October 19-20, 2016 -- WMR's newest book now available from major Internet distributors

WMR's latest book, The Almost Classified Guide to CIA Front Companies, Proprietaries & Contractors, (ISBN-13: 9781365111969; ISBN-10: 1365111962) is now available from major Internet book distributors, including Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and Booksamillion.com. The book is also available from the publisher, Lulu.com.

The book is a 354-page ready-reference volume that compiles, in encyclopedic format, the Central Intelligence Agency's various fronts, proprietaries, and contractors/corporate partners since the creation of the intelligence agency in 1947.

It is noteworthy that there has never been a serious attempt to write a book such as this one.

Found in this book, which belongs on the desk of every researcher, historian, journalist, and spy, are the most famous or infamous, depending on one's outlook, CIA fronts and proprietaries. The reader will find descriptions of Zapata Off-Shore, the Bay of Pigs front linked to George H. W. Bush; Air America, the Indochina War airline once dubbed the "World's Largest Airline" and nicknamed "Air Opium"; Southern Air Transport, the CIA proprietary that flew guns and drugs on behalf of the Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas in violation of U.S. law; and the CIA's favorite money laundering bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), also known as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals."

In addition to these well-known CIA proprietaries and fronts, there are entries for a number of outfits known as "folding tents," that never saw major news headlines. Many of these were scattered around the United States and the world, from Baltimore to Key West and Wilmington, Delaware to Helena, Montana.

Some CIA fronts and partners have operated under peculiar names, for example, Seven Seas, the Human Ecology Fund, Snopes.com and, undoubtedly, the oddest, Glory Hole Development of Colorado.

The reader will also be surprised to learn that a number of companies and organizations that represent "Americana," along with baseball and apple pie, were also working hand-in-hand with the CIA. These include the Walt Disney Company, Reader's Digest, the 4-H Club, Camp Fire Girls, The Smithsonian Institution, and The Saturday Evening Post. And what was good for General Motors was good for the CIA. More astoundingly, the same CIA that was dealing with Disney and the Educational Testing Service that supervises the college SAT examinations was also coordinating the activities of the Hell's Angels and The Finders, the latter a child abduction operation headquartered in Washington, DC.



While perusing the pages of The Almost Classified Guide to CIA Front Companies, Proprietaries & Contractors, one is immediately struck by the staggering degree that the CIA infiltrated American society, including entertainment, education, the news media, religion, labor unions, corporations, and social organizations, since 1947.

The president who created the CIA, Harry S Truman, later called for its total reform. However, others felt that the CIA had become too powerful and totally entrenched in American society to be redeemable.

Secretaries of State George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) advocated abolishing the agency and putting its intelligence collection responsibilities under the control of the Department of State. President John F. Kennedy went one better after the CIA's Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." Judging the extent of the CIA's malevolent penetration of every level of American government and society, Kennedy had the better idea but he paid a terrible price for it.

The author will be speaking at an event marking the publication of the book at the National Press Club's McClendon Room on October 26, 2016 at 6:00 pm.

It is, perhaps, fitting that the book event will be held at the National Press Club. A major focus of the CIA from its very inception was the penetration of the news media, including the assignment of CIA agents to the newsrooms and editorial offices of America's largest media concerns, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Hearst Newspaper, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and other major newspapers and broadcast networks, as well as political polling companies. The CIA's Operation MOCKINGBIRD and "The Mighty Wurlitzer" are torn from the pages of America's post-World War II history that the media would like to leave blank. However, the pages are now filled in with the publication of The Almost Classified Guide to CIA Front Companies, Proprietaries & Contractors.

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