Something is rotten in Whitefish, Montana By The Wayne Madsen Report

 Something is rotten in Whitefish, Montana By The Wayne Madsen Report
Federal government sources have told WMR that there is a close relationship between Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke; Zinke's wife Lolita ("Lola") Hand Zinke [both pictured right]; and Whitefish Energy owner Andy Techmanski. Secretary Zinke is a native of Whitefish and his neighbor and family friend Techmanski, also a resident of Whitefish, received a $300 million no-bid contract from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) to repair the electrical grid of Puerto Rico that was virtually wiped out by Hurricane Maria. The day Maria struck Puerto Rico, Whitefish Energy had just two employees and during this past summer, Zinke's son worked at one of Techmanski's construction sites in Montana. Our sources report that Mrs. Zinke was the main intermediary between Techmanski [pictured left] and her husband in steering the PREPA contract to Whitefish Energy.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said the Whitefish Energy contract "should be voided right away, and a proper process which is clear, transparent, legal, moral and ethical should take place."

After Maria dealt a major blow to Puerto Rico's infrastructure, Whitefish Energy, almost overnight, picked up two Dallas investment groups as significant financial backers. One of the firms reportedly is closely tied to former president George H. W. Bush. Mrs. Zinke is the daughter of former U.S. Consul in Peru Consuelo Castro Hand, a Peruvian naturalized U.S. citizen, and Santa Barbara businessman Frederick Hand. She also claims a direct family relationship to World War II Navy Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. Mrs. Zinke's claim about her mother is peculiar because Zinke claims that her mother was the "U.S. Consulate" in Peru during the Eisenhower administration. The consular corps is composed of either Consul-Generals or Consuls. Consulates are the physical buildings housing consular offices. Secretary Zinke is a former Navy SEAL who was drummed out of the Navy in an early retirement for submitting fraudulent travel claims.

WMR has also learned that during the time Secretary Zinke served as a Montana State Senator and U.S. Representative, his actual residence was a home in Hope Ranch Park, a gated community outside of Santa Barbara, California. In May 2014, the home owners' association of Hope Ranch Park complained after Zinke posted his Montana U.S. House campaign posters in the community. Zinke rarely visited Whitefish or anywhere else in Montana, even though he purportedly represented his state district in Helena and an At-Large congressional district in Washington, DC. In 2013, Zinke listed his address as 735 State Street in Santa Barbara. The address was used on Zinke's Securities and Exchange Commission filing as a director for Save the World Air, Inc., a dodgy Australian-owned and Reno-based company that changed its name in 2015 to QS Energy, Inc. Zinke has come under fire for charging the taxpayers for private charter flights in the United States and abroad that were billed as "official" Interior Department business.

We have also been told by federal sources that Mrs. Zinke and Zinke's two sons, Wolfgang and Konrad Zinke were friends of former Whitefish resident Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi leader who moved to the Washington, DC area after Donald Trump's election. Lolita Zinke served as a Hispanic outreach campaigner for Donald Trump  [both, pictured left]. Spencer is a college friend of Trump's adviser and speech writer Stephen Miller. Spencer previously lived at his parents' multi-use residence in Whitefish that also served as the national headquarters for his neo-Nazi National Policy Institute and its related publications. Whitefish has also been at the center of a number of anti-Semitic incidents aimed at the town's small Jewish population. After Trump's election, Richard Spencer moved his headquarters to Alexandria, Virginia in order to be closer to Trump administration officials, said to include not only Miller but the Zinke family.

After marrying Zinke in 1992, Lolita Zinke worked as a civilian intelligence aide to Navy Admiral Mike Boorda, who was the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) in London. Ryan Zinke worked as a plans officer for Admiral Boorda. Boorda became Chief of Naval Operations in 1994. In 1993, Zinke transferred to Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG) in Dam Neck, Virginia shortly before Boorda took command of the Navy in Washington. WMR has learned from government sources that Lolita Zinke continued to work for Boorda while he was the CNO. In later biographies, Mrs. Zinke claims that she was merely a "civilian quality control specialist" for the Navy in London. However, quality control specialists normally do not require a Top Secret clearance, which Mrs. Zinke claims she possessed while working in London.

Mrs. Zinke also claims to have worked as an "undercover operative with the California Department of Motor Vehicles in San Diego." She provided no further details of what that job entailed.

On March 29, 2010, WMR reported on the actual circumstances behind the May 16, 1996  suicide of Boorda at his residence at the Washington Navy Yard. That report follows:

"According to a colleague of the late military affairs journalist and one of the most highly decorated members of the U.S. military, Colonel David Hackworth, Boorda's reason for committing suicide -- pushed by the corporate media and the U.S. Navy -- namely, his unauthorized wearing of two combat "V" (valor) devices on his Navy Achievement and Navy Commendation medals for service in Vietnam -- was false. Boorda reportedly took his own life by a self-inflicted shot gun blast at the CNO's residence at the Washington Navy Yard.

WMR's source reports that Boorda committed suicide because Secretary of the Navy John Dalton had discovered that Boorda, who was married at the time, was carrying on an extramarital affair with a female civilian who worked in the office of the CNO. Dalton reportedly informed Boorda that he would involuntarily retired within a few months of the discovery by the Navy Secretary of the affair.

WMR has also learned that Boorda wrote two suicide notes -- one to his family and the other to Navy personnel. Neither of the notes were ever publicly released by the Navy.

In addition, the Awards and Decorations officer for the Secretary of the Navy informed Boorda that he was not entitled to wear either of the 'V' devices. However, former CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Boorda's commander in Vietnam, later stated that Boorda was entitled to wear the valor devices.

The Boorda extramarital affair was an obvious potential embarrassment to the Clinton administration. At the time, President Bill Clinton was engaged in his own extramarital affair with White House staffer Monica Lewinsky."

This story is developing.

Modern Puerto Rico is a CIA creation by Wayne Madsen Report

 Modern Puerto Rico is a CIA creation by Wayne Madsen Report

Last week, in a decision that received very little attention, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 decision that Puerto Rico, which enjoys a wide degree of autonomy as a "commonwealth" of the United States, nevertheless falls under the dictates of the U.S. federal government. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote, 

"Because the ultimate source of Puerto Rico's prosecutorial power is the federal government ... the Commonwealth and the United States are not separate sovereigns." Although the case heard was that dealing with the sale of firearms in Puerto Rico, the Supreme Court's decision. Kagan opined that the 1952 Commonwealth status bestowed on Puerto Rico does not "break the chain" between Puerto Rico and the U.S. federal government. Ultimately, Kagan wrote, Puerto Rico answers to the U.S. Congress. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, the latter of Puerto Rican descent, dissented from the majority opinion.

Although the decision by the Supreme Court was met with disappointment among the supporters of Puerto Rican commonwealth status, for those who have championed independence for the island, the decision reinforced their belief that Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States in all but name. Recently-disclosed formerly classified Central Intelligence Agency documents provide strong evidence that Puerto Rico's commonwealth status was a contrivance conjured up by the CIA to ensure continued U.S. control of the territory.

National Security Council documents from 1970, classified CONFIDENTIAL-EYES ONLY, describe how two attorneys from the influential Washington law firm of Covington and Burling met with NSC official Viron Vaky on July 10, 1970, to discuss the issue of the island of Culebra, an island 17 miles east of Puerto Rico that was used by the U.S. Navy as a weapons testing range. The Covington and Burling lawyers -- Richard Copaken and Tom Jones -- were representing the residents of Culebra who wanted the Navy to cease using their island for target practice. The attorneys believed that National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon's counselor, Bryce Harlow, has hidden agendas for upholding the Navy's right to continue using Culebra as a weapons range. What the attorneys told Vaky reached right into the heart of Puerto Rico's quasi-colonialist regime, the same regime that Kagan and her five judicial colleagues legally upheld in their decision on June 9.

Copaken told Vaky that the situation in Puerto Rico had to be viewed in a historical context. He said that Puerto Rico's first Commonwealth Governor, Luis Munoz Marin, who helped destroy the Puerto Rican pro-independence Nationalist Party, developed the "commonwealth" contrivance so that Puerto Rico would serve the long-term interests of the United States.

The classified memorandum of Copaken's comments state that Munoz Marin's "principal lieutenants during his 15 odd years as governor were Roberto Sanchez and (fnu) [first name unknown] Negron [Senator Luis Negron Lopez of Munoz Marin's Popular Democratic Party]. Sanchez [who succeeded Munzoz Marin in 1965 as the second Commonwealth governor] spent most of his time in Washington in liaison with the USG [U.S. government]. Over time Sanchez became a close friend of Abe Fortas, who was the Commonwealth's attorney here." Fortas was a long-time political crony of Lyndon Johnson. Fortas was nominated by Johnson to the U.S. Supreme Court where he served from 1965 to 1969. Fortas resigned in disgrace amid an ethics investigation.

Copaken described Sanchez and Fortas as CIA operatives committed to keep Puerto Rico as a stable U.S. military and intelligence base. Copaken's revelations continued: "During the Dominican crisis [of 1965] CIA operated out of Puerto Rico and used Fortas' link with Sanchez to get Munoz Marin's acquiescence. The CIA agent in Puerto Rico was a Sacha Boldman or Goldman. This was the same agent who had channeled CIA assistance to a school in Costa Rica for Latin American political leaders."

The Covington and Burling attorney continued in his expose of Puerto Rican-CIA links: "Sanchez became governor in 1964. Personal scandal -- divorce and re-marriage to his secretary with whom he had been having an open affair -- affected his candidacy for reelection. Negron became a rival candidate and Munoz Marin advocated unity of the party behind Negron. However, Sanchez insisted on being a candidate, and both he and Negron became candidates for the 1968 election, thus splitting their party.

At this point, Sanchez obtained USG support through Fortas, CIA/AID/Navy aid was given to his campaign. There were disruptive actions directed against Negron. According to the theory, Negron's essential conservatism would have wrecked the Commonwealth and created severe problems; hence USG support for Sanchez.

When, however, it became evident that Sanchez could not defeat Negron, support was switched to Ferre [Luis Ferre of the New Progressive Party -- affiliate of the U.S. Republican Party] as the lesser of two evils. CIA/FBI and particularly US Navy support was given to Ferre, and he won. This gave the Navy a hold over Ferre."


Commonwealth status for Puerto Rico was crafted so the CIA could have an operational base in the Caribbean."Sacha Boldman or Goldman was actually Sacha Volman, who established the Institute of Political Education (IPE) in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1959. It was a collaborative effort between the CIA and social democratic political parties in Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. CIA funds were laundered through the Kaplan Fund in New York and then the Institute for International Labor Research, a New York operation headed by perennial Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas.

It has been the Commonwealth status that has led Puerto Rico into bankruptcy and made it vulnerable to the Wall Street vulture funds that prey on financially distressed countries, particularly those in Latin America like Argentina, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. The U.S. Congress is in the process of passing a bill that will address Puerto Rico's current $70 billion debt crisis. A federal government-appointed financial control board will likely enact socially-crippling austerity measures for the island. Following the Supreme Court's ruling limiting Puerto Rico's autonomy, the island will have little room to avoid severe budget cuts and "fire sale" disposal of commonwealth assets.

The appeals of the people of Culebra against the Navy's bombing of their island fell on deaf ears in San Juan and Washington as the NSC memo further details:

"Ferre, according to Copaken, contributed heavily to President Nixon's campaign and is on close personal terms with him. Given this fact, plus the Navy's hold, the Navy believes it will have its way on Culebra. The result is a surface duplicity, while they work out a deal underneath.

Ferre's family leases the only drydock facilities in San Juan from the US Navy; he has copper interests on the island. By cooperating with the US Navy he obtained USG support in a host of similar matters, or vice versa; his cooperation with the US Navy may have been secured by trading for things he wanted from the USG in other things.

Copagen [sic] alleged that there is close cooperation with the 'White House' certainly at the political level. Bryce Harlow went to Puerto Rico for July 4th celebrations, but one of the things he went down for was Culebra (precisely what Harlow was to do about Culebra, Copaken refused to say."

In the memo, Vaky says he told the attorneys he never heard about "the sinister picture they were painting" about Puerto Rico. Vaky also stated the National Security Council "had no operational responsibility in the matter."

Vaky passed the Culebra memo to Kissinger in a July 13, 1970, cover memo classified CONFIDENTIAL-EYES ONLY. Kissinger scribbled a note on the cover memo, which stated that the Covington and Burling lawyers believed that Harlow was "involved" in the Culebra matter.

Ironically, Kissinger was ensconced last week at the secretive Bilderberg conference in Dresden, Germany while the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a body blow to Puerto Rican sovereignty and the Congress hammered away at a plan that would bail out Puerto Rico in return for draconian financial measures. It is very likely that Puerto Rico's fate was on the table at Bilderberg and that Kissinger waxed on about how he once controlled the fate of Puerto Rico through the CIA, FBI, Navy, and Agency for International Development (AID).

Copaken later wrote a book about the Culebra incident, titled: "Target Culebra: How 743 Islanders Took on the Entire U.S. Navy and Won: An Insider's Account." The book was published in January 2009. Unfortunately, Copaken was never able to conduct a book tour to describe for audiences the U.S. government's control over Puerto Rico; he died from pancreatic cancer on December 8, 2008, a few weeks before the book was published.

Puerto Rican Independence Movement under Attack in New York and San Juan

by Jan Susler

"It appears to us to be a reinitiation of the harassment of independentists."1 -- U.S. Congressman José Serrano, speaking to FBI director Robert Mueller

An unexpected knock on the door . . . men in trench coats handing you a grand jury subpoena . . . . If you're involved in the movement for the independence of Puerto Rico, this isn't just a not-so-fond memory of the COINTELPRO era. It's 2008 in New York City, and you are Christopher Torres, a young social worker; Tania Frontera, a young graphic designer; or Julio Pabón Jr., a young filmmaker from the Bronx.

Their subpoenas have aroused vigorous support for them, not just in New York, but in cities across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. On the island, over forty organizations united to condemn this latest wave of repression and convened a demonstration on January 11 where over a thousand people participated under the theme "In the Face of Repression, Unity and Struggle," with placards and banners calling for the FBI and the federal courts to leave the island. Simultaneous activities took place in Brooklyn, Hartford, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Orlando, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Cleveland. As resolutions condemning the repression emanated from the National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter, the American Association of Jurists, the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project, and the Latin America Solidarity Coalition, the New York Spanish language daily El Diario/La Prensa published an editorial ringing the alarm bell, and U.S. congressman José Serrano telephoned FBI director Mueller to voice his concern.

Why the subpoenas? Why now? And why the resounding, unified denunciations?

Dating back to the era of Spanish colonial control over Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican people have organized to wrest their sovereignty from foreign domination. That resistance continued after the U.S. invasion and occupation in 1898. When the colonizers repressed and criminalized public organizing for independence, clandestine organizations formed, including the Popular Boricua Army -- Macheteros in the 1980s. In 1985, the FBI arrested and almost killed its leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, accusing him of participation in the 1983 expropriation of $7.5 million U.S. government insured dollars from a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Connecticut. After his release on bail, Ojeda returned to clandestine existence. In spite of the FBI's ever-increasing reward for information leading to his capture, he remained underground for some fifteen years. On September 23, 2005, however, a squad of FBI assassins circled his home, shot him, and left him to bleed to death.2 The assassination outraged the entire nation, and the FBI became a pariah.

Hoping to distract public attention from their own criminal conduct and justify their presence on the island, particularly in the post-911 era, the FBI soon went on the offensive. On February 10, 2006, allegedly in a continuing investigation of the Macheteros, they raided the homes and businesses of several independence activists and in the process pepper-sprayed the nation's journalists who were covering the FBI's paramilitary incursions. Again, the entire country expressed its outrage. Since then, activists have been stopped, searched, and harassed, with the homes and offices of many others, including attorneys and movement leaders, mysteriously broken into in events reminiscent of the infamous black-bag COINTELPRO jobs: computers, digital cameras, and cell phones are taken, while other valuable items remain untouched.

Recent rumors are that the head of the FBI in San Juan, Luis Fraticelli, is close to the end of his tenure and has given instructions to accelerate efforts to neutralize the remains of the clandestine group.3

For Fernando Martín, a leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the FBI "wants to clean up its image after the assassination of Filiberto (Ojeda Ríos), because they want to be able to say that in Puerto Rico, they investigate people of all parties (and) somehow salvage their image after their selective attacks."4

Julio Muriente, a leader of the National Hostos Independence Movement, stated, "The legal facade of this repressive operation is directed against the Macheteros, but the real intention is against the entire independentist movement, including against the people of Puerto Rico," calling it "an attack which is not against any particular organization, but against a political, social, patriotic movement, and against a people."5

U.S. Congressman José Serrano (D-NY), who was instrumental in getting the FBI to disclose thousands of pages of records documenting its illegal surveillance of and intervention in the independence movement6, said of these subpoenas, "It certainly appears to be a fishing expedition,"7 which, he noted, harkens back to the days when, according to FBI director Freeh, the agency engaged in "egregious illegal action, maybe criminal action."8

The subpoenas, initially returnable on January 11, were continued to February 1. Attorneys announced they would file motions to quash the subpoenas. Frontera's attorney, Martin Stolar, noted that "if the motion is denied, Tania will have to appear before the grand jury, and may decide not to testify, invoking her constitutional rights."9

Organizations in Puerto Rico have announced they will protest in various towns of the island on February 1 in defense and support of the three young people subpoenaed, with the themes "Wake Up, Boricua, Defend Your Own!" and "the Grand Jury Is illegal!" Additional protests are being planned in U.S. cities as well.

The consequences of not collaborating with the grand jury are well known to those who support independence. Norberto Cintrón Fiallo, whose home was searched during the February 10, 2006 FBI incursion, and who participated in the January 11 protest in San Juan, refused to collaborate with various grand juries investigating the independence movement in both Puerto Rico and New York in 1981 and 1982 and served close to three years in prison as a result.110 Julio Rosado, who participated in the January 11 protest in New York, resisted grand juries investigating the Puerto Rican independence movement, serving nine months for civil contempt in 1977, and later much of his three year sentence for criminal contempt. "They have always been there, whenever they want to intimidate," he said, adding that he is convinced there will be more subpoenas to come.111

A New York daily Spanish language newspaper expressed editorial concern over the political witch hunt, in words which should give usall pause:

Because of laws initiated by the Bush Administration and passed by our Congress, the legal protections that would give political dissidents a right to due process have been eroded. The net is wide for casting someone with "suspicious" political beliefs, without having been charged, tried or convicted of a crime, as a threat. [ . . . ] Because the attacks on civil liberties and human rights and the historical intimidation and repression of Puerto Rican independence supporters are interrelated, activists must make those links.

That's all the more urgent considering the silence of most elected leaders and the virtual media blackout on the subpoenas. In the context of secret prisons, torture, detention without trial, and warrantless wiretapping, the FBI's fishing should be a concern for anyone interested in rescuing this country from a rising police state.112


1 José Delgado, "Habla con el jefe del FBI," El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.

2 In the white papers designed to avoid criminal liability, the government blamed some of the errors in the operation on Luis Fraticelli, the Puerto Rican special agent in charge of its San Juan field office. Not coincidentally, Fraticelli had also participated in the 1985 near assassination of Ojeda Ríos. See: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, "A Review of the September 2005 Shooting Incident Involving the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Filiberto Ojeda Ríos," August 2006, available atwww.usdoj.gov/oig/special/index.htm.

3 José Delgado, "El caso de Nueva York," El Nuevo Día, January 14, 2008.

4 Combined Services, "Denunciation of persecution of independentists:Fernando Martín criticized the newspaper El Nuevo Díafor articles published December 23," El Nuevo Día, January 4, 2008.

5 AP, "Repudio independentista a citaciones a Gran Jurado," El Vocero, January 7, 2008.

6 The disclosed documents are being classified at Center for Puerto Rican Studies of the City University of New York at Hunter College. See: www.pr-secretfiles.net/.

7 José Delgado, "Habla con el jefe del FBI: José Serrano le expresó a Robert Mueller el malestar que existe entre los boricuas en Nueva York por la citación de tres jóvenes," El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.

8 Matthew Hay Brown, "Puerto Rico Files Show FBI's Zeal; For Decades, Secret U.S. Dossiers Targeted Suspected," Orlando Sentinel, November 06, 2003.

9 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán/Agencia EFE, "Posponen citación a independentistas de Nueva York," Primera Hora, January 11, 2008.

10 José "Ché" Paralitici, Sentencia Impuesta: 100 Años de Encarcelamientos por la Independencia de Puerto Rico, Ediciones Puerto Histórico (San Juan, Puerto Rico: 2004), pp. 339-341.

11 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán/ Agencia EFE, "Posponen citación a independentistas de Nueva York," Primera Hora, January 11, 2008. Rosado was one of five supporters of independence so imprisoned. Ricardo Romero, Steven Guerra, María Cueto, who are Mexican, and Rosado's brother Andres, simultaneously served time for criminal contempt of the same grand jury. See: United States v. Rosado et al., 728 F.2d 89 (2nd Cir. 1984).

12 "Constructing an Enemy," Editorial, El Diario/La Prensa, January 17, 2008.

Jan Susler is a partner with the People's Law Office in Chicago, which she joined in 1982 after a six year stint at Prison Legal Aid, the legal clinic at Southern Illinois University's School of Law. Her long history of work on behalf of political prisoners and prisoners' rights includes litigation, advocacy, and educational work around USP Marion and the Women's High Security Unit at Lexington, KY. Her practice at PLO focuses in addition on police misconduct civil rights litigation. For several years she was an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Northeastern Illinois University and has also taught at the University of Puerto Rico. Representing the Puerto Rican political prisoners for over two decades, she served as lead counsel in the efforts culminating in the 1999 presidential commutation of their sentences. She continues to represent those who remain imprisoned.