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http://www.globalresearch.ca/operation-gladio-cia-network-of-stay-behind-secret-armies/9556

Operation Gladio: CIA Network of “Stay Behind” Secret Armies

The "Sacrifice" of Aldo Moro

By Andrew Gavin Marshall

Global Research, July 17, 2008

Geopoliticalmonitor.com 17 July 2008

Through NATO, working with various Western European intelligence agencies, the CIA set up a network of stay behind “secret armies” which were responsible for dozens of terrorist atrocities across Western Europe over decades. This report will focus on the stay behind army in Italy, as it is the most documented. Its codename was Operation Gladio, the ‘Sword’.

An Overview

The Purpose of the ‘Stay Behind’ Armies

In the early 1950s, the United States began training networks of “stay behind” volunteers in Western Europe, so that in the event of a Soviet invasion, they would “gather intelligence, open escape routes and form resistance movements.” The CIA financed and advised these groups, later working in tandem with western European military intelligence units under the coordination of a NATO committee. In 1990, Italian and Belgian investigators started researching the links between these “stay behind armies” and the occurrence of terrorism in Western Europe for a period of 20 years.[1]

‘Secret Armies’ or Terrorist Groups?

These “stay behind” armies colluded with, funded and often even directed terrorist organizations throughout Europe in what was termed a “strategy of tension” with the aim of preventing a rise of the left in Western European politics. NATO’s “secret armies” engaged in subversive and criminal activities in several countries. In Turkey in 1960, the stay behind army, working with the army, staged a coup d’état and killed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in Algeria in 1961, the French stay-behind army staged a coup with the CIA against the French government of Algiers, which ultimately failed; in 1967, the Greek stay-behind army staged a coup and imposed a military dictatorship; in 1971 in Turkey, after a military coup, the stay-behind army engaged in “domestic terror” and killed hundreds; in 1977 in Spain, the stay behind army carried out a massacre in Madrid; in 1980 in Turkey, the head of the stay behind army staged a coup and took power; in 1985 in Belgium, the stay behind attacked and shot shoppers randomly in supermarkets, killing 28; in Switzerland in 1990, the former head of the Swiss stay behind wrote the US Defense Department he would reveal “the whole truth,” and was found the next day stabbed to death with his own bayonet; and in 1995, England revealed that the MI6 and SAS helped set up stay behind armies across Western Europe.[2]

The Birth of Operation Gladio

A ‘Strategy of Tension’

In 1990, the Italian Prime Minister had confirmed that Italy’s “stay behind” army, termed “Gladio” (Sword), existed since 1958, with the approval of the Italian government. In the early 1970s, Italy’s communist support was growing, so the government turned to a “Strategy of Tension” using the Gladio network. At a top secret 1972 Gladio meeting, one official referred to making a “pre-emptive attack” on the Communists. As the Guardian reported, links between Gladio in Italy, all three Italian secret services and Italy’s P2 Masonic Lodge were well documented, as the head of each intelligence unit was a member of the P2 Lodge.[3]

Setting up the Network

In 1949, the CIA helped set up the Italian secret armed forces intelligence unit, named SIFAR, staffed in part with former members of Mussolini’s secret police. It later changed its name to SID. At the end of World War 2, a former Nazi collaborator, Licio Gelli, was facing execution for his activities during the war, but managed to escape by joining the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, Gelli was recruited by SIFAR. Gelli was also head of the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, and in 1969, he developed close ties with General Alexander Haig, who was then Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Through this network, Gelli became chief intermediary between the CIA and General De Lorenzo, Chief of the SID.[4]

Gladio Creates ‘Tension’

Gladio was involved in a silent coup d’état in Italy, when General Giovanni de Lorenzo forced the Italian Socialist Ministers to leave the government.[5] On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank, which killed 17 people and wounded 88 others. That afternoon, three more bombs exploded in Rome and Milan. US intelligence was informed ahead of time of the bombing, but did not inform the Italian authorities.[6] In 2000, a former Italian Secret Service General stated that the CIA “gave its tacit approval to a series of bomb attacks in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.”[7] The bombing was linked to two neofascists and to an SID agent.[8]

Testifying in a court case trying four men accused of involvement in the 1969 bank bombing in Milan, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of military counter-intelligence from 1971 to 1975, stated that his unit discovered evidence that explosives were supplied to a right wing Italian terrorist group from Germany, and that US intelligence may have aided in the transfer of explosives. He was quoted as saying that the CIA, “following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism,” and that, “I believe this is what happened in other countries as well.”[9]

The Report

The Italian government released a 300-page report on Gladio operations in Italy in 2000, documenting connections with the United States. It declared that the US was responsible for inspiring a “strategy of tension.” In examining why those who committed the bombings in Italy were rarely caught, the report said, “those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”[10]

The Red Brigades

The Red Brigades were a leftist Italian terrorist organization that was formed in 1970. In 1974, Red Brigade founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested. Alberto Franceschini later accused a top member of the Red Brigades, Mario Moretti, of turning them in, and that both Moretti and another leading Red Brigade member, Giovanni Senzani, were spies for the Italian and US secret services.[11] Moretti rose up through the ranks of the Red Brigades as a result of the arrest of the two founders.

The Red Brigades and the CIA

The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, which was founded by Corrado Simioni, Duccio Berio and Mario Moretti. Corrado Simoni had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe, Duccio Berio had been supplying the Italian SID with information of leftist groups and Mario Moretti, apart from being accused by the Red Brigades founders as being an intelligence asset, also happened to be the mastermind and murderer of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. An Italian police report referred to the Hyperion Language School as “the most important CIA office in Europe.”[12]

The Murder of Aldo Moro

Moro Makes Powerful Enemies

Aldo Moro, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister from 1963 until 1968 and later, from 1973 until 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades in 1978, while still a prominent politician in the Christian Democrat Party. When he was kidnapped, Moro was on his way to Parliament to vote on inaugurating a new government, of which he negotiated, for the first time since 1947, to be backed by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Moro’s policy of working with and bringing the Communists into the government was denounced by both the USSR and the United States.

Kissinger’s Threat

Moro was held for 55 days before his eventual murder. The reasoning was for his plan to bring the Communist Party into the government. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States. While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.”[13]

Moro was “Sacrificed”

Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department hostage negotiator and international crisis manager, “claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro.” Pieczenik “said that Moro had been “sacrificed” for the “stability” of Italy.” He had been sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day of Moro’s kidnapping to be part of a crisis committee, of which he said was “jolted into action by the fear that Moro would reveal state secrets in an attempt to free himself.” The action the committee took was to leak a memo saying that Moro was dead, and to have the memo attributed to the Red Brigades. The purpose of this was to “prepare the Italian public for the worst and to let the Red Brigades know that the state would not negotiate for Moro, and considered him already dead.”[14] In a documentary on the subject, Pieczenik stated that, “The decision was made in the fourth week of the kidnapping, when Moro’s letters became desperate and he was about to reveal state secrets,” and that, “It was an extremely difficult decision, but the one who made it in the end was interior minister Francesco Cossiga, and, apparently, also prime minister Giulio Andreotti.”[15]

Moro’s Letters

Among Moro’s released letters, which he was writing while in captivity, he stated that he feared that a shadow organization, with “other secret services of the West … might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country.”[16] During his interrogation while in captivity, Moro even referred to “Nato’s anti-guerrilla activities.” However, the Red Brigades did not use this information,[17] perhaps because, according to the founders of the Red Brigades, the leader of the organization at the time of Moro’s kidnapping, Mario Moretti, was working for the Italian or US intelligence services.[18]

Maverick Journalist Killed by President?

Shortly after Moro’s death, Italian journalist, Mino Pecorelli, a man with “excellent secret service contacts,” voiced his suspicion in a 1978 article that Moro’s death was linked to Gladio, which was not officially acknowledged until 1990. A year after Moro’s death, Pecorelli was shot dead in Rome. He claimed that the kidnapping of Moro was committed by a “lucid superpower.” In 2002, former seven-term Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, was convicted of “ordering” Pecorelli’s murder.[19] Pecorelli was about to publish a book “containing damaging criticisms of [Prime Minister Giulio] Andreotti by murdered Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.”[20]

The Bologna Bombing

On the morning of August 2, 1980, Italy experienced its worst-ever terrorist attack at Bologna train station, which killed 85 people, and wounded more than 200 others. A long and complicated investigation was undertaken, and eventually, a trial began. In 1988, four right-wing terrorists were sentenced to life in prison. Two other defendants were convicted of slandering the investigation, “Francesco Pazienza, a former financier linked to several criminal cases in Italy, and Licio Gelli, the former grandmaster of the so-called P-2 Masonic lodge.”[21] This is the very same Licio Gelli who happened to be a CIA intermediary for the head of Italian intelligence for the Gladio network. Although later on, Gelli was acquitted of the charges.


Notes

[1] Bruce W. Nelan, Europe Nato’s Secret Armies. Time Magazine: November 26, 1990:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,971772,00.html

2] PHP, Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies. ISN:
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.ethz.ch/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DETH%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

[3] Ed Vulliamy, Secret agents, freemasons, fascists… and a top-level campaign of political ‘destabilisation’. The Guardian: December 5, 1990:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html

4] Arthur E. Rowse, GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY. Covert Action Quarterly: December 1994

[5] PHP, Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies. ISN:
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.ethz.ch/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DETH%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

[6] Philip Willan, US ‘supported anti-left terror in Italy’. The Guardian: June 24, 2000:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/us.terrorism_graun_24jun2000.html

[7] CBC, CIA knew, but didn’t stop bombings in Italy – report. CBC News: August 5, 2000:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2000/08/05/cia000805.html

[8] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press, 2007: page 181

[9] Philip Willan, Terrorists ‘helped by CIA’ to stop rise of left in Italy. The Guardian: March 26, 2001: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/mar/26/terrorism

[10] Philip Willan, US ‘supported anti-left terror in Italy’. The Guardian: June 24, 2000:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/us.terrorism_graun_24jun2000.html

[11] Philip Willan, Infiltrators blamed for murder of Italian PM. The Guardian: April 10, 1999:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3852325,00.html

[12 – 13] Arthur E. Rowse, GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY. Covert Action Quarterly: December 1994

[14] Malcolm Moore, US envoy admits role in Aldo Moro killing. The Telegraph: March 16, 2008:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581425/US-envoy-admits-role-in-Aldo-Moro-killing.html

[15] Saviona Mane, A murder still fresh. Haaretz: May 9, 2008:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/981929.html

[16] Ed Vulliamy, Secret agents, freemasons, fascists… and a top-level campaign of political ‘destabilisation’. The Guardian: December 5, 1990:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html

[17] Philip Willan, Moro’s ghost haunts political life. The Guardian: May 9, 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4665179-105806,00.html

[18] Philip Willan, Infiltrators blamed for murder of Italian PM. The Guardian: April 10, 1999:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3852325,00.html

[19] Philip Willan, Moro’s ghost haunts political life. The Guardian: May 9, 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4665179-105806,00.html

[20] BBC News, Giulio Andreotti: Mr Italy. BBC: October 23, 1999:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/483295.stm

[21] AP, Four Get Life in Prison In Bombing in Bologna. The New York Times: July 12, 1988:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D61131F931A25754C0A96E948260


Andrew G. Marshall contributed to breaking the Climate Change consensus in a celebrated 2006 article entitled Global Warming A Convenient Lie, in which he challenged the findings underlying Al Gore’s documentary. According to Marshall, ‘as soon as people start to state that “the debate is over”, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over’. Andrew Marshall has also written on the militarization of Central Africa, national security issues and the process of integration of North America. He is also a contributor to GeopoliticalMonitor.com He is currently a researcher at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal and is studying political science and history at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/operation-gladio-cia-network-of-stay-behind-secret-armies/9556

Propaganda Due (P2)

Inside the Brotherhood - Propaganda Due (P2) and The Vatican Bank from Paul Coker on Vimeo.

And GLADIO makes three.

"Next to the CPC (Clandestine Planning Committee), a second secret army command center, labeled Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), was set up in 1957 on the orders of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). 

This military structure provided for significant US leverage over the secret stay-behind networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO's history, has traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and is based in NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. 

The ACC's duties included elaborating on the directives of the network, developing its clandestine capability, and organizing bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE. According to former CIA director William Colby, it was 'a major program'.

Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), {the secret armies} were run by the European military secret services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also MI6). 

Trained together with US Green Berets and British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers, armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of communist parties. 

The clandestine international network covered the European NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland."

"Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?" the international press pointedly asked when the secret stay-behind armies of NATO were discovered across Western Europe in late 1990. After more than ten years of research, the answer is now clear: both. The overview above shows that based on the experiences of World War II, all countries of Western Europe, with the support of NATO, the CIA, and MI6, had set up stay-behind armies as precaution against a potential Soviet invasion. 

While the safety networks and the integrity of the majority of the secret soldiers should not be criticized in hindsight after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very disturbing questions do arise with respect to reported links to terrorism.

There exist large differences among the European countries, and each case must be analyzed individually in further detail. As of now, the evidence suggests the secret armies in the seven countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, focused exclusively on their stay-behind function and were not linked to terrorism. 

However, links to terrorism have been either confirmed or claimed in the nine countries, Italy, Ireland, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Sweden, demanding further investigation."

"On the eve of the 1980 Bologna bombing anniversary, Liberato [sic] Mancuso, the Bologna judge who had led the investigation and secured the initial convictions [of the Bologna bombers] broke six months of silence: 

"It is now understood among those engaged in the matter of democratic rights that we are isolated, and the objects of a campaign of aggression. This is what has happened to the commission into the P2, and to the magistrates. 

The personal risks to us are small in comparison to this offensive of denigration, which attempts to discredit the quest for truth. In Italy there has functioned for some years now a sort of conditioning, a control of our national sovereignty by the P2 – which was literally the master of the secret services, the army and our most delicate organs of state.""

Franklin: The Secret History of the Pedophocracy

Conspiracy Of Silence: The Fraklin Cover-Up from Paul Coker on Vimeo.

In late 2003, Troy Boner walked into a hospital in New Mexico screaming, "they're after me, they're after me because of this book."

The book Troy was waving was this book, The Franklin Cover-Up. Boner was "... mildly sedated and calmed down ... and put in a private room for 'observation.'"

When nurses came to check on him early next morning, Boner was sitting in a chair, bleeding from the mouth and quite dead.

"What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. 

That is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face. 

You have done your part. 

You have tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. 

It has hurt you terribly. 

But it has not killed you up to this point. 

I am telling you, get out of this before it does. 

Sometimes things are just too big for us to deal with, and we have to step aside and let history take its course. 

For you, John, this is one of those times."

Former Director of Central Intelligence, 

(1973-1976)

William E. Colby

"Yorkshire Television of the United Kingdom produced a documentary, Conspiracy of Silence, to be shown on the Discovery Channel, but the Discovery Channel pulled the plug before it was finished. One of the most noteworthy aspects of the documentary is an interview with former CIA Director (1973-1976) William Colby.

Colby directed the CIA’s Phoenix program in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1971, and Captain John DeCamp had been one of Colby’s Phoenix subordinates. Colby developed a paternal affection for the brash, young Nebraskan, and the two remained very close until the latter’s death. DeCamp introduced Colby to Senator Schmit, and Schmit wanted to hire Colby as the Franklin Committee’s initial investigator, but his fellow senators on the committee shot down the appointment. Because of rumors concerning King’s affiliation with the CIA and Franklin monies being diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras, they feared Colby might be part on an ongoing cover-up of King’s activities.

After Caradori’s plane crash, however, the Franklin Committee embraced Colby: He was hired by the Franklin Committee to investigate Gary Caradori’s death, but he couldn’t provide a definitive explanation for the plane crash, writing to Senator Schmit, “I only regret that we were not able to penetrate more effectively the clouds of confusion and contradiction that have surrounded this whole case.”

Though many conspiracy theorists have posited that King was connected to the CIA, Colby never broached the subject in Conspiracy of Silence. He did say, however, that pursuing the allegations could entail “danger,” and he promised to submit the subcommittee’s child abuse allegations to the US Attorney General.

Two years after that interview, in the spring of 1996, Colby went missing for eight days. His body was found floating in Maryland’s Wicomico River. The medical examiner surmised that the 76-year-old Colby, who was in poor health, had opted to go canoeing by himself on a cold, blustery day in April and had fallen out of his canoe as the result of a heart attack or stroke.

According to DeCamp, Colby disclosed to him that King’s pedophilic pandering was linked to the CIA. DeCamp told me that Colby, a devout Catholic, had become disillusioned with the CIA’s use of children for sinister agendas and was determined to put a stop to it. If what DeCamp says is true, then perhaps Colby’s appearance on Conspiracy of Silence and his giving the Franklin allegations to the US Attorney General was his first salvo in a crusade to expose an evil enterprise. Colby was certainly in a position to be the man who knew too much, and his rather enigmatic death deprives us of that knowledge.

Yorkshire Television also interviewed Paul Rodriguez, a reporter for the Washington Times, who had talked to Caradori several times while investigating the skin trade in the capital. “One of the angles I was pursuing in our prostitution investigation were allegations that children were involved,” says Rodriguez. “One of the names that came across our radar was Larry King, which very quickly led us to Caradori’s investigation. Caradori’s investigation initially focused on the homegrown abuse of minors, but he said the underground network that he was investigating was far larger than he ever anticipated.”

The Washington Times’ Rodriguez did some serious investigative reporting on DC prostitution—his work was nominated for a Pulitzer. As he ventured deeper into prostitution among the powerful, he kept running into the name of Craig Spence, a registered lobbyist and Republican “powerbroker.”

“I had been told by several prostitutes along with law enforcement that there were connections between Craig Spence and Larry King,” says Rodriguez. “I never pursued those connections, because I was overcome with considerable local material that I had to ferret out. The allegations were that Spence and King hosted blackmail sex parties that included minors.”

The New York Times described Spence’s taste in fashion as “Edwardian dandy.” He had a penchant for capes, stretch limos, and brawny bodyguards. Spence has also been described as DC’s version of Jay Gatsby, for his enigmatic personality and the extravagant parties he threw at his Victorian mansion in the upscale Kalorama neighborhood. Senior members of the Reagan and Bush administrations, ambassadors, senators, and congressmen all attended, including high-level CIA officials William Casey and Ray Cline.

The Washington Times reported that Spence spent $20,000 a month on prostitutes for himself and his associates, and that he had the juice to arrange midnight tours of the White House for himself, his friends, and the “call boys” whose services he leased. Paul Bonacci told Yorkshire Television that he was one of the “call boys” who took a midnight tour, and corroborated that King and Spence were partners in pedophiliac pandering. Rusty Nelson also spoke to me about the partnership of King and Spence.

A June 30, 1989 Washington Times article, “Power Broker Served Drugs, Sex At Parties Bugged for Blackmail,” revealed that audio and video recording devices were hidden in Spence’s home, and discussed his penchant for blackmail. A month later another article reported that Spence used sexually compromising photographs taken in his home to blackmail an associate.

Spence even told the Washington Times that his home had been bugged by “friendly" intelligence agents, and he continually dropped hints to friends and colleagues that he was freelancing for the CIA. The CIA denied this, but the Washington Times confirmed that Spence was a CIA asset. “We had sources disclose that Spence wasn’t a direct employee,” says Rodriguez. “But he did carry out services for the agency.”

Spence’s parties had two tiers of guests: the squares, who left at a certain hour; and the serious customers, who stuck around for the drugs and hookers. The hookers mostly came from an escort service run by Henry Vinson. After nearly a year of overtures, Vinson consented to an interview with me in December of 2003. He’d left Washington, DC and moved to West Virginia, becoming the proprietor of a successful and legitimate business.

“I visited Spence’s home on many occasions and saw all his blackmail equipment,” Vinson told me. “King and Spence transported children all over the country. They both talked about bringing the boys in from Boys Town, and they arranged for influential people in Washington to be flown to the Midwest to meet these kids. But they preferred to have the pedophiliac parties at Spence’s home, because of the blackmail equipment.”

While King was detained in Minnesota, Vinson was the focus of an investigation launched by the Secret Service and the US Department of Justice, which resulted in a 43-count indictment that included violations of the Mann Act, money laundering, and racketeering. Vinson was already looking at thirty years and a $500,000 fine, but the Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia filed a memorandum requesting that Vinson receive an extremely punitive sentence because his escort service hadn’t screened for HIV. Image

“They were trying to force my silence, and they got it,” says Vinson. “My plea agreement was for 63 months, and I agreed not to be interviewed by the media in exchange for that minimal sentence.”

Though the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jay Stephens, identified Vinson’s enterprise as the largest male escort service in DC, only Vinson and three accomplices were arraigned for crimes related to prostitution. Vinson claims that he told federal authorities about the Washington luminaries who used his escort service, but Stephens said that the investigation hadn’t revealed Vinson’s patrons to be affiliated “with any political or military organization,” except for the federal employees whose names had already been made public. “Everything about the government’s investigation was a lie,” says Vinson. Henry | Audio Clip Three

The Washington Times obtained hundreds of credit card receipts, canceled checks, and a list of Vinson’s clients, which indicate that US congressmen patronized Vinson’s escort service. This corroborates Vinson’s account, not the government’s. Vinson also says that he informed federal authorities about the pedophile ring allegedly operated by King and Spence, and that Spence had disclosed that their enterprise was affiliated with the CIA. All of his statements to federal authorities are, however, unavailable. Image

“I’ve been told that over 25,000 documents were sealed,” says reporter Rodriguez. “We’ve attempted to unseal those documents on two occasions, but were rebuffed. We’ve been told, ‘It will be a cold day in hell’ before those documents are ever unsealed.” 

In November 1989, Craig Spence’s body was found in a room at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Next to it, on the bed, was a newspaper clipping about then-CIA Director William Webster attempting to protect CIA agents summoned to testify before government bodies. The Washington Post reported that Spence had been subpoenaed by the grand jury investigating Vinson. His death was ruled a suicide.

Like Colby, Spence undoubtedly took a number of secrets to his grave."