CIA archives: Langley had its hands heavily involved in treason against President Carter

CIA archives: Langley had its hands heavily involved in treason against President Carter by Wayne Madsen

Declassified Central Intelligence Agency archives indicate that the top brass at Langley was concerned about press reports in 1980 that not only did the Ronald Reagan-George Bush-William Casey campaign team engineer an "arms-for-no-hostages" deal with Ayatollah Khomeini's government in Iran -- thus ensuring the U.S. embassy hostages would remain in Tehran until after the November presidential election -- but also tipped off Iran about President Jimmy Carter's planned attempt to rescue the hostages using military force.

According to documents held in the CIA archives until they were declassified in 2012,      officials of the Carter White House suspected that the Reagan-Casey team had a mole inside the National Security Council. Moreover, this mole was believed to be directly passing classified information on the military operation to rescue the hostages, Operation Eagle Claw, planned for April 24, 1980. The operation was complex and dangerous. Delta Force commandos were to land at an initial staging area in Khorasan province, code named Desert One. They would then fly 260 miles to a second staging area in the Tehran suburbs, code named Desert Two, where they would link up with CIA agents on the ground in Iran and local Iranian support personnel. The U.S. and Iranian team were to drive to the U.S. embassy compound in trucks and then engage the student hostage takers, and, if the plan worked, free the hostages and exfiltrate them to Deserts One and Two and eventual freedom when they reached Saudi Arabia.    

The CIA's director of security, Robert Gambino, the George H. W. Bush loyalist, retired from the CIA in early 1980 to join the Bush presidential campaign. He then switched to the Reagan-Bush campaign after Reagan selected Bush at the July nominating convention in Detroit. Gambino is mentioned in the documents as a liaison between William Casey and disloyal elements within the CIA. Gambino also gave Jeb Bush his CIA indoctrination in 1977 prior to Jeb leaving for a two year assignment as vice president for Texas Commerce Bank, owned by James Baker, in Caracas. Jeb Bush and Gambino initially worked together on George H. W. Bush's campaign in 1980. They both joined the Reagan-Bush campaign in July after Reagan was nominated by the Republican convention in Detroit with Bush as his running mate. Initially, it appears that the CIA group working against Carter was dealing with both the Reagan and Bush presidential campaigns in early 1980. Although Bush beat Reagan in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, Reagan went on to win most of the later primaries.

The classified information on Eagle Claw and negotiations with Iran were passed to Casey, Richard Allen, Ed Meese, and Judge William Clark. Essentially, these four men were operating a spy operation targeting the Carter White House using one or more moles within the National Security Council. Bush agents within the National Security Council were also active. These included Stefan Halper whose father-in-law was Dr. Ray Cline, former deputy director of the CIA. Cline's network of agents, including Ted Shackley, forced to retire from the CIA in 1979, extended to the Carter National Security Council and CIA officers who were thought to be loyal to its director Admiral Stansfield Turner. However, these old Bush loyalists were loyal not to Turner but to Bush and Casey. Halper, Cline, and Jeb Bush's pal Gambino worked together to ensure as much intelligence as possible was passed from the White House to Allen, Casey, Meese, and Clark. Many CIA officers recalled how Carter's first choice to head the agency was Ted Sorensen, the aide to and speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy. Many CIA old timers, who were called "cowboys" by President Carter, feared that Sorensen would unlock the secrets of Langley's involvement in the assassination of his old boss, JFK. They strenuously blocked Sorensen's nomination.

Although a dry dust storm, known as a haboob, resulted in one of the helicopters from theUSS Nimitz having to abort its rendezvous at Desert One and return to the ship, the series of errors and accidents that doomed the rescue mission were not what ultimately resulted in its failure.



Delta Force attacked an Iranian oil tanker truck at the Desert One location to prevent it from revealing the operation. One of the passengers in the tanker truck survived and he escaped in a pickup truck. The resulting nighttime explosion also gave away the U.S. presence to a passing Iranian passenger bus that was taken captive by the U.S. assault team. Eagle Claw was aborted by Carter's order. As the U.S. force was withdrawing from Desert One and amid the swirling sand from the haboob, one of the Marine helicopters collided with an Air Force EC-130, resulting in yet a second explosion that killed eight U.S. servicemen.

The debacle at Desert One merely added fuel to the Reagan and Bush campaigns' charges that Carter was an ineffectual president. However, it did not matter whether the haboob caused Eagle Claw's failure or not. The treason committed by both campaigns had already resulted in the Iranians knowing beforehand about the covert operation.

On April 20, 1980, just four days before the commencement of Eagle Claw, The Washington Star ran a piece by longtime CIA Middle East officer Miles Copeland, a man who participated in the CIA's Operation Ajax that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohamed Mosadeq and placed the Shah of Iran in firm power, that provided details of the involvement of Oman, Egypt, and U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Oman in a planned hostage rescue mission. The Carter White House went into damage control mode over the obvious leak. Radio Iran broadcast the Star's story the same day that it ran in Washington, April 20.

The White House response was that U.S. military planes in Oman were there to supply the Afghan "freedom fighters." However, Carter was forced to reveal the true nature of the planes to both British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was even then close to candidate Reagan, and her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. British MI-6 officers in Oman were, in turn, informed about the hostage rescue mission and they were duty bound to inform Oman's Sultan, Qabus bin Said, what actual mission the U.S. planes on Masirah island were about to embark upon. Soon, the secret plans to rescue the hostages were known in the Persian Gulf city that was the center of all political gossip in the region: Dubai, where Iranian agents were in great abundance. Explanations through diplomatic channels also had to be provided by President Carter to the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both of which were revealed to be part of the covert operation. The supposed highly-classified plan to rescue the U.S. hostages was leaking like a sieve.

Retired Rear Admiral Robert Garrick had actually organized a group of retired military officers to conduct surveillance of U.S. air and naval bases and report to him, who would, in turn, inform the Reagan campaign, any sudden and large movements of planes, ships, or military personnel from the United States to the Middle East. Garrick's job for the campaign was titled "director of research and policy development of the Reagan-Bush Campaign Committee." After Reagan's inauguration, Garrick became deputy counselor to the president under Meese. 
Max Hugel, Casey's campaign assistant, ensured that intelligence assistance for Reagan was supplied by Israel's many agents inside the White House and Pentagon. Hugel became Casey's CIA director of operations in 1981 but soon resigned after it was discovered that Hugel was loose with his lips in passing secrets to Israeli government officials. Hugel resigned, officially for Wall Street securities fraud.

The identity of the mole or moles inside the Carter White House have long been the subject of intense speculation. Robert Gates, a Bush loyalist in the National Security Council and a future CIA director, was one major suspect. Another was Donald Gregg, who started with the National Security Council in 1979 upon transferring from the CIA headquarters where he reported to Shackley. He later became national security adviser to Vice President Bush. The fact that Allen received the same copies of daily CIA intelligence reports that were received by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski made the likely source of the reports the NSC. Brzezinski had briefed H. Ross Perot, who had already freed from an Iranian prison two of his Electronic Data Systems (EDS) employees, on the operation. Perot contracted with former Green Berets to successfully free his employees and Brzezinski was eager for Perot's experience in carrying out the rescue mission. However, Perot was also close to top Republicans, including fellow Texan oil man Bush, as well as Reagan.

Two enterprising Washington, DC newswomen smelled the Reagan/Bush rat with regard to treason against Carter. They were Elizabeth Drew of The New Yorker and Mary McGrory ofThe Washington Post. The theft of CIA intelligence reports and presidential debate briefing materials from the Carter White House was enough to convince Drew and McGrory, two veteran reporters who covered Watergate, that something was amiss with the Reagan/Bush campaigns. Later, The New Republic's Daniel Schorr joined Drew and McGrory in their suspicions about high-level treason in the Reagan/Bush ranks. However, the two women were facing charges of acting as "conspiracy theorists" from Reagan's willing media accomplices, including George Will, William Buckley, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, and even muckraking columnist Jack Anderson.

Vice President Walter Mondale was among those who believed that the White House suffered from those who were leaking highly-classified information to the Reagan-Bush campaigns.

Some members of the press were enlisted in the Reagan/Bush treason against Carter. In September 1980, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent George Wilson received in the mail a document titled "OPLAN EAGLE CLAW Loss Estimate." The document claimed that the hostage rescue mission, had it not been aborted, would have resulted in 60 percent of the hostages killed or wounded during the operation. The document, however, turned out to be a clever forgery. It was not the only forgery crafted by the Reagan-Bush-Casey team that was designed to make Carter look bad.

The mole or moles inside the Carter White House would plague him until October 1980, when Carter's sensitive debate "briefing book" was stolen from the Carter team and ended up in the hands of Reagan and his cronies.

The Reagan-Bush treason also resulted in some 100 CIA agents operating in Iran being compromised after the rescue mission failed. Among the CIA assets were several moles placed among the Iranian students who were holding the embassy. Many agents were actually pulled out of Tehran prior to the Desert One catastrophe, fearing the Copeland article had compromised the operation.

One of the CIA assets compromised by the Reagan-Bush treason was Iranian foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who had, in September 1980, told Agence France-Presse that the Reagan-Bush campaign was trying to forestall a negotiated release of the hostages. The AFPreport quoted Ghotbzadeh as saying that the Reagan people were "'trying to block a solution' to the hostage crisis . . . Two friends of Ghotbzadeh who spoke to him frequently during this period said that he insisted repeatedly that the Republicans were in contact with elements in Iran to try to block a hostage release."

It was later discovered that Ghotbzadeh and his loyalists were part of the Eagle Claw operation. Two days after the November 5th U.S. election, Ghotbzadeh was arrested in Tehran for treason. Although he was released, he became a chief suspect among the Iranian radicals as a Western agent-of-influence. In 1982, he was re-arrested and charged with plotting against the government. Ghotbzadeh was executed by firing squad on September 15, 1982. Ghotzbzadeh was not the only American asset executed. Thanks to the treason of Reagan, Bush, and their teams, a number of other U.S. intelligence assets were caught and executed in Iran.


Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, compromised by Reagan-Bush treason against Jimmy Carter.

As Jeb Bush condemns President Obama for the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, it should be recalled that he, like his father, committed treason against a sitting president in 1980. Ironically, the treason concerned Iran. Jeb Bush's opposition to Obama and the Iran nuclear deal should be seen in light of his treasonous past rather than in a mere policy difference with the current president. As President Carter begins treatment for cancer, the country owes it to him to fully explain the treason of the Bush family, Ronald Reagan, and their cohorts and cronies in 1980. It does not matter how many continuing classified documents need to be leaked to give Jimmy Carter a sense of satisfaction that it was high treason, not political ineptness, that sank his presidency.

The Brzezinski plan for the "Finlandization" of Ukraine and Balkanization of Russia

The Brzezinski plan for the "Finlandization" of Ukraine and Balkanization of Russia

It would not be entirely correct to refer to former Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as a "neo-con." Brzezinski, a nationalist Polish-American Catholic has earned successive rebukes from the hard core neo-cons for his perceived "anti-Israel" bias. However, when it comes to Russia, there is little difference between the rabidly anti-Russian Brzezinski, who sees Eurasia as a massive chess board, and his erstwhile neo-con colleagues of the "AIPAC persuasion."

Brzezinski has offered both the Obama administration and the coup leaders in Kiev advice on how to limit Russian influence in Ukraine while punishing Moscow for its move to take control of majority-Russian Crimea from Ukraine. One of the reasons why President Obama's academic records from Columbia University have been sealed is a strong belief that Obama participated in Brzezinski's high-level Soviet policy graduate-level classes before the future president joined Business International Corporation, a CIA front that sent journalists and economists under cover to eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to collect intelligence.

Brzezinski's 1998 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, sees Eurasia as a natural expansion zone for American influence. Brzezinski is a promoter of Halfrod Mackinder's "Heartland" theory, which postulates that any country that controls the Eurasian landmass, controls the world.

Mackinder wrote in 1919, "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world." Mackinder's theory was at the heart of the desire of the Third Reich, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union to dominate the Heartland. Brzezinski and the more Zionist-leaning neo-cons have adopted the Heartland theory as key to the plan to have the United States dominate the world in the 21st century. However, there have been a number of stumbling blocks, including Ukraine's former close ties with Russia, the embryonic "Eurasian Union" of Russia and the central Asian "stans," and the Shnghahi Cooperation Organization "counter-NATO" alliance of the Russian Federation and People's Republic of China.

With the fall of Ukraine to a group of pro-Western technocrats, trained and funded by Brzezinski's old friend George Soros, who are allied with neo-Nazis and Ukrainian right-wing nationalists, Brzezinski and his fellow travelers see a golden opportunity to march on Moscow. Brzezinski sees Western control of Ukraine as key to eventual Western control of Russia.

Brzezinski has referred to the Ukrainian junta that seized power in a coup, the "new Ukrainian democracy." Ukraine today is no more a democracy than Georgia was after a coup placed Mikheil Saakashvili, a Brzezinski and Soros acolyte, in the presidential palace in Tbilisi. Georgia immediately began threatening the autonomy of pro-Russian Abkhazians and South Ossetians, prompting Russia to deploy protective forces to the two Georgian autonomous republics. Russia's similar deployment of troops to protect the Russian majority in the Crimean autonomous republic of Ukraine is a further carrying out of the Putin Doctrine, which calls for Russia to protect ethnic Russians and other pro-Russian ethnic groups like the Abkhaz and South Ossetians in Russia's "Near Abroad" from the machinations of Western-installed nationalist and anti-Russian regimes.

Not coincidentally, the same day the coup leaders took over power in Kiev, February 22, the Financial Times, which is owned by the Pearson Group, the same company that controls The Economist Group, which absorbed Obama's old Business International Corporation employer in 1986, ran a Brzezinski article titled "Russia Needs to be Offered a ‘Finland Option’ for Ukraine." In the article, Brzezinski says that Ukraine must be absorbed into the European Union as quickly as possible and that Putin's idea of a Eurasian Union must be deterred at all levels, including economically and politically.

Although Brzezinski wants to assuage Russia by calling for the "Finlandization" of Ukraine, in other words, no NATO membership for Ukraine but no division of Ukraine and "mutual respect" between Moscow and Kiev, it is well known that the Finland model no longer applies in Europe. Today, Finland is, for all practical purposes, a de facto member of NATO, with its forces constantly participating in NATO exercises. In addition, it is well known to Brzezinski that during the Cold War, Finnish intelligence covertly cooperated with both the CIA and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

What Brzezinski actually sees for eastern Europe is not "Finlandization" of Ukraine but "Balkanization" of Russia, similar to what NATO accomplished when it divided Yugoslavia into seven separate republics, including one that never had any basis for independence, Kosovo. Crimea, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have more legal grounds for independence than does Kosovo, an Albanian region of Serbia, governed by mafiosi smugglers and carved out by NATO to ensure a continued military presence for the U.S. and its allies in the Balkans.

Some members of the Ukrainian coup government, including the newSecretary of the National Security and Defense Council Andriy Parubiy, have made common cause with Chechen and other Islamist guerrillas inside Russia. Their goals are the same of those of Brzezinski: the eventual carving up of the Russian Federation into a more easily manageable group of smaller states controlled by the European Union and NATO.
















The Brzezinski-neocon plan: A "Balkanized" Russia consisting of as many as 80 mini-states.

The early plans for the then-Soviet Union can be seen in a propaganda pamphlet discovered in the CIA's archives from 1968. The pamphlet, produced by Hungarian anti-Soviet emigres in New York, states what CIA-supported eastern Europe nationalists, the fathers of the neo-Nazis now controlling part of the Ukraniian government, had in store for what was described as the Soviet "Paradise of the Workers":

"The very existence of the Soviet Union started in 1462 by the Grand Ducky of Muskovy. Czarist Russia expansion by territories of the peoples in European part of the Euro-Asian continent is: 1492-1505: Samoyeds, Nentsis-Samoyeds, Komi-Zyrians, Permiaks, Kereliansl 1505-1682: Edmurts, Tartars, Bashkirs, Mordovians, Uralian Cossacks, Kalmucks, Cossacks on the Don, Cossacks on the Terek, Little Russians, Ukrainians; 1682-1725: Estonians; 1725-1796: Latvians, Lithuanians, White Russians; 1796-1825: Karachays, Ossentins, Kabardinians, Daghesti, Armenians, Azerbaidzhani, Cherkessi, Abhazi, Rumanians, Bessarabians, Poles, Fins [sic]; 1825-1881: Georgians.

The Soviet Union followed the imperialism of the Czarist Russia. 1920-1921: Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan; 1939-1945: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; after 1945 with more or less results: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and the Eastern part of Germany.

In Asia: 1462-1584: Mari, Chuvashi, Udmurts, Manis-Voguls, Nentsis-Samoyeds, Ostyak-Khantys; 1584-1689: Evenkis-Tungus, Yakuts, Khakassis, Tuvinians, Buryats-Mongols, Yukagirs, Chukchis-Luravetianys, Koryaks, Nymylanys, Kamchadatics; 1689-1796: Oyrots, Altasi, Khalkas; 1796-1914: Kara-Kalpaks, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tadshiks, Kirghisi, Kurds. After 1945: Kurils Islands and Sakhalin."

The Hungarian expatriate monograph states: "Some names appear twice, since those peoples lived in European as well as Asian territory. Also, because some of them were liberated then subjugated again." As evidence that the new leadership in Ukraine is in lockstep with the ilk who penned the aforementioned tract are statements from the new chief of the Ukrainian Security Service, Valentin Nalivaychenko, that refer to his neo-Nazi followers' plans to "liberate" historical Ukrainian lands in the Kuban region , which lies east of the Sea of Azov in the Russian motherland.


Ukraine's neo-Nazi government leaders want Ukraine to seize and annex Russia's Kuban region.

It is interesting that the CIA, in promoting certain Hungarian exile groups, was giving assistance to other beliefs from right-wing eastern European emigres, including hatred for the Kennedy family. The authors of the above monograph, published on September 1, 1968, three months after Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, criticized the "glorification" of the "Kennedy clan." Today Caroline Kennedy serves as Obama's ambassador to Tokyo, representing a State Department that has made common cause with the sons and grandsons of those who took pleasure in the assassinations of her father and uncle.

Government stalling on Reagan October Surprise records disclosure

Government stalling on October Surprise records disclosure

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has apparently not received word from the Obama administration that the infamous Ashcroft memorandum, which struck down previous freedom of information edicts that favored disclosure over retention of documents. In one of his first acts as President, Obama instructed all federal departments and agencies, including NARA to "apply a presumption of openness" with regard to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

At the crux of the problem at NARA is its foot dragging in releasing enclosures to a March 16, 1981, formerly classified, memorandumfrom Associate Attorney General-designate Rudolph Giuliani to Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division John Keeney requesting that Keeney prepare a letter for Deputy Attorney General Edward Schmults' signature, a request for a report on a criminal referral from the CIA regarding "alleged foreign government interference with the 1980 Presidential election." In essence, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate charges that the Reagan-Bush campaign, with the involvement of Reagan campaign manager William Casey, negotiated with the Iranian revolutionary government an arms-for-no-hostages deal that saw U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran kept as hostages until after the November 1980 election, a contest that saw President Jimmy Carter lose to Reagan primarily due to the Iran "hostage crisis."

After at first indicating that a formal FOIA request was not necessary for access to certain documents, including enclosures to the Giuliani "smoking gun" memo contained in ten boxes of Schmults' papers, which total some 10,000 pages, NARA now claims that FOIA requests are required for certain documents contained in the Schmults records. But NARA does not indicate which papers are subject to a FOIA request. It is clear that NARA is attempting to withhold access to the Giuliani memo enclosures since they will surely point a finger at the complicity of the Reagan-Bush campaign in a conspiracy that resulted in a criminal referral from the CIA to the Justice Department.

According to researchers who have been trying to open up archival materials, their production will prove that the Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to deny Carter a second term by secretly sending without government authorization a U.S.-flagged merchant ship, the SS Poet, from Philadelphia to an Iranian port with arms, ammunition, and F-14 spare parts, and then having a third-country, reported by WMR to have been Israel, scuttle the vessel and eliminate the crew of 34 American merchant marine men.

According to the researchers, the "Giuliani letter was classified for decades and although it unmistakably refers to the 1980 treasonous October Surprise by the Republicans in making a deal with the Iranians to hold the American hostages past the election in exchange for arms, this letter never surfaced in the House Iran-Contra, Senate October Surprise, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh or other investigations."

The researchers also maintain that "the Poet, a U.S.-flag vessel that U.S. Coast Guard reported as having disappeared without a trace after departing Philadelphia on October 24, 1980, with corn for Egypt, did in fact arrive in Iran. We have forced U.S. Coast Guard to release over 140 documents from their investigation to us after it claimed to have none of them.

Among these documents is the charter for the voyage which has war risk insurance in an odd addition made to the charter. No war or hostilities was in progress in Egypt at the time but Iraq had invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. There are many other facts that we have collected that together support the conclusion that the Poet and the murder of its 34 crewmen were part of October Surprise.

The charter was signed for Egypt by a company whose address was in the same Rosslyn, Virginia building that housed multiple CIA activities, fronts and proprietaries."

The researchers believe that the reported October 2008 loss by NARA of a hard drive containing 2 terabytes of data, said to be from the Clinton administration, could be connected, in part, to covering up information that would point to collusion by the Reagan administration in the October Surprise. The Final Report by Judge Walsh on the Iran-Contra "matters" was not issued until the Clinton administration had been in office for six months. The Clinton administration took no measures to further investigate the previous two administrations, those of Reagan and George H. W. Bush, for the serious allegations of wrongdoing contained in the Walsh Report.

The researchers believe, "From the March 16, 1981, Giuliani letter and our correspondence with the principals we conclude that the Carter CIA made the referral to the Reagan DOJ, that negotiations occurred between the top leadership of both parties and an agreement was reached to hide the facts from the American people through classification. Political conspiracy, including the hiding of treason and murder, and secretly ceding a wrongful Presidential election, in effect put an administration in place subject to blackmail, and all kinds of compromises in legislation, international dealings, subversion of justice and misuse of executive power, initially and on-going, potentially through successive administrations. It negates our Constitution and overrides the checks and balances upon which our democracy depends."

Deputy Attorney Schmults, who sat on the CIA criminal referral regarding Reagan, Bush, and Casey conspiring with the Iranians, remained in the first Reagan term for three years.

His resignation letter follows:

The President, The White House, Washington, D.C. 20500

January 23, 1984

My Dear Mr. President:

For three years, it has been my privilege to be the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Every day I have had a keen sense of accomplishment and pride in working with Bill Smith to serve the cause of justice and carry out your policies here at the Department of Justice. Thus, it is not easy for me to tender my resignation, which I do by this letter, effective on February 3, 1984.

Because of your unswerving leadership and strong support, the Federal effort against crime is being fought more effectively than at any time in our Nation's history. The law enforcement community knows it has a President who respects and supports what it is doing, and the results are now apparent to the American people.

My deepest thanks for the opportunity of helping you to further your goals. As I return to private life, I stand ready to do whatever you ask as you seek a second term, knowing that the American people will reelect a President who has served them so well.

Respectfully,

/s/Edward C. Schmults

Reagan's response:

The Honorable Edward C. Schmults, Deputy Attorney General, Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Ed:

It is with regret that I accept your resignation as Deputy Attorney General, effective February 3, 1984.

I know that you have been a strong right hand for Bill Smith as the Department of Justice has kept our promise to the American people to wage unremitting war against crime. You have played a leading role in our counterattack against those who terrorize innocent victims, and especially against organized crime, which can only be defeated by resolute action at the Federal level. Your experience and knowledge in this and many other areas will be sorely missed, but I know that your successor will build on the solid foundations you have laid. I want to thank you personally for a job well done.

Nancy and I send you our best wishes for every future success and happiness.

Sincerely,

Ronald Reagan

ies, incluidng NARA