"A Nation Betrayed" A Public Lecture in St. Mary's Cathedral, San Francisco, California by Lieutenant Colonel James "Bo" Gritz (U.S. Army-Retired) June 1, 1990 (An Unofficial Transcript) Introduction by a member of The Committee for Open Government There are many people still coming in. So we're going to wait just a few minutes, and please help yourself to coffee while you're waiting. I'd like to ask everyone to please be seated. We're going to get started. Good evening everyone, and welcome to our public lecture with Retired Colonel James Gritz [rhymes with "nights"]. Tonight's lecture is sponsored by a local volunteer group. We call ourselves The Committee for Open Government. Our Group supports the work of the Christic Institute. The Christic Institute is a national, non-profit, inter-faith center for law and public policy. They have a Washington, D.C. headquarters, and a local office here in San Francisco. Since its founding in 1980, the Christic Institute has won some of the most celebrated public interest law suits of this decade. One that is especially well known is the case against Kerr-McGee Nuclear Power Company that was won for the family of Karen Silkwood. It is to benefit the work of the Christic Institute in maintaining our freedoms, and the form of constitutional government in the United States, that we sponsored this benefit tonight and asked Colonel Gritz to join us. Right now, just to give you a sense of what the Christic Institute is doing, they're advancing a federal civil suit on behalf of two U.S. journalists. The journalists are named Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey. Tony Avirgan was a victim of a bomb blast in 1984 while he was attending a press conference in La Penca, Nicaragua. Tony Avirgan and his wife Martha Honey investigated that bombing, as have others, and the evidence revealed that the La Penca press conference was bombed in an attempt to assassinate the anti-Sandinista leader Eden Pastora. Pastora, just prior to this press conference, had refused to go along with a plan to organize the Contras, which was set forth by a covert team of U.S. military and intelligence agents. Full examination of the circumstances of the La Penca bombing identified a pattern of criminal activity conducted by the secret operations team. Some of their exploits include political assassinations and trading guns for crack cocaine to finance the Contras. The Christic Institute's La Penca law suit was filed six months before the Iran-Contra scandal broke nationwide. And their findings have been reinforced not only by the Iran-Contra investigation, but also by a report that was released by a committee to the U.S. Senate (it's the Subcommittee on Foreign Relations) and also by a recent criminal probe of the La Penca bombing that was done by the Costa Rican government. These reports really are clear indictments that the White House war on drugs is a sham, and that cocaine pouring onto American streets from Central America, while this covert team is waging an illegal war with the Contras against Nicaragua, is not just a mere coincidence. While coming at his evidence of the covert network from quite a different perspective than those of us who might be labelled progressives, liberals, or "peaceniks," Colonel Gritz has come to some of the same conclusions as the Christic Institute investigators. Colonel Gritz began his military career in 1957 and served in many high-level intelligence missions. He has been decorated 62 times for valor in combat, and was 8 times behind Communist lines in Asia in search of prisoners of war. Colonel Gritz's military career inspired Hollywood to tell his story in the movies "Rambo" and "Uncommon Valor." Colonel Gritz has aptly titled his lecture tonight "A Nation Betrayed." On the cover of his informative and controversial book, for which tonight's lecture is so named, he states, and I quote, "While on a White House sanctioned mission to verify the presence of U.S. prisoners of war being held in the secret camp of General Khun Sa, the heroin overlord of Burma's Golden Triangle, the identities of the world's largest purchasers of opium and heroin were revealed to me. After 30 years of military service in covert operations, I knew these men well. They are the past and present top officials of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency." Please help me to welcome Colonel "Bo" Gritz. [Colonel Gritz begins his lecture:] Well, it's a great credit to you that this is Friday night, in San Francisco, one of the beautiful cities of our nation, and you aren't at home watching the Simpsons, or Wheel of Fortune, or something on an equal intellectual level as that. You're not even there watching "The 7 O'Clock News" with Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, et al. What you're getting here is certainly not "The 7 O'Clock News," because I'm going to tell you the truth about what's going on in the nation as I have lived it today. A lot of you come from different walks of life, different dimensions than I do. My entire life, from the time I was 18 years old, has been spent in the uniform of the United States. I started out as a youngster not wanting to do anything but wear that uniform, and I have worn it with great pride, and I have done many things, a lot of them wrong. But, nonetheless, I have done what my nation thought was right at the time, at least that's what they told me. Now, it is like coming from a dimension that you've never been a part of. Not too many of you out there have probably been involved in honest-to-God covert operations within the United States government. Most of my life has been spent doing that. So, it's like I step from a fourth dimension into your life. I don't know much about what you've been doing either. And what I have done is to share my experiences with you, so you have a more clear understanding about what is going on in the real world. And you are beginning to share your experiences with me, so that I can get caught up to speed on what's been going on here also, because it is honestly like a blind man feeling the elephant. I have been at one particular part of that beast's anatomy, feeling and saying this is what the world is. And you have been at your own particular station. Together, I think, as Americans we don't need to be Republic or Democrat, or right or left, or liberal or conservative. That is what the beast would have us be, is divided. But, if we can just be Americans for a change, I have great confidence that we don't need to flee this land of great blessings but, if we will stand firm, and be hard like woodpecker lips, that in the end we'll win. I have to believe that, otherwise you'd need to bury me, because there wouldn't be anything left for this warrior to continue life for. This is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. There are not boat loads of Americans headed for the Soviet Union. And so, no matter what our ills are, and they are many and great today, nonetheless, we still have the one alternative that everyone who is not here would want to be here to share, and that is liberty like no other group of human beings has known it in the history of time that we have record of. Now, what we have going on today is very simply something that most of you have engaged in. How many of you here have ever played poker, any kind, strip poker, stud poker, one-eyed Jack, whatever? You know that, in a poker game, the object of the game is for one person to end up with all the chips. And that's what's been going on, on a global basis, for many years, far beyond our lifetimes. If you will simply look back at history, you can see that there are global poker players who have discovered some of the secrets of winning this game. What is exciting about our lifetime is that we are here to witness what could be the end of the game because, as you know, when somebody ends up with all the chips, it means all the rest have none. And then you have to stop the game. The chips have to be somehow redistributed, if the game is to go on. Well, I have great faith that we're going to win, but we're not going to win unless we change what we're doing right now. I have been called by the media "a one-man government wrecking machine." And I am guilty. I fully intend, if needs be, to take the government apart. I don't know how to put it back together. But, I will take it apart for you, and I'm after it right now. I have faith that, among 240 million Americans, there are those out there, some of them here tonight, who do have good ideas. I'm going to share some of the ideas that some of these people have given me, because we will need to put the government back together again, and restore OUR government in place of THE government, because we hear a lot of people complaining about THE government today, and it's a very proper term. It is not our government as we were given that government by our forefathers under the Constitution. And it's easy to prove: there are only two kinds of government in the entire world, and one of them is a government that we know as a republic. Now, a true republic means that there is law, and that men are accountable to the law of the land, and no one is exempt. It means even the highest in the government must be accountable under law. Now, if you don't have law and accountability, all of the rest, you can call it a theocracy, like the Ayatoilet had; you can call it fascism; you can call it a monarchy, like the Shah. Well, the Shah of Iran, he was a good monarch, but a better of example is the King of Saudi Arabia. He doesn't have a parliament to tell him what to do. You can label it anything you want to, a dictatorship, but it comes down to one word, and that is tyranny. You either have accountability under law, in the form that we know as a republic, or you can group about fifteen other labels over here under tyranny, which means "deniability." Nobody has to account if you are a tyrant, if you are a dictator. You don't care what the people think. There is no accountability. You simply use plausible denial for national security purpose[s]. And that is what we have today, and the proof is public record. Poindexter, guilty. Ollie North, guilty. Secord, guilty. Hakim is guilty. And of course Casey, never tried, didn't know anything as head of the CIA. Ronald Reagan, never tried, honestly didn't know anything. And George Bush didn't know anything either; never tried yet. But, George Bush, I think, would consider it a great insult, and he must be biting his lip, when he has to say, "I didn't know anything," a man who was head of the CIA under Gerald Ford, a man who was Vice President for 8 years as the "czar" (their term, not mine) in the war on drugs, a man who is now President of the United States and doesn't know anything. It isn't a very good testimony for someone who would lead the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Tonight I think we're going to find out a lot more about what George Bush does know, about what's going on. And, more than just complaining about it, I want tonight to offer some solutions, because we fully intend to start the second American Revolution, and we're going to do it. We're going to fire the first shots in Las Vegas on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of July. We're pooling together what we call pro-American groups from all over the United States at a convention that we have labelled "Freedom Call '90." We are going to stop squabbling about the things we don't agree on, and we're going to focus instead on the major problems facing this nation, and the solutions, and the things that we will agree on. And then, as a unified body (something that the beast fears more than anything else, a unified America), we'll take 2,400 splinter groups, because that's how many we've identified, 2,400 separate pro-American groups. Not a one of them has a voice loud enough to be heard in Washington, and all of our arms are too short unless we do it collectively to get our arms around this problem. But, if we can just get together. Now, the convention will be to define the problems and the solutions. You know as well as I do, as soon as people left Las Vegas and got back home and put on their slave clothing and went back to work, they would probably forget; their energies would be drained. So we have a method (I'll describe it later) that is going to network, coordinate, communicate, so that none of you who are part of this second revolution will be alone in any battle that you may fight, and that, collectively, we will restore our birthright as Americans. Now, we have this one hill to take, and that is Capitol Hill. I'll certainly be there to help you take it. But, you know as well as I do that the reason you don't run for politics is because you don't want to get dirty wallowing with the hogs. I have made a statement. I didn't know what to do. I am a leader who tries to lead by example. I can honestly say that there isn't anything (and some of the troops that have been under my command would verify this, I think) there isn't anything that I have ordered them to do that I hadn't done with them or done first of all. And, in this case, I didn't know how we were to get good people into politics. And so, not knowing what that ground is like, I undertook a campaign two years ago, with three months left to go, by throwing my hat in the political ring as a candidate for the U.S. Congress in Nevada, District 1; had no endorsement of any party. I was a registered Republican, so I entered as a Republican. But having no endorsement, I was an indicted felon. I had only three months. I had no campaign manager. I had nothing literally that anyone would consider a winning equation, and damned near won the election. It shows you that, if good people who are not professional politicians, will come out of the woodwork (you may have to draft them) that there is an alternative to the one-party system that we have here in America today. At least the Soviet Union admits it -- they have one party. But, you know, I voted for Wallace one time; you might have too. I was in Vietnam. I don't know where you were when I voted for Wallace. But, he was running against Nixon and Humphrey, and he said something that is true today. There's not a dime's worth of difference between a Democrat or a Republican. And you know it's true. And we're finding that third parties really don't work too well either, so I'm not advocating a third party. As I have mentioned in the beginning, we are going to take the government apart, because it is not working right now, and we'll put it back together. We will probably have to use conventional party lines because, the truth is, the Libertarians will get out there and beat the drum; the Populists will do this; and you['ve] got all kinds of parties, but they don't carry any constituency with them. So, if we're going to really make a dent, if we're going to make a difference (and we have to do it fairly soon, as I'll hopefully outline for you in the next hour), we're going to probably have to do it along conventional lines. And again, I don't have all the answers, but I am going to share some of the answers I do have and as a result of "Freedom Call '90" in Las Vegas. And, by the way, you're all invited. It's interesting, we made a talk in Seattle, Washington, about a month ago. It was on Saturday. When we got back to Las Vegas, a travel agent called on Monday and said that she was booking 200 people from Seattle to "Freedom Call '90" as a result of that one talk. I know we're going to have standing room only, if only for the feds that will be there to keep an eye on us going. You can imagine getting all of these different groups together. We're going to have folks that are in direct opposition to each other, and that's OK because, if we will just be Americans for a change, we will walk in lockstep to do something that is to the good of this entire nation. And so, I have started that off by telling you that I think the problem is that we're engaged in a global poker game. The good news is, it's exciting nowadays because we're about to see the ending of that game; or the redistribution of the chips of the game will go on. When you read history, and I haven't been an historian ... My life in Special Operations has been like trying to paint a moving train. I barely have time to keep up with what's happening now in my own life, let alone read about what's gone on before. But, in Special Forces, we are students, and history is very important because what's past is prologue. And normally who writes history is writing the future. And it all depends, of course, on who's writing it, as far as what happened. But, when you read history, and you read between the lines, you can see that there have been individuals that have emerged, that have become global poker players. One of them is a man by the name of Rothschild. He discovered a long time ago that, if you can finance the both sides of a war, and have no allegiance to anyone, there's tremendous profit in that and, if you can keep stirring this thing up, then you can literally make fortunes and gain tremendous power. And so, some time ago, there was an interesting coup. We look at the Queen of England and say, well, she's British. Baloney! She's not. The House of Windsor is a German descendant. And very simply there was the Prince of Orange, as he was known, and they pulled a coup and put the Orange family in from Holland in England, and then they changed the name to Windsor. But, up until the American Revolution, the British really had no soldiers of their own. It was interesting because the House of Windsor, which was the German descendant family, would rent the soldiers from the family of Hess in Germany; and these rented mercenaries commanded tremendous wages. The House of Hess got this. And so what was really happening was: you had a head of state in England that used no British men of war, but instead hired German mercenaries, and paid their own families for the hiring. And one way that they got money, interestingly enough (and it's not something that George Bush invented), came from the opium trade out of the East India Company that Great Britain is famous for. And so, when you look at drugs today, and you look at big money and international banking and this global poker game, it comes down to really just a few players. There's not a lot of [players]. You're not a player; I'm not a player. Unless your name is Rockefeller and you are a famous person and known in New York and you're here and I don't see you, then you're not really a player. But there are probably a dozen, maybe fifteen, players, including some Orientals now, that the Trilateral Commission has promoted (of course, the economics of Japan, Europe, and America). And so, we now have some of the greatest wealth in the world accumulating in the Orient. These poker players, very simply, have it in mind to win the game, and we are simply pawns in their service. Now, when you look at the Third World nations (let's discuss them for just a minute, the emerging nations), you could almost call it the Third World War, not meaning that it's World War III. But, it is a war against the Third World to simply keep these people producing export goods for America, or for the international bankers. I have had some unique experiences, and that's what I really want to share with you. I am not here to give you my own philosophy on what's wrong with the world. But, what I am here to do is to sort of link these things together, and then share with you my own personal experience. I commanded Special Forces in Latin America, [at] the same time George Bush was head of the CIA. For me, it was 1975 thru 1977. During that period of time, I saw a couple of things happening that I think are important today. Number one is, we saw Manuel Noriega, who was not the dictator. Omar Torrijos was the dictator then, and Manuel was a real gutsy guy who was his intelligence officer. Manuel Noriega had ties to Fidel Castro; he was a Communist. He also was sabotaging some of the installations in the Panama Canal. In addition to that, and [of] major import, I thought, was that Manuel Noriega was becoming the major distributor, the king pin, for cocaine coming out of Central America and going into the United States. They were using the Panama Canal and the gates were wide open, and they opened in 1976. Now (I'm not proud to say so, it was just simply my job) we targeted Manuel Noriega, and then I made a recommendation that we eliminate him with extreme prejudice. In the vernacular, it means that we take him out, we assassinate him. We could have done that without missing a coffee break. Now, to you it may seem horrifying that we, a military organization in Central America, would even contemplate assassinating another officer like Manuel Noriega, who was an official of Panama. But, in the game, remember, I'm from a different dimension, and I've been behind the veil of covert operations, while you've been out here. I'm simply relating to you what goes on. The way we play the game is, if you are a drug smuggler hurting our country, and you are also a Communist, which we are trying to fight, and stem the tide of Communism in those days ... Now, of course, we find out that it's all OK. Gorbachev is man of the decade. He may even run against George Bush. It would probably be a better alternative than Dukakis. But, when you see that you have Pineapple Face that is a deterrent to all that, as a soldier, I was interpreting as our national objectives in Central America, then my way of projecting force is to take him out. We could do that. We could no longer have Manuel Noriega as a player. Would that mean that the game would stop? No, somebody else might take it over, but we would at least have won a battle there. Now, to my surprise, I received a visit from the chief of intelligence, and he could have sent me a radiogram (an encoded message) but he didn't. I got shot in the back of the head in Vietnam. The bullet bounced off. I am hard-headed. That proves it. He knew me fairly well. I think he might have thought, well, Bo will go ahead and do it anyway and just say he didn't get the message. So, he came to Panama and he told me summarily, quote, "You keep your hands off of Manuel Noriega. He has immense value at the highest levels." Now, what the hell does that mean? "Immense value at the highest levels." A man who is literally opening the gates of the Panama Canal, flooding the United States with cocaine, which, if you'll look back, that is when America got hard hit with cocaine and has ever since. And he has immense values? And so, when I pressed the General to find out precisely what these values were, and to who[m] they were a value, he said, "Well, Bo, one is, he informs us about what Castro is doing." Who cares about the little bearded man with the cigar anymore? Standard Oil pays Fidel Castro almost $800 million a year for royalty rights pumping petroleum out of Angola. It more than pays for the Marxist effort in Angola, and gives Castro a lot of jingle in his pocket to spread around Central America. So I knew that that wasn't a major thing. Our own companies are helping Castro. And so then he said, "Well Bo, he's going to inform us about how the negotiations for the turnover of the Panama Canal are going to go." We were giving the Panama Canal away. Why did we need to be informed about how the negotiations were going to go? None of it made any sense. But, as a good soldier in those days, you know, I simply came to attention, and said, "Yes, sir, Manuel Noriega will have free rein. We won't touch him." And we did not. We created a Frankenstein in Manuel Noriega. George Bush was paying him more than the President of the United States to be a CIA retainer. Now, if any of you have any covert operations experience, I wish you'd be courageous tonight and relate to me during the question- and-answer period, anyone that you have ever known that has gotten that much money from the CIA -- $200,000 a year to be a retainer. I don't think that the people that sold the atomic bomb secrets got that much money. I don't know of any other agent that's gotten that much money straight across the board as an agency retainer. It's just not heard of. But Manuel Noriega was, and for what purpose? Well, in 1976, I didn't understand it. But, there was something else going on. The second point I want to make to you is this: We were preparing to put a new canal in Nicaragua; now, that I knew very well of. Jimmy Carter had arranged to give away the Panama Canal, because the Panama Canal is obsolete. You see, the way this game works is that we have tremendous foundations -- the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation. We have these think tank groups, like Rand Corporation. These tremendous foundations fund these think tanks. The think tanks look at all aspects, but mainly economic, and they see what needs to happen in the years to come if big business is to continue. And then they make reports, and the reports come down to people like the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Then the decisions are made at this level as to what the nation will do. The President is underneath these people. And, in the case of Jimmy Carter, I think that it's provable that Rockefeller literally picked him out of the peanut patch and made him a President, for the purpose of expediting things that needed to be done, in accordance with these think tank groups. Now, one of the things that needed to be done is, the Panama Canal had to be phased out, because super tankers were soon to come in. I don't know the year that super tankers arrived, but I know in 1977, when I was there in Panama, we had plans to shift our efforts into constructing a new canal in Nicaragua. But, first of all, we had to pass off the old one. Otherwise, there wouldn't be an excuse for exploiting because, how were we going to get Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River away from the Nicaraguans and the Costa Ricans? Well, Teddy Roosevelt had a pretty good answer in how we got the Panama Canal, because there wasn't Panama. But in 1900, they decided we're going to put a canal in. We sent the USS Nashville down, that stood offshore. We sponsored a coup, and it was convenient that the State Department was on hand when Colombia said, "OK, you got it. We're going to give you Panama." And then Panama said, "And in all perpetuity, we give you an area for your canal." So, that's how we got the Panama Canal. It was acceptable in those days. It was simply called "gunboat diplomacy." Now, we didn't know exactly, as far as the studies that I had access to, how we were going to get Nicaragua because, you see, the Panama Canal cannot be enlarged any more. Lake Gatun is the controlling factor for the Panama Canal and Lake Gatun comes off the Chagres River and is at its maximum capacity. You can't make it any bigger; so the canal can't be widened; so there is no super tanker going to transit the Panama Canal. Now, the think tank guys also saw that Japan was going to need access to iron ore out of the Amazon basin, and Japan would need access to our East Coast. This meant super canal somewhere. Lake Nicaragua was perfect. It's 90 feet above sea level. It's a tremendously large lake, the largest lake in Latin America. It is a natural lake, which is the only fresh water lake to have killer sharks and barracuda in it. The reason that it has killer sharks is because this area is located right along the Ring of Fire, the geological Ring of Fire. There are tremendous earthquakes. You think we got troubles here. Managua, you read about it all the time, it gets tremendous shake-up. And in the years gone past, there was an earthquake that literally lifted Lake Nicaragua out of the ocean, capturing all of the water life that was there and, over the generations, it has adapted as the salt water turned to a fresh water environment. And now, literally, you have killer sharks in Lake Nicaragua. It is 90 feet above sea level. It makes a perfect Lake Gatun for a super canal. The San Juan River is beautiful. It isn't without precedent that we picked Nicaragua for the new canal. Back in 1847, when did you discover gold here? OK, in '49. In 1849, (I said I wasn't an historian, but history is important, so I may miss a little, but shooting back that far, we're getting pretty close) you discovered gold out here in California. The people in New York wanted it. It was "non-habit forming" to come across Indian territory to get it. And so, there was a man named Vanderbilt, and Vanderbilt had a steam line in New York. And so, it was real simple. Vanderbilt used his steam line and he put New Yorkers aboard a luxury liner, and they went right on around and they stopped at the Nicaragua/Costa Rican border, the San Juan River, which is the border, and they steamed up the border to Lake Nicaragua, across Lake Nicaragua. And then there's about a 17-mile spit of land that separates the Pacific Ocean from what would then be the Atlantic Ocean. And so they got off the steamer, rode in a stage coach along what was known as the Vanderbilt Road. The pilings of that dock are still there today. It's going to be wonderful when I tell you about what's going to happen there. They then would get off the stage, get on another steam liner, and go right on around to San Francisco. And that is how the gold was transferred, the miners this way, and the gold came back the same way. Well, that was 1849 and it was called the Vanderbilt Road. I don't know what they're going to name the new canal. But it ought to be, maybe, the Vanderbilt Road, the New Vanderbilt Road, because we are going to dig it. Now, if you read the newspaper in 1986, you'll see where the Soviet Union had surveyed Nicaragua and the San Juan River, which is the border, a mutual border for a while between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, to make their own canal. But they couldn't do it. It is just too big of a project to do using conventional methods. And so, Japan went in, and they surveyed it; so, it's been well surveyed because we had already surveyed it. But we can do it, and they can't. And the way we're going to do it is by using nuclear demolitions. Now, this should be of interest to you because California was going to be the target for a test, and it never came off. I can't imagine why! Maybe there's too many green people, not meaning EBE's, but Greenpeace people that raised hell over it. But back when, remember? I like Ike. I was a lieutenant when Ike was there. It was a good thing to like Ike. That's why I became a Republican in those days. Ike started a program called "Nukes for Peace." And just north of Las Vegas (I live now about 50 miles southwest. I try to get just as far southwest as I can and still have a habitable area.) but north at Yucca Mountain is where they did all of the "sedan," it was called, the sedan tests to try and clean up the nukes. Now, I'm a chemical, biological, and radiological warfare officer, qualified and sent to school and certified. When the fireball does not touch the ground of a nuclear explosion, there is no contamination. You will die from heat and blast before you'll ever die from radiation. But, when the fireball touches the ground, you now have big problems, because the half-life of plutonium is like 25,000 years. That's a long time to wait. And the half-life means that, in that period of time, it'll be half as much radiation as was there before. When you put something under the ground that is nuclear, and you set it off, you have denied the enemy, for all time and eternity, that area, because it is permanently damaged. Now, what's happened is, the engineers north of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain have been experimenting, since Ike gave them permission to start Nukes for Peace, in how to clean up the bomb, so that we could use nuclear demolitions in order to do mammoth land moving, that we couldn't otherwise use conventional methods on, like the new canal in Nicaragua. Here's an interesting thing. I wish I had a blackboard, because I would diagram it for you. But I'll run thru it real quick so you'll understand it, because I think it's important. First of all, you survey everything, because the density of the soil depends on how deep you bury the charges. Some of the charges will be buried as deep as 2,000 feet, some of them only a hundred and fifty feet, because of the density of the soil all along the area. There is 17 miles that must be cleared; that 17 miles opens onto Lake Nicaragua and the Atlantic Ocean. Now, if you put all the charges in line, there will be more than 200 atomic demolitions the way the plan is right now, and you fire them individually, you can imagine what you get. You get a lot of holes with all kinds of debris, that you would then have to go in with conventional methods and try to organize and make a canal out of. And you might as well have just done it from scratch, I think. You'd be better off than having all this debris and these many holes. But, how many of you here are demolitionists or have any experience with demolition? Good. Then hear me out on this, and see if this is not correct. There is a synergism of 30% that is achieved if you use what we call "row charging." If you take all of the demolitions at once, and you fire them all at once, then you have, literally, instead of having individual holes, the synergism gives you an overlapping of about 30%. You literally have a canal there. And the physics are such that it, honestly, takes the debris at the end of the canal, that would normally be blown out, and even curves it around, so literally you have a bank that is ready-built, along with the canal; in the flash of an eye wink, just one push of a button, 200 separate charges, a total of over 250 megatons, 250 million tons equivalent of TNT, will create a new canal. Now, that sounds very efficient to people in Washington, D.C. But, they do not belong to the Greenpeace organization, I don't believe. The idea is, the way you clean this thing up, the way I understand it is, that when you have the explosion under the ground, you have contaminated earth. If you put it too deep in the hole, then what happens is, all the dirt goes straight up and basically comes straight back down, filling the hole again. So, you didn't accomplish anything, except you loosened up a bunch of stuff. If you put it too shallow, you get a tremendously wide blast, a radius, but a very narrow hole. You haven't done anything there, plus you contaminate a lot of area. If you'll do it just right, if you bury it just right, then when it explodes, the contaminated earth will come up, come back down, be partially covered with non-contaminated soil that wasn't a part of the explosion, and then you have your canal built. And so, this thing has been very carefully surveyed to do that. There is only one thing that I can see that might go wrong, and that is, Mother Nature may decide to do more than burp over this issue. This is on the Ring of Fire. And Lake Nicaragua was created by that cataclysmic earthquake. What happens when we fire 250 million tons of TNT all at one time in that vulnerable area? It's going to be another Chernobyl, I think, where they say, "Well, gosh, we were trying to do something right, and it just went wrong." But, I don't think you're honestly ever going to get a chance to vote. We are going to do that. That is already the plan. And now the only problem is, we['ve] got to get into Nicaragua to do it. Well, it started out OK, because we had Somoza. He was a friend. But, it wasn't working out with Somoza. And so, I'm not saying that the CIA created Danny Ortega and the Sandinista. But, what I am saying is, there was a lot of applause at Langley when the Sandinista took over and Somoza was deposed, because now we had a confrontational scenario. It was built exactly the way Teddy Roosevelt might have constructed it. Now we had, only in modern terms, we had the tremendous tentacles of Communism, Marxism, that would stretch out and wrap around and strangle the free world, didn't we? That's exactly what was presented to us by the President, Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter did his job. He set it up and we transferred the canal over. Now we had the reason to get into Nicaragua. The problem was, the Nicaraguans weren't willing to give it to us, and so creating a scenario where you have built-in confrontation. We don't need to tell anybody. Now, we run our steel helmets and flak jackets on 19-year-old kids in there. We fight this war to cut the tentacles of Communism before it strangles New Orleans. And, when we've won, maybe they will give us, in all perpetuity, this stretch of land we need, which is much more considerable. We only have ten miles in Panama, five miles on each side of the canal. But we're going to need 50 miles in Nicaragua for this stretch of the super canal that's going to be built. And so, it was perfect. One problem: the damned liberal U.S. Congress said no. We could not go in with military force into Nicaragua and help the Contra to stomp out the hated Sandinista. Congress said no. But did we do it anyway? We did. It is public record. And now, Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent prosecutor, 76 years old, Republican, has released the fact that there are more than 550 entries in Ollie North's personal notes and diary relating to the fact that illegal narcotics were used in funding the Contras. And the illegal narcotics came right into this country (most of them) and has helped to overdose America. And we didn't really win, did we? because we tried to do this, but it wasn't working out at all. As a matter of fact, Iran- Contra really interrupted it. And so, what have we done instead? Well, everybody cheered when the new president won. I say "everybody"; almost everybody cheered. But, do you know that the new president of Nicaragua, one, of course was backed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and for good reason? Her dad, I'm sorry, the grandfather, President Chamorro, in 1916 signed a treaty with the United States, giving permission to put a canal thru Nicaragua. And now, Chamorro is president as the granddaughter, and I'm glad that we don't have to send 19-year- olds in there. But that was a military scenario that was always available. And I believe that the entire war on drugs, very simply, was a stage that was set in order to facilitate a military take-over of Nicaragua, if that's what it required, because the time is run out. The think tanks have made their report. The powerful poker playing families in the world have decided. A new canal, for economic purposes, will be built in Nicaragua, and it's going to be now. I think Ronald Reagan had that mission. But, he wasn't successful. We['ve] got to admit he should have been given an Oscar for his performance. He begged you. How many of you, be courageous now, gave to the freedom fighters? Come on. I didn't give any, but I know some of you must have. You know, I know all the guys that were involved in the Contra support. I worked for them. If you'll read my book, one of the best efficiency reports I ever got was given by one of the king pins in that whole affair. What we did was criminal. We couldn't get the U.S. Congress to OK money from taxpayers to go into Nicaragua, and so we collected money from good citizens of America on the voice of the President, and Ollie North, and all kinds of money-raising schemes. We didn't take that money and give it to the Contra. We took that money and we gave it to a man named Erich von Marbod, who was a cohort of Ed Wilson, along with Dick Secord. I know them all well. Erick is a protege of Kissinger and Schlesinger, very high in the CIA. They had to resign from government office when Ed Wilson was put in prison for 52 years, because they were in cahoots with Ed Wilson in arming Qaddafi with tons of munitions and a state-of-the-art missile system. And so, when it came to light, Ed Wilson was put to jail, and both Secord and von Marbod had to resign. Now, von Marbod went to Zurich and worked for Carlucci's company, Sears World. The money came from you (meaning the American public), went there, was given to the Israelis. The Israelis bought weapons from the Soviet Bloc. You can get a machine gun for $145, with three magazines, a bayonet, and a cleaning rod. An M-16, which is an equivalent weapon, would cost $400 here in America. So, you can see why we're dealing with the Communists. We paid the Communists. It came thru Israel so it would be covered. And then we sold the weapons to the Contra. The Contra do not have shoes for their feet, let alone money to pay at an almost 300% profit, when we sold the weapons to them that we had bought from the Soviet Union. Now, there's a lady that I know named Barbara Studley. She has a beautiful house in Potomac, Maryland. She is a close friend of General Jack Singlaub. Barbara Studley was the go-between, and some of those profits dropped off there, obviously, because she's driving a Maserati, and her house is well equipped with antique furniture and silk dresses. But, that money then bought those arms. Those arms were sold to the Contra. The drug cartel was more than happy to pick up the tab. There was just one small caveat. When the CIA planes from Southern Air, carrying 26,000 pounds of munitions (which we've got on the video tape documented), land and unload, don't let them dead-head back empty. We'll load them full of drugs and send them back to the USA. Why would the CIA, why would any American, agree to allow a replacement, ounce for ounce, pound for pound, of drugs for arms, to come back into the United States? Well, you've got to go back just a little bit with me to Mr. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. The younger people in here will recognize him by that name, Mr. FBI, the literal conscience of America, J. Edgar Hoover; J. Edgar Hoover, who transcended many presidents. I think he had something on most of them. They couldn't get rid of him, so J. Edgar stayed as our top cop. J. Edgar Hoover made a statement. He said, "We don't care about people who use heroin, because they are un-American and mainly in the black ghetto." This gave the CIA license from the conscience of America, J. Edgar Hoover, to deal in illegal narcotics. Now, I think that heroin was a thing that J. Edgar, of course, objected to greatly. I don't believe J. Edgar used heroin. But, I think it's also been translated to mean cocaine, and marijuana, and any other kind of illegal drug, because that's what's happened. In Southeast Asia, I have to tell you, how many of you are Vietnam veterans that were there? Good. Then you will bear witness to this. There are as many bomb holes in Laos and Cambodia as there is in Vietnam. But, the U.S. Congress said no. The damned liberal U.S. Congress said no when we wanted to expand the war into Laos and Cambodia. Now, we had a real need. I commanded an Army of Cambodians. General William C. Westmoreland selected me as "the" American soldier. And in his book, he's got a nice photograph of Major "Bo" Gritz with his "Bo's". My army of CamBOdians were paid by the CIA. And the war was fought in Laos and Cambodia for good reason. The enemy was cheating. There is a backbone of mountains, like the Sierra Nevada's, that separates Vietnam from Laos and Cambodia. It's known as the Anammite Mountain chain. The enemy was sending its manpower and materiel out of the north, on the other side of the Anammite backbone, down thru Laos and Cambodia, and then back into South Vietnam, and it was King's "X" for them. We couldn't touch them. That was unfair. We called it the Ho Chi Minh trail. We really needed to get in there. And as a substitute high school teacher, I can get almost every one of my high school government and history students, in honors classes usually, to agree that it would be all right to violate what Congress said we shouldn't do and go on in there. And then, how do we pay for it, if the U.S. Congress is not going to pay for it? Well, the CIA had an airline. It was called what? Air America, better known (Who's a vet here again?) better known as what? Air Opium. Literally, Air America was a joke in the GI's in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. We called Air America Air Opium, because that's what they did. Now, they flew a lot of pigs and rice. They flew a lot of special operations. But, they flew one hell of a lot of dope also. And we paid for the secret war, in part, thru drugs. And, if you will look back at America, America became overdosed during the 60's and the 70's. Now, I graduated from school in 1957, and I'm here to tell you, I don't think there was one student in my graduating class that had anything to do with illegal narcotics. We would have stomped you in the gutter. That was just our mind set about dope. But, how many of you graduated from school after, say, 1964 in here? All right now, was there anybody in your graduating class that was on dope? And now, today, I just came back from Alaska about two months ago and I have the statistics for 1989. 75% of the entire population, the high school population of Alaska, had been offered, physically offered, illegal narcotics. 60% admit that they partook of those illegal narcotics. Now, Alaska is a state that isn't in the mainstream of the drug traffic. And so, it's a conservative state. 60% of the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades admit that they took drugs. And Nancy Reagan, before she left the White House, said that 90% of the graduating class in 1988 had at least experimented with illegal narcotics. Where is the dope coming from? The dope is coming, simply, thru corridors that have been blessed by elements within the federal government. General Khun Sa, when I first met with him and doubted his story that American agents were the chief handlers, traffickers, negotiators of heroin coming out of the Golden Triangle, and he asked me a simple question. He said, "How would I move (In 1986 it was only 600 tons; this year it's 3,000 tons.) 600 tons of opiates on horseback from this secret base to the free world, if it weren't for badges and credentials and official aircraft?" Now, if you've got a better answer than what he gave me, I want to hear it. Because right outside, on the Burma border, at a place called Mai Hong Song, Thailand, is a full blown air base. There is absolutely no reason, because there's really no town. There's a little village there at Mai Hong Song. It's right on the border of Burma. And Khun Sa says that his mules in those days, (now it's 10-ton trucks), but in those days his mules carried the opium down to the Thai border, loaded it on 10-ton Thai military vehicles. It was driven to the Mai Hong Song air base, put aboard official aircraft, and flown then to Bangkok, and to Singapore, and to Hong Kong, and to ports around the world. And, in 1986, it was 600 tons, in '87 it was 900 tons, in '88 it was 1,200 tons, in '89 it was 2,200 tons, and this year DEA says it's going to go up to approximately 3,000 tons of opiates. Business is booming in the Golden Triangle and in the area of opium and heroin. George Bush did not declare war on anything coming out of Asia. You remember his 6 September declaration? He pointed right at Latin America and he said, "We're declaring war on drugs." Then he said that war was going to be declared on the users. "We're going to get down to those users!" He was talking about, because he identified it -- crack cocaine was his major focus. Crack cocaine. If you don't know very much about it, let me enlighten you a little bit because, as part of my own education, I have gotten with law-enforcement people and tried to come up to speed on this. Crack, when you take it, I have been told by people, sends you to heaven. I hope my definition of heaven's a little different. But, you go straight up, and you're only up there like 15 or 20 minutes. And then you come down, and that's the problem, because the crash is so depressive that users have a suicidal tendency. And this is not good for business. So, in order to flatten out that crash, they are lacing the cocaine with heroin, and that is what crack is all about. They're putting heroin with cocaine. When you look at it, 3,000 tons of opiates coming out of the Golden Triangle, most of it into America, when it was only 600 tons in 1986, it shows that there is a tremendous correlation between what's happening with cocaine and what's happening with heroin. Do we care about people who use heroin? Are they un-American? Are they mainly in the black ghetto? We better damn well care, because it's down to the third grade, if you haven't looked recently. What I'm trying to portray to you here is something that may be hard for you to understand. If you are an Ollie North, and I have been given these kinds of missions, so I have some empathy for him, if you are Ollie North and you are told, "We don't want to know how you do it, Colonel. Just do it!" I've had that kind of a mission: "Don't tell us. We don't want to know." Because they know you're going to have to break all rules of land warfare. Then Ollie North accepts that commission and off he goes, and it includes lying to the U.S. Congress. You won't find very many officers today that will stand up and applaud Ollie North for what he did. We took the same oath. We raised our hand to the square, and we swore to defend this nation against enemies foreign and domestic. We did not swear to lie to what represents you, the people, in the form of Congress. We did not swear to shred documents that would cover up the wrongdoing of our bosses. That is misplaced loyalty and duty, and certainly has no honor to it. You gotta be close to Washington. You cannot sit here in San Francisco and look out over the ocean and see all this beauty and try to relate to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon is purposefully, I believe, five-sided, five stories, five interconnecting rings, up and down, in and out, around and around, without getting anywhere. That's the truth, and it is very much. Listen, I've been there. If you look on the cover of the book, on these photographs, I have what I call a brassiere. A brassiere shows two badges down here [points to chest]. One of them is Army General Staff. There are about 200 officers that are awarded the Army General Staff badge because they are on the Army General Staff. And the other is for the office of the Secretary of Defense. I was the Chief of Congressional Relations in the office of the Secretary of Defense. So, I know what the hell I'm talking about. You get caught in this vortex. I hate to give this analogy, but it's true and I think it's appropriate. It's like flushing the stool. You see everything going around and around, faster and faster, and then you can't see for manure. And that's what happens in Washington, D.C. It really does. You get moving around in these rapid circles and, suddenly, what is real, what is conscionable, what is rational, makes no difference any more. We don't want to know how you did it. Just do it, and if it means using illegal narcotics, then do it! Because who[m] is it attacking? Fawn Hall may have used cocaine, but I don't think Ollie North did. I don't think Poindexter did. MacValium tried to kill himself. At least he had some honor. He saw, when he had lied, and when he had disgraced his uniform, because he was an officer also, he suddenly saw the disgrace he had brought, and he tried to kill himself. It's too bad that the National Security Council chief doesn't even know how to do that right. And he took valium, which only puts you to sleep, and unfortunately he wrote a note. And so when he came to, all the people were standing there and he was in trouble. But, here you've got these kinds of people doing these kinds of things, they think that what they're doing is right at the time. They really do. They aren't using narcotics. And who[m] is it attacking? In their own mind set, it is attacking the trash, the un-Americans. Remember what J. Edgar Hoover said. I wasn't the one who said it. "And in the black ghettos, let's get rid of them." Now, let's jump for just a moment to something that just popped into mind, and that's AIDS. We are hearing more and more about it. It's an incredible thing. And again, like I said, I was a what we call "CBR" -- chemical, biological, and radiological warfare officer. We have bugs, there's no question that we have an arsenal of germs to use during selected periods of warfare. We kill sheep in Montana. Anybody remember that? We lied about it, of course. You're never going to tell the truth when you've done something that is wrong. At least the Army, meaning the government, hasn't chose[n] to do so in all these decades. But yet, in the end, what happened? They found out we were using nerve gas and we killed a bunch of these sheep. AIDS virus, I think, can be proven and, if you will look at the Strecker ... as a matter of fact, I am going to ask Dr. Strecker to be at the convention to personally give you his presentation. Dr. Strecker is a virologist. He is well qualified. He simply states that AIDS did not come from green monkeys; that when you look at what the AIDS virus consists of, it is a leukemia from cattle and it is brain rot from sheep. And you put these diseases together and you come up with the AIDS virus. The AIDS virus has 9,000 matching pairs, which means 9,000 to the sixth power. That's the number of variations of virus you can contract under AIDS. Do we even have a calculator that will figure out how many that is? So, what Strecker is saying is, there is no vaccine that you can be vaccinated with, that would prevent the AIDS virus, because there are so many possible combinations. But, he then tracks it very clearly. It came from sheep and from cattle. It was put together by men and then it was sent with the World Health Organization to Africa, where they engaged in a program of inoculation for small pox. There were three major AIDS breakouts: one in Africa, one in Brazil, and one in Haiti. Interestingly enough, there were 15,000 Haitians that were part of the World Health Organization program in Africa that received the virus. And, in Brazil, the World Health Organization also had an inoculation series there. And so, it's very strange that, what Strecker says is a man-made virus, would suddenly appear wherever the World Health Organization is doing good. And, we had another outbreak, of course, and we figured that it came from New York City because there was a hepatitis inoculation that was being given. Right here in San Francisco, I don't know whether you know this or not, I want to bring you, I want to enlighten you on what your government, "the" government does. If you lived here back in the '50's, you were sprayed. The Navy had a ship that went off shore. The idea was to prove that San Francisco was vulnerable to a biological attack during war, and so they attacked you. And they proved, when they had a tremendous outbreak then (it was their measure) that the average citizen inhaled 5,000 units of this particular disease that was being dispersed. And almost all of San Francisco came down with it. So, the government does use test modules to find out what the effect is. Now, last year, I wouldn't have been near[ly] this paranoid, but I have come out to share my experiences with you, and you frankly have scared the hell out of me by sharing your experiences with me. And there are all kinds of things, like Global 2000, that rear a really ugly head, that talk to the fact that the basic population of the world has to be limited by the year 2000. And then, when you look at what the AIDS virus is doing, and they tell you that it is not spreadable by mosquitos. Well, Strecker says, "Isn't that interesting? If the mosquito cannot spread AIDS virus, then why don't we simply find out the filtering process the mosquito has, and then we wouldn't spread any AIDS virus thru our changing of blood?" The mosquito, according to Strecker, does carry the AIDS virus, which means it is not just a local homosexual problem, or an occasional drug usage problem, or when you have a transfusion, some people pick up AIDS virus. And Strecker has some bad news. Another guy I'll invite to the Freedom Call '90, under our health care section, will be a man who has a solution for this thing. Interestingly enough, there was a man named Rife that Strecker identifies, a long time ago. Rife invented a microscope that could see the virus. And then he generated a radio wave that would cause a certain frequency vibration that would cause the virus to destroy itself. And Rife of course was run out of business real fast. Well, there's another gentleman now that has a product that he has put thru the protocol of the Food and Drug Administration as a cure for AIDS and for cancer. It is a chemical that does the same thing. It causes an electrical property change so that you get the same vibration that Rife gave using a radio wave, and it destroys the cell. It destroys the virus. Now, this guy is saying that he's being absolutely stonewalled. They have tested it. He has all the documents in three universities, 30,000 animal tests, 15,000 human tests. And it is effective. So, I'll invite him there so you can hear what these gentlemen have to say. What I'm saying is that the government has a problem, and that is, it has been deceiving you for a long time, for what I think is a very selfish purpose. And that is, somebody's going to win all the chips. And that's what the whole idea is here. I don't believe in global coincidence myself. Global coincidence has to be planned. Magnificently, marvelously, miraculously, the Soviet Bloc crumbles literally before our face, in just a heart beat. One day it's there, solid as the rock of Gibraltar, and the next day it is crumbling. And isn't it interesting that it is crumbling just before the European economic market is going to come into fruition in 1992? Now, I think that the Soviet Bloc will be very conveniently absorbed into the economic community of Europe. And are we going to have a chance to vote? Well, I had dinner with the Speaker of the House Foley, and with the Majority Leader Gephardt. Both of those gentlemen admit that we are in serious, big-time economic problems. Now, AIDS is one thing, and dope is one thing, and crime is one thing, but our economic problems eclipse all of them. And they all admit it, but not one of these distinguished gentlemen ... Haig is not number 3, but Foley is, and Foley fully admits that he has no solution to our economic problem. Here is what happened just the other day. Sam Nunn is head of the Armed Services Committee. He made a speech. It appeared not in the "L.A. Times," or the front page, which it should have, but it appeared in "Aviation Weekly." In the speech, Sam Nunn quoted a man by the name of [Charles A.] Bowsher, who is the accounting general, the Comptroller General of the United States. And Bowsher simply states that if we do not change our course, that within the next four years, the national debt will exceed $5 trillion, and the interest will be more than $350 billion every year. Our defense budget isn't near[ly] that much. The point that Sam Nunn was making is that it's a good thing we got Glasnost, because we won't have any money for defense. We will be consumed just trying to pay the interest on the national debt. Now, let me explain something to you, because a lot of people, for some reason, don't seem to see the forest for the trees. And this is what I've learned, having come out from behind the veil. And then I'll get back to my own personal experience. But, I think this is very key to understand. If you were going to win all the chips in this global poker game, you would have to break the back of the United States. Now, the people who rented German soldiers to England, the people who started the Central Bank of England, the people who started the Central Bank in Germany, these are people who are becoming rich, super rich, because they found that you could just manufacture money to pay for wars. You just go ahead and make money, and you'd lend it to the government. You didn't have to have gold to back it up. Well, it was Alexander Hamilton that wanted to start the Central Bank in the United States, and it was Thomas Jefferson that opposed it. But we did it anyway. The fact is that (can you imagine this?) we've got to break the back of the United States economically. Otherwise, we can't win all the chips. Let's go thru a little war gaming, like we do in the Pentagon. Let's say that the ideal solution is this. First of all, we create a banking consortium -- private individual banks. Now, we give permission for the Treasury to mint money. Every dollar that is minted, we'll have interest owed to us; [it] won't cost us a penny to mint the money. But, we will lend it to the United States government. They will owe us an interest. There won't be one dollar printed, ever, that won't have debt money attached to it. How do you ever pay off the debt? It is a built-in, guaranteed bankruptcy. If you do not print any debt-free money, you could never pay off the principal, because there isn't any debt-free money to even pay the damned interest, let alone the principal. And so, can you imagine someone buying that scheme? Well, in 1913, that's precisely what we did, and on top of it, they had to have some way to pay the interest. Now, if they're going to manufacture whatever amount of money they determine should be printed, and then that goes to the federal government to spend, and interest is owed to them, how are they ever going to get paid? They are paid thru the IRS. Your taxes pay them. Now, it's interesting that two things happened in 1913. The Federal Reserve was created. The Federal Reserve is no more federal than the federal laundry or the federal restaurant, or any other federal type organization like that. It is a group of privately owned banks, and you know who comes down to the one major bank? The one major bank is the same guy that we've been talking about all alone here, the same guy from Germany that had a great idea. And then we've got a few other big players, like Rockefeller. When it comes right down to it, the major banks in the Federal Reserve are located in New York City. The rest of them are just, sort of, subscriber banks. They give permission to print money. Every dollar that is printed, we owe them, a private banking corporation, the interest and the principal. We can never pay it. It is a built-in, guaranteed way to cause bankruptcy. It had to happen, if they were going to win all the chips. And we are looking at some of the last hands today, because it took from 1776 to 1982 to get one trillion dollars in debt. But do you know, since 1982, we now owe three trillion dollars? and in the next four years, it'll be five trillion, if the interest rates go down? That's what Bowsher is betting that will happen, and putting his computation on. And the interest will be more than is collected in the taxes. The interest will be $350 billion and more, just the interest. And so, do you see where we're going? We must have some changes. Now, one of the things that we're is proposing is this. It sounds really radical. And we've given it to Foley and we've given it to Gephardt. As a matter of fact, we've sent it to Bush. But you've got to understand that our President is a past member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. They aren't even bashful about telling you that this is a one-world economic effort. And debtors cannot be choosers. I think when 1992 comes around, and we have the European Common Market a reality, the Soviet Bloc absorbed, that we will be shortly behind. And along with that comes a lot, an awfully lot of restrictions, a lot of these, the cashless society ... It's interesting. I'll give you some headlines. They should have been headlines. Maybe we should get a little group of papers together called "Should Have Been Headlines." But, this was in the "New York Times," March 31st. It said, "Our Congressional leaders are today considering the adoption of a national identity card." Now, the national identity card is supposed to help you safeguard your job from an illegal alien. But, the national identity card is also used for many other things. There is a company in Dallas, Texas, in the Metroplex, that's experimenting right now. They have a card that's made up; it would be your national identity card, with your bar code on it. You set it in the windshield of your car, and the toll gates are all automatically operated and your bank account is automatically debited. That way, you don't have to wait in line to throw money, and it's being praised as a major step forward in the cashless society. A lot of these things are coming now together. It is an exciting time in our life. The idea of the convention is to identify what we feel are the major problems, and then, on the other hand, to identify what we believe are the major solutions, and then all go out there and do something about it. Now, I told you that I would discuss what I think is a solution. We're going to offer a computer bulletin board network as a result of this convention. Anyone who's at the convention, anyone that wants to be a subscriber, can. The computer bulletin board would do this. All you would have to have is a personal computer, or access to one. You go to that personal computer and you call up the Center for Action, and there is the menu. Let's say that you had just been dinged by the IRS to bring all of your records in on Monday, and you didn't know whether you wanted to do that or not, or what your rights are. You could pull up the Center for Action bulletin board, and you'd see under Income Tax, you punch that on that menu, and now you have the income tax. There's all the input that people from around the United States are putting into the bulletin board every day. And there's documents and other kinds of stuff. You may write on there, "Help! San Francisco. Tracy. I've been told to bring all my documents, Monday, to the IRS. Help!" And somebody in Florida, or Rhode Island, or Salt Lake City, or Seattle will probably write back and say, "Tracy, in SFO, this is Marcy, or Murray, in Salt Lake City. Here's exactly what you do. U.S. Code number 1-0-something-something gives you exactly this right. You do not have to produce any documentation." And what it means is that you're never going to be alone with any of your problems again. When you have access to millions of Americans who have experience, because some of them are beating the system now, it means that you'll have access to the experience of these people. I think it's going to catch on like a raging fire. (I think, all of a sudden, our computer is going to get AIDS.) We're going to have a lot of virus problems. But, I am determined that we are going to beat it. We're going to keep the network open so that we can keep everybody pulled together. We passed a resolution in the State of Alaska that calls Thornburg, I believe, to indict General Khun Sa. And I am, again, about to be indicted, if they have their way about it. The resolution was .... Now Alaska is our biggest state, but it only has 500,000 people, and most of them are vets, I think. They have the largest per capita of veterans of any other state in the Union. The vets told me, "Bo, we want to attack. We want to do something." So, we got a resolution together, and the day before it was going to be voted on, the resolution was to require the U.S. Congress to investigate Khun Sa's proposal. Khun Sa's proposal is, "I will eradicate the opium, and I will reveal every U.S. Government official who has been my best customer for more than 20 years." Now, the day before that resolution was to be voted on in the Alaska Legislature, Thornburg indicted Khun Sa. And I think he thought he would stop the resolution. But, we had only one dissenting vote. Alaska passed that resolution. What happens when California passes it, and Washington, and Arizona, and Nevada, and we start working eastward? Congress is going to have to, at some point, say, "We are going to have to investigate." And then what happens? I've been with Khun Sa on four separate occasions. I know that he can't pick my friends for me. But this guy, I believe, is earnest. I'll answer your questions in just a moment maybe why I believe that, because it's about time for a question-and-answer period. But, can you imagine? that if Khun Sa were to come out and do as he said, it would blow the lid off of this rat's nest. We could get our prisoners of war home while they're still alive. We have human sewage right now blocking the bureaucracy. We could win the war on drugs. We could expose a lot of what's going wrong, which I believe includes this AIDS virus, and put a stop to it, before we lose this poker game. And so, very simply, as I see it, we as Americans have a responsibility under the Declaration of Independence. It says, very clearly, that the responsibility is ours, the people, to safeguard the birthright that we gained, and that we must be vigilant. Now, we're going to take Capitol Hill. We're not going to take it using bullets and bayonets and bombs this time. I think we can take it using the very weapons that are being used against us. I really do. By the way, don't expect to hear anything from Noriega or Khun Sa. When you are an indicted felon (I know this because they did this to me), when you're indicted as a felon, the CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act, now suddenly falls over you. You cannot make any statement that might prejudice national security. And so, you'll notice that Manuel Noriega said, "I have George Bush by the cajones." He said that about three months before they indicted him. Do you think they indicted Manuel Noriega because he is a drug lord? No! We were going to turn over the canal in 1990. We had to get Pineapple Face out of there and put our own people in, to make sure that canal keeps running right, for economic purposes, until we get the new one going in Nicaragua. Now, Thornburg has indicted Khun Sa because it looks like we're getting close to a resolution that would require Congress to investigate. As a matter of fact, Sam Nunn has already said he is going to investigate. If we can just give him the push he needs to make sure it's not a "square filler," that he really looks, then we will win this thing. And, I have that kind of faith, and I hope that you do too. As a matter of fact, I know as AmerICANs, the last four letters in the word American, that we can, and that we will, that we must win this thing. And that's an order, by the way. Now, let's take a break, if you will. The video tapes that I have available show Khun Sa indicting these Americans in the jungle. It also shows the Nicaraguan problems, the CIA pilots flying the drugs over there and bringing the drugs back after they've flown arms into Nicaragua for the Contra. And it talks to what I think are some of the major problems, [e.g.] the drug problem. There is a tape back there called "Winning the War on Drugs." I was indicted. I was told that, if I did not erase and forget everything I'd learned, I would serve 15 years as a felon. They tried to get me for training Afghans. I'm guilty. I trained Afghans. But the grand jury, and by the way, not one patriot could ever be tried for a crime if a grand jury wouldn't indict. But, most grand juries are led by the nose by the U.S. attorney, because there isn't any other side. There's only his side. Hearsay is even admissible in a grand jury. But, the grand jury found no true bill, because it was obvious the Statement Department had set up the training for the Afghans. Now, those are Mujahadeen over there, not dogs that we were training. A woman one time said, "Bo, how come Special Forces are involved in animal training?" And it took me about ten seconds to realize she was talking about the guys wearing turbans that I knew as Afghans, only they're Mujahadeen. Then they tried to indict me for the Neutrality Act here in California. I am guilty. I always said I was guilty. My lawyer kept saying, "Bo, please stop saying that." But it is true. I have been ten times behind enemy lines since 1982. Not once did I ask permission, so I was guilty. But, the FBI testified I was a government agent working for the National Security Council's ISA. So, the U.S. Attorney for California said, "I ain't touching it." And so he would not indict. In Nevada, they did indict me, for misuse of a passport. It is a weeny charge. Jane Fonda misused a passport. Ollie North and MacValium had Irish passports when they went into Iran for the illegal drug deals. 30 years of covert operations and they're going to indict me for using a false passport? I am guilty, and I said it on television and the newspapers. I am guilty. I've had false passports most of my adult life. And, I was happy they did indict me, because it meant I could put the government on trial. The only reason I was being indicted is because I wouldn't cover up government drug involvement. I had proof that I had been sent by the White House to Burma. And, they knew the passport I was operating on. I was going to put them on trial and then prove that the reason our prisoners weren't home is because the bureaucrats responsible have been involved in drug smuggling, and would be revealed at any investigation about what took so long on bringing our POWs home. But, you know something, 19 witnesses came against me, and the day that I got up, in uniform, to take the stand, the judge ordered the jury to acquit me. It was never intended for me to say one word. When I said, "Your honor," my lawyer said, "Sit down, Bo! You have won!" But it wasn't a victory, because the government never got tried. I just got acquitted. And the judge put his gavel down and said, "Colonel Gritz, you will not say one word in this court room." But you know what Bill Maddox, U.S. Attorney for the State of Nevada, did? He said it all for me. He walked right out there (this was straight from God, I think) and he said, before three news cameras, when they asked him, "Why did you pursue, personally, as the U.S. Attorney and your chief deputy?", who turned out to be Country Joe and Fish's road show manager, an acid rock group guy, and they shipped him out immediately. That was the first casualty. Then an assistant resigned. They sent him out. The U.S. Attorney said, "George Bush called me on the phone and told me to get Bo Gritz." And when a reporter said, "Are you denying that? Is that what you're saying?" Old Maddox stood right there, stony faced, and said, "No. What I'm saying is, George Bush called me on the phone and told me to get Bo Gritz." I sent a copy of that to Thornburg and to Bush, with a little note that says, "You may have done wrong. And if you didn't, you['ve] got trouble, because the U.S. Attorney in Nevada is lying about you." Bill Maddox lost his job. So, right now the number 4 man in Nevada is the U.S. Attorney. He's happy. But, the State Department has just declared war on me again. I was in Washington, D.C. this last weekend for Memorial Day, and a State Department investigator I've known for a jillion years almost, it seems like, came up to me and said, "Bo, shred everything you've got that is in any way false identification, because the State Department has declared war on you, because you will not stop doing what we asked you to, and that is, talking about government drug involvement." And so, when I came back from Washington, Maddox now is gone, of course, but (Pocker is his name) Pocker has now sequestered a new grand jury to meet on the seventh of June for more charges that they're going to try to drum up. It means we're doing something right. If you don't get a reaction from the beast, it means you're not doing something. But, when you can get that beast to react, it means you've got him somewhere where it's hurting. So, that's exciting news. I've done a lot of things wrong, folks, but not one thing that I wouldn't be willing to stand up and tell in full before you as a jury of my peers. And if you think I did wrong, because that's what the government told me to do, I'm happy to go to prison. But, we thought we were doing right at the time, even though it turned out to be wrong. Now, that is what I wanted to tell you. Let's take a break, make the tapes and books available. I'll be glad to personalize them. We've got to be out of here ... [end of 90-minute tape]. [Editor's note: This transcript was prepared by volunteers who did not have sufficient historical records to confirm the spelling of all the names and places referenced by Colonel Gritz. Spelling corrections will be made as time and resources permit. These volunteers felt it was more important to distribute a transcript of this lecture as soon as possible, rather than to wait until the correct spelling of every last person's name and geographic place was obtained. These volunteers, therefore, can assume no responsibility for any inaccuracies of spelling contained herein. Words and phrases are shown in bold type if their spelling remains unconfirmed. ] # # #
Return to Table of Contents