[CTRL] 370 COINTELPRO NOUVEAUX - The Federal Bureau of Intimidation in Panama

[Agent Smiley]

Note: forwarded message attached.


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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/370-FBIntimidation/message/8   Originally published in The Panama Connection.   -------------------------     The Federal Bureau of Intimidation in Panama   History has shown us that using unethical means to achieve a worthy end can be self destructive, more so, when the end demonstrates that the objective circumstances that were the sole crutch of using those less-than-ethical tactics, in the long run, crumble in face of the facts.   The ethos of the fight against world crime is an incredible media tool that has been used by many investigative agencies for a very long time.  It is technically called psychological warfare, a relatively new term in social science, which is really just plain propaganda manipulated by shady foreign agents with personal vendettas on individuals all over the world.  The history of US intelligence is clearly an example of using covert operations and propaganda to eliminate or immobilize a "suspect".   The danger of secretly manipulating the masses for the supposed "greater good" of US national interests is that it is now being used, not in wartime, but in the general day-to-day investigations of individuals that are conspicuously against certain ideals or morals and are perceived hostile to agencies such as the FBI, CIA, etc.   Case in point is the FBI's dog-to-bone investigation into leading businessman, Marc Matthew Harris, in Panama.  Specifically, Gil Torres, Legal Attaché, stationed at the US Embassy in the Republic of Panama, who for years now has been purportedly recognized to be the FBI leak on Harris to every newspaper in the country, even though he himself has sent a memo denying any investigations into Marc Harris or his companies by any US intelligence agency.  This federal agent has consistently transgressed the limits of his position by interfering in local affairs and continues to use his status to influence Panamanian authorities, as in the case of Marc Harris.  He has been known to contact local and foreign journalists, using the media for his means, and disclosing information of sensitive and confidential nature.  Agent Torres, it is alleged, has even donated eavesdropping and taping equipment to the former head of the Panamanian PTJ (investigative arm of the national police).  Among other things, this equipment was used to tap Harris' phones and bug his offices.  When the head of the PTJ was fired for corruption, the equipment also mysteriously disappeared.   But if the FBI detests leaks, journalists live by them, and press conduct is the other great issue of the Harris affair.  La Prensa newspaper and Gustavo Gorriti are the main media vehicles of the defamation campaign against the Harris Organization.  This newspaper has featured the Marc M. Harris affair more than any other journal in the country. Many of the founders of La Prensa newspaper were supposedly involved in numerous drug and fraud related scandals in the past, like the Miami based Dadeland bank that was, according to the Oakland Tribune, a repository for Medellin drug cartel money.  Ironically, they now use the paper as their personal flag against "supposed" corruption.  It is interesting to highlight that La Prensa has lost a vast amount of credibility according to sources in the journalism business as a result of their irresponsible journalism in recent years in Panama, and in part due to their biased coverage of the Marc Harris affair.   A brief background on the newspaper editor, Gustavo Gorriti, shows that his family was involved in the founding of the Communist Party in his native Peru.  Since they were not moving fast enough, they broke away and created the Shining Path terrorist movement there.  After becoming a newspaper editor, he was thrown out of the country by then President Fujimori.  He eventually relocated to Panama to become associate director of La Prensa.  It is commented that he remains closely associated with the Shining Path and their international needs.  That same editor began attacking Harris on October 10, 1997.  Since the paper's local efforts had no effect on THO's business, he then worked through Gilberto Boutin's legal contacts (Harris' former attorney) to apparently arrange to dig up as much dirt on Harris' person.  They then began a full-scale attack at the same time as David Marchant (an offshore journalist).  Since that time, Marc Harris has received more local publicity than the past or current president.    Gorriti, the now former editor of La Prensa, was also tied into another matter in which Panama's Attorney General, Jose Antonio Sossa, criminally charged him with falsifying a check that was published in La Prensa claiming that Colombian drug dealers bankrolled the Attorney General.  The check was proven to be a forgery created by the newspaper.  The Attorney General was unable to put the editor in jail due to his repeated claims of political persecution and his constant failure to show up in court.  All this came on the heels of the denial of Attorney General Sossa of investigating Marc M. Harris on the insistence of Moncada Luna of the PTJ, Torres of the FBI, Gorriti of La Prensa and Motley of Interpol.  Gustavo Gorriti's days were counted even then, today, he is back in his native Peru, as his contract was not extended by the Board of Directors of La Prensa earlier this year.   Is it right to print in every newspaper and broadcast on every television station in Panama the name of a man who anonymous sources have said is the subject of an investigation by the FBI but who has not been arrested or charged of any crime?  Is it right to explore every aspect of his life, to cause his family to move out of the country for their own protection?  Is it right to sacrifice an individual's privacy to the abstract principle of the public's right to know?  More so, when no investigation is being pursued by any international investigative agency, as was reiterated by the FBI and others?  This paper was the first to feature full-page articles about Harris, 3 days in a row, and to later dedicate 5 full pages to the affair.  Not even the Pope, Noriega, or a visiting President of the United States has received that much coverage in one day.  La Prensa even has a special permanent feature on their home page accusing Harris of paying the attorney general off, among other things.    Unfortunately, Agent Torres seems to have a free reign of his duties in Panama, including that of hounding public figures through certain shady associations with the press and lawyers under criminal investigation.  It is safe to say that one of the shady characters to initiate the defamation campaign against Marc Harris was Gilberto Boutin, as was previously mentioned.  Previous legal adviser to The Harris Organization, a law professor from the Sorbonne, he came to THO through the Swiss Bank Corporation, when he tried to defraud the Panamanian subsidiary of all its assets.    During 1997, he forged invoices for millions of dollars (within THO's own data system) and then sued the local Harris subsidiary, alleging its failure to pay him the amount of those fake invoices.  He was able to conceal his intentions from everyone in the Organization, including the auditors.    On October 8, 1997 his fraud was discovered and THO went after him with a vengeance. Ultimately, the materialization of his objective was avoided.  The legal course of the case is a different issue, but the strong blow to this man's ego has undoubtedly played a major role in the attacks to The Harris Organization.  After being discovered, it was reported to our sources that Boutin went to see Gil Torres at the US Embassy and offered him to crack Panamanian bank secrecy and sell out Harris' clients.  This happened in October of 1997.    Boutin also disclosed files that were initially given to him by his client (Harris) for legal consideration, to Gustavo Gorriti of La Prensa, one of these files being on Wallace Stull and James Sommerville.  Furthermore, another mysterious fact of Boutin is his being the last person to be contacted by Hans Jorg Bosch, the former manager of the Swiss Bank Corporation in Panama, before his physical disappearance.  His whereabouts or remains have yet to be found.   One of Boutin's sidekicks is David Marchant, the editor of a small offshore newsletter of only 150 subscriber which he uses to "expose" supposed frauds.  Boutin apparently contacted Marchant and La Prensa regarding the Marc M. Harris affair and started an "investigative report" aimed at exposing the Harris Organization as a Ponzi scheme.  (Marchant and La Prensa closely work together on publications about Harris.)  Reportedly, Marchant visited Panama once and stayed at a local hotel, courtesy of La Prensa.  In 1998, the Harris Organization sued David Marchant on libel and slander in a US Court in Miami, Florida.  Unfortunately, the judge found there was not enough evidence to suggest that Marchant was negligent in his handling of the information he printed against the Harris Organization.   Before Marchant's attack in 1998, Harris was a figure of relatively low profile in Panama.  Apart from some charitable donations and editorial contributions about macroeconomics, he was rarely featured in the local press.  As you can see, this play has many actors and surely a complex plot, and it has its origins in 1997 when Boutin was discovered as he tried to rip off millions from his then employer Marc M. Harris.  He then used his relationship with Agent Gil Torres to begin the smear campaign.  If not for Agent Torres purportedly being willing to facilitate questionable information to Boutin, the media, and local authorities, none of La Prensa's stories would have carried much weight in Panamanian legal and governmental circles.   These matters are not unusual in the recent history of the FBI, which --- including Waco, Richard Jewell and Ruby Ridge -- have led many people to question the competence of some of its senior managers.  Recently, for example, as the result of complaints by an FBI whistle blower -- the Justice Department's Inspector General completed an investigation that found fault with some aspects of the FBI's National Laboratory.  What then should you expect of an agency whose most popular figure was nothing more than a racist, fascist, anti-privacy hoodlum whose passion was to amass every titbit of data he could to wield as his own Excalibur for political, rather than enforcement, purposes?   The bureau today remains one of the most closed and least examined enforcement agencies of the federal government.  The failure of this powerful and growing institution to provide Congress, public interest groups, reporters and individual members of the public with complete information about its basic activities raises the question of whether the FBI sees itself as operating outside the normal boundaries of representative government.   In the Harris case, because time and time again, the FBI element of the incessant Panamanian propaganda has conducted itself as an outright political police, amounting to nothing more than a domestic/foreign version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world, The Harris Organization is taking the extreme measure of soliciting an investigation to the Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility and is also prepared to solicit an inquiry by both the House and the Senate to the actions of Legal Attaché, Gil Torres and those from whom he takes his orders.   One is tempted to ask the question: When people in the FBI commit crimes, how do they get handled?  They don't.  They're forgotten about.  Agent Gil Torres has apparently utilized "media assets" to plant smear stories in the press - some insinuating that Harris was indeed being investigated for money laundering, as was not the case in a later memo.  Is this not utterly contrary to what the present Director of the FBI so staunchly writes on his "Report to the American People on the Work of the FBI, 1993 - 1998"?  He states that, "Ethics is the golden thread which runs throughout our training.  It often is the difference between correctly applying the awesome power of law enforcement and conduct that undermines the rule of law."  He goes on by saying, "Standards-of-conduct training includes discussion of the rules governing the acceptance of gifts from outside sources, conflicts-of-interests, outside activity limitations, and other matters."  If this is really the Code of Ethics adhered to by the FBI, why then are they harboring an agent whose "conflicts of interests" are never ending and seems to not tire of singling out an individual to the Panamanian media when he has nothing on him?   Do you know how many crimes the FBI has committed?  How many black-bag jobs?  Breaking and entering?  Thousands, but are any of them convicted of what for any normal citizen would constitute a few years in prison?  It happens every once in a while, but only when huge public attention finally gets focused on them.  That is why the Harris Organization has decided to go forward on a formal investigation on this rogue agent who has focused solely on Marc M. Harris during his tenure in Panama.  His practices are almost reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover's famous COINTELPRO, which was designed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups whose views the FBI deemed threatening to the status quo.  We do not believe that Attorney Charles Bonaparte, who founded the Bureau of Investigation in 1909, would be pleased with the state of ethics and efficiency existing today in the FBI!  Bonaparte, unlike today's senior managers in the bureau was determined to "establish a force of well educated investigators of good character, subject to extremely strict discipline and supervision."   The characterization of an FBI Legal Attaché, as is Gil Torres are "senior FBI Special Agents stationed at U.S. Embassies to work with their local counterparts against crime problems of joint concern, in the process building vital "cop-to-cop" relationships."  If this is true, and there are no "crimes" or other "legal" impediments against Marc M. Harris, the individual, then why is Mr. Torres so inclined to hound him insistently?  It is of common knowledge that Agent Torres had dealings other than "cop-to-cop", with Alejandro Moncada Luna, the now former director of the Policía Técnica Judicial of Panama, the investigative arm of the national police.  Keep in mind the eavesdropping equipment that Agent Torres allegedly donated to Moncada Luna to assist him in his witchhunt against Marc Harris.  Moncada Luna was also the person responsible for failing to proceed accordingly, when the Supreme Court issued a warrant for Boutin's arrest.  However, after Boutin was found and arrested in a compromising situation (hanging on to the shingles of a house in the countryside), Moncada, in conjunction with Gil Torres, Jorge Motley (the former head of Interpol in Panama), Gustavo Gorriti and others tried to initiate an investigation against Marc Harris and his Panama operation disregarding the fact that there was and is no indictment against him in the United States, and that Harris' operations in Panama have never been found guilty of any illegality.  Moncada's then boss, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, refused to allow the investigation due to lack of proof.  Moncada's last failure before being fired was his non-investigation of the disappearance of Hans Jorg Bosch, the former manager of the Swiss Bank Corporation in Panama, of whom nothing is known to this date, only that his last phone conversation was with Gilberto Boutin.   Another "cop-to-cop" relationship that is worthwhile to mention in this web of "conspirators" against Marc Harris is now former director of Interpol Panama, and close collaborator of Moncada Luna, Jorge Motley.  His participation in this matter was mainly filtering documents related to the Organization's companies as well as of other international branches of the Organization.  It has been said that he personally requested, under pressure from Moncada Luna, an Interpol investigation of Harris, which did not prosper, but was highly publicized in La Prensa newspaper.  Both Motley and the former chief of police appear to have been involved in the original kidnapping attempts against Marc M. Harris' family.  One other interesting individual in this yarn is ironically, now head of Panama's National Security Council, who's infamous last name is tied to a drug-trafficking sister who's delictive ways were hushed during her brother's tenure as sub-director of the Policía Técnica Judicial (PTJ) in which he was fired by Attorney General Sossa, along with his then-boss, Alejandro Moncada.   Another definition of the Legal Attaché abroad is that  "they serve the nation (US) as a critical public safety asset abroad to aid investigations that are being carried out in the United States. "  More than 80 percent of the current case load handled by Legal Attaché offices is in direct support of domestic FBI investigations, including the priority of helping to arrange the arrest and extradition to the United States of wanted criminals and facilitate resolution of the FBI's domestic investigations which have international leads.  But what then is Mr. Torres investigating if, in his own words, there are "NO" investigations on Marc M. Harris?  Nonetheless, the Harris Organization has decided to take the high road because of the certainty that a contest against such powerful antagonists as the FBI and the media is not the way to go.   If the press leaks that Richard Jewell was "prime suspect" in the Atlanta Olympic bombing did not help the credibility or reputation of the FBI nationally; this case then would be the international version of the infamous FBI leaking information to the press.  With our insistence to the Department of Justice, we would like to uncover the value of Mr. Torres tipping reporters that the FBI suspected Marc Harris of money laundering or drug trafficking.  In Jewell's case in Atlanta, Director Freeh decreed that leaking be forbidden in the FBI and could result in dismissal.  It seems, in this case that the FBI's "core values" are for public consumption purposes only.   We live in a world were the presumption of innocence seems to have eroded, and the responsibility of this sits on the shoulders of both the law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, and the media, who understand very well that once you put a name out to the masses, the caveats tend to get lost in the shuffle.  It is undoubtedly a technique that works quite well since everyone in Panama now has a good picture of who Marc Harris "supposedly" is, according to the FBI leaks, what happened to him and that he is a suspect of a money laundering investigation by the FBI. This was done in such a way that it convicted him on the spot without even an investigation into the matter.   One of the cop-outs of the Panamanian media is that the public had a right to know when authorities' doubts about such a prominent figure in the financial arena.  However, it was in fact these publications that made Harris a prominent figure, as he was relatively unknown in Panama before the attacks by La Prensa and David Marchant.  Their reporting accurately pinpointed when those doubts, in form of leaks, turned Marc Harris into the focus of a "phantom" investigation by supplying false and misleading information solely for the benefit of Torres and his Panamanian henchmen.  Even now after more than 4 years, La Prensa continues to carry in their articles that Marc Harris is being investigated for drug trafficking or money laundering; both cases are outright lies that have been denied by US investigative agencies, time and time again.   The most recent turn of events in the campaign against The Harris Organization and Marc M. Harris is just the tip of the iceberg in this complex plot.  It seems illogical that in a country with such serious economic problems, and with an unemployment rate hitting the ceiling, authorities focus on attempts to close down an operation that employs more than 120 individuals, rather than implementing strategies to generate more employment.  Illogical, yes, but that is because there are underlying players, which have been mentioned throughout this article, that use local organisms as pawns in a vicious crusade of defamation and character assassination that threatens the international image of the country as a legally safe place for foreign investors.  The last one of these players is the Comision Nacional de Valores (CNV) a recently instituted government agency almost, but not quite comparable to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.  They have recently implemented a number of regulations regarding investments offered from Panama, a matter that had never been regulated before.  Though there are dozens of firms in the country that have yet to comply with these regulations, the CNV has made it their mission to single THO out from the rest and expose the firm as an operation outside the law.  THO has complied with the Commission's requirements, filed in an application and is taking the necessary steps to obtain the necessary permits and licenses.  There have been a number of high-profile cases involving local financial institutions that have defrauded local investors (Estrellamar and The Providence Group), but the CNV has failed to investigate them properly because of their personal relationships to the implicated individuals in the case that has defrauded hundreds of Panamanians from millions of dollars.  Officials of this body also seem to have close links to Gilberto Boutin and other players in this saga.   It is an uphill battle that someone needs to fight. The fact is there has been no Congressional committee which has mustered the political will and staff to carry out a comprehensive review of the FBI.  However, we believe that the bureau's political power being greater than at any time in its history, an examination of the questions of how well certain individuals are performing their so-called "crime-fighting missions" is well overdue.    If nothing is done to curb these abuses, which are certain to be happening elsewhere, no one is sheltered from being flung into a world of lies and innuendo solely for the deep-seated pleasure of a select few.  Other individuals, which could be you, could turn out to be the next Richard Jewel, or in this case, the next Marc M. Harris. What are we really doing to reveal the truths about the law enforcement officers in the United States and around the world?  Who acts as their checks and balances? The FBI's profound resistance to providing Congress and the American people with concrete information about what it is doing and how it is doing it means that the federal government¹s largest investigative agency is not subject to meaningful oversight.  Several years ago FBI Director Louis Freeh told a House Judiciary Subcommittee that the FBI is "potentially the most dangerous agency in the country if we are not scrutinized properly."  In reality it never has been fully scrutinized nor will it ever be.  Hence, as huge flops continue to abruptly materialize (the McVeigh files, for example), it is safe to say that the Federal Bureau of Intimidation IS the most dangerous agency, not only in the United States, but as the Harris case illustrates, in the world.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   This editorial was prepared by Marisabel Boyd and Wesley Trammel.   Originally Published. 15 May 2001. Revised. 1 July 2001. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    --------------------------- In Panama reality is greater then fiction... Panama is a Casablanca without heroes... from the Tailor in Panama Panama is a phoenician country were money is thicker than blood... When the Americans took Noriega they took Ali Baba, but they left the forty thieves behind ... --------------------------- You may visit our page at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/950_The_Panama_Connection

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