March 27, 2009 by admin.

ATF North Carolina

In about 1959 my Dad left the Marines and became a Federal Agent for the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms), the agency that enforces the federal laws of the aforementioned three categories.

The ATF sent us to North Carolina, where my Dad primarily chased moonshine bootleggers. The feds wanted their tax money revenue off legal alcohol and the bootleggers paid no tax, so therefore the chase was on. Hence the bootleggers referred to ATF agents as “Revenuers”.

The moon shiners would build transport cars that Jesse James of Monster Garage would be proud of. They would take old junk cars with large trunk capacities and put in a souped up Cadillac engine in it. They would then weld a huge sealed tank into the trunk, which is where the many gallons of shine would be stored. From the outside, the cars did not look like much, but that was the idea. The moon shiners also knew the back roads of North Carolina like their own back yard, which it was. As soon as my Dad would get behind one of these cars, the race was on. They went zooming through the back dirt roads at tremendous speeds. Mind you that both players were bombs with four tires. The shiner’s car was topped off with volatile moonshine and my Dad was carrying dynamite in his trunk. Not the modern and safe dynamite, but the kind that sweated nitro. If it got bumped too much or overheated, bam, game over. Why was he carrying dynamite? Because when he found the shiner’s still (cooking apparatus) he would set a charge and blow it sky high.

One day he did find a still with no owner in sight. So he placed the explosive charge and set it off. The still lit up like a rocket from NASA, and flew in the air many more feet than expected and it almost landed on the moon shiners house. This rocket still then exploded with a massive fireball. My Dad dodged that potential problem by the skin of his teeth. He said that from then on, he planned his trajectories better. Booze in space?

Even the moon shiners had an intelligence network. They would drive by my house and see if my Dad’s car was parked there. If he was home, then Katie, bar the door. I am sure my Mom was not pleased that criminals were driving by while I was playing in the front yard. But like most Federal Agents, my Dad worked weekends and holidays, practically all the time. He was truly a dedicated thorn in the side of those that broke the law.

During this period of chasing shiners, my Dad went into his “James Bond car envy” period, which he never recovered from. He bough a red convertible and wore sport shirts with his .45 ACP pistol concealed under his shirt tails. He hardly looked like a federal agent. One day he got tangled crossways with two criminal types while driving out in the country. Once he had them pulled over for a traffic stop, the passenger immediately jumped out of the car and proceeded to come at my Dad. Without hesitating my Dad drew his .45 ACP pistol (Marine training), and pointed it at this thug. Suddenly the thug saw the business end of the gun pointed right at him. He froze, and then retraced his steps like he was in rewind, moving backwards, and got back in the car. My Dad said it was the weirdest thing that he had seen in a long time.  If you have ever seen the barrel of a .45 ACP, it looks like a bazooka. That explains why my Dad got so much respect from the ambusher. The next day my Dad was in the Sheriffs office doing some paper work and the Sheriff asked if he had an encounter out in the country yesterday. My Dad answered yes, looking quizzical. The two thugs complained to the Sheriff that some maniac in a red convertible had pointed a cannon at them. Guess they learned their lesson about trying to jump my Dad.

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January 27, 2009 by admin.

FLASH MESSAGE: Che was a cold blooded murderer PERIOD.

Attn: Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro ie. Che:  Part 1 and Part 2

The movie skips over all the “inconvenient” history of Che and his murderous ways. The prison executions at “La Cabaña Fortress prison” for example.

Humberto Fontova has written an excellent book on the subject:

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

Humberto’s web site

Do your own research and find out what really happen before you wear another Che t-shirt or Red star on your hat…

See how the CIA was invovled with finding Che.

Félix Rodríguez

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October 10, 2008 by admin.

In Laos one day I saw this street vendor selling chances to win kitchen items. The interesting part was that the whole operation was mounted on a pole that the vendor carried around the streets. There was the punchboard, a pole, and the prizes hanging from the pole.

The punchboard was purchased by the street vendor from some local guy that made them. The lowest prize was a piece of candy and the biggest prize was an aluminum cooking pot. The intermediate prizes were kitchen and household items that were useful in daily life for the average Laotian. All the prizes were individually tied in plastic bags and hung on this wooden pole by plastic string. The punchboard tickets looked like Wrigley’s spearmint gum wrappers, shiny on one side and had a number from 1 to 50, and stapled to the cardboard punchboard. Each number corresponded to a number in a plastic bag with a prize.  It truly was gambling because 10 Kip back then was a lot of money, just to win a piece of candy. The zonk prize basically as Lets Make a Deal would say.

But I had several marketing gimmicks going for me. One was location, location, location. Our first house in Laos was on a main road to the morning market. The morning market was the central place where most commerce in Vientiane took place. So I caught the shoppers with money on the way in to the market. The other gimmick I had was I was an American and we were perceived by the locals as super rich, which by their standards we were. I think at the time the annual salary of a male Laotian was like $200.

I would stand out from front and yell CHA LOCK SIP KIP !

Boy did I get a crowd of curious shoppers each day.

Sip being 10. The rest meant take a chance for 10 Kip !

The novelty of an American kid selling chances was just too much for the locals. After a few weeks of standing in front of this huge French colonial house and hawking my wares, I sold out all my tickets, paid back my Dad the initial front money for the whole setup, and dreamed of other conquests.

We Americans had big noses compared to the Laotians, so they called us, VALANG DANG MO, which ruffly translated, French have big nose. The French were in Laos the previous decade to us being there, and as far as the locals were concerned, we all looked alike with our big noses, I bet you most locals had no idea the French had left and the Americas were there.

P.S. Actually I used the profits to buy the ingredients to make more smoke bombs, but that is another story :}

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January 10, 2008 by admin.

Philip Agee passed away today in Cuba, January 7, 2008. For the CIA, this closes a very long and painful journey of one of the most damaging traitors in its history. How can I say that?

Two reasons, first the CIA in 1970’s assigned one of their best, Ted Shackley, to discredit, block the publication, or stop the publication of the book Agee was writing, called “Inside the Company: CIA Diary“. Ted could not figure out a way to stop the publication, so instead he had TSD create a bugged typewriter and got it to Agee to write his drafts on. A manual typewriter no less. Ted aka the Blond Ghost was legendary in the CIA, having been involved with a major covert operation in Miami (JM/WAVE) against Castro in Cuba (Operation Mongoose), was Chief of Station (COS) in Laos during the Vietnam war, and was Chief of Station (COS) in Saigon. He also the architect of the counter terror program “Phoenix” in Vietnam. Ted was my Fathers boss in both the JM/WAVE operation and Laos. They worked together and partied together. At our house, it was Ted this and Hazel that. My Father truly admired and respected Ted.

The second reason I know that Agee’s book truly damaged the CIA was when Agee’s book finally got published in England, my Dad got a paperback copy of it and read it from cover to cover. He called me a few days later and was in shock. Agee named names and specific secret operations, with no censoring by the CIA. My Dad used a yellow high lighter and bolded every agents name or operation that he recognized. When I went over to my Dad’s apartment later in the week, he showed me the book, and page after page had yellow highlighted on it. I knew right then how devastating Agee’s traitorous ways were and that they would affect the CIA for years to come. Lives were at risk and Agee did it knowingly and purposefully.

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August 21, 2007 by admin.

The Gadget Spooks

In the James Bond movies there was a character at Headquarters called Q. Q did all the gadgets for 007 and had fun showing off his toys. In the CIA during the 60’s and 70’s, the group responsible for all the gadgets was called TSD, Technical Services Division. This was the department that my Dad worked for. TSD was a very small group of dedicated agents that had to support all the field agents and CIA stations around the world. Since TSD people did not grow on trees, they had to travel a lot to deliver devices, install them, and train others on how to use them. When my Dad joined the agency he had to undertake a several year intensive training program in all the tradecraft that the CIA uses. The Government spent $250,000 training him, which was big money in 1960.

Here is a partial list of the types of things TSD did:

Field Support of Agents

Wiretapping of Telephones
Audio Surveillance and Transmitters (Bugging)
Visual Surveillance (Tailing)
Setting up OP’s (Observation Posts)
Concealment of objects
Black Bag Jobs (breaking into consulates and embassies)
Disguises
Forged Documents
Forged Identity Papers
Mail Interception (Flaps and Seals)
Microdots
Propaganda (White, Grey, and Black)
Psych Ops (Psychological Operations)
Exotic Weapons
Questioned Documents Examinations
Counter Terror - Counter Sabotage
Photography (Surveillance, Copying Documents)
Comm Gear (Communication Equipment)
Safe houses

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December 22, 2006 by admin.

The night crawlers bite

Many interesting and exotic animals inhabit Southeast Asia (SEA). Geckos are one of these creatures. But saying that they are interesting is an understatement. Most Geckos in the rest of the World are afraid of human contact and are not know to attack.

Then there is the Tokay Gecko. Dark scales on the top side, beige belly, awesome suction cups on the feet, able to crawl on walls and ceilings, can grow to be 12″ to 18″ long, nocturnal hunter, a mouth full of sharp teeth that have tons of bacteria, a ratchet jaw like a Pit Bull dog, and the gumption to attack humans. During the mating season, the males would make a loud eerie call at night, sounding like “Ettt ohhhh”. They were probably named after the call, since it sounded a lot like Ge-Ko. Sometimes the males would wind up their voice like an opera singer, before making the actual call. It sounded like a car engine turning over and over and not starting. When they did the calls frequently at night, I would shake in my bed with fear, knowing they were out there, waiting for some unsuspecting prey.

My Dad learned first hand how vicious Tokay Geckos could be. One night at the second house in Laos, my Dad was walking around the house outside in the courtyard, and he just happen to be carrying the old trusty equalizer, a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. As he neared the side of the house, a large adult Gecko leaped off the roof and onto his shoulder, attempting to bite him. He violently knocked the Gecko to the ground and proceeded to pulverize it. When he was done, he told my brother and me about the attack, and led us outside with a flashlight. All we could see in the bushes was this tiny mound of red flesh that did not look like a Gecko; it looked more like something that went through a blender.

My Mom learned the hard way also. One day my brother and I came home from school (K6) and found a mid sized Gecko on the front door. My Mom came out the door with a broom, saw the Gecko, and freaked out. She hit the Gecko rapidly, which was most people’s reaction to Geckos. Their legend preceded them. Again the same result, which was a smashed Gecko.

Of course I had my lessons too. At the second house, a two-story water tower was next to the main house. A narrow walk way separated the water tower and the house. The water tower had been converted into small rooms, one on each floor. The room on the second floor had a cool view over the wall of the courtyard and into the neighbors, a Laotian General and his family. When the French inhabited SEA, they build many of the first Western traditional buildings that the Asians had ever seen. Since water pressure was a problem, the French built water towers next to the house and used gravity to feed the pipes. The windows to our water tower had big heavy wood shutters. I considered the water tower my “tree house”. I would climb the stairs and play in the second story room. The other window of that room looked down on the narrow walk way. It was an excellent lookout post for spying on my brother or the servants. One day I was peering out the window of the water tower on the house side, and suddenly I got his strange feeling like I was being watched. I leaned back and looked in-between the open shutter and the outside wall of the water tower. A large adult Gecko was staring me in the face, just inches away from my face. The next thing I remember was my foot hitting the bottom step of the stairs on the way down. I must have flown the rest of the way down. When my feet hit the ground, I was inside the house in a nanosecond. At least it seemed so. I then regaled my family of my brush with death. And I lost interest in the water tower after that incident. Imagine that.

The most traumatic Gecko contact that my family had was at the first house. The French colonial houses from the 1950’s had the kitchen, garage, and servant’s quarters separate from the main house. They were connected by a screened, covered, breezeway. The most direct route to the kitchen was through the breezeway and it had a lot of traffic. A very large adult Gecko decided to take up residence in our attic, near where the breezeway connected to the back of the house. At night he would make his calls and then crawl down a pane of glass, in that small gap between the house and the breezeway. He had a perfect hunting perch. He was directly overhead of anyone walking into the breezeway and going to the kitchen. But he had plans of eating one of us. His belly was so beige, pressed upon the glass, waiting for something to kill. Every night for about two weeks he was at his perch about our dinnertime. He had done his reconnaissance and knew when we traveled the most down the breezeway. Our family and the servants were freaking out. We were being systematically being hunted by this predator. And we were dinner. My Dad finally had enough of this running down the breezeway to avoid being attacked.  One night he came home from the office and announced to everyone that he had the ultimate solution for Mr. Gecko. That evening at dinnertime when the Gecko perched himself on the glass, my Dad retrieved an interesting weapon from his bag. It looked like at long sleek pellet gun, but it looked like no gun I had ever seen. He quietly snuck up on Mr. Gecko and fired one round into his head at point blank range, with the gun making very little sound. Mr. Gecko retreated and was never seen or heard from again. Years later when Senator Church was investigating the Agency for suspected abuses of their power, he discovered some interesting “toys” that the Agency had make. One of them was shown in the newspapers, with Mr. Church holding it up. When I saw the picture, I said bingo, that was the gun I saw my Father using on the Gecko. TSD used the dart gun to knock out guard dogs. But some people suspected that it was also used for shooting chemical pellets into someone. Some debate about this dual use continues to this day.

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December 22, 2006 by admin.

Eagles Nest, Berchtesgaden

When we were living in Frankfurt Germany, we took this very cool vacation all over Europe. This included Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium. We visited the town of Berchtesgaden Germany, which is in the German Alps Mountain Range. The landscape is breathtaking, right out of a scene from “The Sound of Music” and the Von Trapp family adventures. One of the most interesting sites near Berchtesgaden is Adolph Hitler’s summer home and bunker called the Eagles Nest. Eagles Nest during the Nazi rule was home to several high German officials including Hitler, and a Headquarters for various Nazi groups. Eagles Nest was featured in the final episode of the HBO Mini-series “Band of Brothers”. This WWII show depicted the challenges facing a squad of American soldiers during the war in Europe. The Eagles Nest is a mountain top hideout where Hitler had this awesome underground bunker built. Above ground was a large set of stone buildings, which were the daily living quarters. But below ground was a single corkscrew staircase down into the hard rock. After descending down the staircase for a while, the bottom turns into a long zigzagging corridor. Our tour guide told us to look back over our shoulders when negotiating a zig and when I looked back I saw a machine gun port. Each zigzag in the corridor had a machine gun nest pointing into the backs of anyone walking. There were a series of these zigzags, each with a machine gun nest protecting it. With no cover and nowhere to hide, an enemy in that hallway would have been cut to pieces if the gunner decided to open up on them. Seeing those gun ports sent chills down my spine. I could just imagine the Nazi’s zeal to protect Hitler and how the machine gunners would have absolute power over life and death in the corridor. After the zigzags came a small cluster of small, very plain rooms, where Hitler and his staff could hide from air raids. The rooms were so small and ordinary that it was a bit of a let down after all the other security precautions taken to protect the underground bunker. Please don’t confuse this bunker with the one in Berlin where Hitler spent the final days of the war in, and then committed suicide in. The easiest way to get to the Eagles Nest Hotel was by cable car, and the ride was breathtaking. The hotel was very beautiful and the scenery was even more spectacular.

Mountain side gun ports were all along the winding road leading to the Eagles Nest. The gun ports were spaced about every 50 yards along many miles of this road. The ports were about ankle high and gave the gunner a great field of view to kill anything on the narrow road in front of him. Some of these bunkers were cut into solid rock and my Dad and I could not find a single entrance to these gun port bunkers.

My Dad and I decided to walk across the grassy fields near the Eagles Nest Hotel. Suddenly in the middle of one field we found a large irregular hole about 15 feet by 10 feet. We did not come prepared for exploring and had no flashlights. But when we bent down and looked in the hole, we saw a titled room. It appeared that it was an underground bunker complex that we discovered and the hole exposed a bathroom. I had vivid fantasies of find Nazi loot or memorabilia, but we could only look. To this day I wish I could get permission to go back and explore that bunker complex.

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December 22, 2006 by admin.

The Media and the spy game

Several TV shows and movies were very interesting and funny during the 60’s and 70’s, because of the way they portrayed the espionage business. My parent’s two favorite TV shows were I Spy and Get Smart. I Spy starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby as traveling tennis stars that were actually spies. Get Smart had a large cast of wonderful actors including Don Adams (voice of Inspector Gadget), Barbara Feldon, Edward Platt, and Bernie Kopell (Doc on the Love Boat TV show). Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers) and Buck Henry (Catch-22, Heaven Can Wait). One of the additional writers was Pat McCormick (writer for Johnny Carson). Both of these TV shows stretched how the spy game was played and it was great to watch the twists and turns. Of course back then I did not know what my parents actually did, but they sure enjoyed the irony.

One year for Christmas, I asked for only one big present. It was something from a James Bond movie. It was this elaborate briefcase that had a lot of goodies inside. I dreamt of it and finally Christmas morning came, and sure enough I got it. Wow, it was the coolest toy ever. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The edge of briefcase had a hidden throwing knife that could be withdrawn from the briefcase while still shut and thrown across the room into the chest of some hapless KGB agent. Alas my poor brother was always a cheap substitute, but since I had no KGB agent near by, he would have to do. Next there was a trigger button on the handle of the briefcase that when actuated would fire plastic bullets out the side of the case. The case itself was bobby trapped, in case some diabolical criminal a.k.a. little brother attempted to open the case without permission. The trap was set with a little snap cap like that from a cap gun. If I did not throw the secret switch first before opening, then the cap would fire, the smell of gunpowder would fill the air, and ahhhhhhh, you knew that all was right with the world. Once inside the case, your eyes would bounce with joy. The briefcase contained all the basic spy stuff; Gun, codebook, and code wheel. But this was no ordinary gun. It was a 9MM German Lugar, with silencer, extended rifle barrel, wire frame rifle stock extender, scope, and orange plastic bullets. The silencer was the coolest. It could be attached to the pistol or to the extended rifle barrel. The codebook was basically a notepad with a bobby trap. It had a secret switch too, just like the briefcase. It used the same caps too, to explode on the curious. The code wheel was the most interesting of all the items in the case. I had been experimenting with codes and ciphers on paper for a while, but this code wheel did all the work for me. I simply set the code wheel to a secret setting, and then each letter of my message that I wanted to encrypt was dialed into the code wheel. Then I would look into this little window on the code wheel, and there would appear my cipher text. The codebook was where I wrote my plain text and the resulting cipher text. This code wheel device fascinated me, as I saw it as a huge time saver over paper ciphers done manually. And that is why I love computers, the time that they can save, theoretically that is. My Dad must have gotten a real kick out of buying me that James Bond briefcase and watching me play with it so intently. Little did I know that at the office he played with the real thing, including concealing weapons inside ordinary objects, and hiding miniaturized crypto devices. Just like my play briefcase only a little better.

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December 21, 2006 by admin.

Ramblers R Us

At one point in my father’s car buying career, he purchased a wonderful little golden tank called the American Motors Rambler station wagon. The back part of the station wagon was my brother Mark and I, and when we traveled, the occasional 20 suitcases. I believe it was a 1966 gold-colored Rambler, with a luggage rack on top. When the family moved overseas or back to the States, the old Rambler was shipped to us by boat. That old car made it to three continents and ran like a top, wacky sometimes, but a great car. When we took our vacation to Barcelona Spain, we drove through southern France, with a roof full of luggage; two kids hanging out the back, and my poor father swearing his brains out at the lousy drivers. I am sure that James Bond never imagined cruising the French Riviera in a Rambler, with a wife and two kids. The food was either so expensive or so un-American that we ate French bread with peanut butter and jelly every day during that vacation. When we traveled in the mountains of Italy on another vacation, we had this huge steamer trunk strapped to the roof. We brought everything but the kitchen sink. So here we are flying down a highway in Italy, trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, and suddenly a terrifying sound hit our ears. The scrapping of metal on the roof was horrifying. I glanced out the back window of the station wagon just in time to see the steamer trunk hydroplaning down the highway. With an air cushion underneath it, the trunk bounced just off the surface of the road. It did not hit any other cars and finally it lost momentum and skidded off the road. We made a mad U turn and went back to check on the trunk, knowing that it was destroyed on impact. We had visions of our underwear scattered all over the Italian landscape. But miracles of miracles, the trunk was still in one piece, minus a few dents. That steamer trunk probably weighted at least 125 pounds, and was one lethal flying object that day. Thank goodness it did not hit anyone.

On another trip in the old Rambler in Italy, my brother and father were in a bad accident. A crazy Italian broadsided the Rambler because he did not feel like steering around the Rambler. My dad was taking a left when this Kamikaze came flying out of nowhere and crashed into the side of the station wagon. My brother got a lot of glass shards thrown into his back and it was very painful. When this Italian showed up in traffic court to explain the accident, his defense was that our Rambler was too long and he was not used to long cars like that so he miss timed his point of contact. The nerve of the idiot, I am surprised that my Dad did not take the guy for a long ride off a short pier.

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December 21, 2006 by admin.

Mom, Dad, I hate shots

When the Agency prepared an agent and his family to move to a “hostile” land, one of the first things to happen is a series of inoculations a.k.a. shots. As I recall, these shots were so toxic that a person could not handle all of them at once. The shots actually infected us with a little bit of the disease that we were trying not to get. This way our bodies built up immunities in case we came in contact with a full fledged case of the running crud, or whatever the shots were for.

So a few months before our first trip overseas, we loaded up the Rambler station wagon and drove to Langley Virginia from Fairfax Virginia. We check in with the guards at the gate, and then parked. As a family we walk into this great big lobby, with white pillars and a marble looking floor with some very impressive symbols on it. The giant eagle in the middle of this seal just fascinates me, and I stopped my Dad, and said, “What is that on the floor?” He did not answer and hustles the family down a corridor, to the section where the nurses are giving shots. We get our shots and we exited the building with no explanation. My curiosity was killing me, but the answers never came. One day when I was home from college, my mother happen to mention that it was funny how I was giving Dad fits over the seal in the floor of the lobby of CIA headquarters. Well I almost dropped my teeth. After all those years, my mother accidentally solved a mystery that plagued me for years but then forgotten. Sometime after we visited the CIA headquarters a few times for shots, the Agency got wise and starting having dependants (spouses and children) go to the State Department buildings for shots. It seems like they were blowing their own cover with dependants that did not need to know, like me! My poor Dad always had to fend off my barrage of questions. I was a pest, because I knew something was up and could not figure it out.

In case you were wondering, when we went to Laos, we had the full compliment of shots. I believe every shot known to man. Here is the partial list as I remember it: Diphtheria, Typhoid, Typhus, Cholera, Plague I and II, and several others for good measure. I recall the worst one being the Gamma Globulin shot. The nurse would have me stand at the edge of the examination table and hold on. She would then ask me to lower my pants as to expose one hip. The shot was kept in a refrigerator until the last moment and then a horse size needle was attached and then jammed into the hip. The nurses were all military nurses, so their tender loving care was all gone by that time in their career. They were use to giving shots in a great big assembly line. Slam, bang, thank you Mama. For about a week or so after the shot, I would have this great big ugly knot and bruise on my hip. We had to have to two Gamma Globulins before going to Laos. I still have nightmares about that needle. We also took Malaria pills every week in Laos, or at least we were supposed to, but that is another story.

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