The Info Web

#1990s

95 entries

People (50)

  • Abbas Gokal Chairman of the Gulf Group shipping empire, BCCI's largest debtor, convicted at the Old Bailey in 1997 of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to fourteen years.
  • Adriano Sofri Adriano Sofri was the leader of Lotta Continua who was convicted in the 1990s of ordering the 1972 murder of Milan police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, in a case that became one of Italy's most contested criminal proceedings.
  • Alan Fenster Beverly Hills defense attorney who represented Ricky Ross throughout his legal troubles, including the DEA reverse sting case.
  • Aldrich Ames Aldrich Ames was a CIA officer in the Soviet division who beginning in April 1985 provided the KGB with the identities of CIA sources inside the Soviet Union, causing the execution of at least ten agents and receiving over $2.7 million in payment, until his arrest on February 21, 1994 - making him the most damaging mole in CIA history and confirming, years after his death, that James Angleton's foundational premise about Soviet penetration of American intelligence had been correct.
  • Barbara Honegger Barbara Honegger was a Reagan White House policy analyst who resigned in 1983 and subsequently published the 1989 book October Surprise, one of the first detailed published accounts alleging that the Reagan campaign secretly negotiated with Iran in 1980 to delay the release of American hostages.
  • Bettino Craxi Bettino Craxi was the Italian Socialist Party secretary from 1976 and Prime Minister from 1983 to 1987 who was the only major political figure to publicly advocate negotiating for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, and who fled Italy in 1994 to avoid Tangentopoli corruption prosecution, dying in self-imposed exile in Tunisia.
  • Chuck Jones DEA agent who served as Danilo Blandón's primary handler from 1993 to 1995 and denied any knowledge of Blandón's Contra drug trafficking history during a contentious meeting with Gary Webb.
  • Craig Chretien DEA Special Agent in Charge of the San Diego regional office who met with Gary Webb in October 1995 in an attempt to dissuade him from publishing the Dark Alliance story, and who was later promoted to head the DEA's International Division.
  • Daniel Garner LASD Majors II deputy and court-certified money-laundering expert whose prosecution for corruption nearly exposed the Contra-CIA drug connection through documents he had seized from Ronald Lister's home in 1986.
  • David Morehouse David Morehouse was a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and Ranger officer who joined the Fort Meade remote viewing unit after surviving a head wound in Jordan in 1987, was trained in CRV, faced a court-martial for personal conduct, and after retirement published Psychic Warrior (1996), a memoir that was commercially successful but disputed by other unit members for accuracy.
  • Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief who played a central role in spreading a 1984 CIA leak about Sandinista drug trafficking and later led the Times' refutation of Contra drug trafficking allegations.
  • Ed Dames Army captain recruited to Center Lane in 1983 with Stubblebine's approval, a session monitor and trainer at Fort Meade, who left in 1989 to found PSI Tech and sell remote viewing commercially.
  • Edwin May Particle physicist who succeeded Puthoff as principal investigator of the remote-viewing research at SRI in 1985, moved it to SAIC in 1991, and chose the ten experiments the 1995 AIR panel reviewed.
  • Felice Casson Felice Casson is the Venetian magistrate who reopened the Peteano bombing case in 1984, obtained access to SISMI archives, and in 1990 discovered the documents that forced Prime Minister Andreotti's parliamentary disclosure of Operation Gladio.
  • Francesco Cossiga Francesco Cossiga was Italy's Interior Minister during the Aldo Moro kidnapping in 1978 who resigned after Moro's murder, Prime Minister during the Bologna railway station bombing in 1980, and President of the Republic from 1985 to 1992, who became an increasingly outspoken whistleblower on Gladio and Italian intelligence secrets in his final years.
  • Fred Hitz CIA Inspector General whose 1998 investigation and congressional testimony revealed the agency's secret 1982 agreement with the Justice Department exempting CIA assets from drug crimes reporting.
  • Gary Caradori Gary Caradori was a private investigator hired by the Nebraska Legislature's Franklin Committee to investigate Franklin Credit Union abuse allegations who died July 11, 1990 when his aircraft broke apart over Lee County, Illinois, shortly after collecting what he described as significant new evidence.
  • Georg Hodel Swiss freelance journalist based in Managua who located Norwin Meneses in a Nicaraguan prison and uncovered court files documenting his drug trafficking for the Contras, playing a critical role in the Dark Alliance investigation.
  • Giulio Andreotti Giulio Andreotti was Italy's seven-time Prime Minister and dominant Democrazia Cristiana figure who refused to negotiate for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, disclosed the existence of Operation Gladio to parliament in October 1990, and was acquitted of Mafia association charges after an eight-year trial.
  • Hal Puthoff Physicist who founded the CIA-funded remote-viewing program at Stanford Research Institute in 1972 with Russell Targ, ran it until 1985, and later worked on the Pentagon's AATIP.
  • Harland Braun Prominent criminal defense attorney who represented Deputy Daniel Garner in the Operation Big Spender corruption trial and attempted to introduce evidence of CIA drug money laundering, resulting in a judicial gag order.
  • Henry Skip Clements Henry T. 'Skip' Clements was a private consultant in Stuart, Florida who obtained copies of U.S. Customs Agent Ramon Martinez's 1987 reports on The Finders and brought them to Congress in October 1993, helping trigger the DOJ reinvestigation of the case.
  • Jerry Ceppos Executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News who initially championed the Dark Alliance series before publishing a column describing shortcomings in the reporting, effectively ending the investigation.
  • Jesse Katz Los Angeles Times reporter who covered Ricky Ross and the L.A. crack trade extensively, attempting to scoop Gary Webb's Dark Alliance investigation before publication.
  • Jessica Utts Statistician at the University of California, Davis, whose 1995 review for the American Institutes for Research concluded that psychic functioning had been well established, against Ray Hyman's dissent.
  • John B. Alexander Army lieutenant colonel who published The New Mental Battlefield in Military Review in 1980, served under Stubblebine at INSCOM during Center Lane, and later ran non-lethal weapons work at Los Alamos.
  • John Poindexter Vice Admiral John Poindexter served as Reagan's National Security Adviser from December 1985 to November 1986, authorized the Iran-Contra diversion without informing the president, was convicted on five counts before reversal on immunized-testimony grounds, and later directed DARPA's Total Information Awareness program until Congress terminated it in 2003.
  • Jonathan Beaty Time journalist who with S. C. Gwynne wrote the July 29, 1991 cover story describing BCCI's 'black network' and the 1993 book The Outlaw Bank.
  • Karen Jansen Karen Jansen was a U.S. Army major and United Nations weapons inspector who reportedly carried remote viewing-derived sketches of suspected Iraqi biological weapons sites produced by Ed Dames of PSI Tech during the post-Gulf War inspection effort.
  • Kenneth Lanning Kenneth V. Lanning was an FBI Behavioral Science Unit supervisory agent whose 1992 monograph debunking organized satanic cult abuse allegations became the primary law enforcement document shaping institutional skepticism toward claims like those in the Franklin Credit Union and Finders investigations.
  • Lawrence King Jr. Lawrence King Jr. was the operator of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in Omaha whose 1988 collapse revealed $39.4 million in embezzlement and triggered abuse allegations linking King's Republican Party connections to a Washington D.C. child prostitution ring.
  • Lawrence Walsh Lawrence E. Walsh (1912-2014) served as Iran-Contra Independent Counsel from December 1986 to August 1993, producing 14 criminal cases, 11 convictions, and a final report documenting Reagan administration Iran arms sales and Contra funding, before President Bush pardoned six defendants three weeks before Walsh's release of key findings.
  • Lech Walesa Lech Wałęsa was the electrician and labor activist at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard who led the August 1980 strike that founded Solidarity, served as the movement's chairman through suppression and underground existence under martial law, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and became Poland's first post-communist President in 1990.
  • Leroy Brown Corner Pocket Crip and Compton crack dealer who became a business partner of Ricky Ross.
  • LJ Oneale Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Ricky Ross and represented the government in efforts to suppress evidence of Danilo Blandón's Contra connections during the trial.
  • Lyn Buchanan Lyn Buchanan was a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to the Fort Meade remote viewing unit under the Center Lane and Sun Streak programs beginning in the early 1980s, trained by Ingo Swann in Coordinate Remote Viewing, and after retirement founded Problems Solutions Innovations (PSI) and wrote The Seventh Sense (2003).
  • Marilyn Huff Federal judge who presided over Ricky Ross's 1996 trial in San Diego, allowing the government to conduct classified testimony at sidebar and denying defense motions to obtain records about Danilo Blandón's Contra connections.
  • Norman Lamont Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1990 to 1993 who answered for the government after BCCI's July 1991 closure and, with the Bank of England's Governor, commissioned the Bingham inquiry.
  • Norwin Meneses Norwin Meneses Cantarero, known as 'El Rey de la Droga,' was Nicaragua's most prolific drug trafficker who simultaneously served as a DEA informant while running a cocaine distribution network spanning from Central America to California in support of the Contra movement.
  • Paul Bonacci Paul Bonacci was the principal claimant in the Franklin Credit Union abuse allegations, alleging Lawrence King Jr. transported him to Washington D.C. for abuse at Craig Spence-arranged parties from approximately 1981, and won a 1999 federal civil default judgment of $1 million against King.
  • Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) was the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since 1523, whose election in 1978 and 1979 visit to Poland directly catalyzed the Solidarity movement, and whose covert collaboration with the CIA under William Casey channeled approximately $50 million to Polish underground opposition networks through Vatican Bank and other conduits.
  • Rafael Cornejo Norwin Meneses's nephew and distributor in the San Francisco Bay Area since the mid-1970s whose territory stretched to Portland, Oregon, convicted of income tax evasion in 1985 and cocaine trafficking in 1996.
  • Ray Hyman University of Oregon psychologist and skeptic who evaluated Uri Geller for DARPA in 1973 and, for the 1995 AIR review, judged ten SAIC experiments too few to establish remote viewing.
  • Richard Brenneke Portland-based arms dealer and self-described CIA contract agent who claimed to have attended the October 1980 October Surprise Paris meetings, was indicted for perjury in 1989 and acquitted in 1990, and served as a document source for Danny Casolaro’s Octopus investigation.
  • Ricky Ross Freeway Ricky Donnell Ross led South Central Los Angeles's largest crack cocaine distribution network, expanding from local dealing to a coast-to-coast operation that moved over 150 kilos per week at its peak.
  • Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar Head of BCCI's London treasury division, whose September 1993 guilty plea to false accounting was the first criminal conviction arising from the bank's collapse.
  • Tadeusz Mazowiecki Tadeusz Mazowiecki was the Catholic intellectual and Solidarity advisor who became Poland's first non-communist Prime Minister in August 1989 - the first such government in the Eastern Bloc - ending forty-four years of communist rule.
  • Tootie Reese Alleged king of cocaine in black Los Angeles during the 1970s, overtaken by the crack era and successors like Ricky Ross.
  • Walter Pincus Washington Post national security reporter who led the newspaper's attack on the Dark Alliance series and had a documented history as a CIA operative and propagandist during the Cold War.
  • Yasser Arafat Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) was PLO chairman from 1969 until his death, building Fatah into the dominant Palestinian political-military faction, leading the PLO through exile in Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia, and negotiating the 1993 Oslo Accords that earned him a share of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.

Organizations (28)

  • Abrasax Institute The Abrasax Institute was a Satanic cult, described as a gnostic sect, which briefly became the center of attention during the Marc Dutroux investigation around December 1996.
  • Achats Services Commerces Achats Services Commerces, known by its acronym ASCO, was a secondhand car exporting business owned by Michel Nihoul that operated white Mercedes vehicles linked to child abduction attempts.
  • Apollo Bulletin Board Service The Apollo Bulletin Board Service, commonly known as Apollo BBS, operated as one of the world's largest online distributors of sadomasochistic child pornography during the mid-1990s.
  • ASCO ASCO redirects to Achats Services Commerces.
  • ASCO Industries NV ASCO Industries NV was an aerospace company in Zaventem near Brussels owned by military industrialist Roger Boas, a close associate of politicians, lawyers, and financiers orbiting Belgium's Parti Social Chretien (CSP).
  • Blue Boy The Blue Boy was an Amsterdam boy brothel operated by Warwick Spinks in the Spuistraat district that came to police attention in August 1993 when a trafficked British boy escaped and reported to embassy officials, and which was also linked to allegations of snuff film production.
  • Boys Club 21 Boys Club 21 was a boy brothel operating as a nightclub in Amsterdam's Spuistraat district, managed by Alan Williams, a convicted pedophile dubbed 'The Welsh Witch' on account of his violent rapes of boys in Cardiff, Wales.
  • Democrazia Cristiana Democrazia Cristiana (DC) was Italy's dominant postwar political party, governing continuously from 1945 to 1994 with CIA support during the Cold War, whose leading figures included Alcide De Gasperi, Aldo Moro, and Giulio Andreotti, and which dissolved in 1994 under the weight of the Tangentopoli corruption investigations.
  • FARC The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization founded in 1964 that financed itself through cocaine taxation and trafficking and formally dissolved after a 2016 peace agreement.
  • G-Force nightclub The G-Force was an Amsterdam nightclub frequented by Marc Dutroux and Robbie Van Der Plancken and owned by American John Edward Mullaney, identified in Morkhoven Workgroup dossiers as a node in the Belgian-Dutch child abuse network.
  • Gaie France Gaie France was a pedophile magazine published by Michel Caignet, a neo-Nazi child pornographer and former member of the Fane and FNE (European Nationalist Groups).
  • Gay Palace The Gay Palace was a boy brothel masquerading as a gay nightclub in Amsterdam's Spuistraat district, managed by Warwick Spinks during the 1980s and 1990s.
  • Gero-Video Gero-Video was a video distribution company based in Dusseldorf, Germany, identified as one of the largest distributors of homosexual pornography in Europe.
  • Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was Italy's third major postwar political force, which ran a joint electoral front with the Communists in 1948 before gradually moving to center-left autonomy, reached its peak of influence under Bettino Craxi's prime ministership from 1983 to 1987, and was destroyed by the Tangentopoli corruption investigations in 1992-1994.
  • KGB The KGB (Committee for State Security) was the Soviet Union's main security agency from 1954 to 1991, serving as its foreign intelligence service, secret police, and internal security apparatus, and the institutional counterpart to the CIA throughout the Cold War.
  • Le Dolo Le Dolo was a nightclub in Brussels managed by Michel Forgeot, where Jean-Michel Nihoul connected with figures from what were described as the 'clean professions.
  • Los Angeles Times Largest newspaper in the western United States that published the 1996 attack on the Dark Alliance series, led by Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus who had previously spread a 1984 CIA leak falsely accusing Sandinista officials of drug trafficking.
  • Morkhoven Workgroup The Morkhoven Workgroup was an NGO that played a central role in exposing the international child pornography network operated through the Apollo Bulletin Board Service from Zandvoort, Netherlands.
  • Palestine Liberation Organization The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded 1964 and led by Yasser Arafat's Fatah from 1969, conducted guerrilla campaigns from Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia before the 1994 Oslo Accords established it as the recognized Palestinian representative body and created the Palestinian Authority.
  • Rex Productions Rex Productions was a hardcore pornography studio in Amsterdam linked to Jean-Michel Nihoul's trafficking network through Marleen De Cokere.
  • Roxanne Films Roxanne Films was a hardcore pornography studio located at 111 Admiraal de Ruijter Road in Amsterdam, in a building owned by a transvestite named Didier Pellerin.
  • San Jose Mercury News The San Jose Mercury News published the Dark Alliance series in August 1996, using the Internet to share source documents with the public in an unprecedented act of journalistic transparency.
  • Spartacus International Spartacus International was founded by John Stamford, a British foreign-national and defrocked Anglican priest who fled to Amsterdam in 1972 after being charged with operating a child pornography service through the mail.
  • Spartacus Network The Spartacus Network was an international child trafficking and pornography distribution network that operated from the 1970s through the 1990s, primarily based in Amsterdam but with global reach.
  • Swiss Paedophile Association Zurich-based organization whose founders included Beat Meier - who served as honorary president and published a pedophile magazine called LIBIDO - and Karl Hobi, linked to Scotland Yard's snuff film investigations.
  • TAG Films TAG Films was a video production company established in Amsterdam by three Welsh pedophiles: Alan Williams, John Gay, and Lee Tucker.
  • Toro Bravo Toro Bravo was a child pornography production company based in Bogota, Bogota, headed by Jean Manuel Vuillaume.
  • Washington Post Major national newspaper whose national security reporter Walter Pincus, a former CIA operative, led the first major media attack on the Dark Alliance series.

Programs (4)

  • Operation Big Spender FBI sting operation that exposed widespread corruption within the LASD Major Violators squads, resulting in the conviction of multiple narcotics detectives and nearly exposing the CIA-Contra drug connection.
  • Operation Framework Joint Scotland Yard and Dutch investigation (1992-1993) into suspected snuff pornography produced by British nationals operating in Amsterdam's boy brothels.
  • Operation Othello Charleroi gendarmerie observation operation against Marc Dutroux, requested on August 25, 1995, and declared negative by the gendarme René Michaux on January 9, 1996, while Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were in Dutroux's cellar.
  • Stargate Project Army, DIA, and CIA remote-viewing programs of 1972 to 1995, run under the names SCANATE, Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, and Star Gate, closed after the 1995 AIR evaluation.

Events (10)

  • BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report December 1992 report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown on BCCI, documenting its fraud, money laundering, bribery and secret ownership of US banks, and criticizing the Justice Department, regulators and the CIA.
  • Bingham Report Lord Justice Bingham's 1992 inquiry into British supervision of BCCI, which cleared the Treasury, criticized the Bank of England as slow and overreliant on Luxembourg, and upheld its closure of the bank.
  • Boy Prostitution Boy prostitution emerged as a systematic commercial enterprise during the 1970s, operating through organized networks that trafficked male children across the United States and Europe.
  • Franklin Credit Union Scandal The Franklin Credit Union Scandal began with the November 1988 collapse of Lawrence King Jr.'s Omaha credit union with $39.4 million missing, accompanied by allegations of a child prostitution network with Washington D.C. connections; fraud charges resulted in conviction while abuse allegations were found unsubstantiated by two 1990 grand juries.
  • International Child Trafficking Network Overview International child trafficking networks operated across Europe during the 1970s through the 1990s, with connections extending to North America and beyond.
  • Rolodex Investigation Dutch police inquiry (1997-1998) into a callboy service catering to Dutch justice officials, exposing connections between child trafficking networks and senior government figures.
  • Sandstorm Report Price Waterhouse's draft Section 41 report to the Bank of England of June 22, 1991, code-named Sandstorm, which found widespread fraud at BCCI and preceded the bank's closure on July 5, 1991.
  • Three Rivers District Council v Bank of England Twelve-year English lawsuit by BCCI's liquidators and depositors accusing the Bank of England of misfeasance in public office over its supervision of BCCI, abandoned on the 256th day of trial in November 2005.
  • White Marches Mass demonstrations in Belgium (October 1996) sparked by the politically motivated removal of investigating magistrate Jean-Marc Connerotte from the Dutroux case.
  • X-Dossier Files opened in 1996 on the testimony of the anonymous X witnesses in the Dutroux inquiry, whose investigators were removed in 1997 and whose related files were closed in April 1998.

Concepts (3)

  • Apollo Disks The Apollo Disks were a collection of encoded digital disks containing evidence of the international child pornography network operated through the Apollo Bulletin Board Service by Gerrit-Jan Ulrich from Zandvoort, Netherlands.
  • False Memory Syndrome An academic movement which began in the early 1990s pointed toward the exponential growth in child sex abuse allegations as being the result of people recalling false memories.
  • The Bell Curve 1994 book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray on intelligence and class whose bibliography drew on thirteen Pioneer Fund grantees and seventeen contributors to Mankind Quarterly.