("Quid coniuratio est?")
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS
[...continued...]
One last item here that I'm gonna talk about (actually, review; we read this last week) concerns the curious associations of Geraldine Ferraro. Again, by way of taking a look at reactionary and intelligence infiltration of the women's movement and perhaps, at this point, control of the same. Research credit for this article goes to Ted Rubinstein, and it's from a Betty Beale(sp?) column. She's a society columnist. And it was carried in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on October 14th, 1984. It's featured by the News America Syndicate.
Political Opponents Make Strange Playmates
You'd never guess it, but ultra-liberal Geraldine Ferraro and super-conservative Roy Cohn are friends. In fact, Cohn, the brash young investigator of the Joe McCarthy days, may have been the first to plug Ferraro for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination.
It happened at Cohn's birthday party last February at Regine's in the "Big Apple" [New York City]. It was "quite a do," says Victor Laskey(sp?), author of It Didn't Start With Watergate. "Our Ambassador to Austria, Helena von Dame(sp?) was there, as was prominent New Yorker hostess C.Z. Guest(sp?), Barbara Walters, the Rupert Murdochs, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, the Charles Wickes(sp?), Baron and Baroness Ricky DePortnova(sp?), and Heaven knows who else, and the John Zacaros(sp?)." In fact, the Zacaros had been at previous Cohn birthday celebrations. [CN: As I recollect, Zacaro was/is Ferraro's husband.]
It was at the last one, however, that the lawyer/host [Cohn] introduced Ferraro as the possible next vice-presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Playmates make strange politics.
Now a couple of the interesting points about the Roy Cohn/Geraldine Ferraro association and the fact that Roy Cohn appears to have been the first person to promote Geraldine Ferraro as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate: Roy Cohn, although a luminary in New York society until his death, he was nominally a Democrat. But he was a loyal supporter of Ronald Reagan and obviously one of the guiding figures of the "far right" for a long time. Also, as we've looked at from the book Farewell, America, he himself was a participant in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Now the fact that the Geraldine Ferraro financial scandals, as well as her husband's questionable deals with mafiosi possibly, and real estate manipulations, were a couple of the things that really damaged the Democratic campaign in 1984. It's questionable whether Walter Mondale would have been able to win at all. But when the Democratic campaign got off on such a low note, it was basically dead almost from the word go. Mondale never really had a chance, and Geraldine Ferraro is one of the reasons why.
Now the reason, again, that I bring up the Roy Cohn association with Ferraro... And note, also, that Helena von Dame is a close friend of Roy Cohn's -- of course, her association not only with Ronald Reagan, but Nazi war criminal Otto von Bolsing(sp?) we've dealt with in Radio Free America show #3. Helena von Dame was Reagan's appointments secretary, drew up the lists of people from whom his gubernatorial appointments were made when he was Governor of California, and moved into the White House and became Special White House Executive Director for Personnel. She chose also, basically, the lists of people to be selected as cabinet appointees in this [Reagan's] administration.
The question, I think, that has to be asked here is whether or not, perhaps, Geraldine Ferraro's alleged shady dealings and those of her husband were known to Roy Cohn. And again, the possibility of a Watergate-type counter-intelligence operation has to be thought of here.
Now a couple of other interesting associations of Geraldine Ferraro, both of which can be gleaned from the major news media (I don't have them with me at this time, because we're sort of running out of time)... But Geraldine Ferraro first got her biggest boost as a congresswoman from a fellow named Joseph Califano. Joseph Califano was a former Pentagon official, a good friend of Alexander Haig, participant in the Bay of Pigs. And Califano was dismissed, basically, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Jimmy Carter, because of his sort of reactionary stands on abortion and other aspects of women's rights. The fact that when Geraldine Ferraro's badly under-financed congressional campaign took off, the fact that it took off with money secured for her by Joseph Califano from the Carter campaign is intriguing. (By the way, you can read about that in wire service accounts of the Ferraro rise in politics right about the time of her nomination as [candidate for] Vice-President.)
Beyond that, Geraldine Ferraro's first press secretary was the widow of Santo Barrio. Santo Barrio was a DEA agent who, like so many of the DEA agents, appears to have worked both sides of the narcotics question. Barrio, by the way, died, and appears to have been poisoned, in investigation of a case (or perhaps co-operation of a case) called, "The Company," that we're gonna be dealing with when we discuss the inter-relationship of organized crime, intelligence and narcotics.
So again, none of those associations are conclusive in and of themselves. Together, it's an intriguing picture of some of the background of Geraldine Ferraro. And in light of Roy Cohn's devotion to Ronald Reagan, one has to ask whether perhaps the Reagan camp, and Cohn in particular, were aware of just what Geraldine Ferraro and John Zacaro had to hide. Perhaps that was the reason they manipulated them into that position in the first place. Again, bear in mind the whole Watergate scenario where dirty tricks were used to help deep-six the McGovern candidacy.
That more or less winds things up for the prepared portion of the broadcast. I'm gonna review very briefly what we've looked at, because it's been a long section here.
We began by taking a look at Gloria Steinem, her association with a CIA front called "The Independent Research Service," and efforts on the part of Steinem and associates to block publication of that information -- first of all by Random House in a book called Feminist Revolution, then by the Village Voice, and finally by the Heights and Valley News, a New York community newspaper.
Then we took a look at further information confirming CIA association with the Independent Research Service, that from The Espionage Establishment by Wise and Ross.
Then we next took a look at a more detailed account of the Independent Research Service's work in breaking up Socialist youth conferences abroad. And in particular, we took a look at the fact that Clay Felker, who played a key role in setting up Steinem at Ms. [magazine], was an associate of Steinem's with the Independent Research Service.
We also looked at the fact that Katherine Graham was a principal figure in helping to get Ms. [magazine] started and also a major stockholder.
We then looked at the fact that Gloria Steinem's paramour for the last 9 years, at least as of 1984, was a man named J. Stanley Pottinger, implicated in an arms smuggling scam and, more importantly, J. Stanley Pottinger helped block the investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Orlando Letelier.
After that we took a look at the fact that Ms. [magazine's] first publisher, Elizabeth Forsling Harris, appears to have been a key figure involved in setting up the assassination of President Kennedy.
After that, we took a look at the background of Katherine Graham, a principal figure in the whole Ms. axis. Katherine Graham, first of all, was part of an "old boy" intelligence network inextricably involved with the Washington Post. Her husband, Phillip Graham, had worked with CIA official Frank Wisner in setting up one of the first CIA/media operations, called "Operation Mockingbird."
We then looked at how the Washington Post grew, largely as a result of assistance from the CIA.
We took a look at the intelligence background of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and in turn his associations with old chums Richard Helms, CIA Director at the time of Watergate, and also a guy named Cord Meyer, his brother-in-law and a key CIA counter-intelligence official himself.
We then looked at the fact that Phillip Graham, just before his untimely death, became very disenchanted with the CIA's relationship to the news media -- perhaps more importantly, began vocalizing this disenchantment. We then took a look at the fact that this vocalizing didn't last too long because he blew his brains out in August of '63, three months before John Kennedy had his brains blown out.
We also took a look at how [Phillip Graham's] attorney was key intelligence-related attorney Edward Bennett Williams, who himself has possible connections to the assassination of Kennedy.
Following that, we took a look at the fact that Mary Meyer, the former wife of Bradlee brother-in-law Cord Meyer, who [Mary Pinchot Meyer] was Kennedy's lover, was murdered in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, and her diary was appropriated by James Angleton, CIA Chief of Counter-Intelligence.
We then looked at the proposed scenario by Debra Davis that the CIA manipulated the Washington Post and used it as a vehicle for removing Richard Nixon because, basically, Nixon wanted to be too big for the system.
And we then also took a look at the fact that "Deep Throat" appears to have been CIA counter-intelligence official Richard Ober, again, a long-standing friend of Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post.
Finally, we took a look at the close political association between reactionary attorney Roy Cohn and unsuccessful Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro.
[...to be continued...]
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