Informed Sources

Assassination News

Assassination rumors continue to sweep the country. Now both Los Angeles and Atlanta officials have been moved to take a new look at the evidence.

In Los Angeles, the district attorney's office has announced it is "exploring the possibility" of reopening the Robert Kennedy investigation. The announcement follows on the heels of a scientific report by the prestigious Academy of Forensic Sciences indicating its studies support the two gun theory in the Kennedy assassination. Examining the bullets removed from R.F.K. and another man wounded in the shooting, the Academy reports there are "gross differences" in those bullets indicating more than one gun may have been used. Pointing to serious discrepancies in the ballistic evidence, the Academy has called for a new investigation of the case which found Sirhan Sirhan guilty alone.

In Atlanta, reports that James Earl Ray was involved in a gun and drug smuggling ring have the police department investigating the new leads. Two investigators have been assigned to check out leads after the department received a sworn statement alleging Martin Luther King was the victim of a conspiracy. The document reportedly "names names," and police have indicated some of it checks out and some of it does not.

Nixon and the Chile Plot

The C.I.A.'s plot to overturn the Chilean government of President Salvadore Allende Gossens was again in this news, this time with evidence that former President Nixon issued orders to keep Allende from power.

The Senate Committee on Intelligence has been looking at the reports that show Nixon authorized about $10 million to prevent Allende from ever being elected. The Committee has called Henry Kissinger to testify on the Chilean operations by the C.l.A. and the White House's role in that decision.

The Chile operations have also revealed a possible perjury charge against former CIA director Richard Helms. who testified previously to the Senate that the White House had not issued the order on Chile. Last December, current CIA director William Colby approached the FBI with evidence of the perjurous statements by Helms, and asked their advice. It was at that time Colby informed the FBI of an agreement between the two agencies in which the CIA would not report any illegal activities by its own agents to protect "national security." The FBI and the Attorney General have found no evidence such an agreement was made as the CIA claimed. The Rockefeller report first mentioned the alleged agreement, which the CIA claimed had been made in the late fifties. At least nine known cases of illegal activities were not reported to the Justice Department, although federal law requires all agencies to report such misdoings to the FBI. The possibility exists that no such agreement ever existed, and that it was recently fabricated to protect the CIA from blame for certain illegal activities which had never been previously reported.

Little Time left for Gov't File Requests

If you want to find out what the FBI and the CIA have in their files on you, please write immediately.

Congress recently passed something called the Privacy Act. It takes effect September 1. The CIA and FBI are going to use it to deny requests for files brought under the Freedom of Information Act.

So you may have less than a month to request your file.

The files the SUN has seen so far show a massive amount of domestic surveillance done on people who were never arrested for anything and who were only marginally active in "movement" causes. So a couple of letters may be very worth while.

For files from the FBI and other Justice Department agencies, write: Deputy Attorney General, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

For files from the CIA, write: Freedom of Information Coordinator, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C.

Label each envelope and each letter "Freedom of Information Request" Also provide them with your date and place of birth and social security number.

The Cuban Connection

After eleven years, the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) has dropped its embargo against Cuba. While many South American countries already have extensive trade relations with the Communist island, the United States has been slow in establishing better relations with Cuba.

The vote this week was the last of several attempts by the O.A.S. to end the embargo passed during the early sixties. The trade restrictions were supposed to cripple the government of Fidel Castro through economic manipulation. However, the embargo proved the best means of strengthening Castro's government by guaranteeing economic non-interference from the U.S. such as was used in Chile.

The O.A.S. move may have little immediate effect on trade between the U.S. and Cuba. President Ford recently expressed his opposition to the immediate restoration of trade. But at the same time, American corporations have been investigating the new market for several years and will be pressuring the administration to restore relations.

Cuba has also been much in the news over the past two weeks, as the Senate Intelligence committee has been looking at foreign assassination plots. Senator Richard Weicker (R-Pa.) a member of the committee, has added fuel to the fire of rumors Castro was involved in the assassination of President John Kennedy. According to Weiker, a reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination could be a "spin-off" of the intelligence investigation. Weiker has suggested Kennedy may have been assassinated in retaliation for the C.I.A. plots against the Cuban premiere's life.

Pacific News Service is out with a story which ties Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's reputed assassin with the Cubans. But rather than Castro's agents, Oswald may have been duped by anti-Castro Cubans posing as members of the Cuban intelligence service.

In a copyrighted story, by William Turner, a former F.B.I. agent, reports on the strange case of Richard Case Nagell. In September, 1963, Nagell walked into a bank, shot two holes in the ceiling and stood waiting for police to come and arrest him. Nagell told police he knew of an assassination plot against then-president Kennedy, and he wanted to be guaranteed a good alibi when the killing took place.

Nagell's story has long been known to assassination researchers, but Nagell himself had not been available for comment. Now, Richard Popkin, a philosophy professor at Washington University, has new evidence based on Nagell's reports.

Nagell worked for the C.I.A. in 1963, and stumbled onto information about a domestic plot to assassinate the president involving Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans. Although he informed his superiors, he feared nothing would be done because he lacked details.

Nagell, worried that his association with Oswald might link him to a possible assassination, pulled the strange bank job, and was thus in jail when the assassination finally took place in November.

According to Popkin, Nagell claims to have a photograph of himself, Oswald and the two phoney Cuban agents. Popkin has turned the story over to Congress, and told the Senate committee Nagell would come out of hiding should certain protective conditions be met. However, Popkin has indicated that officials in Washington have so far expressed little interest in his material.

Mind Bending in the Army

Experiments with LSD, undertaken by both the Army and the CIA have reportedly been discontinued. But last week, new information revealed the Army was still experimenting with two other hallucinogens on military personnel. The Army claimed such research was a necessary requirement for developing warefare weapons. Interestingly enough, the Army said it found marijuana to be utterly harmless.

Meanwhile, researcher Harold Weisberg has released a previously secret government document indicating the CIA has experimented with mind-control techniques to influence the behavior of individuals as well as mass populations. The three-page paper, "Soviet Research and Development in the Field of Direction and Control of Human Behavior," compares American and Soviet efforts at altering human behavior. The study indicates the CIA is familiar with both "psychological" and "pharmacological" methods, and that experiments have involved "LSD-25, amphetamines, tranquilizers, hypnotics and similar materials." The report also indicates there was no reason to believe the Russians were more advanced in such research.

In related news, it was revealed last week that the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare administered LSD to 2500 mental patients since 1954. HEW claims it received "consent" for the doses.

Women and Health

A suit filed in Kansas against the manufacturer of the controversial Dalkon shield, an intra-uterine (IUD) device, has been won by Connie L. Deemer.

Deemer became pregnant while using the shield, and when it failed to be delivered with the baby, she required surgical removal of the IUD. The A.H. Robbins Company was ordered to pay Deemer $10,000 in compensation and $75,000 punitive damages. The drug company is planning an appeal.

And in another action, evidence indicating G.D. Searle, a leading pharmaceutical company, falsified data on flagyl has been turned over to the Justice Department.

Flagyl is a commonly prescribed drug to women with the vaginal infection trichomonas vaginitas. Charges against the company, made by Food and Drug Administration medical officer Adrian Gross, indicate flagyl causes cancer in mice. Approved for use by the FDA in 1972, flagyl was later discovered by independent research to be carcinogenic. Gross found inconsistencies in the reports on the drug by Searle, and the raw data from the company indicated the falsifications. The Justice Dept. is considering criminal action against the pharmaceutical company.