- The two men headed to the Hilton Hotel
in Sherman Oaks, California in the late Spring of 1986 were on their way
to meet representatives of the mujahadeen, the Afghan fighters resisting
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
-
- One of the two, Ted Gunderson, had had
a distinguished career in the FBI, serving as some sort of supervisor over
Special Agents in the early 60s, as head of the Dallas field office from
1973-75, and as head of the Los Angeles field office from 1977-1979. He
retired to become an investigator for, among others, well-known attorney
F. Lee Bailey. And all along the way, Gunderson, whether or not actually
a CIA contract agent, had been around to provide services to various CIA
and National Security Council operations, as he was doing now.
-
- In more recent years Gunderson was to
become controversial for his investigations into child prostitution rings,
after he became convinced of the innocence of an Army medical doctor named
Jeffrey McDonald, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife and
three young children in the 1970s. This has led to various attempts by
the patrons and operators of the child prostitution industry to smear Gunderson's
reputation.
-
- Michael Riconosciuto was there to discuss
assisting the mujahadeen with MANPADs-Man Portable Air Defense Systems.
Stinger missiles were one possibility. If the U.S. would permit their export,
Riconosciuto could modify the Stinger's electronics, so the guided missile
would still be effective against Soviet aircraft, but would not be a threat
to U.S. or NATO forces.
-
- But Riconosciuto had another idea. Through
his connections with the Chinese industrial and military group Norinco,
he could obtain the basic components for the unassembled Chinese 107 MM
rocket system. These could be reconfigured into a man-portable, shoulder-fired,
anti-aircraft guided missile sytem, and produced in Pakistan at a facility
called the Pakistan Ordinance Works. The mujahadeen would then have a lethal
weapon against Soviet helicopter, observation, and transport aircraft.
-
- Riconosciuto was more than just an expert
on missile electronics; he was also an expert on electronic computers and
associated subjects such as cryptology (see my "Michael Riconosciuto
on Encryption").
-
- Riconosciuto was a prodigy who had grown
up in the spook community. The Riconosciuto family had once run Hercules,
California, as a company town. In the early days (1861) a company called
California Powder Works had been established in Santa Cruz, CA. It later
purchased land on San Pablo Bay, and in 1881 started producing dynamite,
locating buildings in gullies and ravines for safety purposes. A particularly
potent type of black powder was named "Hercules Powder", which
gave the name to the town of Hercules, formally incorporated in 1900. In
World War I, Hercules became the largest producer of TNT in the U.S. Hercules,
however, had gotten out of the explosives business by 1940 when an anhydrous
ammonia plant was constructed. In 1959 Hercules began a new manufacturing
facility to produce methanol, formaldehyde, and urea formaldehyde. In 1966
the plant was sold to Valley Nitrogen Producers. Labor problems led to
a plant closure in 1977. In 1979 the plant and site was purchased by a
group of investors calling themselves Hercules Properties, Ltd.
-
- However, Michael and his father Marshall
Riconosciuto, a friend of Richard Nixon, continued to run the Hercules
Research Corporation. In the early 1980s Michael also served as the Director
of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral
Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians in Indio, California.
Riconosciuto's talents were much in demand. He had created the a-neutronic
bomb (or "Electro-Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device"), which sank
the ground level of the Nevada test site by 30 feet when a prototype was
tested. Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, said of Riconosciuto:
"I've spoken to Michael Riconosciuto (the inventor of the a-neutronic
bomb) and he's an extraordinarily bright guy. I also have a hunch, which
I can't prove, that they both (Riconosciuto and Lavos, his partner) indirectly
work for the CIA."
-
- Riconosciuto's bomb made suitcase nukes
obsolete, because it achieved near-atomic explosive yields, but could be
more easily minaturized. You could have a suitcase a-neutronic bomb, or
a briefcase a-neutronic bomb, or simply a lady's purse a-neutronic bomb.
Or just pull out your wallet for identification and -. The Meridian Arms
Corporation, as well as the Universities of California and Chicago owned
a piece of the technology.
-
- But there was more than explosives in
the portfolios of the CIA agents who surrounded Riconosciuto like moths
around a candle. Both Robert Booth Nichols, the shady head of Meridian
Arms Corporation (with both CIA and organized crime conections), and Dr.
John Phillip Nichols, the manager of the Cabazon reservation, were involved
in bio-warfare work-the first in trying to sell bio-warfare products to
the army through Wackenhut, the second in giving tribal permission for
research to take place at Cabazon. According to Riconosciuto, the Pentagon's
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was in charge of the
classified contracts for biological warfare research. Riconosciuto would
later testify under oath that Stormont Laboratories was involved in the
DARPA-Wackenhut-Cabazon project. Jonathan Littman, a reporter for the San
Francisco Chronicle would relate: "Cabazons and Wackenhut appeared
to be acting as middlemen between the Pentagon's DARPA and Stormont Laboratories,
a small facility in Woodland near Sacramento."
-
- The Race Weapon
-
- Riconosciuto would make additional claims
about Bio-Rad corporation, a medical supplier which had gradually taken
over Hercules, California. They were also, Riconosciuto would say, covertly
engaged in bio-warfare research-producing some of the deadliest toxins
known to man. The focus of Bio-Rad's research was said to be bio-active
elements that could be tailored to attack those with certain types of DNA.
Weapons could thus be produced that were specifically designed to wipe
out specific races or genetic classes of human beings. (Alternatively,
particular DNA types could be immunized against a deadly biological agent;
the agent could then be released, and everyone else would die.)
-
- A couple of years later, Meridian International
Logistics, the parent company of Meridian Arms, was to farm similar research
out to the Japanese. This included (according to minutes of a corporate
meeting dated Aug. 26, 1988) methods for "induction and activation
of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes". Associated with Meridian's Robert Booth
Nichols in a Middle Eastern operation called FIDCO, a company that ran
arms into and heroin out of Lebanon's Beqaa (Bekaa) Valley, was Harold
Okimoto, a high-ranking member of the Yakuza. Okimoto had longed worked
under Frank Carlucci (who served as Secretary of Defense and Deputy Director
of the CIA before becoming Chairman of The Carlyle Group). Okimoto owned
food concessions in casinos around the world-Las Vega, Reno, Macao, and
the Middle East. (Free drinks and anthrax while you play blackjack, anyone?)
-
- Meeting Riconosciuto and Gunderson at
the hotel were two representatives of the mujahadeen, waiting to discuss
their armament needs. One of the two was named "Ralph Olberg."
The other one was called Tim Osman (or Ossman).
-
- "Ralph Olberg" was an American
businesman who was leading the procurement of American weapons and technology
on behalf of the Afghan rebels. He worked through the Afghan desk at the
U.S. State Department, as well as through Senator Hubert Humphrey's office.
Olberg looked after the Afghanis through a curious front called MSH-Management
Sciences for Health.
-
- The other man, dressed in Docker's clothing,
was not a native Afghan any more than Olberg was. He was a 27-year-old
Saudi. Tim Osman (Ossman) has recently become better known as Osama Bin
Ladin. "Tim Osman" was the name assigned to him by the CIA for
his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support
and armaments.
-
- Gunderson and Riconosciuto were not on
an altruistic mission. They had some conditions for their help. And they
had some bad news to deliver. The mujahadeen needed to be willing to test
new weapons in the field and to return a research report, complete with
photos.
-
- The bad news was that some factions of
the CIA didn't feel that Oldberg and Osman's group were the real representatives
of the Afghans. Upon hearing this both Tim and Ralph were indignant. They
wanted to mount a full-court press. Round up other members of their group
and do a congressional and White House lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.
-
- "Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess
my name." -The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
-
- Did the lobbying effort take place? I
don't know. There is some evidence that Tim Osman and Ralph Oldberg visited
the White House. There is certainty that Tim Osman toured some U.S. military
bases, even receiving special demonstrations of the latest equipment. Why
hasn't this been reported in the major media?
-
- One week after giving an affidavit to
Inslaw regarding the PROMIS software in 1991, Riconosciuto was arrested
on trumped-up drug charges. The Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting the
case attempted to cover up Riconosciuto's intelligence background by claiming
to the jury he was "delusional." A TV station came and pointed
a camera out at the desert at Cabazon and said, "Riconosciuto says
he modified the PROMIS software here." Of course Riconosciuto didn't
modify the software out between the cacti and yucca. Sand isn't good for
computers. He did the modifications in offices in nearby Indio, California.
The AUSA told reporters Riconosciuto had been diagnosed with a mental condition,
the implication being "he's making all this stuff up". Yes, there
had been a mental evaluation of Riconosciuto. I have a copy of the report.
The diagnosis? Here it is: NO MENTAL DISORDER. The Department of Justice
consistently and maliciously lied to the jury, just as had been threatened
by Justice Department official Peter Viednicks if Riconosciuto cooperated
with the congressional investigation of PROMIS.
-
- If the war against Osama Bin Ladin (Tim
Osman) is not a total fraud, then what is Michael Riconosciuto doing in
prison? Why doesn't he have an office next to Colin Powell so he can give
realistic advice on Bin Ladin's thinking? And where is Ralph Olberg?
-
- Thirty-four days before the East African
embassy bombings of August 7, 1998, Riconosciuto notified the FBI in Miami
that the bombings were going to take place. Two days prior to the bombings
he requested of BOP (Bureau of Prisons) officials at the Federal Corrections
Institution (FCI) in Coleman, FL., that he be allowed to call ECOMOG security
headquarters to warn African officials. The BOP denied the request. Riconosciuto
was mystified at being ignored by the relevant government authorities.
I'm not mystified. I suspect the reason Riconosciuto was ignored was that
the relevant parties, including especially the Miami FBI office, knew all
along the bombings would take place. And they wanted them to happen.
-
- The same is true with respect to the
recent plane bombings of the WTC. It wasn't an intelligence "failure".
The terrorist acts were deliberately allowed to happen. The actors may
have been foreign. But the stage directors appear to have been all along
here in the U.S. Cui bono?
-
- Isn't it time to let Michael Riconosciuto
out of prison, and wipe the slate clean of the trumped up drug charges,
and let him be a national security advisor-at least with respect to the
government's pursuit of Osama Bin Ladin? Isn't it time to quit pretending
Osama Bin Ladin came out of nowhere?
-
- This is not an academic argument. Sources
say three dozen MANPADs have been imported into Quebec, Canada, from Colombia
(where they arrived from Eastern Europe). The missile shipments followed
the "northern" drug route-from Colombia into Canada. The missiles
involved are Russian Strellas and Iglas. These will serve just fine to
take down commercial airline flights. Just like TWA 800. Which group of
terrorists has the missiles? Meanwhile, how many biological warfare agents
are in the hands of organized crime? Maybe you should ask Riconosciuto
about all this.
-
- Michael Riconosciuto is now incarcerated
at the FCI Allenwood, PA. You know where to find him.
-
- Note: Michael Riconosciuto has just been
moved to Springfield, MO. His address is:
-
- Michael J. Riconosciuto
- 21309-086 Box 4000
- U.S. Medical Center
- Springfield, MO
- 65801-4000
-
- J. Orlin Grabbe's homepage is located
at http://orlingrabbe.com. from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 5, No
46, November 12, 2001 http://www.orlingrabbe.com/binladin_timosman.htm
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