Hillary 'Goon Squad' Victim Goes Public
On Monday NewsMax.com detailed the story of Clinton campaign insider Patrick Halley, who revealed that "goon squads" were recruited to suppress protests at events for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Now one Clinton "goon squad" victim has come forward to tell his story.
The incident took place at New York City's Israeli Day parade at the height of Mrs. Clinton's 2000 campaign for the Senate, where, by all accounts, the then-first lady was roundly booed by the crowd as she stoically marched from block to block.
A member of the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com, dressed for the occasion as the devil, joined the crowd to add his voice to the protest. He recounted the episode Tuesday:
"To suppress opposing views in the crowd the Clinton campaign had people on both sides of the street walking the route with Hillary - but behind the barriers. They were carrying professionally printed pro-Clinton signs."
"Before she passed," he recalled, "they shoved me back and got in front of me, holding their signs in front of mine. However, my signs had a 3-foot handle and I raised them up."
At that point, recounts the FreeRepublic protester, "I was poked in the eye by a finger inserted to the eyehole in my mask."
In his recently released book "On the Road with Hillary," Mr. Halley details his eight-year stint as Mrs. Clinton's advance man, where one of his most important jobs was stifling protests like those staged by FreeRepublic, using even physical intimidation when he deemed it necessary.
"Less genteel souls," Halley explained, sometimes referred to his protest-busters as "goon squads" - although he preferred the term "etiquette squads."
"I was proud of the fact that not one of them had ever been arrested," he boasts in the book.
Every now and then, Halley said, even he would have to throw a punch or two.
During a trip to Moscow while Mrs. Clinton was first lady, the advance man recalled:
"A photographer blocked my way and, trying to get a picture of Hillary in her limo, pushed me. I hit him square in the face so hard I thought I'd broken my hand. His nose exploded in an eruption of blood and I was able to shove him out of the way and jump into the lead car."
When it came to his protest busters, Halley says he "never advocated physical confrontation and always insisted that the etiquette squad stay within the boundaries of the law."
But in the next breath he confessed, "Sadly, but inevitably, things sometimes got a little frisky, but my recruits knew how to handle themselves. ... I had heard rumors that they had been very adamant about defending themselves when set upon by protesters."
Information Sharing That Led to 9/11: Freeh and the Stasi Files
Douglas J. Brown
The Nathan hale Institute
Friday, Oct. 25, 2002
In the 1990s, the United States possessed one of the greatest spy networks the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn't create it and we didn't run it. The great East German spymaster, the Man Without a Face, Markus Wolf, created it and who knows, in a perverse, Kafkaesque way, he may still run it.
(See "The Man Without a Face is Smiling," http://www.nathanhaleinstitute.org/Mephisto.asp)
On Nov. 22, 1998, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reported, "the complete original files from East Germany's foreign spy operations, including the true identities of its thousands of agents, ... are in the possession of the Central Intelligence Agency." (WP 22/11/98, A2)
In the epic struggle between the Washington Post and the New York Times over which publication can do the greatest damage to U.S. intelligence capabilities, Pincus' 1998 story may well prove to be the most irresponsible and damaging editorial decision ever taken by either publication.
How did the Post stumble across the story? Well, someone might want to ask one Louis Freeh. Apparently Freeh's FBI and the Reno Justice Department used the secret files of the HVA, the foreign intelligence service of the Stasi, to prosecute an espionage trial in Virginia.
Oops! Another freebie to the world's intelligence services.
To all those critics of the FBI who claimed the bureau didn't share information prior to 9/11, not true. Under Freeh there was information sharing. It just so happened that it was often with the wrong people. Filegate, pre-publication copies of Gary Aldrich's book, the Hanssen case, and news that certain Stasi files were not missing after all are just a few examples Freeh can cite to defend his record as it pertains to information sharing.
Meanwhile at Langley, the PR-obsessed Tenet CIA took a perfunctory no-comment stance to the Pincus story, only to let it be known unofficially that "Operation Rosewood" would be recorded as "one of the CIA's greatest triumphs."
In other words, yes, we confirm we have the files because it makes us look good, but officially, no, we don't have the files because after all we are intelligence professionals and our professionalism makes it incumbent on us to say, "What are you talking about?" Or, even better: "No comment, but gee isn't it neat what great spies we are?"
Now, how to make a huge blunder into a colossal one? Let's give the files back to the Germans as soon as possible. For some reason or reasons, those Social Democrats and their leftist allies really want those files back. Danke, Herr Clinton und Tenet! We knew you would understand.
How significant a spy network did Wolf and the HVA develop? While Wolf's exploits in West Germany are legendary – one estimate states that Wolf had 6,000 to 7,000 agents in West Germany alone – his work in other countries, especially in the Third World, is just as impressive.
"As much treasure as the Stasi spent on spying against the West, if not more, went to support the so-called liberation forces in the Third World," notes John Koehler in his excellent book, "Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police." (Westview Press, 1999, p.297)
Liberation forces, which included the PLO and other terrorists Organizations, were trained and backed in order to push the Third World into the Soviet camp and away from the West. In truth, the Stasi made little distinction between guerrilla movements and terrorists groups. They each had the same objective – defeat the West.
As former KGB chief analyst Gen. Nikolai Leonov recently stated, "In the Cold War confrontation, we accepted as a matter of principle that geopolitical victory will be won by those with whom the third world will go. ..."
However, Wolf and the Stasi had an additional intriguing role in the Cold War that would make their agent network a great prize for any intelligence agency to get its hands on. According to Koehler, the Stasi were responsible for organizing and training "secret police forces and intelligence departments" in the Third World.
Thus, the Stasi had an extensive network of agents and assets in some of the most sensitive positions and troubling spots of the world. And not only did their people have strong ties and extensive contacts in countries like Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etc., but the Stasi network also was tied into terrorists groups, front companies, and global organizations and institutions with fine-sounding goals but often shady origins and hidden agendas.
Moreover, many of the Stasi agents found themselves in the early '90s adrift, unemployed and with pasts that made them open to blackmail and intimidation.
The thought, let alone the sight, of the files of Wolf's global network of agents undoubtedly left many Directorate of Operations (DO) officers at the CIA drooling at the opportunity. Unfortunately, DO officers were not calling the shots at Langley during the '90s, sometimes not even in the DO itself; instead, a cadre of politically correct, publicity obsessed, self-promoting Washington insiders were running the agency.
Were such people likely to see the potential of co-opting and integrating the Stasi network into our own HUMINT network? Were such people likely to develop a thoughtful, nuanced and strategic approach on how to utilize the Stasi network?
Not likely. In fact, they likely would have been mortified at such a bold, ambitious plan.
Why?
The Torricelli Principle.
The New York Times.
The Washington Post.
The San Jose Mercury News.
Intimations of Dulles-Gehlen.
"60 minutes."
ABC, NBC, CBS.
Hollywood.
NPR.
Academia.
Their friends.
Oh my, and don't even mention other Eastern Bloc intelligence services and their agent networks.
No doubt U.S. intelligence utilized the Stasi files, but using them to prosecute two individuals in Virginia, at the cost of compromising their utility and value, was a monumental blunder in 'information sharing' that led to 9/11.
With all the incessant blathering from Congress, the press and the experts about the 'breakdown' of our HUMINT capabilities and how the lack of information sharing led to 9/11, it's a little surprising that more attention hasn't been given to perhaps the greatest blunder of the many great blunders of the Clinton administration: the acknowledgment of our possession of, and then the agreement to return, the Stasi files to Clinton's good friend Gerhard Schroeder.
One can only imagine the self-proclaimed Kennedy protégé Clinton informing Schroeder of his decision: "Ich bin Stasi ..."