Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 11  Num. 99
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                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")

SECRETS OF THE L.A. RIOTS -- PART II

[Editor's note: Fred Celeni (pronounced suh-LAN-ee) worked as a federal intelligence agent, he says, for the office of U.S. Congressman John D. Dingell. Celeni was interviewed for public access television in Los Angeles, and that interview was later re-broadcast on Sherman Skolnick's television program, "Broadsides," in Chicago. Following is my own abbreviated transcript of Celeni's remarks. (Possible spelling errors exist and are not noted.)]

[...continued...]

-+- Tow Truck Mike -+-

INTERVIEWER: What happened to the black individual, you said, who was a local resident who happened to be out there with a video camera? He shot you, sitting in the LAPD car. Can you tell us what happened?

FRED CELENI: A gentleman pulled up in a tow truck. I came to find out, later on, that he was called "Tow Truck Mike." And Tow Truck Mike took a videotape of what was going on; he swung the camera around and picked me up, sitting, looking out the window of the [squad] car. He was back, I'd say, 150 feet.

So what I did is, I wrote down the license number and I got on the telephone. And a couple of hours later, the police invaded Mike's home. And they took Mike down to the police station -- they took his mother, too... his mother or his father. And they said to him, "If you don't give us this videotape, your mother (or father) is never leaving this police station alive."

And so he turned over the tape.

INTERVIEWER: The meeting at the Hamburger Hamlet with Robert Vernon, the Assistant Chief of Police: Who else was at that meeting?

FRED CELENI: There were three meetings that took place at that location. The first meeting was Robert Vernon, Ira Reiner, and myself. The second meeting was...

INTERVIEWER: Ira Reiner!? The District Attorney?

FRED CELENI: Yes, sir. The District Attorney.

Mr. Reiner wore a baseball hat -- a red baseball hat that said "Los Angeles" on it. And when we left that first meeting, he gave me the hat as a souvenir. And I wore it when they taped me for "Street Stories." "Street Stories" came in when I was interviewing Damian Williams' mother for my radio show. And when they taped it for airing... It never aired, because Dingell ordered it pulled. But the tape still exists, I'm sure, at CBS.

INTERVIEWER: Congressman John Dingell from Michigan ordered it pulled?

FRED CELENI: Yes, sir.

INTERVIEWER: How did he have this power?

FRED CELENI: He told me that he just called up somebody in New York City and said that, "=I= =do= =not= =want= Celeni on the air."

They were there for an hour that day, taping me, at radio station KIEV in Glendale.

INTERVIEWER: Congressman Dingell actually admitted this to you?

FRED CELENI: Yes, sir. He said, "=I= =do= =not= =want= you on the air. Somebody might recognize your face. And I can't have you on the air as 'Fred Sebastian.'"

INTERVIEWER: That was your code name, "Fred Sebastian?"

FRED CELENI: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: What knowledge did Ira Reiner have?

FRED CELENI: Basically what they were doing [at the Hamburger Hamlet meeting] was internecine warfare. Mr. Reiner said that, not only was there a wealth of intelligence coming out of [Operation Lasso], but he felt that he had no control over it. We had had an incident a couple of months before with the Sheriff's Department up in Malibu, which almost blew the operation wide open, and they had to come in and cover it up. And at that point, Mr. Reiner said that he wanted more-direct input. So he arranged for one of his murder prosecutors from Van Nuys to start overseeing the cases. And he also arranged for one of his former prosecutors to take a job directly at CCLJ.

The Center for Constitutional Law and Justice [CCLJ] was =not= a store-front law firm. It had a quarter of a floor in an office building. It had ten attorneys. They had a complete support staff. They had $100,000 worth of computers and fax machines and telephone systems. They had sophisticated taping and surveillance systems. They had a sophisticated electronic entry system: when you came in, you had to acknowledge that you were coming into a videotaped and audiotaped area. The California Law Magazine talks about it.

All of the money came from Congress. This is the first time in the history of the country where you have Congressman John Dingell running an illegal intelligence operation, and killing people who are United States citizens.

The fact is, nobody has adequately checked this story out. And until somebody checks it out, they will continue to get away with it.

-+- Praying On O.J. Simpson -+-

INTERVIEWER: This leads us to an interesting coalition, of Nathan Arnold and Mark Fuhrman, on another celebrated case.

FRED CELENI: It's kind of a strange story. And I'll tell you why.

One day, we were sitting at the Hamburger Hamlet. (And this is =before= the riot. This is back about January of 1992.) And Bob Vernon, every time we would meet, he would make us pray. He was a devout Christian and a deacon in his church. And we had to hold hands, and we had to pray. (Not that I have a problem with it; I was an old Catholic altar boy. I thought it was kind of strange, though, to do it in the Hamburger Hamlet.) And in the course of doing this praying... We finished praying, and he says to me, "What do you think about 'jungle bunnies' being with our white women?"

And I paused for a moment. I thought to myself, "Bunnies?" (Because I'm thinking about what we're doing, and this guy's off in the briar patch.) And he lost me for a second. Then it hit me, what he meant. I said, "Well, if the woman and the man meet, and they want to be together, I guess that's their business." I don't think it's any of =my= business.

And he said, "Well that's not the kind of attitude you should have. God means monkeys to stay in trees with monkeys; and God means white women to stay with white men."

INTERVIEWER: And this is who, saying this?

FRED CELENI: This was Robert Vernon.

And I said, "What's the purpose of this? Where are you going?" And he said, "Do you know O.J. Simpson?" I said, "I don't know him personally, but as you know, we had him under surveillance back in Buffalo a few years ago.

And he said, "Well, you know, that son-of-a-bitch is fooling around with a woman from my church. And I hate that."

Well from there begins an odyssey where we start following O.J. Simpson, Nicole Simpson. And it ends up that we had a woman under surveillance, and in the course of the surveillance, we begin to find out that Mr. Simpson is involved in the cocaine trade.

INTERVIEWER: What time frame does this envelop?

FRED CELENI: Late 1991 to early 1992.

INTERVIEWER: Prior to the riots.

FRED CELENI: Prior to the riots.

The meeting where he discussed this, if I remember correctly, was around February of 1992. But Mr. Simpson had been a subject of an intelligence operation, by =their= office, in late 1991. =We= had no direct contact with it in its early stages of 1991. We came into it in 1992. But he had already been under surveillance.

INTERVIEWER: By LAPD?

FRED CELENI: Correct.

Later on, we were told to keep up surveillance on O.J. Simpson. And we found out that Simpson is basically a moron. And I don't mean that in any racial fashion, when I say that. I'm talking about as a human being. He's a moron. And if it's a white woman and she has her legs open, O.J. Simpson will be there. It's as simple as that. And it's sad, but that's the way the man is.

What happens after that, as we get into the "Lasso" operation and the riots, eventually I am told, in August, to start winding things down. And this was in the Los Angeles Times: Everyone wanted to know why, all of a sudden, in August, the Center for Constitutional Law and Justice starts shutting itself down. Everyone says, "What's going on here?" And then, one day, we fire all the lawyers.

[...to be continued...]

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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