The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

by Jon E. Lewis

  A Texas civil jury, Congress and a Special Counsel have all cleared the FBI of intentional wrongdoing at Waco. Maybe correctly. Yet, at the very least, the FBI acted with criminal recklessness at Waco. Aside from using teargas against children, the FBI deployed a Bradley fighting vehicle to ram-raid the room where the Branch Davidian children were holed up. Autopsies showed that a number of the children died from crush injuries.

  After Waco, America became a more suspicious place. The FBI bears a share of the guilt for that.

  The FBI incinerated the Branch Davidians at Waco: ALERT LEVEL 8

  Further Reading

  William Gazecki (director), Waco: The Rules of Engagement, 1997 [movie]

  Dick J. Reavis; The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation, 1998

  WATERGATE

  Everybody knows about the Watergate conspiracy. President Richard Milhous Nixon organized cronies to burglarize the Democratic offices in the Watergate Hotel, Washington DC; when the break-in was investigated by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who traced the plot back to the White House, Nixon tried to cover up his role. With evidence mounting against him, he resigned on 9 August 1974.

  In the accepted Watergate story, James McCord and his fellow-Plumbers, as Nixon’s private burglars were known, illegally entered the Democratic National Committee to place bugs. Nixon’s supporters, however, allege there was another Watergate conspiracy – one in which Nixon was the victim. McCord and the four other men who burgled Watergate were CIA pros. Consequently, they could easily have effected the break-in without leaving traces. The obvious conclusion is that they bungled the break-in in order to implicate and sabotage Nixon.

  Then there are the sources for the Woodward and Bernstein stories. The anonymous Deep Throat was long assumed to be Robert Bennett, manager of the Mullen Company (a CIA cover outfit). Why was the CIA briefing against Nixon? A fit of scruples because they didn’t like a President who ordered burglaries of opponents? Hardly. The obvious conclusion, again, is that the CIA was sabotaging Nixon.

  In 1984 Jim Hougan published Secret Agenda. This revealed that, when the FBI examined the Democratic offices at Watergate, they found no evidence of it ever having been bugged. “It doesn’t take a genius,” former CIA agent Frank Sturgis informed the San Francisco Chronicle in 1977, “to figure out that Watergate was a CIA set-up.” Nixon agreed, writing in his memoirs: “The whole thing was so senseless and bungled that it almost looked like some kind of a set-up.”

  The reason the CIA wanted Nixon out of the Oval Office is explained by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in Silent Coup (1991), the Magnum .45 of pro-Nixon literature. Nixon wanted out of the Vietnam War.

  There was, of course, another plausible reason for removing Nixon, not one to be breathed by pro-Nixonites like Colodny and Gettlin. He was paranoid and going off the rails.

  Against the “Nixon was smeared by the CIA” theory there have to be weighed the White House Tapes. These record Nixon’s conversations in the Oval Office and clearly capture him plotting with regard to Watergate. Also the “Nixon was smeared” case was weakened in 2005 when it was revealed that Woodward’s and Bernstein’s snitch Deep Throat was not Bennett but the deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt.

  On the 20th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, investigative reporter Jim Hougan commented, “If one tries to understand Watergate in terms of a single monolithic operation by a team of spooks with a unified goal, it will defy understanding.” The burglars themselves have given differing reasons as to why they were in the Watergate building on 17 June 1972.

  Although Nixon was guilty of all the crimes that caused him to resign, it is by no means impossible that he was edged on his way by the CIA and elements in the White House who used Watergate to smear him.

  Watergate was a CIA trap to smear Nixon and cause his downfall: ALERT LEVEL 7

  Further Reading

  Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men, 1974

  Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, 1991

  Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, 1984

  HAROLD WILSON

  During the 1930s the KGB targeted bright young things at British universities for recruitment as spies, men and women who might quietly worm their way up the fabric of the British state while really working for the USSR. Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald MacLean, Guy Burgess – all were testament to the KGB’s success. Philby even made it to the head desk at MI6’s anti-Soviet IX Section. All these men were eventually unmasked, but there remained the nagging doubt that somewhere deep in the British state there were other spies as yet uncovered. The nightmare scenario, of course, was that one such plant would become the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

  In 1963 Hugh Gaitskell suddenly resigned as leader of the Labour Party; he died shortly afterwards of lupus disseminata. So unusual was the disease in the UK that Gaitskell’s doctor is said to have reported the matter to MI5. Gaitskell had recently visited the USSR and, according to Soviet defector Anatoli Golitsin, the KGB Assassinations Department 13 was seeking to assassinate a European politician and put their man in his place. At this point, MI5 agent Peter Wright revealed in his memoir Spycatcher (1987), the security service became seriously interested in Gaitskell’s replacement as Labour leader: Harold Wilson.

  Wilson had been a minor blip on MI5’s radar for a long while. He had flirted with Communists at Oxford in the 1930s, and in 1947 he’d made several trips to Russia as the government’s Secretary for Overseas Trade. If not already a Soviet agent, Wilson, MI5 believed, was recruited on these trips by the old means of a “honey trap” – a sexual liaison with a female KGB member. Filmed or photographed, the liaison opened up Wilson to perpetual blackmail. Proof that Wilson was “turned” ostensibly came during the Korean War, when the Labour MP was less than red-blooded in seeking North Korea’s eradication. James Angleton of the CIA is said to have confirmed to MI5 Wilson’s role as a Soviet stooge.

  By any measure, though, MI5’s evidence against Wilson was meagre. This did not stop the spooks from running a major smear campaign against him, which was steadily stepped up over the course of Wilson’s four tenures as Prime Minister. Termed “Clockwork Orange”, the MI5 smear campaign dripped media stories that Wilson was having an affair with his aide Marcia Williams, and falsely alleged links between Wilson’s Labour Party and the KGB. According to Peter Wright, at least 30 MI5 officers were involved in the mid-1970s plot to destabilize Wilson, an accusation supported by MI6 chief Sir Maurice Oldfield and Captain Colin Wallace of Army intelligence. (Wallace was later framed for manslaughter because of his refusal to aid the Wilson plot; in 1996 a court quashed his conviction.)

  With no prior warning, on 15 March 1976, Wilson announced his resignation as Prime Minister. The official explanation was that at 60 he was too tired to go on. Soon afterwards, however, he began briefing journalists about an MI5 plot against him, adding that in 1968 and 1978 “dark forces” had planned a military coup against him. So far-fetched did these claims seem that they met with all-round amusement, forcing Wilson to deny his own words.

  In 1993 an official government investigation, MI5: The Security Service, asserts “no such [MI5] plot [against Wilson] existed”. Peter Wright’s Spycatcher has been proven to be exaggerated, and Wilson’s own cabinet colleague Dennis Healey (now Lord Healey) says Wilson “made Walter Mitty look unimaginative”.

  Even so, there is enough evidence from Colin Wallace to incriminate sections of MI5 in the destabilization of Wilson’s 1970s governments. Wilson’s retirement is thus explained by the fatigue and depression caused by having his own security force turned against him.

  Of Wilson’s alleged covert Communism, though, there is not a jot of proof.

  British PM Harold Wilson was a KGB stooge: ALERT LEVEL3

  Elements in MI5 plotted downfall of Wilson’s Labour governments in 1970s: ALERT LEVEL 9

  Further Reading

 
Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace?, 1990

  Robin Ramsay and Steven Dorril, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, 1991

  Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, 1987

  WINGDINGS

  In the aftermath of 9/11 there resurfaced a popular early-1990s conspiracy that within Microsoft’s Wingdings font were secreted hidden messages. One such message was to be found if “NYC” [New York City] was typed in Wingdings. Up came:

  Some conspiracists read the symbols as Microsoft’s approval for the killing of New York’s Jews, and eventually the brouhaha reached the New York Post, which excitedly reported “ANTI-JEWISH CODE LURKS IN POPULAR SOFTWARE”. Microsoft dismissed the charge, saying that the skull, Star of David and thumbs-up sequence was pure coincidence – a claim somewhat undermined by the admission of Microsoft spokesperson Kimberley Kuresman that the symbols for “NYC” in the somewhat similar Webdings font were intentionally designed to be associated with happiness. They were: an eye, a heart and a skyline. That is, I LOVE NEW YORK.

  Then came 9/11, and someone on the internet decided Microsoft’s Wingdings had forecast – even signalled – the terror attack on the World Trade Center. As one email posted on AboveTopSecret.com put it:

  The “Wingdings” Conspiracy. Has anyone heard of this? I’m shocked! Go to notepad, set the font to highest, select Wingdings font, and type in caps Q33 NY. This is the flight number of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center . . . Coincidence? I doubt it . . .

  Q33NY in Wingdings is:

  An airplane attacks two buildings and kills the Jews . . .

  The conspiracy is undone by significant faults. Most notably, Q33NY was not the number of any of the aircraft involved in 9/11. Further, the 3–3 symbols are not “buildings” but lined documents. If you want a secret message from Wingdings, try this:

  Microsoft’s Wingdings font is designed to convey secret anti-Semitic messages: ALERT LEVEL 1

  Further Reading

  http://www.snopes.com/rumors/wingdings.asp

  DOCUMENT: “ANTI-JEWISH CODE LURKS IN POPULAR SOFTWARE”, NEW YORK POST, 1992

  One of the world’s bestselling computer programs contains a secret anti-Semitic message apparently urging death to Jews in New York City.

  A computer consultant discovered the diabolic message while installing Microsoft’s new Windows 3.1 software for a client yesterday.

  The consultant was testing a mailing-address use of the program when he noticed the letters “NYC” had been replaced by a hateful message – a skull and crossbones, the Star of David and an approving thumbs-up symbol.

  Microsoft strongly denies any hidden message. Others disagree.

  “There’s no way it could be a random coincidence,” said Brian Young, a friend of the consultant, who does not wish to be named.

  “It’s pretty scary. I was pretty shocked by the whole thing.”

  Computer owners who use Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word or any other Microsoft program containing a print font named “Wingdings” can duplicate the anti-Semitic message by typing the letters “NYC” on their screen.

  Microsoft said “Wingdings” was designed by Bigelow and Holmes, an outside vendor, and denied that Microsoft intentionally designed the secret message.

  Prof. Charles Bigelow confirmed that his company provided the symbols, but insisted that Microsoft made the final “mapping” decisions assigning his symbols to specific keys on the keyboard.

  But a senior Microsoft spokesman said the charge that the fonts contain a hidden message is “outrageous”.

  “It’s like saying that if you randomly type out characters on a keyboard to spell ‘Satan’, you can do that, but it’s incredible to say that there’s anti-Semitism in Microsoft or one of its vendors,” said Charles Hemingway.

  But Young, who discussed the matter with other computer consultants, isn’t so sure it’s just a coincidence.

  The “Wingdings” font contains no letters – just 255 symbols.

  Young calculated the odds of three letters of the alphabet being combined with 255 symbols, and said he found that the odds of obtaining the message were less than one in a trillion.

  “It’s mind-blowing,” said Young. “Somebody’s responsible for this. This is very offensive.

  “I found it hard to believe some of the stories about the resurgence of Nazi sympathizers – but this puts things back into perspective.”

  MALCOLM X

  The Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, 3.05 p.m., 21 February 1965: someone in the crowd of 400 shouts out, “Get your hand outta my pocket! Don’t be messin’ with my pockets!” A smoke bomb goes off at the back of the auditorium. Chaos ensues. Out of the agitated mass of people a black man moves to the stage with a sawn-off shotgun and fires point blank at the speaker. Behind him two other men charge forward with handguns, and they likewise fire at the figure on the stage.

  Hit by what the autopsy report later called “multiple wounds in the chest, heart and aorta”, the speaker died almost instantaneously, despite the efforts of his bodyguard Gene Roberts to resuscitate him.

  The speaker was Malcolm X, the leading black politician of post-war America aside from the also-assassinated Martin Luther King.

  As Malcolm X lay with his life racing away, his assassins tried to escape, but one of the shooters, Talmadge Hayer, was caught by the crowd. Almost a year later Hayer and two other men, Norman “3x” Butler and Thomas “15x” Johnson, were convicted of the first-degree murder of Malcolm X. The case was closed, tied up with ribbon and put away in the vault. Hayer had admitted the crime and the motive was plain: internecine war between black radicals. Hayer, Butler and Johnson belonged to the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm X had been expelled after accusing founder Elijah Muhammad of the distinctly non-Koranic behaviour of fathering illegitimate children. Malcolm X had afterwards founded his own Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). A running war between the two outfits ensued. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam was reported as saying only weeks before the killing that Malcolm X was “worthy of death”. Malcolm X’s daughter Qubilah certainly considered Farrakhan the architect of her father’s death; she contracted a (failed) hit on Farrakhan in 1994.

  The assassination of Malcolm X, however, presented some discrepancies which suggested that it was not an “inside job” by black radicals:

  Hayer might have been guilty, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest that “3x” Butler and “15x” Johnson were not even in the Audubon Ballroom on the fateful day.

  Malcolm X’s meetings were usually overflowing with police, yet almost none were present on 21 February 1965.

  One of the few NYPD cops who was on duty that day (Gene Roberts) turned out to be working undercover – as Malcolm X’s bodyguard.

  Four days after Malcolm X’s assassination, one of the principal officers at OAAU, Leon “4x” Ameer, announced that he had important information on the case but feared his life was in danger. Just under three weeks later he was dead, apparently from an overdose of sleeping pills.

  Talmadge Hayer stated that, although he pulled the trigger, he was not a member of the Nation of Islam. Moreover, the man who hired him was “not a Muslim”.

  The scuttlebutt, which grew louder and louder, was that Malcolm X’s assassination had been ordered by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Malcolm X had attributes which failed to endear him to the FBI director: just for a start, he wanted the overthrow of the racially tainted American capitalist system “by any means necessary”. He kept bad company, too; he met with the likes of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

  Hoover did not balk at assassinating those he deemed Public Enemies, as the gundown of John Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago at the outset of Hoover’s career attested. Malcolm X would certainly have qualified in Hoover’s head as a Public Enemy, although calling for revolution was not actually a crime in the “land of the free”. Some strong circumstantial evidence of FBI involvement in Malcolm X’s a
ssassination came with the uncovering of an FBI Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) memo which takes credit for the shooting. The same memo also states that Gene Roberts worked for the Bureau as well as the NYPD.

  COINTELPRO was Hoover’s personal covert agency, its stock-in-trade being the infiltration of radical groups with the intention of fomenting discord, or setting up members of radical groups for assassination. In 1968 Black Panther Fred Hampton was shot dead as he slept by Chicago police (who fired a generous 89 bullets around his apartment) after an FBI tipoff.

  Could FBI agents provocateurs have manoeuvred the Nation of Islam into killing Malcolm X? Yes.

  The FBI set up Malcolm X for assassination by black radicals: ALERT LEVEL 7

  Further Reading

  Michael Friedly, Malcolm X: The Assassination, 1992