In mid August 1975 I was completing my first week of research for Congressman James V. Stanton. The preceding week Congressman Stanton was unexpectedly given the chairmanship of an important subcommittee of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee which was mandated to investigate allegations of secret police activity on the part of CIA and FBI. When I called to offer my research services and those of 4 law students from CLEVELAND MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL )) the congressman's alma mater )))Stanton assigned us to his administrative director, Mike Sweeney.
This first week we were studying the senate testimony of two noted capos of organized crime ))) Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana. They had been called to testify before the CHURCH COMMITTEE, our sister committee in the Senate, about joint CIA/Mafia attempts to kill Fidel Castro. They had both cited the 5th amendment a countless number of times when asked about CIA connections with these contract hits and with the assassination of President Kennedy. They were both due to testify again )))) only this time they were being granted an involuntary immunity. This meant that if they did not answer all questions they could be cited for contempt of congress )))) carrying a possible 3 years imprisonment.
Two weeks before I joined the staff, Johnny Roselli's mutilated body turned up floating in an oil drum off the coast of Florida. This sets the stage for the day I walked into the office to find Mike Sweeney and the entire staff in a state of shock. On Mr. Sweeney's desk was the morning edition of the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER with a nondescript three paragraph story in the bottom right collum of the front page. Sam Giancana, the undisputed head of the Chicago mob for 30 years, had been shot 5 times through the face in his own home the night before!
What made this especially shocking to us was our knowledge that Giancana was under 24 hour FBI surveillance at the time. More shocking was the newspaper's omission of Giancana's upcoming Senate testimony ))) to us the obvious motive for the rub out. This omission troubled Sweeney, who dispatched me to the nearest newsstand to purchase the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, LA TIMES and every out of town newspaper available. I returned with more than a dozen ))) all of which carried essentially the identical 3 nondescript paragraphs ))) all omitting the obvious motive! In a state that could medically be described as shock, Sweeney kept repeating "Tomorrow it could be one of us who is murdered and the newspapers would not mention what we were working on." Beyond our wildest imaginations we had just experienced our first "news black)out".
In 1977 I interviewed for the research staff of the SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS, the House committee empowered to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Both Jacky Hess and Gerald Hamilton, the Deputy Directors of the Kennedy and King investigations respectively, strongly recommended me for hire. Their boss, Donovan Gay, the Research Director, said the committee had committed to hire 3 people before I was interviewed. He promised I would be the 4th person hired and they were intending to hire another 15 researchers and 15 investigators.
Unfortunately I misjudged the intentions of the committee. I didn't realize that the fix was in at the highest levels. In addition to 2 university presidents and a federal judge I made the mistake of including Penn Jones, perhaps the top JFK researcher in the nation, in my references. Both chief councils, Richard Sprague and Robert Blakey were cover)up specialists who addressed this problem by stopping the hiring process with me. When it was clear that the resolution to reinvestigate these assassinations would pass the House, a highly tenured congressman, whose congressional district just happened to include CIA Headquarters at Langley Field, signed on insuring that he would become chairman of the committee. This congressman, Thomas N. Downing then appointed Richard Sprague chief council. Sprague was a law partner of Arlen Specter, the council for the WARREN COMMISSION noted for the "magic bullet theory" (Today Specter represents Pennsylvania in the US Senate). Obviously my chances were doomed.
I could perceive that all the levels below the Chief Council were persons like myself in pursuit of the mandate of the committee. I had a special status since the staff assumed that I would be joining them some time soon. There is an up side and a down side to everything. Never officially hired, I never had to sign the life long nondisclosure agreement that Chief Council Robert Blakey insisted all researchers and investigators sign. Had I signed this I might be reluctant to be giving this information now.
I was determined to discover the mechanism that could "black out" the news nation wide. In 1977 I was in a fraternity of researchers surrounding the committee from which such inquiries could be launched. I found what I was looking for in a senate document called THE DISCLOSURE OF CORPORATE OWNERSHIP OF THE BROADCAST INDUSTRY (Document No. 93)62 93rd Congress 2nd Session March 4, 1974). In the ten page preface of this document is a description of the gravity of our present situation in language so simple every American can clearly understand.
This document clearly stated that by 1972 a hand full of international banks had illegally usurped corporate control of the entire broadcast industry! During a period when FCC regulations clearly prohibited ownership of more than 1% of a broadcast company, the CHASE MANHATTAN BANK alone held 14.1% of CBS, 6.7% of ABC, 4.5% of RCA the parent company of NBC, and 5% of TIME/LIFE. Elsewhere in the report a controlling interest was defined as 5% or more. I can assure the reader matters have only gotten much worse over the years.
This is why the air waves today are congested with trashy filler about the bad check scandal in congress at a time when the connections of all the top political figures in the nation to BCCI go unmentioned. The congressmen all eventually paid for those checks. No one lost money. The BCCI scandal is 10,000 times more serious.
In January it was reported that BCCI contributed copious amounts to both the Bush and Dukakus presidential campaigns. Now it emerges that Jackson Stephens, the largest contributor (a $2,000,000 "loan") to Bill Clinton was a founder of BCCI ))) but wait ))) that's not the worst of it. In 1988, Stephen's wife was the co)chair of the GEORGE BUSH FOR PRESIDENT COMMITTEE! As recently as 10 months ago, Stephens donated $100,000 to the Bush campaign! Those who fix our elections are so confident that the media will be controlled that they now take little pains to cover their tracks.
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