What follows is not a proper essay. It's more of a brain dump. If you root and snort among the scattered debris you'll find some surprising items which you may be able to arrange into a cohesive story. If no narrative suggests itself, then simply enjoy it as a parapolitical joyride.Jerry Weller is the Illinois congressperson now at the center of a rumor concerning a female page. The rumor remains unverified; see below. Much more substantive evidence links him to Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Jack Abramoff and a host of other disgraceful figures.
Weller is married to Zury Rios Montt, a member of the Guatemalan parliament. She is the daughter of religious madman Efrain Rios Montt, installed by the CIA as Guatemalan dictator in the 1980s, at which time he murdered many thousands, mostly indigenous Mayans.
The best precis of the Rios Montt years may be this page, which tells us that Rios Montt belonged to a fundamentalist church in Northern California called Gospel Outreach, which somehow acquired the funding and organization to spread far-right Protestantism in Guatemala and other Latin American nations, under the name El Verbo:
Gospel Outreach is an evangelical Pentecostal church with headquarters in Eureka, California and Guatemala. It grew out of the 'Jesus People' movement of the 1960s in the United States. . After the 1976 earthquake, 28 Gospel Outreach evangelicals from California arrived in Guatemala to help rebuild the country and establish El Verbo church.Much of the money appears to have come from (or through) some well-known American televangelists:
"Rios Montt has been supported by Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcasting Network), Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority, Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty Federation), and Loren Cunningham (Youth with a Mission). They have worked with the Florida Cuban community. . . Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has provided financial support for the schools of El Verbo in Guatemala. This is done under the ‘Programa Ayuda Infantile,’ a branch of the Swaggart ministry.”(Emphasis added.) We've dealt with Youth With a Mission before in relation to the Path to 911 debacle; see here.
Yet Rios Montt's principle partner appears to have been Israel.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
From a 1987 issue of Covert Action Information Bulletin (as cited in the afore-linked page):
"Israel also installed computer surveillance equipment in Guatemala and, under the pretext of providing agricultural assistance, helped devise Rios Montt's 'beans and bullets strategic hamlets, modeled after the CIA's Operation Phoenix. . . [ed. note: ‘beans and bullets’ refers to Rios Montt’s policy, ‘If you are with us, we’ll feed you; if not we’ll kill you.’](Emphasis added.) An Israeli Knesset member is on record as saying that Israel acted as a cut-out for the American intelligence community when it did "dirty work" in Latin America.
[Richard Paradise of Gospel Outreach] says he works under the auspices of the World Zionist Organization as a liaison with U.S. evangelicals, with the assigned role of working against anti-Semitism within the U.S. . . According to a special report entitled 'Sectas y Religiosidad en American Latina' published in October 1984 by the Chile-based Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales, during Rios Montt's rule, members of Gospel Outreach's Verbo church took jobs in espionage and torture and accompanied Israeli and Argentinean experts during interrogation sessions."
Rios Montt's son-in-law, Weller, has tried to squelch the congressional report on Duke Cunningham. We know from the official precis that this report details suspicious meetings between Cunningham and certain "foreign nationals." I have argued in a previous post that these "foreign nationals" were probably Israeli.
I still do not know the exact relationship between YWAM and Gospel Outreach/El Verbo. I've speculated before that both groups have functioned as CIA assets. In the 1980s, the respected magazine The Christian Century published a series of exposes on Christian missionary organizations used as "front" groups by the CIA.
The Latin American death squad/evangelization operation required a great deal of money, which had to come from somewhere. Since many sources aver that Rios Montt was installed by the CIA, we can fairly posit that the spooks used American fundamentalist churches as a funding mechanism.
Those of you who have read Daniel Hopsicker's amusing tale of Jerry Falwell will understand that Falwell prefers to receive funds and does not much care to distribute them. Falwell himself appears to have an unusual relationship with one of the spooked-up flight school operators who figure in the Mohammed Atta tale.
YWAM emerged as the secret funder of Path to 911, the deceptive anti-Clinton documentary which ABC (Disney) broadcast without commercials. No mere missionary organization has that sort of money or clout. A psyop like that is obvious spook stuff, and anyone who thinks otherwise is too damned naive to take seriously.
But Disney isn't the only studio to come under the influence. The right-wing screenwriter for Path to 911 was Cyrus Nowresteh, linked not only to YWAM but to David Horowitz and his Israel ueber alles crowd -- not to mention Richard Mellon Scaife, the anti-Clinton zealot who has bragged about his links to a faction of American intelligence.
Nowrasteh has just begun to spread his blame-911-on-Clinton smears. His latest partners are Paramount pictures and -- I kid thee not -- Oliver Stone.
From Think Progress:
After steering clear of political controversy with 9/11 heroism tale “World Trade Center,” Oliver Stone and Paramount Pictures are venturing into edgier territory with “Jawbreaker.” Pic will focus on America’s response to the terrorist attacks with the invasion of Afghanistan and hunt for 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden.Jawbreaker is a deceptive CIA-vetted book which blames Clinton unfairly. Although author Gary Berntsen confirms that we had intelligence concerning the presence of Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora, the book tells only part of the story. The Bush administration made a deliberate decision to allow not just Bin Laden but literally planeloads of Al Qaeda functionaries to escape. The truth of the matter can be found in many places, not least among them the fine documentary 9/11: Press for Truth. (See the ad on the right-hand side of this page; also see my earlier piece here).
Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose most recent credit was the controversial ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11,” is set to write a second draft of “Jawbreaker.”
Why would Oliver Stone -- a delegate to the convention that nominated Bill Clinton in 1992 -- form an alliance with a right-wing propagandist like Nowrasteh? The first question is: Why would he want to direct a script written by anyone other than himself? I happen to know that Stone is (justifiably) proud of his screenwriting capabilities. Politics aside, Nowrasteh has displayed no discernable gifts for structure, well-crafted dialogue or the creation of three-dimensional characters.
And you thought Oscar and Felix were an odd couple...
The creation and aftermath of JFK must have taught Stone a thing or two about covert operators and CIA-vetted literary endeavors. You can bet the pink slip to your car that Stone knows the true meaning of a phrase like "They have worked with the Florida Cuban community." The director of Salvador surely knows all about Central American death squads and the history of thugs like Rios Montt. He surely knows that Nowrasteh links up with a lot of people who have something up their sleeves other than their elbows.
I strongly believe that this project was forced upon Stone. Frankly, there's not much he could say that would persuade me to think otherwise. I don't know what the neocons have on him, although a drug charge would seem a likely possibility. There's a reason why some people call him "Oliver Stoned."
(A side note: When I received a first-hand account of Stone's drug usage in the early 1990s, my first thought was: He'll be heading for jail soon. When that didn't happen, my second thought was that he would never again make a film like JFK, and that eventually he'd be forced to do some propaganda for the other side. I said as much to friends in the mid-90s.)
As I noted in the opening paragraph, I do not yet have a cohesive storyline. Perhaps you can form one based on the elements given here.
12 comments:
Very interesting post. Ive been reading alot about these people in the past 24 hours and its amazing how scandal after scandal has the same key players.
Another interesting aspect that could tie in is how Guatemela is being backed by BushCo for the open UN Security Council Seat. Of course the other option is Venezuela, and they wouldnt want that now would they?
"The general's ties with the United States military go all the way back to 1950 when he received training by the Pentagon at the School of the Americas in Panama. In 1954, the young officer aided the CIA in engineering the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, whose nationalistic policies had irritated United Fruit."
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair07162003.html
I threw together a post over @ my blog that I may run on DKOS tomorrow. Anything you think I should add/remove/change? Suggestions definately welcome.
It's a great piece. You accidentally referred to Zury as Zura. So did I, although I've cleaned up the mistake.
Really incisinve commentary on Oliver Stone. His near-destruction (financially, professionally, and spiritually) and ultimate neutering in the wake of JFK is one of the saddest processes I've ever witnessed. He was, is, and will always remain one of my greatest personal heros. He knew he was putting everything on the line to make that Movie, and he pulled it off. No matter what else he does in life, that single accomplishment awoke more people - directly or indirectly - than any other single conscious act performed by anyone in my lifetime. That awakening included yours truly. You could trace and negate the first, second and third generation "conversions" that grew out of JFK, and I believe the Internet's independant press would look much different, and far less invigorated today.
PS: Oliver, if you are out there, can I send you my OS poster for autograph?
Let me add that I have enormous respect for Stone, and not just for JFK. The man is a born director.
The comments about his drug usage may seem disrepectful, but they are based on fact. His Natural Born Killers commentary track is pretty revelatory.
There appears to be a tremendous mechanism available here for Bush to take over the world.
The largest source of spare change for covert activities in the 80's was, of course, the cocaine trade, which began as a side note to the Contra operation and by about 1984 had become the dominant factor. It's never been clear where the profits of that all went -- certainly not to the Contras, who were constantly complaining about being under-supplied.
The extent of Israeli involvement in Latin America during that period also continues to surprise me the more I learn about it. We tend to forget that Mossad agent David Kimche, together with Robert McFarlane, set up *both* ends of Iran-Contra. Israel was already involved in Latin America by the late 70's, when it took up extensive arms dealing in response to the economic strains of the 1973 war and the subsequent oil shocks. An involvement with the drug trade followed very quickly, much of it by way of Mike Harari's association with Noriega.
And that's not even getting into the active presence in the same areas of the World Anti-Communist League, Reverend Moon, and their fascist friends. (One of the things that gives me conniptions is the extent to which the Israelis and the old Nazis seem to have been on the same side in things like the 1980 Cocaine Coup in Bolivia.)
Among other things, the WACL -- then still known as the Asian People's Anti-Communist League -- had been involved in Latin America as far back as the 1954 coup against Arbenz (thanks to E. Howard Hunt), and its ties there ran very deep. Moon's CAUSA also set up a Guatemala office under Montt in 1982.
So there's no lack of larger context for these events. Even Ollie North might bear consideration here, as someone with ties to prayer-breakfast Christianity as well as to the Enterprise/Operation Phoenix gang. And Christian Reconstructionist gun-nut Larry Pratt was also down in Guatemala in the 80's, both arming and evangelizing civilian militias.
For that matter, I find on checking my files that Wayne Madsen links both Rios Montt and Jerry Weller to the Fellowship Foundation, in his expose called "The 'Christian'Mafia." Like most of Madsen's claims, that would be extremely interesting, if it can be confirmed.
Overall, the period c. 1977-85 was a time when many different right-wing factions came together, were energized by the dominance of conservativism in much of the world, and formed a variety of unlikely alliances and working partnerships. This, along with the covert nature of much of what was going on, makes sorting it out extremely difficult. But the fact that it still continues to have fallout today also makes it crucial.
geez, this whole overblown soap opera (i don't think even shakespeare would know what to do with these scandals) makes my head spin.
speaking of spin, weller's latest strategy is right out of the rove playbook:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001849.php
seems he's filing a report with the ethics committee about an unnamed page getting unnamed inappropriate attention from an unnamed congressman.
spin and deflect, spin and deflect. repeat and rinse.
The idea that someone has Stone in the bag would help to explain his 'humanized' Nixon. And his stupid football movie.
But I think an equally good explanation may be that JFK got him access. Someone stepped forward and clued him in, with the implied invitation that he can stay clued in, if he's nice.
The use of evangelical religious groups as CIA fronts is not a new idea, of course, although it may be for some readers new to Cannonfire or other blogs like it. Gerard Colby in the book about the Rockefeller empire Thy Will Be Done documented how the Rockefellers used religious front groups as intermediaries to gain control of South American natural resources (especially oil) by driving out the natives from the lands containing those valued resources by hook or by crook. Also, Alfred McCoy in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade touches on this page from the spook playbook dealing with narcotics trafficking in Southeast Asia, especially during the Viet Nam War.
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