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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 28-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
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