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To: Tom Clarke who wrote (16588)	5/26/2000 9:49:00 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Drug Czar is a War Criminal: cryptome.org

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (16588)	5/27/2000 4:44:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Charles, This Calvi story is a pretty old tune..... Actually, I don't have much interest in investigating it anymore. The bottom line is that not much has changed in the Vatican since the Borgias and the Renaissance conspiracies. BTW, do you recall that strange murder of the head of Vatican's Swiss Guards and his wife? It was allegedly a "fit of madness" by a younger Swiss guard who committed suicide just after his double murder.... Pretty odd, eh? Especially when one notices that the Pope's elite army is really composed of handpicked Swiss Catholics --from the best families. To get back to the Calvi case, here's a good report: americanatheist.org You probably know that the election of Karol Wojtyla as Albino Luciano's successor was a U-turn for the Church: Cradinal Luciano was an insider who knew all the ins and outs of "Vatican Inc." and was a liberal (pinko?) individual, whereas Wojtyla was a reactionary outsider who was well aware of his "chance-of-a-lifetime" to undermine Communism, starting with his own country (Poland). Here's a link to a French Catholic magazine that's usually very critical of the Vatican's hardline stance: golias.com The current pope has surrounded himself with fanatics from Opus Dei. While he openly pledges in favor of ecumenism and welcomes other religions' wisdom (ie Judaism, Islam, Orthodox christianism, etc.), the pope is simulteanously radicalizing the Catholic agenda on each and every issue. Gus.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (16588)	5/27/2000 5:13:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Footnote to my previous message: (from conspire.com ) Number 49 Going Papal Papal guardsman goes postal 5/15/98 -- You expect disgruntled American peons to go postal. Happens all the time: Seething nutcase nurses grudge over some real or imagined workplace slight, erupts into that peculiarly American state of apopleptic indignance ("How dare they?! I got rights!!"), begins drilling office cohorts with live ammo. What you don't expect is a natively neutral Swiss chap (who is apparently comfortable in a silly plumed helmet) to explode in a fit of homicidal derangement, capping off his boss and his boss's wife, and then turning his gun on himself. It's even more surprising when it all happens behind the sanctified walls of Vatican City. So it's no wonder the conspiracy theories have begun to spew faster than muzzle flash at a post office substation. You've probably heard the basic news: Earlier this month in Vatican City a young soldier shot and killed the new commander of the pope's Swiss Guard, killed the commander's wife, and then killed himself. The Swiss Guard is an elite group of 100 Swiss Catholic men, founded in 1506 to help guard the pope and to perform ceremonial duties. Twenty-three-year-old Swiss Guard vice-corporal Cedric Tornay's motive in killing Col. Alois Estermann and Estermann's Venezuelan wife, Gladys Meza Romero, was ostensibly anger at being passed over for a coveted medal. That and the claim that the 44-year-old Estermann, who just ten hours earlier had been promoted to the top position in the Swiss Guard, had persecuted and him on the job. In a suicide note, Tornay, apparently referring to Estermann and his wife, wrote that "it was they who forced me to do what I am about to do.... I have to render this service to the Corps and the Catholic Church." Sounds like a standard case of an embittered employee taking the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-deluded low road to carnage. And that's just how the Vatican has depicted the incident -- as a "fit of madness in a person with very peculiar psychological characteristics," as Holy See spokesman Joanquin Navarro-Valls put it. According to Navarro-Valls, Tornay was "very bitter" that he was not included on a list of guardsmen scheduled to receive a decoration at Estermann's swearing-in ceremony, and that he was angry about a Feb. 12 letter of reprimand from Estermann, for staying out all night. But just days after the Vatican publicly endorsed the disgruntled nutboy theory, the story got somewhat curiouser when German newspaper --the Berliner Kurier-- reported that Estermann had been a spy for East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. Quoting an unnamed source in Berlin, the Kourier reported that Estermann, who had operated under the code name "Werder," had been recruited by the Stasi in 1979 while still in the army in his native Switzerland. Supposedly, after joining the Swiss Guard, he acted as a Vatican mole in the between 1981 and 1984. According to the Kourier source, Estermann sent confidential Vatican information from Rome to Innsbruck, Austria. Subsequent reports in the Italian press identified Estermann's spymaster as former Stasi officer Markus Wolf. Wolf denied any connection to Estermann. Though Wolf claimed that he did indeed have a mole inside the papal compound, he said that the agent was a German researcher working in a Vatican scientific academy. The Vatican, itself, also denied the rumors in a authoritarian dismissal that will do little to quash further speculation: The "hypothesis is not even being taken into consideration," said Navarro-Valls. And from there the (speculative) plot thickens: Estermann, it turns out, was the papal guard who rescued the pope from a 1981 assassination attempt that left the pontif badly wounded. As detailed in 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca pumped two slugs into the Holy Father's chest, and might have finished him off if it weren't for a guard who propped the slumping pope up in the Popemobile, and blocked further gunsight access to with his own body. That heroic guard? Estermann. Also detailed in 60GCAT is the propaganda campaign by CIA-connected cold warriors and the Italian secret services to portray the fanatical fascist Agca as a pawn of Soviet-bloc spymasters in Bulgaria. Despite numerous books and articles claiming just that, and a series of strong-arm moves by Italian authorities to make Agca confess to Bulgarian sponsorship, the case was so weak that the accused Bulgarians were eventually acquitted. (Agca continues to serve a life sentence.) If Estermann was indeed a Stasi mole, the significance of his actions in 1981 are rather murky. His efforts to save the pope certainly helped thwart Agca's assassination attempt -- which makes the so-called "Bulgarian Connection" even more dubious. For why would a Soviet mole interfere with a Soviet plot to ice the pope? As for a sinister motive in the killing of Estermann, there are several possibilites: 1) The Vatican is correct when it asserts that Estermann's killer was a disgruntled lone nut --regardless of whether Estermann was a mole; 2) Estermann was eliminated in an effort to either cover up ties to the Stasi-- making his murder a pretty stupid plot, in that it only hastened his exposure as a former Stasi snitch; 3) Estermann was whacked to expose his ties the Stasi -- an unsatisfying theory in that it seems like a lot of trouble when a simple leak to journalists would have done the trick. So, we must confess, it all remains hazier than a cloud of Frankincense. We'll keep you posted as the situation airs out. ________________ PS - I've noticed that you're a bookstore owner of sorts.... Do you have Michael C. Piper's book on JFK? I was told it's out of print.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (16588)	5/29/2000 6:39:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Re: ...The Mafia, as you call it, may exist in Italy, but here it's a shadow of its former self. Our most famous mobster, John Gotti Jr., is reduced to selling steroids at his gym and shaking down local grocers. Yours really is a self-delusive opinion on the Mafia's stake in the U.S. --the largest drug-consumer market in the world. ....yet another claim of the Mafia as the highest stage of capitalism: washingtonpost.com Excerpt: Tucson, AZ: With the vasts amount of money these global drug cartels earn, is it fair to say that they not only threaten democratic institutions, but skew the free market flow of capital? Frank Cilluffo: I think that that very well is a fact and that by any standards the criminal narcotics industry ranks among the wealthiest and powerful multinational businesses in the world. And that's the way to think of it--as a business-- perhaps the fastest growing since the end of the Cold War. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan estimated the industry at $500 billion/year. While those estimates are questioned, according to those accounts, it's still bigger than the world's auto industry. And it certainly does undermine the confidence of our financial system. These are the true multinationals. I call it the darkside of globalization. They enjoy the same advantages as the wealthiest and most powerful countries of the world. They have abundant capital and can afford anything they need to succeed, people, materials, etc. It also makes it impossible for legitimate companies to compete when they will take a loss to launder their money and make it appear legitimate. [the laundering premium] [snip] _______________ Indeed, the mafia is here to stay... after all, as more and more legitimate businesses fall into its clutches, the mafia is on the point of becoming one of the world's largest employers, outperforming (temp supplier) Manpower! How much luxury liners (in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean,...) with casinos on board are operated by drug barons? How much luxury resorts and hotels? How much real estate projects?