-Caveat Lector-
[In MY continuing effort to remain (and post) impartially, I
submit the following for your consideration. Remember, however,
that ANY BODY, I repeat, ANYBODY, is better than a Bush;-) --MS]
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20001016_xex_cia_official.shtml
WorldNetDaily
Monday, October 16, 2000
CIA Official: Gore Compromised by Secret Past
Says Russia has dossiers on VP's former drug use, Hammer connection
By Charles Thompson and Tony Hays
© 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Editor's note: The following report on Vice President Al Gore's
alleged past drug use, as well as his deep connections with
Soviet operative Armand Hammer, was researched and written by
native Tennessee reporters Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays.
Thompson is a long-time veteran of network news, having been a
founding producer of ABC's "20/20," as well as Mike Wallace's
producer at CBS's "60 Minutes." His most recent book, "A Glimpse
of Hell: The Explosion on the U.S.S. Iowa and Its Cover-Up," was
released by W.W. Norton in Spring 1999. Hays is a veteran
journalist who has written extensively on political corruption in
Tennessee. Recently his 20-part series on narcotics trafficking
received an award from the Tennessee Press Association.
According to a former high-ranking official in the CIA, Russian
intelligence agencies possess thick dossiers concerning Al Gore's
heavy usage of drugs three decades ago as well as his father's
questionable dealings with Armand Hammer, a dedicated Soviet
operative for 70 years.
The CIA source, speaking to WorldNetDaily on condition of
anonymity, has since the 1970s routinely advised American
presidents, including President Clinton, on Russian intelligence.
There is credible evidence, says the source, that these dossiers
have already been employed to alter Gore's behavior on issues
affecting Russia. As an example, he cited Gore's acquiescence to
the corruption of former Russian Prime Minister Viktor
Chernomyrdin, who co-chaired a commission with Gore to encourage
Americans to do business in Russia. Chernomyrdin accumulated from
one to five billion dollars in personal assets from the
systematic looting of the Soviet state treasury during the time
he co-chaired the commission with Gore.
Republican presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush brought
this exact point up during last week's second debate with Gore.
"We went into Russia," said Bush. "We said, 'Here's some IMF
money,' and it ended up in Viktor Chernomyrdin's pocket and
others. And yet we played like there was reform."
As WND has reported previously, American businessmen, who were
threatened with death by the Russian mafia and/or had their
assets expropriated by these gangsters, say their complaints were
brushed aside by Gore and his aides while the vice president
chaired the committee meant to help them.
"Chernomyrdin didn't have to show Gore the incriminating
dossiers; Gore knew he had them. It's akin to blackmail and
extortion, but it's really using highly embarrassing information
on a sustained basis," said the source, who has been associated
with America's foreign policy elite for three decades as a chief
adviser on intelligence matters.
"The situation will get much worse if Gore's elected president.
Russian president Vladimir Putin [a former KGB colonel who has
mob connections] will tell Gore, in effect, 'I've got the files
and this is what we want you to do.' And Gore will do it," he
added.
Earlier this year, John C. Warnecke Jr., a former Tennessean
newspaper reporter in Nashville, told Newsweek reporter Bill
Turque that he and Al Gore had spent many a night together nearly
30 years ago imbibing cognac and smoking opium-laced marijuana.
Warnecke worked with Gore in 1971 and remained a good friend
through 1976. Ken Jost, another former reporter for the
newspaper, backed up Warnecke's account after Turque's biography,
"Inventing Al Gore," was published.
In years past, The Tennessean had treated Warnecke as if he were
royalty due to the fact that his father has close connections to
the Kennedy family, as did John Seigenthaler, the former editor
and publisher of the paper. Seigenthaler considered himself to be
a king-maker and recruited both Warnecke and Gore to join the
paper's staff, largely because of their respective fathers'
political clout. Seigenthaler was the one who first convinced Al
Gore Jr. to run for Congress.
Even so, after his revelations about Gore's alleged drug use, the
paper didn't waste any time training its editorial guns on the
53-year-old Warnecke.
It was quick to bring up the fact that he had once suffered from
depression. Warnecke admitted he had been depressed 20 years ago,
but said he had obtained treatment then and was fine now. The
paper cited 31 former Tennessean staffers who had worked with
Gore and Warnecke in the early 1970s who said they had never seen
Gore smoke marijuana. Three others deferred comment.
Gore called the story "old news" and said he used marijuana "when
I came back from Vietnam, but not to that extent." One of the
trio who refused to discuss Gore's drug usage was the top editor,
Frank Sutherland, who had allegedly partied with Gore and
Warnecke.
"If Al Gore wants to talk about his private life, that fine,"
Sutherland said. "But I'm not going to talk about my private
life. That's nobody's business." An ardent Gore supporter,
Sutherland went so far as to appear in a Gore campaign video.
In early June, Sutherland couldn't find space in his newspaper to
report the story about the overflowing sewage in a ramshackle
house Gore rents on the edge of his 80-acre estate in Carthage,
Tenn., to a disabled man, his wife and their five handicapped
children. Even though the story appeared on the Associated Press
and on the front page of almost every major newspaper in America,
Sutherland said it didn't merit sending a reporter from Nashville
to Carthage, about 60 miles away.
One of the tenants, Tracy Mayberry, said she had complained
repeatedly about clogged toilets, overflowing sinks and the odor
of sewage that permeated the house, but received no satisfaction
from Gore. Even after he was widely chided as a "slumlord," Gore
apparently didn't take the matter all that seriously, because the
repairs were carried out in a slipshod, grudging manner.
Disgusted, Mayberry and her family vacated the premises and moved
to the Midwest, where she said she was going to vote for George
W. Bush.
Whatever the Russians have in their dope dossiers regarding Gore,
the material can't match what's apparently in the Gore/Armand
Hammer files. The squalid Gore/Hammer relationship, according to
one longtime observer of Hammer, is much like a B-grade gothic
movie, replete with spying, murder, bribery, art forgery, jewelry
theft and exploitation of workers and the environment.
'Remarkable life' Until Armand Hammer's death on Dec. 7, 1990, at
age 92, a story such as this could probably not be written.
During his lifetime, Hammer commissioned three vanity
biographies, including one entitled "The Remarkable Life of Dr.
Armand Hammer," to camouflage his dealings with Russia.
His public relations staff doled these volumes out to reporters,
and over time fiction became accepted as fact. Any reporter who
dug too deeply into Hammer's background was threatened with a
lawsuit. Steve Weinberg, a well-respected journalist and
University of Missouri professor, was the only writer to produce
an unauthorized biography about Hammer. Published nearly two
years before Hammer's death, the well-researched book drew
Hammer's ire. He had his attorneys file a lawsuit in England
alleging that 156 passages were defamatory.
Weinberg did not have the same defenses against libel in England
that he would in the U.S. He had the burden of proving that all
156 passages were true. If just one were proven false, Weinberg
would have lost the entire case. As it was, his publisher was
forced to pay millions of dollars in legal expenses. The case was
dropped when Hammer died.
Hammer's attorneys also threatened retired Marine Lt. Col. Bill
Corson for what he wrote about Armand and his father, Julius, in
Corson's 1985 book, "The New KGB." Corson, who died earlier this
year, was a legendary expert on intelligence who had served in
combat in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He told attorney Louis
Nizer, who was famous in his own right, to pound sand after Nizer
threatened to bring legal action. Nizer never followed up on his
threat to sue.
In the past 10 years, a glut of CIA and FBI documents concerning
Hammer's extensive dealings with Russia have been declassified.
In addition, a hard-hitting book, "Dossier: The Secret History of
Armand Hammer" by Edward Jay Epstein was published four years
ago. This material provides rich insight into Hammer's treasonous
activities on behalf of the Communist Party.
Interestingly enough, only a trickle of documents have been
released concerning the Gore/Hammer relationship from the Russian
archives. This, despite the fact that millions of documents on
other subjects have been dislodged since the dissolution of the
former Soviet Union 10 years ago.
"The Russians don't want anybody chasing down that rat hole,
poking into those side corridors involving the Gores," the CIA
source said. "Al Gore Jr. is clearly still a valuable asset to
the Russians."
Armand Hammer was born on May 21, 1898, in Manhattan. His father,
Julius Hammer, told friends that he named his son for the arm and
hammer emblem of one of the Communist Party predecessor
organizations. Julius, a dedicated revolutionary most of his
life, was born in the Jewish ghetto of Odessa in 1874. He spent
his youth in Russia, and when he was 16 moved with his family to
America.
One of the founders of the Communist Party in America, Julius
Hammer raised huge sums of money for radicals both before and
after the Russian Revolution, sometimes by theft. A graduate of
Columbia College's medical school program, Julius was primarily
an abortionist. He also controlled eight drugstores from which he
siphoned off assets for the benefit of the Bolsheviks.
Armand followed in his father's footsteps to Columbia College and
was a second-year medical student in 1919, working afternoons in
his father's clinic, when tragedy struck. Julius Hammer was
charged with manslaughter after a 33-year-old woman underwent an
abortion in the clinic located in the Hammer home and later bled
to death. Although Julius admitted performing the abortion, he
claimed it was medically justified. However, author Edward Jay
Epstein asserts that it was Armand, not Julius, who actually
performed the abortion on Marie Oganesoff, the wife of a Russian
diplomat who had come to America for the czarist regime during
World War I. Not long after his father was arrested, Armand
dropped out of medical school. Despite this, he referred to
himself as "Doctor Hammer" for the rest of his life.
Julius's trial dragged on for almost a year. It was interrupted
by a charge that William Cope, a public relations man retained by
him, had attempted to bribe a juror. The jury finally found
Julius guilty and sentenced him to three-and-one-half years of
hard labor at Sing Sing State Prison.
Julius's imprisonment left the Hammer family in a quandary. At
that time, there seemed to be a good chance that the worldwide
embargo of Russia would be loosened, allowing foreign
entrepreneurs to make a financial killing in that impoverished
country. Julius had been planning on returning to Russia to take
advantage of the situation, but now Armand was designated to go.
A callow youth with no business experience, he couldn't even
speak Russian. Nevertheless, he was shrewd and could capitalize
on his family's sterling relations with Lenin, Leon Trotsky and
other communist luminaries. Armand was later joined in Russia by
his brothers, Viktor and Harry, and by his father after he was
released from prison.
In 1921, Armand drew the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, then a
26-year-old lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice spearheading
the "red round-ups." The future FBI director heard from an
informant that Hammer was a courier for the newly organized
Communist International, or Comintern. Hoover alerted British
authorities, and Hammer was searched when his ship reached
Southampton, England. A propaganda film was found in his
possession. Scotland Yard detained him on the ship for two days
and then allowed him to go his own way. Although Hoover kept
close tabs on Hammer for another half century, he never arrested
him, possibly because Hammer's Russian spymasters had amassed so
much dirt on the FBI chief.
After a meeting with Lenin in the Kremlin in 1921, Armand later
recorded in his dairy: "If Lenin told me to jump out that window,
I probably would have done it." He said he was "captivated" by
Lenin and agreed to do anything he asked. Lenin granted Hammer
the first U.S. concession in Russia, a run-down asbestos mine.
Josef Stalin, Lenin's brutish successor who murdered millions of
his countrymen, later granted Hammer a concession to manufacture
pencils in Russia.
In addition to these ventures, Hammer spent much of the 1920s
serving as a courier and paymaster to a multitude of active spies
salted away in 20 countries. It was a miserable existence for
Hammer, one-night stays at down-at-the-heel hotels, constantly
dodging counter-intelligence agents who pursued him.
In 1922, embittered by the atrocious working conditions and
miserly pay at the asbestos mine, the workers revolted. Hammer
quickly got in touch with Felix Dzerzhinski, head of the Cheka,
the dreaded Soviet secret police for help. The Cheka brutally
suppressed the strike. Hammer wrote glowingly about Dzerzhinski's
tactics. He said he had been with the police chief in the Urals,
and when a train was late, Dzerzhinski became enraged. He ordered
a detachment of Cheka troops to take the chief train
administrator and his assistant to a courtyard and shot as a
"lesson" for the other workers. Hammer was impressed by
Dzerzhinski's brutal methods, telling colleagues that he had
witnessed an example of the ends justifying the means.
After Armand's return to New York in late 1931, he separated from
his Russian-born wife, Olga, a former cabaret singer, and his
young son, Julian. He later divorced Olga and was reconciled with
Julian. The divorce was part of his attempt to obscure his
dealings with the Soviet Union. For the next decade, Hammer
devoted much of his time to promoting and running Hammer
Galleries in New York. These galleries were a Soviet front used
to peddle fake Romanoff jewelry and counterfeit art. Russia was
strapped for money, and this was a desperate attempt to raise
hard currency. The shipments that arrived from Russian included
everything from costume jewelry to Torah scrolls stolen from
synagogues and icons ripped from the walls of orthodox churches.
Almost none of it had been owned by the czars. Faberge Easter
eggs were also faked. Hammer was allowed to keep very little of
the profits. A master of disinformation, at one time when Hammer
had only $2,000 in his banking account, he was widely touted in
the press as being a multi-millionaire.
In 1940, even though he had signed a non-aggression pact with
Adolph Hitler, Stalin was mistrustful of his German allies and
enlisted Hammer to influence President Franklin Roosevelt to help
Russia if she were invaded. Roosevelt was well aware of Hammer's
background from J. Edgar Hoover and from British intelligence.
Roosevelt met once with Hammer, for just five minutes. Hammer's
mission was a failure. The Roosevelt administration was well
aware of who Hammer's real masters were and shunned him.
Hammer was nervous during the 1950s as the Korean War was being
fought and anti-Soviet sentiment grew throughout America. He saw
himself being jailed as his father had been. Somehow, that never
happened, although others were imprisoned or deported for much
lesser offenses.
Enter Al Gore Sr.
During this same time, Hammer brazenly petitioned the U.S.
government for a license to export synthetic nitrogen-based and
ammonia fertilizer to Russia. This fertilizer could also be used
to make military explosives and munitions. Most of the fertilizer
would be manufactured at a $75 million West Virginia plant owned
by the U.S. Army. Hammer submitted the highest bid for a 15-year
lease on the plant. Denied access to the Truman administration,
he enlisted key members of Congress, most notably Albert Gore
Sr., to lobby in his behalf. He put Gore on his payroll.
Hammer cut Gore in on a sweetheart deal when Occidental purchased
Hooker Chemical Company in 1969. According to author Bob Zelnick,
who was then an ABC News correspondent, the Tennessee senator was
allowed to purchase a thousand Hooker shares at $150, far less
than the stock was worth. Gore was also made a partner in
Hammer's cattle-breeding business, from which the Tennessee
senator earned tidy profits. Gore reciprocated by doing favors
for Hammer, such as cutting through Justice Department opposition
to make an FBI agent available to testify for Hammer in a civil
suit.
Zelnick lost his job at ABC News after he refused to honor the
network's demands that he break his contract with Regnery
Publishing, Inc. to write his book, "Gore: A Political Life." He
now teaches graduate courses in journalism at Boston University.
The House Armed Services Committee looked into Hammer's
fertilizer deal and grilled him about his dealings with Russia.
The Army refused to do business with him. The FBI was also
hostile, and the Hammer deal ultimately went down in flames.
About that same time, Hammer's 26-year-old-son, Julian, was
charged with first-degree manslaughter after he shot an old Army
drinking buddy, Bruce Whitlock, twice in the chest in Julian's
Los Angeles apartment. Julian told police that he and Whitlock
had quarreled about a $400 gambling debt. Armand Hammer spread
bribe money around, and employed Rep. James Roosevelt as an
intermediary. The eldest son of President Franklin Roosevelt,
James Roosevelt had been eased out of the White House staff by
his father, because he frequently intervened in politically
sensitive cases and offered his influence to financial backers of
the Democratic Party.
James Roosevelt informed Hammer that he was in deep financial
trouble, requiring $2,500 for alimony payments and debts. He also
asked and received $10,000 from Hammer for a partnership in a
failing business he owned. Through Roosevelt's intervention,
Hammer's bribes, reportedly amounting to $50,000, and the slick
manipulations of his attorneys, the charges were dismissed
against Julian.
Hammer was the guest of Sen. Albert Gore Sr. at the inauguration
of President John F. Kennedy on Jan. 19, 1961. That evening,
Hammer and Gore hoped to talk with the new president about Soviet
President Nikita Khrushchev's proposal for "coexistence" with the
West. However, the meeting never took place. Hammer had recently
become chairman of Occidental Petroleum, then a financially
strapped venture, and he allegedly skimmed millions from his
third wife's substantial settlement from her former husband to
keep Occidental afloat. After Kennedy and his White House aides
rebuffed Hammer's bid to represent the U.S. at a meeting with
Khrushchev in Moscow, Albert Gore Sr. approached Secretary of
Commerce Luther Hodges and persuaded Hodges to allow Hammer
travel to Russia under the Commerce Department's auspices.
That same year, Hammer also attempted to reinstate a variation of
the fertilizer deal with Russia that had been shot down a decade
before. This scheme was avidly supported by Rep. Roosevelt and
Sen. Gore. The FBI learned about the deal from wiretaps on key
Soviet agents.
This information was brought to the attention of William
Sullivan, then the number-three man at the FBI. W.A. Brannigyn,
special-agent-in-charge of the FBI's New York office, wrote
Sullivan on Feb. 23, 1961, "Hammer has been described by a
business associate as a loyal American but (is) unscrupulous and
a type 'who would do business with devil if there was a profit in
it.'" Brannigyn also wrote that because of the "political
overtones" of Hammer's proposed deal, the U.S. should avoid any
dealings with him.
Hammer's wholesale bribing of Libyan officials in the 1960s to
obtain drilling and exportation rights for Occidental was
credited by knowledgeable sources as having caused the overthrow
of King Idris by Muammar Gaddafi, then only a 27-year-old
sub-lieutenant in the Libyan army, in 1969. The year before that
happened, Hammer and his third wife, Frances, and Gore Sr. had
attended an extravagant affair in Libya staged by Hammer to honor
the King Idris and his court. Occidental didn't fare all that
well with Gaddafi.
Not long after Richard Nixon became president in 1969, Hammer
began petitioning administration figures to normalize U.S./Soviet
relations. According to a CIA memo, Hammer worked through an
experienced KGB officer, Mikhail Bruk, to smooth the way for him
to return to Moscow. Hammer announced at a press conference that
he had concluded "a wide-ranging agreement" with the Soviets for
his company. Occidental's stock value shot up 19 points before
analysts determined that most of it was pie-in-the-sky. The CIA
labeled the deal a stock swindle. CIA director Richard Helms sent
Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, a memo on
Aug. 1, 1972, which included excerpts from the agency's
voluminous files on Hammer and Russia in order to blackball
Hammer's most recent Russian proposal.
"The financial community is skeptical about the worth of this
agreement," Helms wrote.
Hammer donated $54,000 in laundered $100 bills to President
Richard Nixon's reelection campaign during the spring of 1972.
Watergate special prosecutors moved against him, and his
attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, persuaded Hammer to plead
guilty in 1975 to misdemeanor charges of making illegal campaign
contributions. He was fined a mere $3,000 and put on probation,
but not sent to prison. He immediately launched a crusade to have
his guilty pleas set aside.
For the remaining years of his life, Hammer commuted back and
forth to Moscow, failed several times in his attempt to wangle a
Nobel Peace Prize and battled to keep his life as Soviet agent
secret. He also continued to do business with Albert Gore Sr. --
and began an alliance with Gore's son, Al Jr.
By 1990 when Hammer died, Gore Sr. had been a full-time Hammer
employee for 20 years after having lost his 1970 senatorial
reelection bid. After Gore's defeat, Hammer put him on the
Occidental board of directors and subsequently made him chairman
of an Occidental subsidiary, Island Creek Coal Co., the third
largest coal producer in America.
'Money in the bank'
Of all the deals and financial schemes that Sen. Albert Gore Sr.,
the father of the current presidential candidate, was involved in
with Soviet agent and business mogul Armand Hammer, none was more
tawdry than their bull-and-heifer breeding venture.
In 1950, with Hammer's encouragement and financial support, Gore
began buying and breeding prize Aberdeen-Angus cattle in a big
way for his farm outside Carthage, Tenn., which he was turning
into a baronial estate. Gore's hometown paper, The Carthage
Courier, contains stories during the 1950s and '60s of important
politicians, lobbyists, sports figures, defense contractors and
government vendors flocking to Tennessee to attend a Gore cattle
auction. A former Gore senatorial office staffer, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity, said that many of the buyers never
bothered to pick up their livestock after plunking down thousands
of dollars for the animals.
END: PART 1
[Lemme know if any one want's me to post Part 2. --MS]
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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