Tag: assassinations

How the Murder of a CIA Officer Was Used to Silence the Agency’s Greatest Critic

ON THE NIGHT of December 23, 1975, Ron Estes, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Athens, was lounging on the couch in his girlfriend’s apartment when the man who worked as a driver for his boss, Richard Welch, burst through the front door.

“A shooting, and Mr. Welch is down,” the driver yelled.

Estes grabbed his coat and ran outside, ignoring his girlfriend’s pleas to stay.

At Welch’s house in the Greek capital, Estes saw the station chief lying on his back on the sidewalk, his wife, Kika, kneeling beside him. Blood covered Welch’s face, and Estes could see immediately that he was dead. “I didn’t need to feel for a pulse,” he said in an interview. A police car arrived, and Estes asked the officer to call an ambulance. When no ambulance arrived, they hauled the body into Welch’s car and Estes and Welch’s driver followed the police officer, siren blaring and lights flashing, through the streets of Athens to the nearest hospital. A medical team was waiting; they quickly placed Welch on a gurney and took him to an examining room. There, a doctor placed a stethoscope on Welch’s chest and confirmed to Estes that he was dead.

Welch was 46 years old. A career CIA officer, he had been the CIA’s Athens station chief for six months.

At the hospital, Welch’s driver finally caught his breath and told Estes what had happened. He had driven Welch and his wife home from a Christmas party at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, then stopped in front of the walled compound that enclosed Welch’s house to open the front gates. As Welch and his wife got out, three armed men in a black car pulled up behind them, burst out of the car, and confronted Welch.

“Put your hands up!” one of the men told Welch in Greek.

“What?” Welch asked in English.

One of the gunmen leveled his .45 caliber handgun and fired three times. An autopsy later showed that the first shot hit Welch in the chest, rupturing his aorta and killing him instantly. The three men got back in their car and sped away. That’s when Welch’s driver rushed to get Estes.

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RFK Jr. goes public with who he thinks was involved in JFK murder, ‘cover-up’

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a bombshell claim Sunday in connection with the assassination 60 years ago of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy, who is now challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, blamed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for the murder and “cover-up” of the tragic motorcade killing on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

During a New York City radio interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable,” RFK Jr. said: “There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder.

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Former Mexican president worked for CIA

Former Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo, who led the country from 1976 to 1982, was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset, according to a new batch of declassified documents published by the US National Archives.

Among the papers, relating to a CIA probe into the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, was a memo from a meeting of CIA agents on November 29, 1976.

In the discussions, US intelligence official Bill Sturbitts informed his colleagues that “Mexico will soon have a new president, a man who has had control of Liaison for a number of years.”

Lopez Portillo was not mentioned by name in the memo, but the meeting took place just a few days before he officially assumed the presidency.

He had run for office earlier that year as the sole candidate from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000. Lopez Portillo died in 2004 at the age of 83.

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The Prankster and the Assassin

Kerry Thornley was born on April 17th, 1938 in Whittier, California, the very same conservative bastion of Orange County blandness that bestowed upon us the honorable Richard M. Nixon, who some consider the physical embodiment of the Curse of Greyface.1

In 1958 – as an apparent counterbalance to Nixon’s ascension into the office of Vice President – Thornley and his teenaged pal Greg Hill (while sipping coffee in a Whittier bowling alley) inadvertently invoked Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord. In the aftermath of their caffeine-induced vision, Hill and Thornley founded the so-called spoof religion Discordianism, as well as its disorganizational branch, The Discordian Society.

Initially an in-joke between Hill and Thornley, by the late 1960s the Discordian Society began to attract a loose knit group of writers, artists and free spirits who often adopted comical Pope names. Thornley embraced the Discordian persona of Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst while Greg Hill became known as Malaclypse the Younger.

Other Discordian Popes included Playboy editors Robert Anton Wilson (Mordecai the Foul) and Robert Shea (Josh the Dill), who in tandem co-authored the counterculture classic, The Illuminatus Trilogy, with the first book in the series dedicated to none other than Hill and Thornley. Throughout Illuminatus are numerous references to Discordian memes such as The Law of Fives, The Sacred Chao, and the John Dillinger Died For You Society.

Many Discordian activities concerned pranks designed to not only poke fun at organized religion and uptight people, but also as a means of illumination through the use of surreal and irreverent humor. In recent years, the Discordian Society has grown into a worldwide underground phenomenon, although the only thing that its Popes and Momes can generally agree upon is that tried and true Discordian maxim: “We Discordians must stick apart!” For further information/confusion refer to Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her.

During Thornley’s junior year of high school in the spring of 1956, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves, attending boot camp that summer, then returned to high school in the fall of 1957 for his senior year. The following year he attended the University of Southern California as a journalism major, but quickly lost interest in pursuing the academic life.

A budding writer intent on traveling the world, Thornley figured the most immediate way to do so was by fulfilling his two-year active duty in the Marines. Kerry enlisted in the spring of 1959, and his first stop was El Toro Marine Base, located near Irvine, California. It was here that his life was forever altered when his path crossed that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

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Russian Journalist Killed by Hand-Delivered Explosive in St. Petersburg Cafe

Russian journalist Vladlen Tatarsky was killed today in a St. Petersburg cafe after opening what he thought was a packaged gift, which was hand-delivered to him by a young woman and turned out to be an improvised explosive device. Tatarsky, who has reported from the front lines in contested regions of Ukraine, was at the cafe as part of a public gathering in support of the Russian war effort and was slated to address the crowd as a guest speaker.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian journalist with more than half a million followers on his Telegram channel, was killed in an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe, where he was set to speak to a crowd of Russian patriots about the ongoing war effort in Ukraine and his time spent on the front lines and elsewhere, covering the conflict.

According to eyewitnesses to the explosive attack, a young woman with blonde hair hand-delivered a package, disguised as a gift and containing a small statue, to Tatarsky. The package though was a bomb, and the explosion that followed its opening ended Tatarsky’s life, and injured sixteen other people.

“At 6:13 PM on April 2, 2023, the police received information about a blast in Universitetsjaya Embankment 25. As a result, one person was killed. It was war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky. Sixteen people were wounded,” Russia’s Interior Ministry revealed in a statement announcing the bomb attack.

Security footage taken from the cafe shows a young woman, who is suspected to be the attack culprit, carrying a box. Russian authorities are circulating the image in an effort to hunt her down.

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The Air Force’s Drones Can Now Recognize Faces. Uh-Oh.

The U.S. Air Force now has the capability to use facial recognition on drones that could target specific people. Special operations forces can use the drones to gather intelligence and to aid in other missions, according to a contract first spotted by New Scientist. It’s part of a growing movement to develop automated weaponry that raises legal and ethical questions.

The drone software maker, Seattle-based firm RealNetworks, claims the uncrewed craft will use artificial intelligence (AI) to fly itself and discriminate between friend and foe. The company has said that its software can also be used for rescue missions, perimeter protection, and domestic search operations.

The new Air Force drone system isn’t the only drone system to try to use facial recognition. An Israeli company is working on a drone that uses AI to help a drone find the best angles for facial recognition.

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These Bizarre CIA Documents Expose The Most Horrifying Secrets

“The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones – a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it – are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.”

Malcolm X’s daughters are set to sue NYPD and other city agencies for ‘concealing evidence around their father’s murder:’ Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump to defend family on 58th anniversary of activist’s death

The three remaining daughters of civil rights leader Malcolm X are planning to sue the NYPD together with various government agencies alleging their involvement in the assassination of their father, on the 58th anniversary of his death.

Ilyasah, 60, Attallah, 64, and Qubilah Shabazz, 62, are to allege how evidence relating to Malcolm X’s murder in 1965 was ‘fraudulently concealed’ by the authorities. 

Their case has been picked up by renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump with whom they have enjoyed a long partnership. 

Crump, together with co-counsel Ray Hamlin, is planning to file a ‘notice of intent’ and sue the NYPD together with various government agencies on behalf of the daughters, alleging their involvement in the assassination.

The suit will allege how evidence relating to Malcolm X’s murder was ‘fraudulently concealed’ by the authorities that were investigating his death.

The role played by federal and New York government agencies, such as the NYPD, FBI, and CIA, in his murder has been a matter of dispute for a long time.

Tuesday marks the 58th anniversary of civil rights leader Malcolm X’s death. 

On that day in 1965, while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X was assassinated at the age of 39 in front of his family, having been shot 21 times by several men. 

At the time, the agencies had access to factual and exculpatory evidence that Crump alleges they kept from Malcolm X’s family and the individuals wrongly convicted of crimes connected to his assassination.

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What happened to the story of the two murdered NJ councilmen?

We are being told it is a coincidence, and that there don’t appear to be any political motivations behind the murders. Perhaps that is true. I have no reason one way or another to believe otherwise.

But it sure is odd that not one, but two Republican councilmen in New Jersey were murdered in a week, and both had been elected since 2020.

The first murder was of Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour of Sayreville; the second of Milford Borough Councilman Russell Heller. The second murder may have been work-related, as his killer shared the same employer. However, nobody is saying “boo” about what happened and it isn’t even clear that the killer and the councilman knew each other.

On a whim, I searched the Googles and found a distinct dearth of stories about the killings, neither of which has an apparent motive. The police indicated that each was a targeted killing, but the reasons behind the murders are unknown.

It has been two weeks since the first murder and a week since the second. Both briefly made national news, and then the story was memory-holed. A brief update was covered locally when the 911 call for the first was released. But the initial flurry of stories died out almost immediately.

Everybody has chalked it up to coincidence and…that’s it.

Maybe. But it sure seems weird that we haven’t been given much of an explanation about what happened in either case, and the coincidence is rather striking.

One thing is certain: if these were two Democrats we would be enduring endless lectures about insurrections, political violence, violent rhetoric, and gun control.

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4 More Arrested for Alleged Role in 2021 Assassination of Haitian President

Four more people were arrested on Tuesday and charged in connection with the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the Justice Department announced.

Colombian national Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, 50, of Miami; Venezuelan American Antonio Intriago, 59, of Miami; and Walter Veintemilla, 54, of Weston, Florida, face charges that include conspiracy to kill or kidnap a person outside the United States.

Frederick Bergmann, 64, of Tampa, Florida, faces charges for allegedly committing export violations and smuggling ballistic vests.

Ortiz and Intriago are part of Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security (collectively known as CTU), which is based in South Florida, and Veintemilla is a principal for Worldwide Capital Lending Group, also based in South Florida, according to prosecutors.

The four men worked out of South Florida to plan and finance the plot to oust Moïse either by kidnapping or murdering him, and later replace him with someone who would serve their own political goals and financial interests. The intended replacement was Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 64, a Haitian American dual citizen with political aspirations, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors allege that in April 2021, just three months before Moïse was shot 12 times at his private home, Ortiz, Intriago, John, Solages, and Sanon met in South Florida and agreed to a plan in which Sanon would become president and would award lucrative contracts to CTU for infrastructure projects in Haiti.

Additionally, Sanon would also award them with the provision of security forces and military equipment, federal prosecutors say.

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