape, that my
JFK videotape was merely a crude and rushed research aid probably
seven generations down from the original. I took pains to make it
very clear to Cooper that my videotape was by no means a clear or
high-quality finished production -- and that it was never intended
to be shown or distributed publicly for that reason. Both Lear and
Cooper, as well as Gritz, knew this very clearly from their first
conversations with me. Lear's letter to me which is included here
demonstrates that clearly. I also made it very clear to Cooper at
that time all the reasons why I no longer supported the driver
theory and that it simply did not hold up. I ordered him to cease
and desist in showing the videotape, and insisted that if he was so
intent upon misinforming the American public, he should cough up
$40 and buy his own film and edit it to his liking. It wouldn't
surprise me at all if Lear hinted or even claimed directly to
Cooper that he obtained The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited from
a CIA agent, since he does have a uniquely twisted sense of humor,
and likes to play at being the mysterious and secretive spy type.
He actually is regarded as a kind of Walter Mitty of the
intelligence set, as it were, by anyone's estimate who knows him
very well at all. Anyone who has ever been to visit Lear's home
and entered his "Shrine," whose four walls are completely covered
with photographs from his flight exploits around the world, and
whose bookshelves are stocked with the likes of Will by G. Gordon
Liddy, The Secret Team by Col. Fletcher Prouty, Lost Victory by
William Colby, and America in Search of Enemies by John Stockwell,
knows only too well Lear's penchant for the esoteric, covert and
clandestine, as well as the practical joke. I still have several
copies of letters sent with a Washington, D.C. postmark on Central
Intelligence Agency stationery to SA Lars Hansson. It is very
obvious by comparing them to other letters from him that the type
is identical to that of the old typewriter in Lear's study in Las
Vegas. Lear knows as well as Gritz that I am no agent -- there is
no way in the world given my politics and record of patriotic
action that any intelligence agency of the U.S. government, or even
a shadow government would ever consider hiring me in any capacity,
much less attempting to co-opt me. It is far more likely, given
the success of my efforts, that they would enlist someone like John
Lear or Bill Cooper in an attempt to discredit me. Lear knows that
he has had tremendously much to fear by my disclosures, and it is
not at all surprising that he has been taking steps for some time
to try to embarrass me or diminish my credibility, all the while
pretending to be my "pal." I have no doubt Cooper would attempt to
make an "iron-clad case" against me if he was able to purloin
Lear's notes to me, as he has other material from other
researchers. He would have an absolute heyday if he were ever able
to paw through the moving-box-full of recorded telephone
conversations Lear has compiled over the last few years, as well.
Since I have nothing to hide, I am including Lear's letters to me
with this packet, along with the CIA ID I finally picked up to make
idiots like Cooper happy. You should have little trouble judging
for yourself what's authentic and what's contrived, I would
certainly hope. To the uninitiated, such humor, given the depraved
and murderous record of CIA actions worldwide, might justifiably
seem a bit macabre, if not sordid: In fact, I several times became
completely disgusted with Lear's callousness in his humor regarding
the suffering inflicted on the third-world victims of his lethal
cargos. However, given the implicit threat involved in any
serious effort to expose such ongoing operations, such sarcastic
humor, within limits, often served as an escape valve for the
repressed rage and disgust experienced by many of us who research
these activities. Even so, given Lear's admitted involvement for
many years in the transport of weapons and God knows what else for
the CIA and other related agencies throughout the world, I often
felt that he was much too glib about the number and brutality of
the deaths that resulted from his lethal cargos and from CIA
operations in general. Despite his outward hospitality and what
appeared to be genuine camaraderie that developed between us in
mid-1988, and again in mid-1990, I was never able or willing to
completely trust him or relax my guard, as much as I might have
wanted to. As much as I came to truly appreciate his dry and
sophisticated wit during the time I spent with him, and during our
phone conversations and mutual correspondence over a period of two
years from June 1988 to August 1990, I never felt entirely
comfortable with his motivations or basic allegiances, and often
felt a serious uneasiness about his actual values or the possible
reasons for his apparent preoccupation with exposing the UFO cover-
up. His activities since his meeting with Bill Cooper -- whenever
that actually occurred -- have certainly not been beneficial to me.
Cooper continues, "Shortly after Lear gave me a copy of the film,
Lars Hansson called and asked if he could drop by to meet with me
at my home in Fullerton, California. I told him he could and asked
him to bring a better copy of the film if he had one. Lars said
that he would. He stated that he would also bring a film on a man
named Bo Gritz, of whom I had never heard. Mr. Hansson informed me
that he had made the video for Bo Gritz and John Lear and that both
were using it in their lectures. I found out much later that Bo
Gritz was selling the tape for $10 per copy. Lars came to the
house, brought the films on videotape and we spoke for about an
hour. His main purpose was to tell me that he wanted me to expose
the people to the film but did not want me to connect him to the
film in any manner. I agreed not to divulge my source and I kept
my word. I began to use the tape in my lectures. When I found out
that Bo Gritz was making it available, I bowed to public pressure
and also made it available." This entire paragraph is a complete,
bald-faced lie. Cooper says that I called him shortly after Lear
gave him a copy of my film, but the fact is that, whether he
received it in October or December of 1988, I did not call him
until August 1989, at least nine months later, and only after
several friends of mine urged me to check him out personally
following his talk in Long Beach. This was shortly after I had
been advised that I had been referred to erroneously on KPFK Radio
as an FBI agent by John Judge, during a discussion about Cooper and
Lear and UFOs, which Judge refers to as Unrecognized Fascist
Observatories. Cooper did not mention the Kennedy tape at all
during our phone conversation, much less during our meeting at his
home, nor did I agree to bring him anything, since I did not know
nor had I ever spoken to the man, and had only seen a couple
computer messages of his at that point. Since I had dropped the
"driver theory" entirely almost a year before, and had made that
clear to both Lear and Gritz, I not only did not have a better copy
of the videotape around, I most certainly would not have given a
copy to Cooper, whom I didn't even know -- much less trust -- at
that point. Since I had dropped my support for the theory almost
a year before -- and everyone close to me was well aware of this
fact -- I had no reason whatsoever to ask Bill Cooper to promote it
or anything else for me. At no time -- I repeat, at no time -- did
I ever give a copy of the JFK videotape to Bill Cooper nor
authorize him to show it -- with or without my voice -- nor did I
ever discuss the matter with him at all until late October 1989 by
phone, when I discovered from the group of people promoting his
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:46:20
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 20
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]
Nov. 5 event that he had acquired a copy from John Lear and was
showing it to whoever would watch. I had been so preoccupied with
my own work in Santa Barbara that I was largely unaware of what had
been happening with both Gritz and Lear, much less Cooper, during
that time period. That first discussion/confrontation with Cooper
regarding the JFK videotape occurred some two months after my first
and only meeting with Cooper at his home in August 1989 -- not
shortly after his meeting with Lear, as he claims. Contrary to his
statement here, he immediately recognized my name when I identified
myself, and claimed that he had had me "checked out thoroughly" and
that he knew I was "on the level," and had been expecting my call.
I made it very clear during our brief conversation that I had
originally heard about him from his computer messages to Lear back
in November 1988, and that the main reason I was calling was
because several acquaintances of mine had attended his lecture in
Long Beach, including Barbara Honegger, and were actually pretty
shook up about some of his statements, and wanted me to go and
check him out. At no time in this conversation, or during my
subsequent meeting with him and his wife at his home did we discuss
the Kennedy assassination at all, nor did I agree to bring him any
videotapes of anything. I was simply going to meet with him to
discuss his experiences and claims, and to examine whatever
evidence he had. Since I had dropped all involvement or belief in
the possibility the "Greer shot Kennedy" theory nine months before,
as many people can and will attest -- including Bo Gritz and John
Lear -- it would have been absolutely ludicrous for me to have even
considered doing so, especially with someone I did not even know,
much less trust. In fact, I did not even have a copy of the tape
on hand at that time, and would have had to pay $12 for another
copy. Cooper's statements in this regard are absolute, bald-faced
lies. I spent about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. at Cooper's home in the late
afternoon in mid-August 1989, and we actually did not even discuss
the Kennedy assassination, since I spent most of the time there
watching a videotaped copy of his presentation at the July 1989
MUFON convention in Las Vegas. I made a point of taking notes and
then asking him to clarify certain statements he made in the
presentation afterward. During our conversation, completely on the
spur of the moment, I did go out to my car and get him a copy of
the 10-min. video of Col. Gritz's trial which I had recently co-
produced, and I did pen a short note of encouragement on the cover.
I certainly did not give him authorization to show that videotape,
either, at his public presentations, nor has Gritz. Just as I was
about to press Cooper for some hard documentation of his claims,
the new editor for the Whole Life Times, a woman, showed up to do
an interview with him, and I left to meet with four friends in
Santa Monica for dinner. They will not hesitate to verify my
statements regarding the timing of this meeting as completely
accurate. The first time I ever discussed the Kennedy
assassination, or my videotape, with Bill Cooper was in late
October 1989 over the phone, after I discovered in a meeting with
some of the organizers of his event in Hollywood on Nov. 5, 1989
that he had shown what sounded like my videotape to them and to
other people. Although he claims publicly that I gave the JFK tape
to him -- an absolute bald-faced lie -- when I actually demanded to
know where he obtained a copy of the tape during the aforementioned
phone conversation, he repeatedly refused to tell me. His deceit
in this instance would be quickly revealed by a certified lie-
detector test, though I have little doubt he will find any number
of excuses to avoid submitting to one. I not only did not know the
man well enough after one meeting at his home to entrust him with
anything of any importance, I did not like him well enough after
that one meeting to even consider showing it to him, since it was
irrelevant and inaccurate, anyway. In fact, it was never
discussed at all until I confronted him about it over the phone in
late October 1989. Any statements he has made or is making to the
effect that I gave him the JFK videotape, authorized him to use it,
or even discussed the assassination with him prior to this time are
outright, bald-faced lies, and will readily be proven as such if he
does submit to a certified lie-detector test. If Cooper actually
believes that is what happened, then there is little doubt he is
definitely slipping gears, and given his record of heavy drinking
and calling people late at night to threaten them or leave
threatening messages on their answering machines, that is a very
good possibility as well. Whatever the case, as he has stated in
his book, he has no qualms about charging people to see my
videotape without my permission; according to his crony, Stan
Barrington, he has also sold at least several hundred copies as
well under his own label for at least $20 each. I am not alone,
as a private citizen researcher and investigator, in declaring Bill
Cooper a fraud and a liar -- and those are two of the nicest things
I can say about the man. When I demanded during our face-to-face
encounter on Las Vegas Radio KVEG in late July 1990 that he produce
this JFK tape which he claimed I had inscribed and given to him at
our joint appearance on Aug. 4 at KFI Radio in LA, he not only did
not produce it -- how could he? -- but then insisted he didn't have
to produce anything. I repeat -- the man is a charlatan and a
liar. Let me make it clear also that my dealings with Gritz and
Lear were virtually entirely separate from the other -- that is, I
don't think to this day that they have even physically met each
other, nor am I aware that they have even spoken over the phone
together more than once or twice, if that. Gritz was never
particularly interested in Lear and his off-the-wall ideas and
pretty well wrote him off as a flake early on, while Lear generally
derided Gritz for being "slow-on-the-draw" for taking so long to
realize the actual nature and extent of USG involvement in the
worldwide drug trade, as well as the actual nature of the UFO
situation. After Lear deliberately failed to show up at the one
meeting I had tried to facilitate between them in August 1988, I
thereafter made little discussion of one when I was in the company
of the other. I know only too well that however Gritz may choose
to project himself publicly, and despite his occasional lapses in
terms of misplaced trust, he is incredibly sincere, dedicated, and
astute in his planning and execution of goals, and is perhaps the
most utterly fearless individual I have ever had the privilege of
meeting in my entire life. I believe I have already made my view
of John Lear crystal clear. Although taking his girlfriend into
the cockpit during at least one of his commercial flights to San
Francisco and Los Angeles, or securing employment for her with the
same airlines -- based in his hometown! -- may not have led
directly to his alleged firing by American Trans Air -- he claims
they were upset about a UFO lecture he gave in Texas -- lapses of
this type in judgment and restraint are probable factors in his
release. They were certainly major factors in my decision to
terminate contact with him for a year in November 1988. The one
lecture of mine on September 1, 1988 which Lear attended, during
which I showed the JFK video along with a great deal of other
material, which he has since publicly referred to in a feeble
attempt to prove that I have "flip-flopped" on the issue, was, in
fact, simply used as an excuse by him to spend the evening with his
girlfriend by claiming to be with me. They proudly sat together in
the front row, no less, and were clearly captured on video, as well
as observed by numerous witnesses in attendance. I thought it was
incredibly tacky on both of their parts, but particularly his,
considering his asinine and irresponsible behavior prior to that
evening. It was but one of several instances in which Lear has
used me as a convenient cover and/or scapegoat for his own half-
assed activities, as I described in Part One. As I have also
indicated earlier, I did not know Bo Gritz at the time I made the
JFK video, and had never even heard of John Lear, either, and never
authorized either one of them to show it at their lectures, much
less sell it. Included in the Appendix is a letter I received from
Lear in early 1990 advising me that he had seen my tape being sold
with Bill Cooper's label on it at a lecture by Bill Hamilton in
Palmdale, Calif., and asking if I had changed my position on not
having it distributed by making an agreement with Cooper. He asked
if he could also, since he had had numerous requests for it. I
have little doubt Lear has dubbed dozens of copies for his friends,
and that what he wanted then was the ability to actually charge
money for them. The only time I authorized Lear even to show it
was in April 1989, after he at least had called to request
permission. I didn't know that he had actually been showing it all
along. I made it very clear to him he could do so on the condition
that he made it a point to emphasize very clearly at the outset
that the man who made it -- and I told him he could use my name --
absolutely did not subscribe to the theory any longer and that he,
Lear, apparently still did. I have yet to see the footage of that
interview, but given the number of Lear's other lies and
prevarications, I seriously doubt he added that proviso, and he
would probably deny now, after I make these disclosures, that I
made such a stipulation -- a lie detector would show his deception,
however. I remember distinctly feeling at the time that it was
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:47:22
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 21
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]
the beginning of a set-up to discredit me, since he had had little
interest in actively pursuing the theory for nearly a year before.
As you have read in Part One, he had extreme ulterior motives to
try to embarrass or discredit me, given what I had come to know of
his scandalous and/or criminal activities in 1988. I was not
surprised, however, when I refused to "help him out" at the July,
1989 MUFON convention, to learn several months later that he again
used my video as part of his "bootleg" presentation. I seriously
doubt he would have had the balls to have shown it if I had been
there. Although he made a great display to me of keeping the
videotape "under wraps" until at least August of 1990, I have since
discovered that he went ahead and showed it at least several times
publicly at some paid events in Las Vegas and Dallas -- again
without my permission and contrary to our trust. I have had it
confirmed as well from the producers of the show that it was, in
fact, John Lear who also made my videotape available to Nippon TV
for broadcast without my permission, even though he was well aware
of how to contact me at the same address I had had in California
for over two years at that point. Although Cooper has touted
Nippon's version as "computer-enhanced," the display at his Beverly
Hills High program in August 1990 showed only a poorly colorized
("neonized" is perhaps more accurate), doctored version of my own
videotape -- with my own voice clearly evident in the background --
and dubbed-in sound effects to indicate the gun blasts. It was
even cheaper and shoddier than I had been led to believe by his
grandiose claims when I challenged him on KFI Radio a few days
before. Regarding this time period Cooper states in his book, "Some
time later I read an L.A.-based newsletter (forgot the name) in
which Lars Hansson stated that he did not know that I had the film
and did not know that I was showing it at lectures. Hansson stated
in the newsletter that he was at my Hollywood High lecture on
November 5, 1989, and that he tried to protest my use of it during
the question-and-answer period but that he never had a chance to be
recognized. We videotaped that event, and at the end I asked
anyone with questions or comments to walk to a microphone that we
had placed in the aisle. I have examined every inch of that
videotape and Lars Hansson never got up from his seat, nor did he
ever raise his hand, nor did he attempt in any way to be
recognized. Lars later called me again and asked me not to use
his voice on the tape, his voice where he says with no hesitation
or qualification whatsoever, as he narrates the videotape, 'The
driver of the car turns with his left arm over his right shoulder
with a pistol and fires. You see the .45 automatic, .45 caliber
nickel-plated automatic weapon in his left hand. He's firing over
his right shoulder; you see it in relief. You see his head
pointing backwards toward the President. In this enhanced close-up
you see the impact of the bullet upon the President. The force of
the shot drives him violently backward against the back of the
seat. You see Mrs. Kennedy react in horror." Then later in the
film Hansson makes this statement: 'You can clearly see his [the
driver's] head turning and his arm, and the weapon extending into
view over his right shoulder.' I agreed not to use his voice. In
subsequent lectures I showed the tape with no audio. As it turned
out, people were able to see it better with no narration." I have
never disputed that the words on the videotape attributed to me are
indeed mine, but as I have stated earlier, and will discuss in more
detail further on, the tape he has been using was thrown together
in 45 minutes in a studio, in a rushed attempt to prepare a
riveting "trailer," if you will, for a presentation to some
potential investors in the investigation. Even as I made it, I
chided myself for hurriedly stating it as an actual fact, instead
of emphasizing that "it appears as if", or "it looks like the
driver is doing this," because that was all I knew for certain at
that point. I consoled myself at the time with the certainty that
I would only give a few copies to trusted individuals who could be
relied upon not to let it out until it was either confirmed or
disproved. Putting those particular words on tape was a monumental
mistake I have admitted publicly a number of times -- in print, on
television, and on the radio -- but the biggest mistake was
entrusting it to John Lear, which will become mightily evident by
the end of this statement. Cooper, however, continues lying in the
first line of this quote by saying he did not remember the name of
the magazine, when he has referred to it repeatedly in his CAJI
newsletter, on the radio, and in public -- UFO Magazine -- as a
"trashzine," and has spared no effort in thoroughly castigating its
editor, Vicki Cooper, and several of its present and former
writers, including Martin Cannon, Barry Taff, and Don Ecker. He
continues the lie by saying that I stated in the magazine that I
tried to protest his use of my videotape at his Nov. 5, 1989
lecture. You can read my letter to UFO in the Appendix yourself,
and see that I claimed that I had called him prior to the event and
again in January 1990 to do so. My comments regarding the
sequence of events at his presentation were actually edited from my
letter before printing due to space limitations. Given Cooper's
technique of "accessing secret information," perhaps he actually
pawed through their trash cans to come up with that claim. What he
obviously can't keep straight is that I did call him prior to the
Nov. 5, 1989 event to insist that he cease and desist using my
tape, and to advise him for the first time directly that I did not
support the driver theory since at least Nov. 1988. I also
informed Cooper that I felt it was highly irresponsible as well as
unethical for him to be deliberately promoting a falsehood publicly
which he knew next to nothing about. He insisted that I had no
copyright on the material and that he would show it or sell it to
whoever he liked, with or without my permission. I acknowledged
that I had no copyright on the Zapruder footage -- that much was
true -- but that I certainly did on my narration. I emphasized
that since it was never intended for public distribution, was not
accurate, and I had shelved the theory nine months before, if he
was so intent on showing the film, he should at the very least
remove my narration. He did so at that event, knowing that I would
probably be in attendance. I told him then that if he was so
intent upon getting out the "truth," why didn't he at least cough
up $40 and buy his own copy of the film, and make his own edited
version, instead of having to use mine without my permission, when
I myself didn't support its contents? I asked him who gave him
the copy of my tape and he refused, point-blank, to tell me. I
again demanded to know, and he mumbled something about some ex-CIA
person, and I suspected for a minute that he had perhaps slipped,
and that the Agency probably had gotten hold of a copy and may well
have given it to him to go out and discredit me. I still think
that may be the case, given Lear's long-term direct ties to the
Agency, and his (and their) many reasons to try to shut me up, one
way or the other. On the other hand, in both their cases, they
have not hesitated to flippantly accuse any number of other
researchers or activists of being "closet" CIA agents or "plants."
I explained to Cooper that all the research I had done up to
November 1988, and since, had pretty well convinced me that Greer
could not have fired a weapon because both his hands never left the
steering wheel, nothing crossed his chest, and despite the apparent
protrusion behind the reflection from Kellerman's head -- which
Adams and Evans believe indicates the presence of a gun barrel --
there is no apparent recoil or muzzle blast from a weapon, and no
apparent cuts in the film at that point either. Cooper then
proceeded to tell me that he had read in the Top-Secret Navy
documents he had had access to that the weapon was an electronic
device firing a self-propelled explosive projectile filled with
shellfish toxin. When I countered that as an ex-deputy sheriff
and customs agent I believed that was simply bullshit, and that
even if such a weapon existed -- which was highly possible -- and
even if it was left up to Greer to finish what others had failed to
accomplish -- which was also within the realm of possibility --
nobody in Naval Intelligence would write that down, much less leave
it anywhere that a lowly petty officer like him would have access
to it. I told him that regardless of what his cow-eyed followers
were willing to swallow, he and I both knew that was complete
bullshit. It is truly a shame I didn't record that conversation,
because Cooper's next words were something to the effect that "I
don't give a shit what actually happened. We are under so great a
threat of takeover that if that's what it takes to shake people up,
I'll go ahead and use it, and I don't give a damn whether it's true
or not, or what you or anyone else says about it." I accused him
then of doing it for sensational purposes just to sell tickets to
his own events and accused him of being a demagogue and a cheap
huckster who was just trying to cash in on the UFO hysteria that
had been generated by Lear. I made the statement to him at that
time that the only aliens Kennedy was about to expose -- as was the
first Pope John Paul before he was poisoned -- were the Nazis and
fascists who had infested our aerospace and defense industries and
intelligence agencies as well as the worldwide drug trade, along
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:47:22
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 22
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]
with their willing American accomplices. I reminded him of several
glaring examples, such as the fact that Ruth and Michael Paine, who
just happened to speak Russian fluently and were so kind in
"looking after" Marina Oswald at their home in Irving, Texas while
Lee worked in Dallas, were almost certainly CIA agents themselves.
Michael Paine worked directly under (former) Nazi General Walter
Dornberger, judged one of the most vicious of the war criminals in
the dock at Nuremberg, who was the director of research and
Development at Bell Helicopter in Dallas. Anyone familiar with
Kennedy's actions in office knows that he had pledged to end U.S.
participation in the Vietnam conflict by the end of 1965, following
his certain re-election, and had also vowed to close advisers to
"splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the
winds." I reminded Cooper that Bell Helicopter stood to lose
billions of dollars in contracts if Kennedy had followed through
with either promise, and that it was Warren Commission member John
J. McCloy, the former High Commissioner in Germany, who had
pardoned Dornberger and literally thousands of other Nazis and
facilitated their insertion into U.S. defense industries,
intelligence agencies and the military. I pointed out that it
just happened to be Ruth Paine who had so conveniently found the
nice job at the School Book Depository for Lee, and later found his
alleged rifle in her garage. I reminded him that the man whom
Oswald supposedly took a potshot at shortly before the entire hit
team took Kennedy out, General Edwin Walker, placed a call
immediately after the shooting of JFK to Munich. Finally, I
reminded Cooper that the Warren Report itself was written by Otto
Winnaker of the U.S. Army Historical Division, who also happened to
be one of 26 official historians to Hitler's Third Reich before
being provided with a nice job in the U.S. Army through McCloy's
"compassionate" efforts. I emphasized that it was these "aliens"
who deserved our scrutiny, whom Bo Gritz and the Christic Institute
have brought out of the shadows into the spotlight. I emphasized
that this is the biggest cover-up in modern history, but with the
revelations about Bush's forced firing of several Nazis on his
campaign staff, and the revelations brought out in such books as
Trading With the Enemy and American Swastika by Charles Higham,
Blowback by Christopher Simpson, Inside the League by Scott and Jon
Lee Anderson, and The Great Heroin Coup by Henrik Kruger, a Danish
journalist, it cannot be held back any longer. As a matter of
record, it should also be pointed out here that even though Cooper
was unable to provide any supporting documentation for his
allegations regarding George Bush's involvement in drug smuggling
through his Zapata Oil Co. based in Midland, Texas, when put on the
spot by a representative of the Christic Institute, numerous
revelations on this subject have emerged from other credible
sources. Many of my associates, as a matter of course, point to
the glaring fact that drug smuggling into the U.S. rose by at least
1000% during George Bush's watch as "drug czar" (and is bound to
rise by at least that much under the "control" of the current
occupant of that slot -- given his abysmal record in the state of
Florida). It is well known that Bush's son, Jeb, was intimately
involved with the anti-Castro Cubans who were the recipients of at
least $250,000 in State Department funds for an obvious cocaine-
smuggling front called Ocean Hunter in Miami, along with its sister
operation in Costa Rica, Refrigorificos Puntarenas. That
particular story was examined in detail in a 1987 CBS West 57th
Street program by Leslie Cockburn and Jane Wallace. CIA agent
Felix Rodriguez AKA Max Gomez, who ran the contra re-supply
operation through Ilopango air base in El Salvador directly under
Bush's right-hand man Donald Gregg, is alleged by several sources,
including the cartel's chief accountant and money-launderer Ramon
Milian-Rodriguez, to have solicited and received a $10 million cash
contribution directly from the Medellin, Colombia, cocaine cartel
for the contras. One of my own sources claims, with considerable
veracity, to have actually worked directly under Ted Shackley from
1979 to 1984 and to have visited Shackley's home in Medellin, where
he has lived with his common-law wife, a sister to cartel kingpin
Jorge Ochoa, for years and actually ran the Medellin Cartel!
Despite his claims to the contrary in the Iran/Contra hearings, it
is a matter of record that Oliver North's personal notebooks
contained 550 entries directly concerning drugs! Former CIA
Director under President Jimmy Carter, Admiral Stansfield Turner,
stated publicly just prior the the 1988 elections that he had taken
Gen. Manuel Noriega off the CIA payroll in 1977, where he had been
placed by former Agency Director George Bush, only to watch Noriega
be reinstated in 1981 to the tune of $200,000+ per year -- the same
amount we pay our president! -- by Vice President George Bush. The
Cutolo Affidavit and accompanying documents (reproduced in the
Appendix) which was sent to Lt. Col. Gritz in Aug. 1986 provides
tremendous additional support for the allegations that Noriega was
directly involved with the Israeli Mossad, through agent Michael
Harari, the U.S. Army and the CIA in the establishment of direct
routes of air transport of cocaine from Col;ombia into the United
States. Gritz has stated publicly many times and in his books and
videos that as Commander of Special Forces in Panama in 1976 he had
prepared an assassination team to "terminate with extreme prejudice
Manuel Noriega" before he was ordered -- in person at Task Force
Hawk Communications Center at Ft. Gulick -- by Maj. Gen. Harold R.
Aaron, Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to stand
down his team, "because of Noriega's immense value to the Director
of Central Intelligence -- George Bush!" Finally, the U.S.
Supreme Court itself ordered Vice President George Bush personally
-- who had been placed at the head of the Eli Lilly drug company by
Dan Quayle's father! -- to cease and desist in his lobbying
efforts to enable the drug companies to continue dumping drugs into
third-world countries which were not allowed here. In fact, the
public relations specialist hired to perform damage control on Dan
Quayle's "backfiring" vice-presidential candidacy in 1981 was none
other than Stuart Spencer, a political harballer who had just
before that been serving in virtually the same capacity for none
other than Manuel Noriega, on a $350,000 contract! Perhaps now
you can understand why so many of my associates claim George Bush
paraphrased his instructions to his agents in the War on Drugs from
Nancy Reagan's "Just say no!" are "Just fly low!" In a recent
conversation with retired USAF Col. Fletcher Prouty he told me
that, in his capacity as chief liaison between the USAF and the CIA
at the Pentagon from 1954-1963, he had personally "sanitized" two
freighters for use in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which were re-named
Barbara and Houston. A picture of the latter is included in Peter
Wyden's excellent book, Bay of Pigs. Prouty noted in the same
conversation that he, himself, had been one of the U.S. military
officers directly responsible for arranging air transportation for
the relocation of the Nazis described in Blowback. Joseph McBride,
in a series of articles in Nation Magazine in 1988, detailed his
verification that George Bush actually worked for the CIA as early
as 1961 himself, and had filed reports concerning activities by the
YAF (Young Americans for Freedom), a right-wing youth group in
Houston. Although the Agency attempted to claim that the George
Bush in question was another man with the same name, a lowly clerk,
McBride dug further and proved that the Bush in question was, in
fact, a George H.W. Bush and that his address listed at that time
was the same address in the which the current President resided
during that time period. Regarding Bush's involvement with Nazis,
the Village Voice reported on Nov 1, 1988 in "The Real Nazis
Behind Every Bush," that "the seven protofascists given the boot by
his campaign team two months earlier had been part of the GOP's
systematic recruitment of the most extreme rightwing elements in
the Eastern European ethnic communities of the United States... The
Bush ally with perhaps the closest ties to Hitler's Germany was
Yaroslav Stetsko, whose group, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
[ABN], was a prominent participant in a 1983 White House meeting
featuring talks by both President Reagan and the vice president.
Bush signed a photograph taken at that meeting 'To the Honorable
Yaroslav Stesko, With Best Wishes, George Bush.' ...Stetsko (who
died in 1986), was an extreme Ukrainian nationalist who
collaborated with the Nazis in World War II as the very short term
"prime minister" of the "independent" Ukrainian puppet government
set up in the Western Lands of the Ukraine, or Galicia. Within two
years of the establishment of Stetsko's regime, more than 100,000
Jews were exterminated in the Galician capital of Lvov, according
to captured Nazi documents." Cooper snickered about the entire
suggestion about the cover-up of post-war Nazi involvement with
UFOs, the aerospace and defense industries, drug smuggling,
assassinations and political repression. He retorted that fools
like me and John Judge and Dan Sheehan were complete idiots to
think that "goose-stepping Nazis in Wehrmacht uniforms" were
piloting the UFOs. He snarled that he was going to tear them apart
on the Tom Leykis KFI Radio show in LA that very afternoon. When
I questioned him as to why he had such a hard-on for them, he
complained about some disparaging remarks John Judge had made about
him recently on KPFK Radio. Cooper was also enraged about a letter
written by L.A.-based researcher Martin Cannon to Daniel Sheehan
expressing concern about the Christic Institute's contact(s) with
Cooper, Lear and even myself. Cannon, I learned later, did not
even know who I was at that point and mistakenly assumed I was part
of the confederacy, thanks to some rather insidious and two-faced
gossip-mongering from a disaffected former legal activist in LA.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:48:24
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 23
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]
For the record, this man was one of the first people I showed the
raw, unedited JFK videotape to and was the person who insisted that
I contact John Judge regarding the issue, which I did in short
order by mail. Judge was apparently too busy or too unconcerned to
reply, but later referred to me on the same radio program which I
mentioned earlier as "a former FBI agent who was hanging around the
Christic office in LA promoting the erroneous driver theory" -- or
words pretty much to that effect -- much to the concern and
consternation of a number of my associates in that area. That
particular gaffe was particularly unfortunate on Judge's part,
since everyone I dealt with there and Judge himself had been
informed that I had been a Customs agent, and that I had never
promoted the driver theory as certain, but rather was attempting to
quietly secure the funding necessary in order to confirm its truth
or falsity. I had actually sent him a copy of the news article
about me which clearly states that I was a Customs agent.
Unfortunately, Judge's distaste and mistrust for any kind of
bureaucrat or agent runs so deep that he foolishly jumped to that
conclusion. Be that as it may, Judge and I have since clarified
the issue, and I was instrumental in producing an appearance by him
a few months later in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. The legal
activist, on the other hand, scrupulously avoided facing me after
that, and contented himself with accusing Father Bill Davis, and
the Christic Institute in general, of being agents of military
intelligence. Oh well. Cooper began to rant against Judge, calling
him a "communist" and an "agent of Western Goals," and accused
Christic of being "funded by the KGB." Remembering his slavering
adulation of Gritz at that point, I calmly reminded him that even
Bo Gritz had repeatedly publicly denounced that charge against
Christic as absolute hogwash. Since I had seen neither Cannon's
letter nor Sheehan's reply, I encouraged him to call or meet with
these people in person to try to resolve whatever disagreements
they had privately, since open sniping over the airwaves only did
further damage to the overall effort. Cooper insisted that he was
going to rip them both to shreds on the program, and at that point
I realized that the man was either profoundly ill-informed, a
deliberate agent provocateur, or a complete lunatic. I cut the
conversation off, and hastened to contact the Institute in LA and
Washington to warn them of his plan, as well as to ascertain
exactly what Sheehan had written back to Cannon regarding Cooper
and me. After several hours of phone tag, I reached Wayne Nelson,
Sheehan's brother-in-law, who works at the Institute. He quickly
informed me that he had indeed met with Cooper following an off-
the-air phone conversation between Sheehan and Cooper initiated by
Carol Hemingway while Cooper was a guest on her radio program.
Cooper had apparently claimed that he had all kinds of evidence of
George Bush's involvement in long-term drug smuggling and other
nefarious activities. However, when Nelson met with Cooper in
order for him to deliver the information, all he could produce was
the same tired old inuendoes and insinuations which had been extant
in the alternative media for several years -- basically recycled
dirt, but nothing of sufficient substance to add anything new or
useful to the equation. As I indicated earlier, however, Cooper
had attempted to insinuate himself under Christic's umbrella of
credibility, and when they rejected him as the fraud that he is, he
immediately resorted to reviling them as agents of the KGB. A
number of us monitored the KFI radio program very carefully that
afternoon, and Cooper never brought up Sheehan or Judge once.
When asked by a caller what he thought about Robert Groden's
research and books, however, Cooper indicated not only that he did
not know who Groden was, but was not even sure if he existed. I
have his exact words on tape. Anyone who has done any research at
all on the Kennedy assassination will quickly encounter the
pioneering, self-sacrificing and courageous work of Robert Groden
who has devoted over 25 years to intense study of the
assassination. In fact, he is the first person ever to present the
Zapruder film to the public on Geraldo Rivera's Goodnight America
show in 1975. He worked diligently to persuade the House Select
Committee to bring William Greer back on the stand for further
questioning and shares with me the conviction that Greer knew far
more about the plot to kill Kennedy that he was made to tell
publicly, that he did indeed step on the brakes of the limousine in
the middle of the fusillade -- instead of getting the hell out of
there -- and that he did turn around twice to look back at Kennedy,
but that he did not take his left hand off the steering wheel
during the crucial time period when Kennedy was hit by the fatal
shot(s). Regarding my action or inaction at his Nov. 5, 1989
presentation at Hollywood High, what Cooper apparently failed to
notice was that after our heated phone conversation of a few days
before, I determined to attend and videotape his entire
presentation, and was, in fact, out of my seat most of the time
running the video camera. I also set up my audio recorder to
record, but Cooper's henchman running the sound and video system
repeatedly shut it off when I walked away. I certainly took note
of the fact that Cooper did not include my narration when he played
the tape that evening. What he also fails to mention is that, out
of courtesy, I allowed the various other questioners to precede me
in line while I carefully recorded those interchanges, hoping that
someone else might take him to task regarding the driver theory.
One person actually did begin to bring up the issue, but did not go
into that specific angle. Although I have taken a great deal of
flak from friends and foes about this issue since that night, it
should be apparent to anyone who has known me or seen me in action
before or since that I have no problem standing up to anyone who is
lying about me or many other issues that I feel strongly about, on
the radio, in print, on TV or in person. There are so many
examples I can cite -- with literally thousands of witnesses --
that it is actually absurd to even consider that I was afraid or
unwilling to confront Cooper. In fact, it was the main reason I
drove with two friends 200 miles round-trip with a borrowed video
camera to record every word from Bill Cooper's mouth for
documentation purposes in the event I had to file a lawsuit. A
few examples, among many, of my penchant for taking liars to task
include my confrontation in the summer of 1984 with former
Presidential Press Secretary (under Jimmy Carter) Jody Powell at
the University of Washington (Seattle) about President Carter and
the true situation with the embassy takeover in Iran and the Shah's
entry through the good offices of Henry Kissinger himself into the
United States in 1979. The moderator actually refused to let
Powell answer my question and when I confronted him in the hallway
(still nursing a broken shoulder from my experience in El Salvador)
a huge crowd gathered around us pressing him to answer my question.
He managed to slither around it fairly deftly, though -- he must
have had losts of practice in the White House. I took Robert
Scheer and Alexander Cockburn to task in front of well over 1,000
people at UCLA regarding their failure to report major allegations
from several sources (including U.S. Green Berets who were assigned
to provide security) concerning George Bush's secret meeting with
the Iranians off the island of Antigua in August 1988 on board the
yacht Christina after I had sent the editors the entire story, and
once again the moderator cut off my microphone when both of them
refused to address the question. Cockburn used my query to launch
into a diatribe against the Christic Institute, for which I was
later blamed. Fortunately, one of the people who recorded the
event was an acquaintance of mine, who played the tape to Father
Bill Davis of the Institute after he reported that a number of
people had misinterpreted my question as a set-up to slam Christic.
Davis very quickly realized my true intent. I have confronted
Contra apologists at several different events in California,
including Elliott Abrams at the Miramar in Montecito and another
Contra apologist at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. I have appeared
on a growing number of radio programs across the country naming
names in the Kennedy assassinations and others and naming some of
the principals in the worldwide drug trade. I made a point of
confronting Cooper on Las Vegas KVEG in late July 1989 in no
uncertain terms, as well as a week later on prime-time KFI Radio in
LA. Then and now, I have absolutely no qualms about confronting
Cooper, or Lear, or any of these other disinformation specialists
in private, or in public. The simple truth is that on the night of
Nov. 5, 1989, with only a couple of questioners left in line, I
actually began to move from the corner of the floor where I was
attending my video camera to join the line and take Cooper to task.
Suddenly, with no advance warning at all, he announced he had been
informed that he had to cut the program right then, with no more
questions. At most events of this nature, the speaker or moderator
will usually announce that they will take one or two more
questions, and had that been the case, I would have certainly
persuaded one of the other questioners to step aside. However,
because of Cooper's abrupt termination of the Q & A, even that was
not possible. I briefly considered shouting out my question from
the floor, but have had enough experience in producing such
presentations that I knew I would have succeeded only in being
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:49:24
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 24
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]
characterized as a heckler, and passed on that option. Anyone
who was there that evening who observed me, and my comments
throughout, will verify my statements here. Cooper is simply lying
when he says I never got up from my seat, since I was on my feet
most of the time running the camera, and was on my feet en route to
the questioners' line when he called the meeting to a halt. I met
with my attorney shortly afterward to outline the situation with
Cooper for him. He recommended immediately sending a "cease and
desist" letter, and possibly filing a copyright violation action,
but I unwisely held off, since we had another action already
underway, and I was in arrears to him at that time. I reluctantly
decided that I needed to square up accounts before taking on
another potentially long, time-consuming and costly legal action.
This, of course, is exactly what I believe Cooper and his cronies
are deliberately provoking a number of serious researchers and
activists to do in order to tie them up in costly, exhausting and
ultimately futile leagl wrangling. Following the holidays, in mid-
January 1990, I called Cooper again in an attempt to reason with
him and put a stop to the disinformation, but he was adamant that
he had seen the information verifying Greer's shooting role in his
Navy papers. I reminded him that he wasn't talking to some naive
housewife; that no one would have written that down and that it was
complete bullshit. He insisted that I didn't know what I was
talking about -- that I was actually right when I made the tape.
Cooper claimed that now I didn't have the balls to take the credit,
but he did, and he was going to carry the truth forward. I
demanded to know again where he got his copy of the tape and he
again refused to tell me. I knew there was little point trying to
reason with him, but I tried a different tack by emphasizing to him
that it certainly was important to rattle peoples' cages and get
them to look at the situation. I countered, however, that the
potential harm done by misleading them on an issue with something
that is later disproven far outweighs the good, and that if he was
really sincere in his belief that Greer fired the fatal shot, he
should collaborate with me in a complete investigation to verify it
once and for all, instead of continually referring back to some
secret papers no one else had seen. He refused to bite, and
insisted that was all the proof he needed and there was no way I
could stop him from showing the tape any time he wanted. I then
made it clear that if he was so intent on doing so, why didn't he
at least pop for $40 or $50 bucks and get his own copy of the
Zapruder film, and edit his own version, so that I, at least, would
not be blamed for continuing to disinform people? He pleaded
poverty (as he did in his August 1990 presentation at Beverly Hills
High) and since I didn't know at that time that he and his partner,
Stan Barrington had already sold hundreds of copies of my tape at
$20 each, I then ordered him to remove my narration from the tape
he was showing and that if he did not, I would certainly bring
legal action against him. He became even more belligerent, and at
that point I simply signed off. Whether he did or did not remove
it in his subsequent showings, I don't know, though my narration
was clearly evident in the re-worked version of my tape by Nippon
TV which was furnished to them by John Lear, again without my
knowledge or permission. Cooper's statment in his book that
"people were able to see it better with no narration," is just too
ridiculous in light of all this to even address.
CONVERSATIONS WITH A UFO MECHANIC
The very next morning after Cooper's talk, I received an early call
from Lear at home, telling me that "Bob" had finally decided to go
completely public and would be appearing on several segments of a
9-part UFO series produced by George Knapp at Channel 8 TV in Las
Vegas. He was very excited about the prospect of the entire story
coming out, and seemed sincerely pleased that so much of what he
had been trying to bring forth would now be vindicated. When I
questioned him as to whether "Dennis" was going to tell the entire
story, he corrected me and explained that Dennis was the name of
Bob's boss at the Test Site, and was used mainly as a cover, and to
deliberately embarrass him after the threatening treatment Bob had
received at his hands. I told Lear about the large crowd that
showed up for Cooper's event the night before and he was apparently
impressed enough to ask me again if I would be willing to set up
similar events for him, since I was the only guy he "could trust
not to screw" him. I was still very gun-shy after the events of
the previous year and the snafu with Honegger, but reassured John
that he would have no problem marketing himself with any reasonably
competent promoter. After we hung up, I finally put two and two
together and realized that "Bob" was Bob Lazar, the young whiz-kid
who had given me his business card when I met him at Lear's home
the last time I had visited there almost exactly one year before.
Since I believed Lazar might actually have been under a continuing
threat, and the program might even have been yanked, I decided to
call him directly and verify that he actually had had the
experiences Lear had been describing for the last six months. Bob
answered and was very friendly and upbeat. I sensed that he was
actually somewhat relieved that his entire story would finally be
made public. When I explained that I had not really taken Lear all
that seriously after what had happened before, and had never really
made any attempt to find out who "Dennis" was, he chuckled, since
he had certainly known who I was all along. As he admitted later,
he had secretly videotaped all of us at our meeting at Lear's house
the year before, just to cover himself. During our brief
conversation Lazar was very candid and straightforward in verifying
everything Lear had told me that I brought up to him down to the
last detail. The various aspects of his story described by Lear
included: their being apprehended watching UFO maneuvers at the
Test Site and his being threatened at gunpoint by security
personnel; his being shot at on the freeway by assailants unknown;
the assistance provided by Dr. Edward Teller in helping him obtain
his job at S-4 and the presence of each of their pictures in an
issue of the Los Alamos paper -- his on the front and Teller's on
the back; his clear working understanding of the UFO's propulsion
technology, and his acquisition of solid proof that he had had such
employment. Following his answers to those questions, I
cautiously figured that since either or both of our phones were
probably monitored, I had heard enough for that time. I thanked
him for his candor and offered to provide him with a place to land
if he needed one. Just as we were signing off, there appeared to
be some kind of commotion taking place there, and I asked him if he
was alright. He assured me everything was O.K. A few minutes
later, Lazar called back and asked me what I knew about OSI and how
much power they had. As a former Customs agent, I knew from
additional research that OSI (Air Force Office of Special
Investigations) agents have equally if not more extensive powers
that transcended standard law enforcement since they deal so
heavily with "national-security" matters and told him as much. I
asked why he wanted to know, but he replied that he'd rather not
say right then and assured me everything was alright. I was quite
concerned, but decided to respect his wishes and drop it for then.
I woke up early the next morning, Tuesday, Nov. 7, with the matter
still on my mind and called Bob back to make sure he was still
safe. He explained that the girlfriend of one of his associates at
the Test Site had come by to tell him that her man had been
questioned at length that day regarding his association with Lazar
and would probably lose his Q-clearance as a result -- the kiss of
death in terms of potential advancement within the high/lethal-tech
scientific community within the military-industrial complex. I
again expressed my concern for his safety and reiterated that there
were several safe sites he could avail himself of in California if
he needed to before signing off. On Friday morning, Nov. 10 -- my
birthday -- Lear called me early to begin chewing me out in
extremely harsh terms for "setting Bob up." He railed at me that
I should not have called Bob at all and wanted to know how I had
gotten his number. When I was finally able to calm him down enough
to get a word in edgewise, I patiently but firmly made it clear to
him that Bob himself had actually given me his business card a year
before when we met at John's house, and that I only decided to call
Lazar after listening to John regale me with their joint exploits
for the last six months and after he had informed me that Bob was
going public. I carefully explained that it hadn't concerned me
enough until then to even bother putting two and two together to
realize Bob's identity. Lear then explained that the reason he was
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:50:26
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 25
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]
so upset was that the day after my last call to Lazar, Wed., Nov.
8, someone broke into Lazar's house and stole a number of things,
including samples of the "Element 115" UFO fuel that Lazar had
removed from the Test Site to prove his allegations. Lear implied
heavily that I might have had something to do with it, or that Bob
and I had discussed it over the phone, tipping off the jerks who
were listening in. I told Lear in no uncertain terms that I
purposely did not discuss anything along that line with Lazar: I
had actually cut the call short when he began to mention his having
"proof" just in case anyone else was listening. I emphasized that
if he wanted to blame anybody for anything, he had better get off
my line, since I had "eaten shit" for him far too long already,
while he lied to me or about me repeatedly to cover up his own
asinine behavior. I emphasized again that he was the one calling
me repeatedly for the last six months to blab about Lazar, and that
I only called to hear Lazar confirm the basic story from his own
mouth before he might have disappeared. This calmed Lear down
considerably and he then fell all over himself apologizing, but
emphasized that he was just so unnerved and distraught about Bob's
safety, and the number of people who had already gotten Lazar's
number and were calling him incessantly. I reassured him that I
had pretty much blown the entire story off until he had called a
few days before to say that Lazar would be on the George Knapp
program, since I knew and respected Knapp as a serious reporter
with integrity who would not have risked his professional
reputation on a hoaxer. Lear then invited me to come out to visit
with him and Lazar at his home by way of conciliation. I reminded
him that I did not feel very comfortable with that after all that
had transpired the year before, but he assured me that it was all
water under the bridge with him and his wife and that I was very
welcome to visit. Given the monumental ramifications of Lazar's
revelations -- if true -- I had no choice as a reporter and
investigator to say yes, and I made arrangements to head out to Las
Vegas the next weekend. When I arrived, I met a friend who
accompanied me up to Lear's home where we met with Lear, Lazar and
his friend Gene Huff, whom I also remembered from our meeting there
a year before. Then and since I found both Lazar and Huff
extremely friendly, sincere and agreeable people, and have
developed a great appreciation for their sophisticated sense of
humor, along with a rarified perspective on a variety of issues.
The conversation that ensued between the five of us was
freewheeling, centering primarily, of course, on Bob's incredible
UFO-related experiences. At one point during the conversation the
name Gordon Novel came up, and I took great pains to emphasize to
Lazar, Huff and Lear that the man had been in the middle of a
number of major national scandals, including the assassination of
John Kennedy, and that Lazar and Lear would be wise to keep contact
with him to an absolute minimum. I emphasized to Lazar that as
often as Novel had worked on behalf of the "agencies," that he was
probably there masquerading as a propulsion-technology entrepreneur
in order to find out just exactly how much Lazar actually knew, or
to entice him into some kind of compensated business agreement
which could be manipulated around into espionage charges with
little difficulty. When they asked me point-blank how dangerous
I thought Novel actually was, I reminded them that he was the man
who had bragged about screwing up the Jim Garrison investigation on
the radio five years before, he was the man hired by Charles Colson
to de-gauss the Nixon Watergate tapes, and he was Larry Flynt's
director of security when they obtained the Vicki Morgan sex tapes
-- she was killed not long afterward -- and one of his underlings
was shortly after implicated in the death of LA producer Roy Radin.
I emphasized that I had no way of knowing if he was actually the
kind of guy who would pull the trigger, but that he knew intimately
the kind of guys who do. Lear retired early that evening, so the
four of us went to have dinner and continue the conversation at a
nearby Mexican restaurant. Lazar expanded in great detail on his
activities at S-4 and provided extensive description of the craft
he worked on as well as the extreme security measures involved in
working there. He and Huff emphasized that certain of the things
Lear had been saying about his experience were not accurate,
particularly statements Lear attributed to him during their first
conversation at Lear's home following Lazar's decision to tell him
about his employment at S-4, specifically concerning an alleged
"gravity phone" and an alleged "ultimatum" sent by the U.S.
Military Command back to the "masters" of the aliens Lear alleged
we had been dealing with for the last 40 years. Rather than going
into further detail regarding these disclosures, I would simply
recommend that anyone consumed with such interest contact Lazar, if
possible, through George Knapp at Las Vegas TV Channel 8, or
perhaps through Don Ecker at UFO Magazine in California, both of
whom have met with and written about Lazar. Lazar and Huff then
began to tell me about how Lear and his wife had bad-rapped me
about several issues, including the "stolen" phone and sunglasses,
along with the navigation map and photograph. I was not surprised
at the Lears' pettiness after all the crap I had endured on their
behalf and the hundreds of dollars worth of work I had performed on
their house for which I was never compensated. I pointed out to my
dinner companions that Lear actually had to borrow the money from
his mother to pay me. We talked a while longer, and then headed
toward our cars in the parking lot. Oddly enough, as I was
cautioning Lazar one last time to be extra careful, all four of us
noticed an unusual large, absolutely brilliant white object moving
fairly slowly across the sky in a horizontal trajectory from south
to north, coming almost directly overhead before veering off to the
northwest, over Nellis Air Force Base. All of us saw it clearly
for at least 15-20 seconds, and all agreed that whatever it was, it
was not an airplane or any conventional aircraft, nor was it a
meteor. After the evening of intense revelations, I jokingly
remarked to Lazar that he could tell the boys back at special-
effects that I was convinced already -- this was definitely
overkill. We all laughed, somewhat nervously, and went our ways.
Lear called me the next morning to invite me up to his home to
continue the discussion, and obviously got quite a charge out of
our UFO "encounter" the night before, having already talked with
Lazar by phone. Lear was apparently favorably impressed with my
continuing efforts on Gritz's behalf to publicize his discoveries
in the Golden Triangle, and repeatedly asked me to help him set up
speaking engagements once or twice a month to help him boost his
income, since he was falling about $2000 short every month. I was
already uneasy after the events of the previous year, but knowing
well that he truly did not have the money that everyone believed
him to have inherited, I replied honestly that he should have no
trouble at all getting out on the circuit with his name and
background. I recommended that he should simply contact one of the
better-known speakers' bureaus. Lear countered that I was the only
person he trusted who knew the names and the players and knew the
issues inside out, and that he would only be able to do one or two
a month at best, which would not make it worthwhile to a regular
bureau. Rather than be overly blunt, I indicated that I really
did not want to be associated publicly with the UFO field, but
preferred to keep tabs on new developments while I continued my
investigations into known ongoing covert operations. I again
smelled a set-up, and despite my genuine concern for his well-
being, figured it was not my problem how well he made his living.
Nevertheless, since I was actually pretty serious throughout this
time about trying to develop the UFO material into an
action/adventure feature film project, which would at least pay me
for the effort, I did humor him by offering to make some inquiries
about both areas, and he didn't hesitate to prepare a "preliminary
authorization" for me to do so on his behalf (see attached copy).
When I returned to LA with a copy of the Knapp 9-part TV special
provided by Lear, I was at first very excited about contacting
several news and film production groups. Gradually over the next
few days, however, I convinced myself that, lacking the means to
fully verify most of the contents to my own satisfaction, and
having been thoroughly burned already by Lear and Cooper, I would
rather simply let the situation unfold before making any serious
moves with the material.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:50:26
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 26
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]
DALLAS REVISITED
Following the holidays, in early January 1990, Lear called me again
to question me at length about the Kennedy tape. He explained that
his wife had bought him a new hi-powered VCR for Christmas with
slow-motion and stop-frame function, and that he was able to stop
the tape right after Kennedy was shot in the head and Greer was
turning around. We discussed it for quite some time over the
phone, during which I emphasized to him again that the NOVA footage
clearly showed that Greer's chest was unobstructed, and his entire
shirt and tie were completely unobscured during the entire
sequence. He countered that you could still see Greer withdrawing
something from his shoulder. I began to get pretty impatient with
his insistence, particularly after his "lies" about the October
Surprise flights and the "Lear Leap of Logic" about the creation of
AIDS. In spite of that, I decided to humor him, figuring that he
might finally be willing to go to Pennsylvania and meet with Groden
and perhaps finally help me track down the supposed remaining two
witnesses in Dallas to hear what they actually had to say. Lear
was emphatic that Greer really did kill Kennedy and pressed me very
hard to give him the address and phone numbers of my original
sources for the driver theory, Perry Adams and David Evans. I
smelled a rat, but contacted Adams, whom I'd spoken to several
times throughout this period, and he agreed to speak to Lear if he
wanted to call. Evans, on the other hand, remaining adamantly
convinced that the ddriver theory was correct, and thoroughly
untrusting of anyone with ties to the intelligence community, also
smelled the rat, and insisted on forgoing communication with Lear.
I have respected his wishes and protected his identity to this day.
Lear was emphatic also that he was expecting a large loan to clear
on his house, and was prepared to spend several thousand dollars to
obtain a pristine copy of the original Zapruder film and have it
thoroughly analyzed. After all the garbage I had had to endure at
the hands of Cooper, I was actually hopeful that Lear might
actually finally get with it and help us clarify the truth once and
for all. He was also quite boastful about a phone conversation he
had had at length with Gordon Novel, which he recorded and wanted
to share with me as soon as I could get over to Las Vegas. Again,
I was pretty flabbergasted that he would actually do so, but after
all that had preceded this, I decided that if he wanted to share
something like that, by God, I'd be there to listen! I drove over
that weekend in early January and Lear quickly set up the sequence
to show me how the supposed weapon/reflection off Kellerman's head,
immediately after the fatal head shot to JFK, moved back down
toward the dashboard at a sharp angle, which actually did seem to
be pretty incompatible with Kellerman's movements at that point, at
least upon first viewing. I asked Lear to play it several more
times, during which it became very apparent that that is, in fact,
exactly what Kellerman did do: he literally hunkered down -- ducked
and covered -- right after the shot, and so did Greer, probably
fearing another final volley from the grassy knoll, perhaps to
finish them all off. I asked Lear why he didn't cue up the close-up
footage I had seen at the studio back in 1988, the real clear
footage where Greer's chest can be seen clearly throughout the
entire sequence. I asked him to shuttle through the program to
bring up that sequence, but he insisted that this was the only
segment that showed the driver in close-up, and impatiently refused
to "waste time" going through the rest of the tape. I thought it
was rather odd at the time, since I had made the arrangements for
him to obtain the videotape in the first place, and I myself had
never gotten my own copy, and we ended up spending several more
hours afterward discussing a number of other issues, anyway. It
was very clear to me, however, that the segment he was playing was
not the best close-up I remembered seeing in the NOVA special, and
I resolved to get my hands on a copy as soon as possible. Lear's
behavior pretty well reinforced my earlier conviction that his
concern with the driver theory at this late date was part of a
continuing set-up. I resolved that as long as that was likely the
case, I would "play" Lear along as far as possible, and noted to my
friend later that evening that it was only a matter of time before
Lear and I would part company once and for all, that I believed he
was stringing me along for some reason, and that sooner or later we
would inevitably "burn the bridges" between us. I decided that,
until then, I would milk him for all that he cared to blab about.
We both agreed that given the crap I had endured already on his
behalf, I was more than justified in taking that approach. With
the continuing reporting of details related to the Marcos trial and
the missing gold, I thought that perhaps Lear might finally be more
forthcoming about his activities with Warton than he had been
earlier. Fortunately, I was not wrong. At this point, he asked me
if I wanted to hear his conversation with Novel. Their early-
morning tete-a-tete, which has since been transcribed, was
startling, to say the very least. Once again, I was completely
amazed after all that had transpired that Lear would even consider
letting me know he was in touch with Novel or that he had taped
their conversation, much less that he would actually play it for me
and then give me a copy. If it had been anybody else, or at any
other stage of our association, I might have said, "No. Keep it to
yourself," or begged off in some other way. But after all the
bullshit and the game-playing and the grief that his giving the JFK
tape to Cooper had already caused, I figured that if Novel had
anything new to add to the story of Kennedy's death, it would help
to make up for all the other bullshit. And I felt that if anyone
was in a position to know after all these years, given his
background, Gordon Novel was certainly a prime candidate. Whatever
disgust I might have for many of his actions over the years, one
has to give the man credit for simply staying alive through all the
incredibly heavy situations he had moved through in his life. I had
already listened to Novel on an audiotape I had just acquired at
that time of a radio program in the SF Bay area in 1983. Gordon
had called the studio at about 3 a.m. after hearing his name come
up on the program while he was driving up to San Jose. It was talk
radio at its finest to hear him openly admit that he had been
recruited by Lyndon Johnson himself to destroy the Garrison
investigation from the inside, where he was serving as Garrison's
chief of security at his request, then admit later that he had
actually been hired by Charles Colson to de-gauss the Watergate
tapes for Richard Nixon, and would have "succeeded in erasing them
all if they had been willing to pay me more money." After
listening to the self-anointed Kennedy "expert," Dave Emory, accuse
John Judge of being a closet agent of Western Goals, a rabid right-
wing outfit, shortly before in Los Angeles, it was actually quite
amusing to hear him squirm on the earlier program once he realized
Novel was actually the person he claimed to be. Emory repeatedly
stammered out his assurance that "I'm not gunning for you, Mr.
Novel," and bleated about his "healthy respect" for Novel's
capabilities and his fervent hope that Novel wasn't inspired to be
gunning for him. I had actually developed a begrudging respect
for Novel, who probably deserved to have been hung long before, but
had craftily managed to end up on his feet numerous times and still
remain a player in a number of major national political scenarios.
Although he was and is a criminal of the first order, I cannot help
but admire his audacity in claiming that "I'm the only guy who's
ever stod up to and caused the Company to say uncle. Okay? Say
Uncle... I did it by a very super-sophisticated dirty trick that
didn't even have to be performed which convinced the priesthood,
i.e. the council consisting of all the ex-directors, that they
should leave me the fuck alone and I would not interfere in their
business as long as they weren't constantly trying to banana me...
And the threat I had to lay down of what I'd do to the Company if
they didn't get out of my fucking hair... I must have gotten
everybody's funny bone because the threat was taken as very serious
and one of the funniest ideas ever to come up for putting the
Company out of business. I mean literally putting it out of
business for at least a couple of weeks -- the whole magillah."
Novel claimed also that he had attempted to actually blackmail J.
Edgar Hoover, but apparently his ploy backfired in that case. He
was convicted on a fabricated arson charge as a result, but managed
to get himself out and back into action after serving two years.
Whatever the final judgment that will be rendered against him, the
man certainly has an intimate familiarity with the forces swirling
around the death of John Kennedy. Later that afternoon while I was
still at Lear's, he suggested that we "step out for a cup of
coffee." I thought that was rather odd, since we easily could have
gotten some coffee from the kitchen, but no sooner had we entered
the car than he began to speak in hushed tones about a trip he had
made the night before with Lazar to Los Alamos, N.M. He continued
by describing how Lazar had become involved in a brothel operation
in Las Vegas by supplying all kinds of high-tech electronic
features that made it truly "space-age sex." I was completely
stunned, as Lear continued to relate how he had purposely ridden
over to Los Alamos to talk the whole thing over with Bob. I asked
Lear if he had actually been to visit the place, and he gave me
that knowing look, nodding that it really was "an incredible set-
up." I responded that "set-up" was exactly the right word. Lear
seemed to indicate concern that word of Lazar's involvement in the
operation getting out could undermine all their efforts to get the
UFO story out, to which I added a hearty AMEN, but then he asked me
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:51:28
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 27
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]
whether I thought he should tell his wife about it. I shot back:
"You've got to be kidding, John! After all that shit in 1988,
she'll go completely nuclear about this! I can't believe you
haven't jerked Lazar completely out of there already! It's just
absolutely asinine for him to have anything to do with something
like that, not to mention illegal!" Lear responded, "Well, if I
don't tell her and she finds out, then she'll be even more angry.
Besides, Gene already told his wife. If I don't tell her, she'll
think I've been hiding something when she does find out." I
countered: "And if you do tell her, she's going to jump to the same
conclusion anyway and blow the whistle on the whole deal and toss
you out on your ass! I can't believe Lazar would do something so
goddamn stupid with all the legitimate options he has in front of
him. And I can't believe you'd even risk going over there after
all that crap in '88. How many times have you been?" Lear gave me
that knowing look again with a smile and I just shook my head at
the monumental stupidity of both of them. As we returned to the
house, he made me promise that I would not say anything to anybody
else about it, especially his wife and Lazar, and I nodded
disgustedly, thinking to myself once again that these are all
merely overgrown idiots, spoiled little Mama's boys with too many
toys to play with. After we were back in his study I made a point
of almost grabbing Lear by the shirt to tell him firmly that if he
had any regard whatever for his wife and family, as well as Bob
Lazar, he would insist that Lazar completely remove himself from
the operation IMMEDIATELY, and go and help him do it himself if
necessary and never return. I insisted that with all the media --
not to mention military intelligence -- attention focused on Lazar,
it was not a matter of IF he would be caught, but WHEN, and told
Lear to mark my words. I asked him again if he hadn't learned
anything from his fiasco in 1988, and he just sloughed it off.
Once again, I was so completely disgusted that I completed other
small talk and left shortly afterward. I returned to California,
and reimmersed myself in several upcoming public events I was
involved in presenting and tried to put the entire matter out of my
mind. While I was thus engaged, at the repeated urging of a number
of people in Santa Barbara who had seen the Channel 8 series on
UFOs, I did begin to make arrangements to present a "trial-run"
event with Lear at the local movie house, and actually printed
flyers, etc. in preparation. He was actually quite thrilled about
them and the event, but I was having a hard time sleeping at night.
I couldn't help but reflect over all the garbage that had occurred
already in relation to him and Cooper, including the brothel
operation, and how difficult it would be -- as had already been
graphically demonstrated by Cooper -- to undo any distortion or
disinformation Lear might propagate during the event. I knew only
too well how many people would eat up his every word, given his
illustrious family name and public image, but I knew only too well
the dark side behind it. Following Lear's confirmation in person
during my visit that he had indeed given Cooper a copy of the JFK
tape in October 1988, I called Cooper again to insist that he honor
my demand to stop showing the video, to which he replied as before.
When I pointed out that he was setting himself up for some very
serious copyright-violation litigation, he scoffed at the
suggestion, insisting that he didn't "give a damn" about violating
my copyright or anyone else's. I acknowledged that I probably had
no copyright claim on the tape, but that Zapruder and Groden
certainly did. I asked him again why he was so insistent on using
my video, when he could easily obtain his own copy of the film and
edit it to his own satisfaction, without continuing to make me
appear to be promoting a theory I had given up on over a year
before. He insisted it was "too bad," but that if I "didn't have
the guts to stand up for the truth" he would tell it for me. When
I insisted once again that the driver theory was not true, he
retorted again that "I don't give a shit. If your tape is what it
takes to wake the American people up, I'll use it, whether it's
true or not!" I told him then in no uncertain terms that he was
welcome to "go screw himself," but that he would learn soon enough
that he already had, and signed off. That is the last time I have
called Cooper or spoken to him on the phone since. In the
immediate wake of Cooper's distortions, I finally decided that my
already strained credibility could not withstand another such
onslaught, nor did I want to waste any more time or effort trying
to undo any further damage that might occur through Lear's
deliberate propagation of disinformation to open-minded but
unsophisticated citizens in my hometown. A week before the event
was scheduled to take place in late February, I cancelled it, much
to the disappointment of Lear and the dozens of people who were
already planning to go. I called Lear to tell him then that he
would have to find someone else, that it was just too costly for me
to do at the time, and that I had my hands full with several other
events. He was disappointed, but handled it surprisingly good-
naturedly, then began to tell me about some heat researcher Martin
Cannon had received following the printing of his article about
Lear which included some quotes about Novel that Novel apparently
became quite irritated about. Cannon, as I mentioned earlier, had
written a letter a few months before to Daniel Sheehan, expressing
well-justified concern about apparent contacts between the
Institute and Cooper. It had concluded by stating that I was an
"associate" of Lear's and Cooper's, who had been misleading the
"naive Christic volunteers about UFO-related issues "into the
depths of Cooperism," implying that I was somehow stumping for
Cooper, when I had never even mentioned him to anyone at the
Christic office. The legal activist had taken Cannon's letter and
Sheehan's reply from the Christic files and had allowed them both
to be copied and circulated around LA -- an unconscionable act, by
anyone's standards-- which ended up causing me a great deal of
grief with my true associates in California. I jokingly told Lear
that maybe Cannon should get to know Novel a little better before
he began taking potshots at him, since Novel was clearly the type
who would shoot back. What Lear didn't know was that I had written
Cannon a lengthy letter a couple of months before explaining my
activities in detail and he and I had pretty well resolved the
misunderstanding. What he also didn't know was that another friend
of mine had written to Mary Ferrell, a highly respected Kennedy
researcher in Dallas, to ask her a number of questions about Novel,
along the lines of issues I've mentioned earlier, only to have his
letter pique Novel's interest to the extent that he was ready to
catch a flight out to Denver immediately to check out my friend.
Since he is an absolute novice at this research and not at all used
to threats and counter-threats, I had contacted Ferrell myself
immediately to have her relay to Novel that I was the person he
needed to question, not R., who was entirely harmless. Up to that
time, no one else had yet heard Lear's tape of Novel, nor had I had
it transcribed.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:52:28
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 28
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]]
PATRIOTS FOR PROFIT
Lear continued calling me on a weekly basis, usually at work during
the day to share the latest "nugget" or new development in the
UFO/covert operations arena. I went along with the discussions for
the most part, figuring that perhaps he really was making a sincere
effort to cultivate a friendship in the wake of considerable damage
in the past. I never was able to lose the suspicion, however, that
it was primarily an effort on his part to keep tabs on what I was
up to and to make sure that we remained on at least "even" terms.
I figured that he was probably still fearful that I might go public
with the stories about the 1981 weapons flights to Iran and the
1988 plans for shipment of the Marcos Gold. As a matter of fact,
at that very time I had sent out an updated version of my original
memo on the gold shipments to a selected variety of national media
and law enforcement in the midst of the trial of Imelda Marcos in
New York, but again received not a single acknowledgement of
receipt, much less a concerned response. In the middle of one of
these conversations, precisely as I had anticipated two months
before, Lear told me that the other TV station in Las Vegas,
Channel 13, had tracked Lazar to the brothel, and that he had
already admitted his involvement on a preemptive newscast on
Channel 8. As clearly as I had foreseen this turn of events, it
still was startling to actually hear of it unfolding, and I kicked
myself for not taking the liberty of confronting Lazar about it as
soon as I had found out. Although we have never been close
friends, I believe my credibility with Lazar and Huff has always
been very strong precisely because I have never tried to "buddy up"
to them or to capitalize off their story, but merely treated them
like the regular people they are -- with perhaps a couple of
exceptions. I am actually pleased to say that, as far as I know,
our relations are still on the same level today, despite all the
crap that has ensued since, and no doubt lies ahead, after these
revelations. I became very concerned about Lazar's situation, since
I knew that any excuse to arrest him could lead to a possible
mandatory imprisonment and a likely MK-ULTRA-style "liquid
lobotomy" which would leave Lazar wondering who he ever thought he
was, much less what planet he was on. I have seen too many victims
of the American Gulag to have any doubt whatsoever of the likely
scenario. I again made arrangements to go back to Las Vegas to
meet with them, since I was also preparing to begin working with
Gritz again on his new book, Called to Serve, and video-documentary
Reflections, and wanted to try to talk some sense into Lazar. Much
to my disgust, I found that not only had he been charged with at
least five separate counts, but that he had already pleaded guilty
to one count of felony pandering! I was absolutely stunned, and
asked who he had for an attorney, Donald Duck? I was not only
extremely disgusted that Lear had not followed my advice, after all
the grief his sexual escapades had caused him (and me), but that no
one had helped Lazar prepare any kind of adequate defense, since a
felony conviction for pandering in Clark County, Nevada is about as
ridiculous as a felony conviction for skiing in Aspen, Colorado!
It is well known that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of
hookers and cathouses operating openly in Vegas, and the only ones
which ever are shaken down by Metro are the ones that don't pay
their "juice" to the Mob, or "share their juice" with Metro. It
didn't surprise me at all, in fact, when I learned that the number
three man at Metro had been a boyfriend/regular customer of the
madam at Lazar's "bordello" for eight years! So much for justice
in Clark County. The real irony is that Metro had actually staged
a bust at the motel operation a few months before and actually knew
about Lazar's presence, but had no intention of busting him until
he apparently was given bad advice and decided to admit his
involvement on prime-time local TV, leaving them no choice. When I
arrived at Lear's house he had a hard time containing his mirth
about something, and I asked him what he could possibly think was
so funny at a time like that, with his friend looking at a prison
term and/or lobotomy. He asked me if I'd seen Bill Cooper's new
newsletter and I replied that I didn't even know he had one. Lear
then said, "Sit down. You've got to see this." Apparently, in the
aftermath of Lazar's admissions, George Knapp felt honor-bound to
address the UFO issue from the "other side" -- that is, pointing
out all the inconsistencies and weirdness that has pervaded the
issue, and giving more time to the critics. His second nine-part
series, entitled UFOs: The Best Evidence? was, if anything, better
than the first series, which was excellent. Lear "cut to the
chase" initially in showing me a humorous segment poking fun at
Knapp which was produced by local radio hosts Johnson & Tofte
entitled "The Boob on the Tube," which Knapp had the class to
include in his program. The next segment was a carefully edited
examination of Bill Cooper which was absolutely scathing in
exposing him for the fraud he truly is. Knapp must have taken some
non-reportorial delight in purposely selecting clips of Cooper
which showed him with particularly stupid expressions on his mug.
I was actually so inspired by his genius in this regard that I
followed suit in my selection of similar footage of former
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
"Big Dick" Armitage in Gritz's new video. Armitage has been
alleged by many investigators, including Gritz and H. Ross Perot,
to have been massively involved for years in large-scale opium and
heroin trafficking. Armitage was one of the key officials in the
Defense Department who expedited weapons sales to Saddam Hussein
for years prior to the invasion of Kuwait, all the while being
directly responsible for the recovery of American Prisoners of War
and Missing in Action from Southeast Asia. I had no qualms whatever
in selecting, much less dificulty in locating, particularly dim-
witted shots of him. After his wife had left, Lear then showed me
a copy of Cooper's latest CAJI (Citizens' Agency for Joint
Intelligence) Newsletter, in which he excoriated Knapp, Lazar, Lear
and others, accusing Lear of being not only a CIA agent and
"Condor," the OSI agent in the UFO COVER-UP ... LIVE! television
special from the year before. Cooper had also accused Lear of
having a hooker at his house during a meeting with him, Gordon
Novel, Paul Shepherd and some other gentleman. As I read Cooper's
charges, as much as I had come to loathe the man, I couldn't help
but reflect upon how similar his charges seemed to my own
experiences at Lear's. When I asked John if there was any truth at
all to what Cooper was alleging, he became evasive, and mumbled
that there were a few people at the house, but the situation was
much different than Cooper described. I let the issue lay for
then, but noted that Cooper -- no matter what class of liar and
fraud he was -- certainly had every right to feel outrage at the
way he was represented on the program, without any chance to
directly rebut the charges, particularly by an admitted government
disinformation agent such as William Moore (no matter how he tries
to justify his actions). Although I have nothing but contempt for
Cooper, it was easily understandable why he would grab any dirt he
could get his hands on to fling back at his accusers. Yet again I
was reminded of how petty and asinine are most of the personalities
in the "forefront" of the UFO issue, and all the reasons why I
preferred to stay completely out of it. Lear admitted also that he
was very worried that Cooper's allegations about the hooker, and
his involvement with Lazar in an alleged "speed" (e.g.
methamphetamine) lab could seriously affect his employment if
carried any further, "even though they were untrue." I asked him
why he didn't just go on the air and deny Cooper's accusations or
take legal action, but he countered by questioning, "Would you want
to have someone like Bill Cooper owing you money for the next 20
years?" I got his point, but sensed strongly that there were other
reasons for Lear's reluctance to press Cooper. I certainly
understood, however, his reluctance to drag his family name into
any kind of serious public scrutiny, no matter the extent of his
professed blamelessness. I assured Lear that I was only warming
up to do battle with Cooper concerning his appropriation and sale
of the Kennedy tape. Lear himself had written to advise me about
the situation shortly before, after attending a lecture by Bill
Hamilton in Palmdale, California, where copies of my tape were on
sale for $20 each with Bill Cooper's label on them. I assured Lear
that whatever his beef with Cooper, it would have to wait until I
set the record straight with the man once and for all. I made it
clear that I would not be taking any major action until after I
completed work on Gritz's new book and video and his Freedom Call
convention was over. I made it clear that their successful
completion without interruption was of first priority, but that
after that Cooper was going to "feel the heat and see the light,"
precisely as I had advised him during our last conversation a few
months before. I then began to question Lear closely and obtained
a highly detailed briefing on Lazar's situation. I asked him
point-blank how he could have allowed Lazar to continue in the
brothel operation after all that had happened before, and
especially after my own heated insistence that he simply pull Lazar
out of there bodily if necessary. He simply shrugged his shoulders
and said "No one can tell Bob Lazar to do anything. I tried, but
he wouldn't listen to me." When I asked him why no one had helped
Lazar to obtain more effective legal representation, Lear simply
shrugged and said, "What could I do? I don't know any good
attorneys." I interrupted his limp excuses to remind him that a
classic railroading was underway and that Bob Lazar would probably
be lobotomized within three days of incarceration. When I asked
him why he wasn't doing anything more to help Lazar, he feebly
protested that "When I got into this [UFO] thing, I said I would
take it as far as I could go, just to find out what the truth was.
I've been through all the information all these guys have dug up,
including Bob, and if he gets put away now, I just can't be too
concerned about it. I have to just keep moving on." After all his
professed love and concern for Lazar over the previous year, and
all the mileage he had tried to obtain through his association with
Bob, I was just amazed at his cynical disconnection from Lazar's
plight. I swear before all that is sacred that these were his
words and intent, which I recall virtually verbatim. I was truly
stunned. During this same time period, I received another call from
Lear to come up to his house to meet Paul Shepherd, who had been a
"traveling companion" of Gordon Novel's and was at Lear's house the
night of the alleged incident with the hooker. Since I had good
reason at that point to find out whatever I could about Novel, I
accepted the invitation and spent several hours in conversation
with the two men about a variety of subjects, including Novel.
Although I had been forewarned to be careful around Shepherd, who
was characterized as a "slippery, snaky" kind of guy, I found him
to be refreshingly down-to-earth and candid, and despite his
obviously intense interest in the UFO phenomena, he seemed to have
a very balanced and mature approach to the situation for a 35-year-
old man. I did find it quite odd, however, when Lear appeared to
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:53:30
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 29
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]]]
be guiding Shepherd through a carefully-choreographed, step-by-step
retelling of the "Night with the Hooker" story, in which both
admitted that the woman actually was present, but that it was
simply impossible for "anything" to have happened. Up to that
point I really hadn't given the matter all that much thought, but
now began to seriously question exactly why Lear was going to so
much trouble to try to convince me that nothing happened, when he
and I both knew damn well that such activity was SOP for him,
especially if he had several other men around to try and impress.
Prior to Shepherd's arrival, Lear had been very excited about
sharing with me the audiotape of his more recent conversation with
Novel. Gordon elaborated at twice the length as before upon all
the issues discussed in the previous conversation, including some
"wetwork" he claimed to have recently performed in the Caribbean
"for the last time." He described his being ordered by Gen. Daniel
Graham to "get the hell away from the UFO business," after he had
repeatedly assured Lear previously that he had Graham's full
backing in the UFO pursuits. Lear then brought up Cooper's
allegations, to which Novel launched into a lengthy recounting of
the situation from his perspective, admitting the woman's presence,
but denying that Lear had had enough time alone with the woman to
have "consummated" anything. I did find it pretty amusing,
considering Cooper's outraged charges, that the woman apparently,
according to all accounts, bummed all of Cooper's cigarettes before
opening up a fresh pack of her own. As I said at the outset, in
this line of work, hearing about a cigarette moocher right after
hearing someone confess to "wetwork in the Caribbean" is not all
that unusual, even for someone who is not a CIA agent. I speak
only for myself in this regard, but I am inclined to believe Novel
when he claims to have pushed the Agency to a stand-off, since
whatever he may lack, the man certainly seems to have no shortage
of cojones, unlike Lear. Lear offered to make a duplicate of the
second conversation with Novel, apparently in a continuing attempt
to "impress" me, or to at least keep me "inside the tent pissing
out," but I declined, telling him that the last one was serious
enough, and I didn't want to compound the error in the event Novel
ever decided to go on the rampage. I would have very much liked a
copy of the conversation, but felt the issues had become far too
serious at that point to risk carrying in my baggage anything more
damaging concerning Novel. My apprehension was particularly
heightened at that point following a fortuitous discovery sometime
in July during a meeting with an Australian film producer in
Beverly Hills who had adapted part of Gritz's story into the
opening segment of a planned film entitled A Murder of Crows. I
was stunned to discover on his dining-room table a giant front-page
article in the Australian Sydney Morning Herald about the
indictment of a former Australian government official in the
attempt to move 550 tons of gold -- no doubt all or part of the
Marcos hoard! I had little doubt then or now that those
responsible would eventually surface direct connections to the
Secord-Clines-Colby clique involved in the Nugan-Hand banking
scandal in Australia which resulted in the death of Frank Nugan and
the disappearance of (former Green Beret and CIA agent) Michael
Hand in late 1980. I highly recommend Jonathan Kwitny's excellent
book The Crimes of Patriots for a detailing briefing on this
miasma. I had more than enough on hand concerning Novel, and any
more of that nature could qualify as literal overkill. At that
point, I would not have put it past Lear to have notified Novel
that I had secretly taped their conversation (instead of him), in
an effort to have Novel himself neutralize me. Stranger things
have happened, many times. For that reason, following his sending
to me a copy of the inscription to him by William Colby in his book
Lost Victory, I had actually made an elaborate show of presenting
Lear with a humorously (but in deadly earnest) typeset version of
the transcript of his previous conversation with Novel. It was
intended to be a subtle reminder that the game -- if it was to be
a game -- was equally matched. I have no doubt he got the message
when his eyes bulged out of his head, and he whispered, "My God, I
didn't realize how serious this looks in print! He'd kill us both
if he ever saw this! Who else has a copy?"
DESERT SOLITAIRE
Sometime during this period, while I was plugging away on the
Profiles in Conspiracy chapter of Gritz's new book, Lear called up
and asked me if I would like to go with him out to the Test Site to
try to watch UFO maneuvers that evening. I immediately responded
that I was too busy and couldn't risk losing time the next day by
staying up too late. He was extremely insistent that I join him,
since he had so few opportunities to get out there and had a lot he
wanted to talk over with me. I was extremely apprehensive about
the situation, and really had no particular desire to sit out in
the desert all night, particularly within range of national-
security goon squads, but figured that maybe he wanted to get
something off his chest. Despite all the apprehension and
mistrust that had come to swirl beneath the surface of our dealings
with each other, I still felt then, and now, that Lear is basically
one helluva nice guy, who really wants to be a friend, but just
doesn't know how to remain discreet about matters that should
remain private and/or confidential -- with anybody. Worse yet, his
long-term connections with the Agency, coupled with the
preponderance of weapons cargos, gives the giant lie to any
"humanitarian" impulses he might profess in dealing with UFO or
covert-operations issues. However reluctantly, I did accompany
Lear out to the Test Site, but decided to borrow the .45 he keeps
hanging behind his desk just in case he or anyone else decided to
pull anything "squirrelly" out in the desert. Since I had not had
time to let anyone at all know where I was going -- which they
would have thought was screwy anyway -- I figured I had better
prepare for the worst. Although the evening was totally
uneventful, the .45 still provided a giant measure of comfort in
the event that anyone unexpected might have come roaring up.
Throughout the night, Lear and I discussed a variety of issues,
both of a personal nature and concerning the vast panoply of UFO
and shadow government activities. I must confess that the time was
somewhat poignant, much like the time I was able to spend with my
sister a couple of months before she was killed in a freak car
accident, since I already sensed that something would be happening
fairly soon to completely eliminate further contact between Lear
and me. I certainly didn't foresee anything morbid occurring, but
sensed strongly that some issue would surface to irrevocably sever
our communication. Consequently, I made it a point to talk as
honestly, forthrightly and directly with Lear as possible, and
focused repeatedly on his true beliefs about the reasons for our
oppressive operations throughout the world, particularly in the
third world, and his true reasons for pursuing the UFO issue so
obsessively. There were no revelatory confessions, either. One
item, though, stands out: After hours spent discussing the wide
range of UFO incidents and individuals, I asked Lear, "If all these
things have happened that you believe concerning the secret
treaties with aliens and Eisenhower, etc., and the establishment of
the intelligence agencies in the post-war world to try to counter
the alien threat, and given the incorporation of thousands of
'former' Nazis in these structures, why would these agencies have
spent so much time and effort brutally suppressing so many small,
weak countries throughout the world and overseeing the drugging of
our own people by the tonnage? Why, if we're facing such a huge
threat from Zeta Reticuli or Alpha Timbuktu, would they waste even
an hour tormenting peasants in Guatemala, Bolivia, or Indonesia?"
Lear's only reply was "That's all just a smokescreen."
When I pressed him about it to clarify his meaning, he said he had
nothing to add, and I thought that the only smokescreen operation
underway was the one he and those agencies were actively involved
in -- keeping Americans from knowing about those operations, and
now using some contrived "alien threat" to replace the dreaded
"commies" who were now our trading partners. The only smokescreen
was the one that concealed massive increases in expenditures for
the weapons industries while we had smoke blown up our posteriors
about the "peace dividend." The rest of the way back to Las Vegas
Lear chose to reflect on his affair with the mistress mentioned
earlier, whom I had come to know fairly well in the interim. I
found her to be an intelligent and attractive woman myself, and
certainly could not fault him for his interest in her, but had a
hard time understanding how he could have rationalized dragging out
the affair so close to home for the length of time that he did,
even after she made concerted moves to end it. Since I've never
been a great fan of his wife's, I think I actually would have had
more respect for him if he had been more up-front about the affair
and simply gone with the other woman if he was dissatisfied with
his wife, rather than sneaking around as long as he did, even for
months after the episode to which I was a witness. Lear insisted
he had always lived "close to the edge" and that if he had it all
to do over again, he would have made entirely the same moves.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:54:30
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 30
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
Since I also knew the girlfriend's version of events at that point,
unbeknownst to him, I simply shook my head in pity, since he
obviously accorded the affair far more depth than she did, at least
after a certain point, when she actually had to threaten to call
his wife if he didn't leave her alone. As we parted company that
morning, I assured him that I would be setting the record straight
once and for all about Cooper and the videotape, and would do my
best to set the record straight on his behalf also. Somehow I knew
that even if Cooper didn't resort to any cheap shots at Lear on the
radio, it was only a matter of time before his sleazy lifestyle
caught up with him. By the time this actually took place, in late
July 1990, I had already made plans to confront Cooper on Las Vegas
and LA radio and at his event in Beverly Hills in early August, and
had written a short piece on our dispute for UFO Magazine. As
Cooper tells it in his book: "... in the late summer of 1990, after
I had been showing the film for over a year and a half, Lars
Hansson began to show up on the radio proclaiming that Greer, the
driver, did not shoot the President. Lars Hansson showed up at my
fall 1990 Beverly Hills High School lecture and disrupted the
lecture, yelling out taunts and otherwise making an ass out of
himself. When the lecture ended, he accosted people in the lobby,
and along with David Lifton, attempted to convince members of the
audience that they really didn't see Greer shoot Kennedy. To their
credit, most of the audience told Hansson and Lifton to stick it
where the sun don't shine. Once people see it with their own eyes
they can no longer be fooled. Hansson, Lifton, Grodin [sic], and
the other agents of the secret government are running out of time.
Americans are catching on to the scam. I shudder to think what
will happen to these people when Americans finally get angry. Do
not forget that Lear informed me that his source for the film was
a CIA agent who later turned out to be Lars Hansson." It is
definitely important that you understand that by the summer of
1990, I had already appeared on the national TV news program INSIDE
REPORT to admit my error in producing the tape and allowing it to
get out through John Lear, to clarify that I did not and had not
supported the driver theory since at least November of 1988, and
specifically to confront Cooper's phoniness. When he discovered
that I was going to appear on the program, after thinking that he
was going to be "the star of the show," Bill Cooper backed out.
The producers, apparently lacking a "bad guy" -- completely
contrary to their agreed-upon treatment of my testimony --
knowingly and deliberately left out half of what I said, and
presented me promoting the driver theory, when, in fact, I was
repudiating it. Before I was able to expose their deliberate
perfidy publicly, they went out of business. By July of 1990, after
working intermittently on the re-writing and editing of Bo Gritz's
new book and video as he was planning his upcoming Freedom Call
'90, I had determined to stay entirely out of the planning and
execution of the event for a variety of reasons. My associate and
I had just put on a very successful series of programs by Gritz,
Dan Sheehan, Tony Avirgan and Dr. Bob Strecker in Santa Barbara
(for which I received nary a dime) and I was too worn out and
financially depleted to go through it again. I felt that after all
the crap with Cooper, et al, I would prefer to keep a little
distance from the event. While working on the book, however, I
learned that someone named Richard Murry had volunteered himself to
act as Gritz's coordinator and had apparently gone to considerable
lengths to make sure that Bill Cooper was guaranteed a prominent
position in the proceedings. I had never heard of Murry before,
but I did not hesitate to let Bo know, as I had during our one
meeting at his house the summer before, that Cooper was a fraud and
bad news, very much along the lines of three other individuals who
had cozied up to Bo and then stabbed him in the back. I
emphasized, as I had when Bo had asked me about participating in
Cooper's event at the Showboat in Las Vegas in January 1990, that
he had everything to lose and nothing to gain by having anything to
do with the UFO issue, much less with a phony like Bill Cooper. I
reminded him then, and again in July, how he had admonished me back
in mid-1988 to stay out of the UFO issue myself when I was first
beginning to meet with Lear, and to "stay focused on the immediate
target" -- that is, POWs and the drug problem -- and urged him to
follow his own counsel, since I knew well, from first-hand
experience that Cooper and Lear were both phonies. I had figured
that Cooper would have buried himself in his own bullshit by that
time, but like the snake-oil salesman I would accuse him of being
shortly thereafter on Las Vegas radio, he keeps moving his dog-and-
pony show from town to town and simply accuses his accusers of
being agents of the secret government whenever they point out his
lies or blatant reversals. Though I had vowed not to involve myself
in Gritz's Freedom Call, along with several of my associates I did
make a concerted effort to persuade Gritz to drop Cooper from the
program. I indicated to Bo that if he was willing to forego my
advice after two years of intense interaction and make the same
mistake he had made with Scott Barnes, Chuck Patterson, et al, then
I'd have to seriously rethink my own commitments -- I was getting
too old to continue fighting obvious losing battles. Apparently we
did have some impact, though Gritz still graciously allowed Cooper
to present a "side-door workshop" down the hall after the main
speakers had concluded. Although someone may accuse me of working
behind the scenes to undermine Cooper, I have been open and candid
about my efforts along these lines to one and all. I am only sorry
I was unable to have him barred from the premises entirely. As
could be expected, Cooper apparently made a cheap shot at the
Christic Institute, blaming them for his exclusion, when they had
absolutely nothing to do with it.
EYEBALL - TO - EYEBALL
I had already determined to take Cooper on over the airwaves as
soon as Gritz's event was over, not wanting to taint the
proceedings with our "personal feud." I was only able to attend
the first evening and half of the next day, but still had occasion
to actually be standing right next to Cooper at one point, though
he didn't notice me. It took all the restraint I could muster to
keep from confronting him then and there, but as much as I have
come to detest Mr. Cooper, I had far greater respect for Gritz than
to disrupt his program. I did determine, however, to confront
Cooper publicly on the radio at the first opportunity following the
conference, and expose his lies. As fate would have it, a close
friend happened to have called KFI Radio in LA on my behalf at that
time and when Tom Leykis's producer heard I was the person who made
the infamous Kennedy tape, he was delighted to have me on the
upcoming show with Cooper. With that show already scheduled, I
determined to fire the first salvo on the Billy Goodman show on
KVEG in Las Vegas, which had promoted Cooper slavishly from the
outset. Goodman was lukewarm about having me on initially, since
I had deliberately been maintaining a low public profile in order
to facilitate my investigative work. When he heard that I was
going to be meeting Cooper head-on on KFI Radio in LA a few days
later, he was anxious to "scoop" Tom Leykis and then actually
became insistent that I appear on his show. When Bob Lazar also
called him to suggest that he have me on, he couldn't get me on
quick enough, since "Bob Lazaaaaaar...." had been the primary
factor in making the the Billy Goodman show "happen." When Lazar
quit calling in, Goodman's ratings evaporated. I would have
preferred to have started much earlier that evening, since I was
certain Goodman or someone else would immediately contact Cooper,
and I didn't want to take unfair advantage of the situation, but
the show was actually delayed an hour in starting until 1 a.m.
After I'd made a few opening remarks about Lazar's upcoming
sentencing, Goodman asked me something about the Kennedy
assassination. Knowing I would probably not be able to complete
many sentences afterward, I deliberately stated that Bill Cooper
was "a fraud, a liar, a plagiarist, a snake-oil salesman and a
third-rate huckster," and that he was completely misusing the
videotape I had made after I had told him more than once to cease
and desist. The audiotape of the entire confrontation is available
to anyone who wants to hear it. I was tired after a long week,
and simply not prepared for Cooper's bald-faced lies. Given my
training and natural orientation toward diplomacy, I was more than
ready to concede a point to him if it was true, and I did this
several times. My friends jumped me afterward about going so easy
on him, and he later crowed that "Everybody who heard the program
thought I kicked your ass!" Goodman, who Lear regularly refers to
as "Billy Buffoon," shamelessly ran interference for Cooper, who,
as he let slip during the program, was one of Goodman's biggest
advertisers/sponsors. Even so, I made the main points I wanted to
make. Despite Cooper's lies and threats, the ripples I created
that evening have certainly rocked his boat, and eventually will
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:55:32
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 31
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
engulf him. When Cooper claimed I had made the tape for Bo Gritz
and John Lear -- a bald-faced lie -- and that I had given him an
inscribed copy and a written authorization to show it -- another
lie -- I emphasized that I did not know either one of the two men
at the time I made the video. I surprised him by challenging him
to present the copy he claimed I had given him to Tom Leykis as
proof when we met on his program five days later in LA. Needless
to say, Cooper had nothing to show, because it simply never
happened. When I asked him off the air, in front of Tom Leykis and
the others present, where the tape I had supposedly given him was,
he could only snarl -- "I don't have to show you anything!" On
that program, I did not hesitate to admit that I not only made the
tape, but made a monumental error by stating the "driver scenario"
as an actual fact in the narration, rather than as an apparent
possibility. One man who thoroughly castigated me on the air
claimed I had created the tape as a "straw man" -- that is, putting
out something that was actually true, but of such poor quality that
it could easily be discredited. He called me a fraud, and insisted
I had been paid off to change my story. After I managed to get a
word in, I emphasized that my intention in throwing the tape
together was primarily to preserve our copy of the film and to
secure the funding to obtain a pristine copy of the film and
perform the best analysis available. I pointed out that there were
actually numerous other pieces of evidence besides the film that
seemed to support the theory, and that I would have been the first
to promote it -- after all, I made the damn thing! -- if I believed
it was true. When he accused me of deliberately making a poor-
quality tape just to make money, I reminded him that I was not the
one promoting it, showing and selling it -- Bill Cooper was! That
took the wind out of his sails somewhat, and most of the other
callers pretty much tended to side with me, particularly when I was
able to bring out a number of the other crucial aspects of the
assassination of which Cooper is apparently ignorant. I was also
able to point out the numerous inconsistencies in Cooper's claims
about his own background, particularly his statement that he had
decided to have nothing to do with the U.S. Government following
his military service, even though his own resume claims five more
years' involvement with the "intelligence community," from
1975-1980. Cooper claimed to have been so unnerved by his exposure
to the Naval briefing papers in 1971 (or was it 1972 or 1973? I
think Cooper changes the date every time he's asked) that he had to
go AWOL for ten days to sort it out and wanted to have nothing
further to do with the military or the intelligence community.
After having his term of service extended by the Navy for a year in
punishment, he nevertheless chose to continue working for the
"intelligence community" from 1975-1980 -- according to his own
resume! In my one meeting with him at his home in Fullerton,
California in August 1989, during our two subsequent phone
conversations in November 1989 and January 1990, and during our
joint appearance on KFI Radio, he refused to answer any of my
questions as to what his activities were on their behalf.
Regardless of who "won" the encounter, Cooper failed, in front of
five witnesses, by being unable to produce the tape he claimed I
had given to him, much less the authorization he claimed I had also
given him. He reversed himself more than once when I took him to
task regarding specific time periods he claimed to have gone AWOL
and decided to get out of government service once and for all after
seeing the "Top-Secret" documents. I reminded him publicly that
people he had claimed previously to be his staunchest allies told
me he had bragged about sneaking the documents from their security
lockers and sneaking the copies off his ship in his lunch pail.
When I confronted him about the contradiction between his statement
on the air regarding his unwillingness to work for the USG after
reading the reports, and the fact that he claims on his own resume
that he performed services for "the intelligence community" from
1975-1980, he changed the subject; he refused to even discuss it
off the air. His statement to me was "That's for me to know --
you'll never find out!" The rest, however, is all on tape -- you
can listen to it yourself. Oh yes, he was very forceful and
overpowering, in the bully-boy style he has relied on to intimidate
others, shouting his way into control of the discussion, and lying
repeatedly whenever I circled in too tightly on him. Some might
think he carried the day, particularly when I was willing to
concede agreement with the few truthful statements he did make. I
know that I scored points with the audience through my willingness
to concede I had made the film and that there were numerous other
aspects related to the theory, all of which Cooper was entirely
ignorant. I pointed out that the two alleged witnesses who were
supposed to have been willing to confirm the theory could somehow
never be located or identified. I described the mysterious .45-
caliber slug found and photgraphed repeatedly on the other side of
Elm Street which Cooper had never discussed. I described the
extensive participation of "ex"-Nazis in the overall planning and
execution of the hit, and named names --none of which he knew.
Despite his blustering, bully-boy style of shouting down any
unfavorable questioning, most of the listeners I talked to later
said they believed I made a far more favorable impact than Cooper
on the better-informed audience in Los Angeles. Perhaps the
greatest victory was that, after hearing me out following Cooper's
subsequent presentation at Beverly Hills High, the one gentleman
who gave me such a hard time on the radio, who also still prefers
to subscribe to the driver scenario, has become quite a good friend
since. He has also shared some excellent information regarding
several related issues with me and my associates. Despite our
disagreement on the driver scenario, he has come to know well the
depth and sincerity of my research and continuing efforts. Despite
Cooper's claims to the contrary, there were no free seats at his
Beverly Hills High program -- everybody had to pay $20 to get in,
only to hear more of Cooper's recycled purloined material from the
same UFO researchers whose documents and articles I myself had read
from John Lear's files two years before. There were also no
microphones provided, nor any question-and-answer session after his
three-hour harangue, nor were any cameras or recording devices
permitted -- hardly the open atmosphere one might expect from
someone who was trying to enlighten the world about the imminent
global threat facing them. Rather, it had all the hallmarks of a
slickly-planned event to insure Cooper held all the cards and
controlled distribution of all the recordings. Perhaps because of
the heat I had put on him, he was obviously defensive throughout
the talk, and actually did identify some of the many other
researchers whose work he was quoting from for a change. The slide
show was incredibly slow-moving, hard to read and tedious, and in
one case he quickly passed over a quote by Mikhail Gorbachev which
appeared to indicate his belief in UFOs, until an alert listener
demanded that Cooper go back and read the rest of the quotation, in
which Gorbachev said, "For indeed, what could be more alien than
war or the threat of war?" Cooper was visibly ruffled by that
minor exposure of his deliberate sensationalism. He used the
occasion to heavily slam Don Ecker, Bob Lazar, Budd Hopkins and me,
repeatedly referring to Ecker's UFO "trashzine," and claimed that
Bob Lazar was as "phony as a three-dollar bill." Only a few months
earlier Cooper had gushed all over Lazar on the Billy Goodman,
claiming he had "checked Bob out thoroughly" and he was "all he
claimed he was" and "a great American patriot." Since no
microphone had been provided with which to address Cooper, I had no
choice but to shout out from the middle of the auditorium "Is that
why he just received a W-2 form from Naval Intelligence for his
work at Area S-4?" He did not like that one bit, to be sure.
When he later claimed during the showing of my videotape and the
cheap colorized version of my tape by Nippon TV which he claimed as
absolute proof of the driver theory, that I had demanded that he
remove my narration some time before, but that he "didn't have the
money," I again had no choice but to shout out, "Your partner, Stan
Barrington, says you sold several hundred copies of my tape. That
should have given you plenty of money, Bill." At that point he
tried to restore dominance by stating that "It's my show!" to the
obvious approval of a few of his most devoted sycophants and
ordered his ushers to eject me from the auditorium if I "made
another outburst." A couple of them approached me hesitantly, at
which time I told them I had heard enough anyway and I would be
happy to leave as soon as they refunded my money. They never
returned. Contrary to Cooper's statement, following his final
boring remarks, I did not accost anyone. Rather, a large crowd of
people eagerly besieged me not in the lobby, but right in the aisle
as I was trying to leave -- not to make any disparaging remarks,
but to eagerly question me about the tape and why I did not support
my own statements on it which Cooper was promoting so heavily. I
told them the simple truth as I have told you here, at which point
David Lifton appeared. I neither came with him to the event nor
did I know he was present until that point. I had not spoken with
him except for one time on the phone regarding the Greer theory two
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:56:32
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 32
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[..Continued from previous message]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
summers before. Even then Lifton was adamant that he did not
believe in the driver theory though he had been exposed to it many
years before by Fred Newcomb, who had co-authored the Murder From
Within manuscript with Perry Adams. Lifton is well known by
serious Kennedy assassination researchers to be no friend of Robert
Groden: nevertheless, he stated authoritatively that as much as we
all would like to pin the fatal headshot on Greer, after viewing
what he claimed was the finest copy of the film available shortly
before, he was certain that (as I had been saying for nearly two
years) Greer's hands never left the steering wheel, even though he
did look back twice and stepped on the brakes -- clear indications,
as far as I am concerned, that Greer was probably in on the plot.
This crowd of between 50-75 people that Cooper claims was so
antagonistic, actually followed us both outside to the patio at my
suggestion to facilitate clearing the hall. We continued the
intense discussion there for over two hours longer. Without any
urging on my part, they also bought over $100 worth of some of the
other literature I had brought along with me.
One fellow I met in the lobby during the intermission called me a
week later, having tracked me down to tell me he had looked at the
much-clearer Zapruder footage from the NOVA special and could
clearly see that Greer didn't fire anything, and thanked me for
having the guts to admit my error in letting the tape get out and
for confronting Cooper. Cooper is right about one thing: once
people see actual clear footage of the Zapruder film and not the
8th or 10th generation garbage he drags around, they can indeed no
longer be fooled and they will all denounce him for the fraud and
shameless demagogue that he truly is. Cooper's statement that
"Hansson, Grodin [sic], and Lifton are running out of time.
Americans are catching on to the scam. I shudder to think what
will happen to these people when Americans finally get angry. Do
not forget that Lear informed me that his source for the film was
a CIA agent who later turned out to be Lars Hansson." is simply
another outright, bald-faced lie and malicious slander. Though I
am not an attorney, it almost certainly qualifies as actual
malicious baiting for some lunatic to go out and "terminate" us as
agents. The simple fact is that I had actually gotten into an
hour-long argument with Lifton regarding the driver theory two
years before, and had never written or spoken to Robert Groden
until after our appearance on the TV program on which Cooper alone
was afraid to appear. Since Groden and I had never met or spoken
with each other before, he was unfamiliar with my beliefs
concerning the driver theory. I have little doubt he was referring
to Cooper's published and videotaped statements when he
characterized them on the program as "asinine," even though the
producers had deliberately left out the most important half of my
testimony and made me appear to be supporting the theory myself.
I have yet to meet Robert Groden personally and met Lifton for the
first and only time at Cooper's event. Despite their personal
and/or professional differences, however, they have performed 1,000
times the committed research AND sacrifice to bring the truth about
Kennedy's murder to the American public than has Cooper. Even my
15-year effort in that regard pales beside their work. For Cooper
to even dare to make such a statement about them is utterly
shameless and completely asinine. I don't know either of them very
well at all, but I would be willing to wager all that I have or
will have that the odds are far greater that if anyone works for
the "Secret Government" it is Wild Bill Cooper -- he certainly has
the most acknowledged service time, and the least time in doing the
hard work in genuine research on the Kennedy assassination. To
make such a statement about me is so absolutely, patently
untruthful and absurd, after my own record of taking the government
on directly on my own and Gritz's behalf, that anyone who has made
even the most feeble effort to check me out can quickly see through
it. I can easily supply dozens of character witnesses who can
verify my activities and lack of income for the last 10 years. As
I said before, Cooper is a complete phony and a liar, and his
cheap, third-grade technique of accusing anyone who exposes him of
being "an agent of the Secret Government" is so petty, childish and
disgusting it reeks. And again I ask you, what did Cooper do for
"the intelligence community" between 1975-1980? If he is so
intent on alerting us all to the danger of takeover of which we are
already acutely aware, and if he had no qualms about committing
treason and stealing Top-Secret documents that no one else has ever
seen, what could he possibly reveal about his intelligence-related
functions for five years that could possibly be any more damaging
to our "national security" than the purloined and fabricated gloom-
and-doom scenario he is already spewing? His campaign of smear
tactics and vilification reeks of Goebbel's "Big Lie" propaganda
techniques. His almost complete ignorance of or unwillingness to
discuss the extreme extent of actual Nazi involvement in the post-
war heroin and cocaine trade, as well as the true composition of
the controllers of Military-Industrial Complex that obviously rules
this country and most of the world through planned programs of
assassination and genocide, is simply staggering. If, as John
Judge says, "Goebbels would have given his saluting arm for the
propagandizing power of television," he would certainly have
sacrificed his "bird finger" for a bully-boy like Bill Cooper to go
out and harangue the masses with his message of fear, smear and
confusion. Considering all that I have related thus far, I do not
think I am merely being paranoid in believing that Lear probably
used Cooper's interest in the Kennedy assassination initially in a
definite attempt to discredit me. Given the unscrupulous hothead
and publicity hound that Cooper is, it probably took very little
urging to get him underway. Despite widespread suspicion that Lear
and Cooper have actaully been working for the same master(s) to
spew disinformation since, I do believe that Lear's and Cooper's
mutual contempt is as real as mine is for both of them. Even so,
I seriously doubt that Cooper had had any great concern at all
about John Kennedy's death, or who was actually involved in
effecting it, until John Lear "pimped" him with my rough videotape
The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited. It is obvious even to this
day that Cooper has done very little research on the subject. In
all the presentations he has conducted on the subject which I have
heard or seen, his discussion is limited almost exclusively to the
"driver-shot-Kennedy" scenario and little else. Whatever Cooper's
actual motives in appropriating my videotape and selling it since
he obtained a copy directly from him, John Lear knew clearly that
I no longer supported the "driver-shot-Kennedy" theory long before
he met with and furnished my tape to Cooper, and I have little
doubt also that Cooper knew my stand on the issue well before he
began to publicize my tape. They also both knew very well that the
videotape I produced was by no means a finished product for display
or distribution, but rather a research aid hastily edited from a
poor-quality copy of the film to begin with. Milton William "Bill"
Cooper, in my opinion, is not only a liar and a plagiarist, he is
a crude, loutish bully boy who would be right at home in a brown
shirt, or better yet, in a third-grader's sandbox -- that is
precisely his style of threatening and accusation. While Cooper
has managed to get his hands on some good information from a
variety of sources, he has sown more seeds of discord and
dissension amongst a variety of sincere groups and researchers than
any government disinformation agent could ever hope to. If he is
not on the payroll of Naval Intelligence or some other agency, as
he has admitted he was from 1975-1980, he certainly should be
receiving checks from them, since he is doing a superlative job of
distorting and disrupting the work of a number of dedicated and
sincere researchers, and misleading thousands of genuinely
concerned citizens who, for whatever reason, will not take the time
to verify his claims. The only reason I doubted initially (and
still do) that he was an agent was that I couldn't believe after
meeting him that they have been reduced to hiring someone so crude,
so asinine and so transparent. Although I was being pushed by him
and some of his supporters at that time to help represent and
promote him (and actually did provide limited media-related
consultation to them for his Nov. 5, 1989 event before I knew
better) I decided during our first and only meeting at his home in
August 1989 that I did not like his overall "you're either my
friend or my enemy" style and was not at all convinced of his
veracity or his precision. Since then, I have come to develop
genuine loathing and contempt for the man, and for his alter ego,
Mr. Lear, and not without exceedingly good reason, as you have been
shown already. Since I first became aware of Mr. Cooper from Lear's
computer bulletin board messages in November 1988, I have noted
that virtually everyone else that he has initially sucked up to,
and slobbered over publicly, has come in fairly short order to
completely disassociate from him. Following their disavowal of
Cooper, each has also subsequently received the most vicious
denunciations from him either on stage, in print, or late at night
over the phone. One close friend of mine received two death
threats from Cooper at 2:30 a.m. after simply calling to order an
audiotape of Cooper from his friend, Richard Murray. While perhaps
in some cases his criticism of others may be partially, or even
completely justified -- as in the case of Lear -- Cooper is not at
all above resorting to bald-faced lies to shore up his own position
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:57:34
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 33
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
(..Continued from previous message)
when he has been shown to be in error, which is often. Indeed, I
have never yet in my lengthy personal and professional experience
with military and law enforcement personnel, attorneys, covert
operatives and foreign-service snakes, much less used-car dealers,
met anyone who will lie as blatantly and shamelessly as William
Cooper, though he has indeed many close seconds. This behavior on
his part is especially disgusting because I do believe that some of
what he is promulgating is accurate and of utmost importance to
Americans and all the world's citizens. The tragic aspect is that
he is so far off-base in the rest of his allegations, and so foul-
mouthed and crude in his dissembling and attacks on other genuine
and sincere researchers such as Robert Groden, that the baby ends
up being thrown out with the bathwater when intelligent people
finally learn enough to dismiss Bill Cooper as a wild-eyed fanatic
at best. Most are far more inclined to view him as an outright
disinformation agent and/or wacko. I have tried to give the man the
benefit of the doubt since first hearing of him in Nov. 1988,
particularly since some of the information he has accessed and
promulgates is true and valid, but after careful study, it becomes
apparent that virtually all such material has come from others.
After being on the receiving end of his lies, theft and threats, I
am steadfastly committed to making sure that people hear "the rest
of the story" regarding his allegations and activities before they
pass judgment on his veracity, or mine. One simple case in point
regarding Bill Cooper's lack of accuracy, honesty and precision, is
the way in which he has crusaded as the great exposer of the U.S.
Army's involvement in the creation of AIDS. It is a matter of
record that Dr. Robert Strecker and others were lecturing on this
tragic fact years before their literature came into Cooper's hands.
As a blatant example of Cooper's lack of precision and
thoroughness, the excerpt from the Congressional Record concerning
the Department of Defense Hearings testimony from Dr. McArthur on
July 2, 1969 which Cooper distributes and has printed in his book
on page 445 as "proof" of the Army's culpability (which I happen to
agree with) he wrongly references back to Part 5: Research,
Development, Test and Evaluation. Anyone who had bothered to
simply look up the testimony at their local library would quickly
learn that nowhere in Part 5 does McArthur's testimony appear, and
might quickly conclude that it has been faked. Obviously, anyone
who distributes such information under that heading as proof is
ill-informed at best and an outright fraud at worst. On the other
hand, anyone who, unlike Cooper, made at least a cursory search of
the references before taking it out to grandstand and sell tickets,
would quickly learn that there were seven parts to that particular
series of Defense Appropriations hearings -- the McArthur testimony
actually appears in Part 6: Chemical and Biological Warfare on June
9, 1969, not July 1, 1969, as Cooper's reprint indicates. If it
may seem that I'm splitting hairs here, bear in mind that the
testimony is in an entirely different book from an entirely
different hearing on an entirely different day! If Bill Cooper is
that sloppy in his research about a relatively simple reference
readily available to the public, how accurate is he with all the
alleged meetings and secret documents he claims to have had access
to? According to several of Cooper's former confidantes, he
actually bragged about stealing the top-secret documents he claims
to have had access to from their lockers, after which he
photocopied them and sneaked them out of his duty station in his
lunchpail. When I questioned him about this on KFI Radio in August
1990, he was evasive to the extreme. I seriously doubt Cooper had
any serious function with ONI while he was in uniform or out of the
service, since he lacked the rank, the specific training, much less
the record to be legitimately accorded such a high level of trust,
nor has anyone come forward to verify such service. I am certainly
no great fan of Naval Intelligence in particular -- Lee Harvey
Oswald was one of their agents before his untimely demise. John
Walker and his network were Naval Officers and/or intelligence
personnel; Christopher Boyce (the "Falcon"), on the other hand, was
merely the son of a retired FBI agent. But the fact is that they
are serving many years in prison for virtually the same acts as
Cooper has bragged about committing, both privately and publicly.
If what Cooper is spewing so self-righteously is such a great
threat to the world power-brokers, not to mention their hand
maidens in the intelligence communities, why has he, like Lear,
been so immune from prosecution? If, as Cooper claims in his
book, UFO Magazine writer (former Green Beret and deputy sheriff)
Don Ecker lost his leg in a shotgun-training accident, is it not
possible -- with as many lies as he has been caught in red-handed -
- that Cooper might actually have simply had "one too many" when he
rolled his motorcycle off the road and lost his own leg? I don't
know and neither, apparently does anyone else for sure, as is the
case with almosty all of the rest of his wild-eyed allegations. He
certainly must have had several too many when he left the 10 life-
threatening messages on the answering machines of his former
promoters, actors Michael Callan and Douglas Deane in July 1990.
The audiotape of those messages is readily available for anyone to
hear for themself. The first one on the tape gives you quite a
feel for the man's subtlety and business acumen when he is failing
to accomplish objectives: Maniacal laughter precedes "Heeeeeey,
maaaaaaan -- Somebody just sold me your kneeeeees, and I'm comin'
to get 'em. I'm comin' to get those knees, and I'm gonna break
them motherfuckers into five million pieces..." Maniacal laughter
fades to hangup. Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem, If, that one
must learn to achieve mastery of life by being able to transcend
many types of setbacks, including "having your words twisted by
knaves to make a trap for fools." I had no idea at the time I
first read those words 20 years ago just how precisely I would come
to experience that reality personally. Knave is certainly one of
the most complimentary terms I would accord Bill Cooper, who has
not merely twisted my words, but has blatantly lied repeatedly
about my words and actions, and those of a number of others.
Fortunately, I have far more faith in the strength of the truth and
the intelligence of our respective audiences that most will be able
to sort out who is telling the truth once they have heard or read
at least two sides of the story. Unlike Cooper, I have proof for
every single allegation I am making (and witnesses in virtually
every instance), and will be most happy to make this available at
a reasonable cost to anyone who wants to examine it for themselves.
I am also more than willing to submit to an independent
professionally administered polygraph test along with this
affidavit should anyone request it and be willing to pay for it.
AS embarrasing as a few of these disclosures have been for me as
well, I have absolutely nothing to hide. I sincerely doubt that
Mr. Cooper would be willing to submit to such a test with regard to
my charges contained herein. I am absolutely certain that he would
not pass if he did. I find it particularly interesting that even
the title of his opus, "Behold a Pale Horse," is an outright
plagiarism from an earlier novel by the same name written by Lannon
D. Reed. Considering the fact that Cooper was so adamant in
denying to me during our two phone conversations the involvement of
"ex"-Nazis in the Cold-War nightmare we have had to endure since
1945 -- as well as in John Kennedy's assassination -- I found it
particularly amusing that the book he stole his title from is
actually subtitled "A Novel of Homosexuals' Persecution in the Nazi
Holocaust." To borrow a line from Wild Bill Cooper's book, "I
shudder to think of what will happen" to him when the gay community
and Holocaust survivors "finally get angry" about his cheap
plagiarism and debasing of their experiences. As you can see,
plagiarism is the least of his outrages. Cooper's final statement
about Lear's identification of me as a CIA agent, whether Lear
actually said it or not, is ridiculous and almost laughable, given
Lear's long-term association with the Agency himself, and his fear
and trembling since August 1988 about my exposing him for the
sleazebucket and gunrunner that he is. It is even more disgusting
and hypocritical in light of Cooper's almost slavish attempt to
curry my favor during our first phone discussion and my subsequent
meeting at his home in August 1989. If it were not for the
general ignorance of most of these issues by his audience, Cooper
would probably have been put long ago in an institution where he
belongs. Knowing his capacity for turning his own lies around on
others, when he does finally go berserk and kill some innocent
bystander who also appears to him to be "an agent of the Secret
Government" or ends up on the losing end of the lawsuit I may
eventually have to file, he will almost predictably claim that the
Agency was funding me. Whatever funding I might be able to obtain
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:58:34
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 34
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
((..Continued from previous message))
to prosecute such a suit would come from honest efforts and not
from any intelligence sources. Cooper continues, "Hansson later
claimed that I violated his copyright. He had no copyright.
Hansson himself violated someone's copyright my making the film and
giving it to me Lear and Gritz. I didn't and still don't give a
damn about copyright on THIS particular film. If I did, no one
would ever know who really killed our President. Bo Gritz stated on
radio that he felt exactly the same way. Hansson never attacked
Lear or Gritz who still show the tape, and Gritz still makes it
available. I wonder why? Are Lear, Hansson and Gritz working
together?" I didn't "later claim" that Cooper violated my
copyright -- I informed him of that fact the first time I called
him to confront him about his use of my videotape in late October
1989. I made it very clear to him that whether I had any legal
claim to a copyright on the Truth Betrayed video or not, if he had
any ethics at all he would obtain his own copy of the film
inexpensively from any of the several legitimate sources and make
his own tape. I was not aware until several months later until
John Lear himself informed me that he was selling it as well. I
made it very clear that I had completely given up on the driver
theory a year before, and that Lear certainly was well aware of
that fact. As to whether or not I had violated Zapruder's or
Groden's copyright, that is certainly debatable; since I had made
no copies of the tape for sale, and had only given a very small
handful of the tapes to close and trusted associates -- aside from
Lear -- I seriously doubted then or now that I had violated any
copyright laws. When Cooper says he doesn't "give a damn about
copyright on THIS particular film. If I did, no one would ever
know who really killed our President," he certainly utters a
mouthful. He obviously doesn't give a damn about copyrights on a
high percentage of the material he quotes as his own from a number
of other researchers -- including the very title of his book,
lifted from an earlier novel about homosexuals in Nazi Germany by
Lannon Reed. And he certainly doesn't give a damn about
enlightening his audience about all the other scumbags who
participated in the planning, financing and execution of the
fairly-well orchestrated hit in Dallas that day. Whether William
Greer was in on the plot in any capacity, he was one of a long list
of perpetrators Cooper completely overlooks in his obsessive
concentration on the most sensational (and erroneous) aspect. I
have not heard the particular radio broadcast that I referred to
earlier and that Cooper refers to here in which he claims that
Gritz "stated on radio that he felt exactly the same way." Bo and
I have done one radio program together on the subject and have
spoken together publicly twice with references to the JFK murder,
and we collaborated on an entire chapter in his new book on the
subject. I have little doubt that he probably did say something to
the effect that he felt there should be no copyright on the
Zapruder film, but I know for certain after a number of discussions
on the subject with him that tossing my videotape out to the
largely uninformed public with no additional information and
references in support of, or contradicting the statements I made on
it, is profoundly disorienting to the average person. As a
special-forces operative and triggerman for many years, Gritz is
occasionally prone to "shoot from the hip" and ask questions later.
He admitted when I confronted him about his impulsive decision to
make copies of my tape available without advising me in mid-1989
that he did it primarily out of disgust with Cooper's excessively
secretive and exclusive approach to the entire matter. He was so
put off by Cooper's reliance on his "secret copy of the special
uncut version of the Zapruder film" to bolster his own limited
credibility -- when the same tape had been gathering dust in
Gritz's living room for over a year at that time -- that he
impulsively offered to make a copy of it available at the request
of one of the callers. Knowing from our discussions that I didn't
support the theory any longer, anyway, and having seen much clearer
footage in the studio where I had produced his documentary a few
months before, he considered it "no big deal" and offered it
primarily to defuse Cooper's messianic approach to the matter.
Despite his error in doing so without contacting me first, Gritz at
least had the consideration for the eventual recipients to also
include another fairly decent documentary on the assassination on
the same tape, in order to provide some kind of overall background.
He didn't ask the producers of that program for permission to copy
it, either, but that was his choice -- I had nothing to do with it,
and did not find out until several months later. Gritz immediately
discontinued distribution when I found out about it and requested
him to stop. Cooper finally makes a truthful statement when he
says that I never attacked Lear, because I certainly should have
exposed him for the fraud and lecher that he is over two years ago.
Out of respect for John Lear's family, particularly his mother --
since I lost all respect for him over two years ago -- and concern
that my disclosures could bring considerable grief upon him and/or
them, and my complete disgust with Bill Cooper, it is true that I
have given Lear far more leniency than I should have. It is
certainly true that he has shown (and probably sold) the tape many
times without my permission. In addition to what I have already
described, I have had it confirmed as well from the producers of
the show that it was, in fact, John Lear who also made my videotape
available to Nippon TV for broadcast without my permission, even
though he was well aware of how to contact me at the same address
I had had in California for over two years at that point. Although
Cooper has touted Nippon's version as "computer-enhanced," the
display at his Beverly Hills High program in August 1990 showed
only a poorly colorized ("neonized" is perhaps more accurate),
doctored version of my own videotape -- with my own voice clearly
evident in the background -- and dubbed-in sound effects to
indicate the gun blasts. It was even cheaper and shoddier than I
had been led to believe by his grandiose claims when I challenged
him on KFI Radio a few days before. Cooper has attempted to make
a second career for himself exposing "the greatest cover-up in
human history," denouncing anyone as a CIA agent or an "agent of
the secret government" who has questioned him in any way. I find
this very disturbing and believe that anyone who is inclined to
take any of Cooper's charges seriously should also demand and
receive a detailed answer from him regarding his post-service
intelligence-related functions. I honestly have no idea at this
point what they were, or if, in fact, he is currently a witting or
unwitting agent of any intelligence agency. I would not be at all
surprised to discover that he is, but I do not know that for a
fact. Given the Agency's unwillingness to disclose association
with anyone, a disavowal from them of Cooper is a virtual
certainty. Given the number of his demonstrated lies and flip-
flopping, however, I am by no means sure that his resume statement
is accurate, either -- that's the big problem with liars.
THE BEST EVIDENCE?
The only reason I elected in the midst of all this to become
involved in any way at that point with Lazar's legal case was that
Lear, originally, and then Huff and Lazar, had told me in no
uncertain terms that as part of Lazar's extensive briefing at S-4,
he had reviewed a number of documents related to the development of
AIDS as a biological weapon, and had even been so specific as to
have mentioned that the Naval Officer who had signed the final
report certifying the weapon's operational status in 1972 was an
R.M. Donner. Although I had virtually no way of telling if their
statements were true, Lazar's credibility and consistency regarding
other aspects of his story, bolstered by four lie-detector tests,
had held up throughout our limited dealings. Furthermore, the
record of U.S. Congressional funding of this specific type of
research, at the very least, is available in your library in the
Congressional Record from 1969. My immediate and overriding concern
was that if there was any chance whatsoever that Lazar was telling
the truth, and had not been fed bogus information, that he may well
have been telling the truth about the formula for the antidote
which he also claimed to have seen and memorized. If any of that
was even remotely true, the risks of embarrassment, much less
imprisonment, were far outweighed by the possibility of securing a
means to eliminate this man-made scourge. For that reason alone,
not out of any regard for Lear, or any necessarily great affection
for Lazar and Huff, I worked feverishly for the next few months to
secure some of the crucial elements for the formula, as well as to
secure maximum media coverage for Lazar's case, virtually all of
which he blew off entirely. Despite all of my feverish efforts,
however, it was actually the serendipitous and fortuitous
occurrence of two things that really kept Bob Lazar from going to
prison. The first was the unfortunate murder by strangulation of
a black casino floorman by three Metro policemen who entered his
apartment illegally to "question him" about his girlfriend's
alleged prostitution, which created a firestorm of well-justified
criticism and put the heat on Metro to avoid any other scandals,
which madam Toni Bullock's operation would have surely entailed.
The second was a supreme blunder by some lowly underpaid file clerk
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 09:59:36
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 35
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
(((..Continued from previous message)))
somewhere in the bowels of the Defense Department who accidentally
actually sent Lazar his W-2 from Naval Intelligence for the period
of his employment at the Nevada Test Site, which actually showed a
MAJEST security classification, I'm told. The combination of those
two factors running on the evening news days before Lazar's final
sentencing stripped bare the hard-ass probation officer's
motivations in condemning Lazar as a "con-man" and a "liar" and
resulted in his being awarded three years probation by the
conservative, but fair, judge presiding over his case. After
attending the next-to-last court hearing for Lazar, Lear asked me
to come up to his house and help him with his sewer system. I
really didn't have the time to spare, but actually felt sorry for
him at that point, since he apparently lacked the money to pay a
proper outfit to do it -- who can you call to help you with
something as unappealing as that? I had to cancel a couple of key
meetings to do so, and ended up spending most of the day helping
him try to rout out his clogged drain lines, without success.
While we were talking, perhaps because of the "earthiness" of the
situation, Lear was especially candid about a number of matters.
Again I found myself almost feeling sorry for the guy for having
gotten so far in over his head on the UFO situation, and so far
behind in his family situation. He began to express great concern
about the fact that he had been laid off from his flight job, as
well as about Cooper's continuing efforts to embarrass and
discredit him. He was particularly distressed about the threat of
Cooper's full disclosure about the woman who had come to the house
the night that Cooper and Novel were there. I'd become pretty
tired of hearing about it, since I thought it was asinine for her
to have been there at all, regardless of what happened, given his
past history. When I asked him disinterestedly if anything had
actually happened, if she really was there on "professional
business," he automatically replied, "Well, yeah, of course. I was
just too drunk to do anything." I didn't have the heart to start
lecturing him again, since it was obviously pointless, anyway, if
he was still pursuing the same stupid path he should have left
behind two years before. I just nodded and decided that now that
Lazar was pretty well off the hook, I would just as soon fade into
the sunset, and leave the entire sorry mess behind me. Lear asked
me to stay for dinner, expressing appreciation for my friendship
and understanding, but I just felt it was time to go. Frankly,
despite my disgust for the actions I have related thus far, that is
the enduring image I have of the man -- one of pity. Despite all
the luster and the awards and the recognition, John Lear is still
so much like the little kid in third grade who couldn't do enough
pull-ups or sit-ups to make the team, to which he desperately
wanted to belong, or to win his father's approval. Even Lazar and
Huff, who had taken to calling each other "Gufon" and "Bufon" in
sarcasm toward the UFO fanatics involved in MUFON, dismissed John
as simply "Lear" when he asked them if he should be called "Lufon."
Following Lazar's sentencing to three years' unsupervised
probation on the "weenie charge" (please excuse the pun), in
September 1990, I became heavily involved assisting in the
production of Gritz's new video and editing of his new book, Called
to Serve. When I returned to California at one point to continue
editing the video after the owner of the original studio became
somewhat panicked at the content and real or imagined surveillance
being conducted against him, I contacted the owner of a flight
service company which specialized in film work to discuss a film
treatment I had in development. He was very receptive,
particularly when I mentioned my acquaintance with Lear, and
informed me that he had learned of John's layoff from his mother
shortly before, and was concerned about his immediate prospects.
I told him I was actually anxious to put a film deal together on
UFOs, incorporating specific aerial sequences with standard
aircraft, that with any luck could include John in both a
consultative and a flying capacity. I actually thought that
perhaps getting Lear involved in larger creative project might
actually help him acquire an entirely new perspective on life. The
gentleman thought that would be a great idea as well and I agreed
to send him the story treatment I'd just completed in order for him
to look it over and discuss it with some of his contacts. A few
days later, Lear called me up to chew me out about discussing his
employment with the man, much like his bitching about my calling
Lazar. Eventually I was able to make it clear that I didn't bring
it up at all, but that the man had already learned of his situation
from John's mother. I pointed out that I only mentioned that I
thought it would be great if he had the chance to have a major
involvement in a blockbuster film, since we all knew his flying
career was nearing an end, anyway, due to his difficulty in passing
the annual physical. When I explained the general discussion
regarding the film project, he became even more belligerent,
claiming that he would settle for nothing less than co-writer on
the script. I replied that he was welcome to be producer and
director if that's what he wanted -- all I wanted was to just get
something rolling rather than talk and more talk. After being
extremely discreet and supportive of him through over two years of
pretty asinine behavior, I was pretty disgusted at his accusations
and decided to drop the entire project insofar as he was concerned.
I called the flight-service director back the next day and
discreetly informed him that Lear preferred to handle the project
himself and that they would need to communicate with each other
exclusively from that point on -- I was completely bowing out of
the loop myself. I was so completely disgusted with Lear, after
actually trying to help him out, that I resolved to sever
communication with him once and for all, but it was not to be. A
few days later, he called me in LA early in the morning after I had
been up until 3 a.m. working on Gritz's new video, to blab about
the documents he had just received concerning OPERATION WATCHTOWER.
I was still groggy after only a few hours sleep and responded
slowly. Lear mentioned a number of details in the Cutolo Affidavit
that were being held very discreetly at that point, and I quickly
came back to full consciousness as my anger began to rise. I asked
him three different times where he obtained the documents, and he
lied to me repeatedly each time. I had actually just met with
Oliver Stone the day before regarding the documents and the video
in progress, and he, in turn, had passed the information on to
award-winning reporters Seymour Hersh and David Oberst. I was
absolutely aghast that a blabbermouth like Lear, whom I had already
decided to sever connections with, now had his hands on them and
could disrupt any efforts underway to confirm and substantiate
their contents. Worse yet, when I called back to Lear to try to
find out who else he had talked to at that point, and to convince
him to keep his mouth shut about it for the time being, I
discovered he had left a snide message on his answering machine,
heard by anyone who called him, regarding me and the Kennedy tape.
After all the crap I'd endured on his behalf, and the hundreds, if
not thousands, of miles and dollars I'd spent over a period of
nearly two years trying to get him to see the actual truth of that
situation, to hear him belittle me and the assassination itself in
such a petty and crass manner -- given the multitude of sins I'd
been sitting on for him -- was just too much to swallow any
further. The fact was that Lear was the very person who had
violated my trust in the first place by making the video public
when it was never intended as any kind of final statement, and by
giving it to Cooper, which in turn led Gritz to foolishly make it
available. All the while I was acutely aware of deliberate
treasonous/criminal behavior on his part, not to mention scandalous
peccadilloes. I was outraged beyond belief. I called him twice
that evening to leave messages to the effect that I thought his
behavior was asinine. I stated in no uncertain terms that if he
really felt it necessary at that point to deal with such matters in
that shallow a fashion, I felt no longer bound to maintain my
silence about a number of matters that the media, and the public,
had long deserved to know which I had been urging him to disclose
throughout. I indicated that I was being questioned by some news
agencies about my knowledge concerning the Marcos Gold shipments,
and was seriously questioning my decision to keep him out of harm's
way by feigning ignorance. He instead chose to interpret my
messages first as a threat, and later, as an attempt to extort
money from him, but they were neither. I recorded my third
message to Lear on my own tape recorder, which clarified that there
was a severe misunderstanding underway, and a serious breach of
trust and respect committed, and offered him, in firm terms, the
opportunity to meet and talk about it privately before it escalated
into open warfare. I made it very clear I was not threatening him
or trying to extort money, but merely intent on encouraging him to
sit down and talk about the situation. When he refused to respond
directly, but instead called a number of my former acquaintances to
misrepresent my statements to them, and apparently implied that I
had called to extort money from him, I then wrote him a certified
letter, deliberately couching certain "delicate" issues in cryptic
terms in case his wife might have intercepted it. I made it very
clear I had no desire for any money from him at all, but rather
that we sit down and talk and get the problem between us resolved.
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 10:00:36
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 36
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
((((..Continued from previous message))))
He then called another friend of mine to complain that his wife had
received the letter and was now visiting serious grief on him as a
result. Fortunately, my friend had the presence of mind to ask if
that was before or after he had read the letter himself. Lear,
fool that he is, admitted that he had actually left the letter
laying on his desk and his wife found it there. What I find
especially ironic about this is the fact that I actually took
deliberate pains to keep the discussion strictly between the two of
us, when I easily could have deliberately dropped all the
revelations on his wife, with predictably nuclear results. Instead
I had purposely worded the contents so as to avoid any such
references, other than a phrase about his "dalliances in the French
Quarter," which referred merely to his meeting there with Novel on
the Fourth of July 1990. As a matter of fact, I had called him
there from Santa Barbara that evening to see what advice Novel had
to offer concerning how to keep Lazar from going to prison -- I
figured he should know. To my knowledge, Lear actually did nothing
at all out of the ordinary while in New Orleans, but apparently
just the terminology I chose was enough to set her brain working
overtime. The only time I actually managed to reach Lear, as I
described earlier (probably in early October 1990), he was
extremely belligerent, immediately reading to me the third in a
series of snide phone messages he had prepared to embarrass me,
offering my phone messages to him for sale to anyone who called in.
He then demanded to know how much I wanted -- claiming he had his
checkbook in front of him -- for me to agree to quit attempting to
contact him. When I explained that I simply wanted an apology, a
retraction of his earlier messages, and to talk and get to the
bottom of why this situation had come up in the first place he
laughed, and accused me of deliberately creating grief for him at
home by leaving the three phone messages. He accused me of
leaving drunken messages on his machine, but I reminded him that I
rarely ever drink, and never to excess. I clarified that what he
heard in my voice was not drunkenness, but disgust. When I
reminded him of all the grief he had caused for me with the Kennedy
tape to begin with, of the thousands of people who had been
disinformed by Cooper thanks to him, and of the countless people
who had heard his phone messages about me, he was momentarily
speechless. I emphasized once again that all I was asking for was
for us to sit down in some neutral spot, and get to the bottom of
the dispute before it escalated any further, because I was sick and
tired of being used as the whipping boy for his and Cooper's
bullshit. He agreed to call me back later that day but never did,
and has ignored or refused to listen to or look at any message I
have tried to send him since, much less to talk with me. In the
meantime, I have learned from very reliable sources that Lear has
boasted about enlisting another person to try to get me to admit to
an attempt to extort money from him while that person was secretly
tape-recording our conversation; that he had forged a threatening
note and my signature and the end of my letter to him mentioned
earlier, which he has copied and distributed to any number of other
people; and that he has been stating in his public lectures that he
was misled by me about the Greer theory, and only after he decided
to go to see Robert Groden on his own did he realize he had been
misled. Mind you, this was two years after I insisted that he
contact Groden and gave him the number myself so that he could see
why I didn't support the theory any longer. As detailed as this
accounting is, I still find it very unfortunate that it has become
necessary, since it is completely contrary to my own nature to
betray trusts, or unpleasantness related to a friend, but the key
word here is friend. If John Lear had ever truly been my friend,
he would not only have had more respect than to have conducted his
sleazy actions while I was anywhere around, much less begged me to
cover for him, much less tried to use me as the scapegoat
afterwards. If he had truly been my friend, he would have either
been far more forthcoming about some of his other illicit
activities and joined me in fully disclosing them to responsible
authorities (if there is such a thing anymore), or he would have
kept them entirely to himself, and not have tossed them out in the
form of braggadocio. If John Lear had truly been my friend, he
would have certainly been willing on any of the several occasions
that I made the offer to sit down with me and resolve the dispute
that has arisen, instead of resorting to lies, inuendo, attempted
entrapment, outright forgery, and open statements to others about
his desire to kill me. If he had been my friend, he certainly
would not have violated my trust by giving the unfinished JFK
videotape to Bill Cooper and God knows how many others, and showing
it all over God knows where, especially after I had made it very
clear to him from the beginning that it was not for public
dissemination and later that I no longer supported it at all. What
I am simply trying to say, after all these words, is that, if any
of these reports about his recent actions are true, and if Lear
actually did characterize me as a CIA agent to Cooper, then he
easily qualifies as a bald-faced liar himself. You can believe
what you will. If you choose to think that I must be guilty
because I have devoted so much space to denial of their charges,
that is your prerogative. You can believe me when I say I have far
better things to do than waste time on what you have just read, but
I have become sick to death of the continuing lies that are spread
about me by this man has openly dealt with known weapons smugglers
for years to supply guns and explosives to anyone who could borrow
enough money to pay for them, anywhere in the world. I would say
that a high percentage of the funding for his beautiful home and
other wherewithal, if it wasn't given to him by his mother, came
from such blood money.
If they're willing, I will be
happy to provide statements from any or all of the witnesses I've
referred to, or put you in touch with them directly, with their
permission. My personal and professional reputation has suffered
so heavily from this mess that I seriously doubt even this effort
will make very much difference. But my conscience has compelled me
to simply state the truth for your benefit as well. Take it as you
will. At least now I can go on to more important things with an
uncluttered mind.
EPILOGUE
Since I finally decided to go public with this material, I have
been in touch with a number of excellent reporters in this country,
in Europe and the Far East who have covered many of these issues
for over a decade in some cases, and have received a high level of
interest and follow-through, as Lear and Warton have discovered
already. I am assured that whatever may come to pass, the
important issues contained herein will not be forgotten or pigeon-
holed any longer. Among the numerous excellent sources I have
developed over the last several years despite this distasteful
series of events, one who is extremely knowledgeable has informed
me of the pivotal role played in the arrangement of the October
Surprise deals by one Hector Villalon, an Argentinian "diplomat."
According to Honegger's reference to him on page 242 of her book,
October Surprise, Villalon did indeed play a key role in the
arrangement, but Honegger has nothing else to add to that
statement. I informed her in early June 1991 as I am informing you
now that, according to my source, Villalon was in on the plan from
the beginning. Unbeknownst to Honegger or any of the other
journalists investigating the October Surprise, according to my
source Villalon was the personal secretary to Fulgencio Batista in
Cuba and was, in fact, an OSS officer even after the creation of
the CIA in 1947. As outlandish as this may seem, it is verifiable.
Finally, according to this source, whom the Iranians contacted
early in 1980 for help in obtaining spare parts for their weapons
systems, Villalon is old and very bitter about the U.S. betrayal of
his country in the Falklands War after all he and his countrymen
had done to support our numerous dirty little wars and dirty
dealings, and may be very willing to talk about his role -- that
is, before he becomes another victim of George Bush's "kinder,
gentler nation." The latest news flash I received as I was
completing this report indicated that Bush was apparently planning
to meet with Villalon sometime during his trip to Europe. Hmmmm.
Americans should be very quick to note the irony that the outright
theft of nearly a $1 billion in the Silverado Bank swindle by the
President's son Neil Bush has resulted in less than a hand-
slapping, while so many who have placed Bush in Paris in October
<>
---
* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 10:01:38
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part 37
Attr:
INFO.PARANET -------------------------------
(((((..Continued from previous message)))))
1980 are either dead or behind bars on trumped-up charges. I have
much, much more to report on this matter which is outside the
purview of this report and will advise you as soon as the material
has been fully verified and printed. After singling out Lear for
such in-depth scrutiny, it is only fair that I fill out the picture
relating to Warton to a greater extent. Within the complete scope
of the flight operations in which they have both participated for
years, Lear, despite his illustrious family name, has really been
little more than a "cabdriver," if you will, for the brains and
brawn behind the operations, Hank Warton, and his overseer in many
operations, Theodore Shackley. This makes Lear no less culpable,
however, for he is more than intelligent enough to be fully aware
of the ramifications of his choices to involve himself in such
flights. I am currently working with a source who is intimately
familiar with such operations who was made to serve six and a half
years of a ten-year sentence when he deliberately brought a load of
800 pounds of cocaine into an off-limits airport in Georgia in 1984
to bust the Ted Shackley/Oliver North/Michael Harari smuggling
network. Although only 600 pounds of the load showed up in court,
he succeeded in putting a major dent in the ring, leading
eventually to the exposure of the entire operation two years later.
But he nearly paid the ultimate price, after being massively
drugged for three years with a daily dose of 3,000 mg. of procaine
as part of his "rehabilitation therapy." In addition to the
background I've already mentioned, it should in fairness be pointed
out that (according to sources who have known him for years)
Warton's Jewish parents were killed in front of him in Nazi Germany
when he was a teenager. To prove his fidelity to his adopted
country, Warton undertook an extremely dangerous behind-the-lines
mission in North Africa, before acquitting himself with honor with
the U.S. Marines at Guadalcanal. Since World War II, Warton has
flown more air operations -- weapons deliveries for the most part -
- than probably anyone would care to remember, especially those who
contracted with him to do so. Warton has, by his own admission,
also performed a great deal of contract work for the CIA. In one
case, according to his own testimony, he had brought a load of
East-Bloc small-arms weapons from Sofia, Bulgaria to Dugway Proving
Grounds for testing purposes at the behest of his Agency and
Pentagon handlers. Another agency became suspicious about one of
his planes involved in the flight while it was temporarily parked
in Florida prior to returning to his HQ in London, and in short
order Warton was looking at a felony charge. When he contacted his
people at the Pentagon for backup, they informed him the situation
had to be kept "low-profile" and they could not risk an
investigation. Warton was promised that if he took the rap and
paid the fines, they "would make it up" to him in future contracts.
He dutifully pleaded guilty and received a felony conviction and a
total of $150,000 in fines. Warton is now under investigation for
alleged illegalities in connection with the planned sale of one of
his C-130s, with the government attempting to use his previous
conviction as proof of "predisposition." Whatever his actual guilt
or innocence may be, Warton is not unlike many other true patriots
who probably began and still continue in clandestine operations
with sincere, even admirable motives, perhaps seduced to some
extent by the payoff and the excitement, but all too readily tossed
on the slagheap by their Agency controllers when they got caught in
a jam which threatened to expose their controllers. Like so many
others caught in this particular kind of "squeeze," after many
years of unquestioning compliance with Agency requests, Warton is
now appealing his earlier conviction by employing the equivalent of
a "CIA defense," while attempting to prove that his actions in the
recent sale were all above board. Currently there is "bad blood"
between the CIA -- an unabashedly Catholic organization from its
inception -- and the Mossad, out of which rumors have arisen that
the latter organization may soon be "surfacing" photographs of
George Bush in Paris in October 1980. Unless Israel gets its way
in current negotiations, Warton, who has served both masters for
decades, may find himself in a uniquely tight squeeze. It remains
to be seen how much loyalty will be extended by his masters to a
faithful servant. Whatever the outcome, I have no doubt whatsoever
that a very close scrutiny of the operations he directed will yield
gigantic revelations about the higher-ups who ordered them. After
several consultations with various attorneys regarding Cooper's
appropriation of the Truth Betrayed videotape and his unauthorized
sale of it internationally, I was persuaded that since I had not
intended to distribute it and therefore had not initiated any
copyright acquisition, my legal standing in terms of Cooper's
copyright violation was shaky at best. This, however, is hardly
the case with Groden and Zaruder. Following the publication of
Cooper's book, from which I have already quoted at length, I again
discussed filing a slander suit, but was persuaded that doing so
would simply be a case of "throwing good money after bad," since
Cooper barely has a pot to piss in, anyway. After considerable
investigation into his limited holdings, whatever resources he does
have to engage me in that fashion would probably be provided to him
by others, anyway, anxious to draw me into protracted legal
wrangling which would only diminish my effectiveness in current
efforts. Consequently I have decided, as one shrewd veteran
counseled, to "take advantage of the free publicity Cooper's book
is generating" and set the record straight publicly. This report,
then, constitutes another salvo in that effort, and there remain
plenty more revelations about Cooper in reserve. I recently
notified Bob Lazar as a friend that I was preparing to go public
with this information, but did not intend at that time to bring him
up any more than necessary, and certainly not with any vindictive
motivation. At that time, I had no intention of discussing his
proximity to the AIDS issue, and I will not be at all surprised if
he denies any knowledge of it, or his discussion of Lear's threats
against me. Despite his earlier success with the polygraph
regarding his UFO-related experiences, he could certainly not pass
if he chose to deny my statements here. I can readily understand
if he chooses to regard them as a betrayal of trust, but I have
felt, and have encouraged him from the beginning of our association
that he should have made more concerted efforts to get his
information concerning AIDS into a number of responsible hands who
would help him get it to the world -- as he himself said about the
UFO-propulsion technology -- rather than waiting for some drug
company to buy him out. I apologize sincerely if this revelation
brings more heat upon him, but I feel the rest of the world
deserves for him to come forward without delay. If he can waste
his knowledge about anti-gravitational propulsion on a cathouse, he
can certainly press his knowledge about AIDS into the service of
the entire world, even if it takes a giant shove. We'll see.
Finally, this report would be incomplete if I failed to point out
the role of a former Lear executive, George Otis, in "priming"
Ronald Reagan for much of his Apocalyptic orientation during his
years in the White House. According to a report in the Covert
Action Information Bulletin, following his stint at Lear, Otis
worked on the climate-control systems for the Minute Man missiles
at Vandenberg Air Force Base before heading up his own aerospace
contracting business. He was also a leader of the Full Gospel
Businessmen's Fellowship International (FGBMFI), a Pentecostal
organization of business and military men. The FGBMFI actually
provided the seed money for several of the television evangelists,
including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Jim
Bakker's Praise The Lord (PTL), and Paul Crouch's Trinity
Broadcasting Network (TBN). During a meeting in Sacramento with the
Reagans -- he was introduced to them by Pat and Shirley Boone --
Otis and another FGBMFI leader, Harald Bredesen, focused strongly
on biblical prophecy concerning "the last days" and the "Second
Coming of Christ." Bredesen has been a member of the board of
directors of Robertson's CBN since 1962 and a longtime activist in
the so-called charismatic movement. Following their discussion,
the group formed a circle, held hands and began to pray. Otis was
suddenly "ovecome with the Spirit," and appeared to be speaking in
the "voice of God" to Reagan, telling him he would reside at "1600
Pennsylvania Avenue" if Reagan continued to "walk in my ways."
According to reports from people close to Reagan during this
period, he took that prophecy and its subsequent fulfillment very
seriously. The "missing chapter" from Barbara Honegger's October
Surprise, along with some of her other handout material, examine
the ramifications of Reagan's apocalyptic orientation in detail,
and is highly recommended for review. While Otis appears to be a
staunch believer in "end-time" prohecy, he has been no stranger to
more practical material considerations. He operated a short-wave
radio "ministry" called "High Adventure" with the four "Voice of
Hope" stations in Israeli-occupied Lebanon ("broadcasting from the
Armageddon Bowl") along with a Spanish-language program
broadcasting from southern California throughout the western
hemisphere. Otis also built Middle East Television,then gave it to
Pat Robertson's CBN. Both his TV and radio stations in Lebanon
have been the targets of bombing attacks, probably owing to his
close links with former Phalangist leader Major Sa'ad Haddad, his
successor Gen. Antoine Lahad, and the Israeli military authorities.
<>
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* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1993 10:01:38
From: Michael Corbin
To: All
Subj: Lear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Conclusion
Attr:
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((((((..Continued from previous message))))))
It is particularly notable that most members of the FGBMFI hold
responsible positions in military industries and the nuclear chain
of command. Many active members are involved with the military,
either active-duty or ex-officers, with experience working with
nuclear-weapons systems, and they interface heavily with the
civilian side of the military-industrial complex. According to a
number of informed and credible sources whom I know personally, it
is very possible that much of the Apocalyptic, Armageddon-type
ideology being promoted as a background context for foreign policy
-- as was graphically evident during the recent Gulf War fiasco --
is merely a cynical manipulation of the masses of "believers" by
the weapons manufacturers and their agents such as George Otis and
Harald Bredesen. Now that the hated Communists of yore have
become essentially our trading partners, it is not at all
surprising that people like John Lear and Bill Cooper, with long-
established family and professional ties to either the military or
these industries (or both), are pushing the "Alien Armageddon"
line. Currently, daily revelations of damaging testimony
concerning the role of Robert Gates in the Iran/Contra scandal from
formerly staunch CIA damage-control specialists such as former
Saigon station chief and Iran/Contra Committee investigator Thomas
Polgar (as seen on Nightline recently) are a harbinger of things to
come. If my sources are correct that George Otis worked directly
under Bob Gates himself, his possible -- if not probable --
connections to Lear and especially Warton, could yield even more
profound revelations. Stay tuned.
SIGNED UNDER THE PAINS AND
PENALTIES OF PERJURY ON THIS 18TH DAY OF JULY, 1991.
____________________________ Lars C. Hansson Date SWORN to Before
this _______ day of __________________, 19____.
____________________________ Notary Public I am a registered Notary
Public in the State of Florida with a commission that expires on
the _______ day of ________________, 19____.
END
PARANET FILENAME: FOOLING.ASC
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* Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)
