Posted on 01/04/2005 10:39:47 PM PST by SAMWolf
Now if I can just figure out how to make the tape deck work with the receiver.
The eject button on my Panisonic tape deck, which is part of a Panisonic rack stero system, BROKE. I have a Technic and a JVC dual cassette decks sitting on a microwave cart. Tried putting the white plug into the OUT slot and the red in the red out. THen put the correct ones in the IN slot on the tape decks. Then selected TAPE on the receiver, then play on the tape deck..I got NO SOUND. I tried both units. I even unplugged the Peavey mixing board Dennis had tied into the Panisonic. The Panisonic is 14-15 years old, the Techinc about 3-5, the JVC 5-6 years old.
The boom box that I have will let you dub from CD to tape, but not tape to tape.
Everything seems to be breaking down due to age..me included.
That photo of Colby brought back bad memories. Isn't that the SOB who worked with the Church Committee to dismantle the CIA? We're still paying for that one.
Afternoon, SZonian
Is Duckie's real name Emelda? :-)
Afternoon PE.
Is that Kerry smoking dope on the front?
Afternoon Matt.
We had some nice days, no rain but the temperature has been dropping at night to the low 30's and the ponds are getting a thin layer of ice on them. Fun watching ducks land on what they think is water. ;-0
It's hell getting old. ;-)
Colby was CIA station chief in Saigon from 1959 to 1962 and headed the agency's Far East division from 1962 to 1967. Then from 1968 to 1971 he directed the Phoenix program in South Vietnam, which sought to identify and eliminate communist activists (the Viet Cong) at the village level. Colby felt that the program was superior to the use of military force, which he believed was too blunt an instrument and alienated the Vietnamese. Nevertheless, estimates of the number killed under Phoenix range as high as 60,000 people. (Colby put the number at 20,587.) Phoenix has also been defended on relativist grounds--the Viet Cong assassinated nearly 40,000 of their enemies in the period from 1957 to 1972. But none of these arguments could prevent the program from becoming a focal point of the antiwar movement. Although Colby maintained that the deaths characteristically arose in combat and not as a result of cold-blooded murder, critics of Phoenix labeled it an assassination program and a crime against humanity.
After Phoenix, Colby rose within the CIA's Washington bureaucracy, and on 4 September 1973 President Richard Nixon appointed him director of the agency. During his tenure the press and Congress turned on the CIA, accusing it of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from assassination plots to espionage against Americans at home. When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby offered significant if limited cooperation. For example, he handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Idaho Democrat Frank Church details of the CIA's recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency's attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America's oldest democracy and to the installation of a vicious dictatorship. Colby's candor on such matters shocked colleagues in the CIA, some of whom never forgave him for opening up the activities of what was, after all, a secret agency. His only daughter, Catherine, had died after a painful illness in April 1973, and colleagues speculated that the tragedy unlocked what some regarded as Colby's already overdeveloped Christian conscience. Though he strenuously denied that his daughter had opposed Phoenix, perhaps Colby did want to atone for his part in the program. It is also clear that he disapproved of certain of the CIA's activities that he called "deplorable" and "wrong" and wanted them stopped. In any case, he realized that a display of flexibility in his dealings with Congress would increase the agency's chances of survival.
With CIA morale at a low ebb, Colby's enemies began to line up. On the Left, a coalition of muckraking journalists, Vietnam War critics, and ambitious legislators refused to give him credit for attempting to open up the agency. On the Right, conservatives such as Barry Goldwater disliked Colby's liberalism and concessions to the Church committee. Colby had become politically vulnerable, and on 30 January 1976 President Gerald Ford replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Colby had introduced some significant reforms, such as the prohibition of assassination as an instrument of national policy and the practice of informing select members of Congress about the CIA's activities, but his intelligence career was over.
Colby's life continued to be eventful. In 1978 he published his memoir, Honorable Men, in which he defended himself against the Left over Phoenix and against the Right over his decision to clear the air while director of the CIA. In 1982, following the enactment of stringent secrecy legislation in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government began proceedings against Colby for making unauthorized disclosures, in the French-language edition of his memoir, about American efforts to retrieve secret codes from a sunken Soviet submarine. His agreement to pay a $10,000 fine in an out-of-court settlement barely covered the cracks between Colby and his enemies on the Right.
In 1984 Colby divorced his first wife and married a former diplomat, Sally Shelton. He had resumed legal practice and lectured widely, taking up a new cause--the campaign for a freeze on nuclear arms. On a spring day in 1996, Colby went down to the waterfront near his weekend home in Rock Point, Maryland, and launched his canoe into a stiff breeze. Until his body was found several days later with no evident signs of foul play, the press had one more chance to speculate about the fate of a man whose manner of death seemed to conjure up the enigma of his life.
Until his body was found several days later with no evident signs of foul play, the press had one more chance to speculate about the fate of a man whose manner of death seemed to conjure up the enigma of his life.
Sounds like an old score might have been settled.
You can say that again. I know I'll sit back and chuckle about all these 'breakages' some time in the future, but for now it's a big nusiance that leaves me fustrated.
He was ordered to provide safe passage for a drugrunning convoy which consisted of, among other animals, elephants.
Said convoy having just transited Communist territory. The tale told to illustrate a bizarre aspect of that war.
All were outfitted in sterile uniforms and carried Swedish K submachine guns, offering Saigon some measure of plausible deniability in the event of their capture.
Ruddy's 1999 column on Colby's death by canoe.
Ruddy's The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, Free Press Div. Simon & Schuster, 1997, is a most thorough reporting effort.
1996 was a year for taking out the trash; Ron Brown's flight into Silence Mountain, TWA Flight 800 and the 3M adhesive that never was.
William Colby's Death Mystery It was March of 1996. My cell phone rang. My literary agent was on the line.
"Cross Colby off the list. He's dead."
"Colby is dead," I said with some shock.
"Yes, I just heard on the radio he died in a car crash," my agent said.
I did not know former CIA Director Bill Colby, nor did my agent. But we both knew James Dale Davidson, editor of the investment newsletter Strategic Investment. Davidson was not only an associate of Colby's, but Colby had worked for Davidson as a contributing editor for his newsletter.
At the time of my agent's call, he was attempting to find a publisher for my book on the Vince Foster case. We still had no publisher, and my agent had floated the idea of William Colby writing the proposed book's foreword. This would serve several purposes. Colby, as a former CIA chief, would give the book some credibility with a publisher.
Colby had been a key figure in the Watergate scandal after he refused to allow the CIA to block the FBI probe on the Watergate burglary. Colby could not be accused of being part of a right-wing conspiracy. After leaving the CIA, he argued for unilateral disarmament and became a fixture at the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies.
My agent thought Colby might be open to the idea. After all, he worked for Davidson and Davidson openly claimed Foster was murdered, pointing the finger at the Clinton White House.
But now the idea of a Colby foreword seemed lost.
I called Davidson and asked him if he had heard the news about Colby. His voice became strained. He sounded stunned when I told him.
But, of course, Colby had not died that March. He died a month later. My agent was wrong. To this day, he swears he heard something, and to this day, we laugh about the Jungian wrinkle in time. Davidson was peeved at me for the false report, as he well should have been.
On April 29, 1996, the wires flashed with hot news: Former CIA Director William Colby had disappeared from his country home on the Wicomico River in Maryland. Authorities suspected he died in a canoeing accident, as his waterlogged canoe was found on the shore near his home.
A week later, his body surfaced in the marsh near his home. After a perfunctory autopsy, local police authorities closed the case as an accident.
Still, there were many reasons to suspect foul play.
These suspicions began as soon as the initial press reports came out. As expected, the Associated Press ran the first wire story. Colby "was missing and presumed drowned" the AP reported. The wire story said he died as the result of "an apparent boating accident."
Quoting a source close to Mrs. Colby, who was in Texas at the time her husband disappeared, the AP stated Colby had spoke via phone with his wife on the day he disappeared. He told her he was not feeling well, "but was going canoeing anyway."
This would be an important clue pointing to an accidental death, had it been true. But someone fabricated this story out of whole cloth. A week later, Colby's wife rebutted the AP report, telling the Washington Times her husband was well, and made no mention of canoeing.
This initial, false report that relieved obvious suspicion was, for me, a red flag of a cover-up.
Interesting, too, were the obituaries being written. All detailed Colby's fabled career in the World War II-era OSS, the James Bond-like spy who parachuted behind Nazi lines and became a stellar CIA agent. After heading up the Company's Phoenix program in Vietnam, Colby was tapped by President Nixon for the position of DCI -- Director of Central Intelligence. These obituaries detailed a formidable list of Colby's associations after he left the CIA.
Yet, nowhere did any media report Colby's most significant occupation at the time of his death -- contributing editor for Davidson's Strategic Investment.
Odd that Colby's major affiliation at the same time of his death deserved no notice.
Strategic Investment is a prestigious financial newsletter with more than 100,000 readers each month. It is co-edited by James Davidson, a national figure, as well as William Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times of London.
This curious omission takes on great importance when one understands one of Strategic Investment's key aspects. It has been one of the leading, real opposition publications to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the United States.
Davidson and Rees-Mogg have never pulled any punches about the Clintons. Each month, the newsletter detailed the Clintons' sordid drug, mob, and murder connections. Davidson had been a friend of Bill Clinton and had frequented Little Rock. He even had donated the maximum amount allowable to Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.
In 1993, Davidson had an awakening about Clinton. My reporting on Foster, investigative reports by British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and columns by Strategic Investment's Washington insider Jack Wheeler, had convinced Davidson that Clinton was linked to organized crime, had subverted the U.S. law enforcement agencies, and was a danger to America's institutions and financial well-being.
As an editor for Davidson's newsletter, Colby never wrote about the Clintons or touched upon these matters. He did, however, lend his name to Davidson's enterprise. The newsletter's reach was multiplied by the effect of the millions of direct-mail pieces Davidson's organization sent to homes across the country seeking new subscribers.
I was shocked by one such direct-mail booklet. The cover headlined the Clintons' connection with murder and drugs. I opened the first page, and the first picture I saw was William Colby's. Another headline blazed that Strategic Investment was "An Investor's CIA." Colby was prominently displayed, as was his endorsement. This was brilliant marketing on behalf of Strategic, but when I saw it, I thought Colby was swimming in dangerous waters.
This turned out to be literally true when he was found floating on the Wicomico. Like the Foster death, the circumstances of Colby's passing made little sense.
When police entered his country home, they found both his radio and computer left on. "Investigators found dinner dishes on a table and clam shells in the kitchen sink." Friends say this was unusual for Colby, a meticulous man.
The canoe was found conveniently waterlogged near the waterfront part of his home. Considering the swift current of the Wicomico, that made sense only if he died very close to the shoreline near his property. Yet authorities using scuba divers and sophisticated radar couldn't find his body there.
And a canoe is an extremely seaworthy boat. How did it become lodged and waterlogged on the riverbank? Had Colby been stricken by a heart attack and fallen off, as has been speculated, the canoe should have completely capsized or safely righted itself, not become waterlogged and moved by the current to the Colby waterfront.
Then there were other telling problems. Colby was found with no lifejacket. He always wore one when on the water. The scrupulous search for him should have turned up the floating life jacket or the buoyant paddle. Neither was found.
An autopsy by a Maryland coroner found that Colby had died of drowning. The autopsy also claimed that the drowning was precipitated -- get this -- by a heart attack or stroke. Take your pick. But the coroner found no evidence of either!
Police homicide investigators always treat drowning deaths with great suspicion. Trained killers know that someone killed by drowning is "buried" in deep water, a target of predatory sea life. After days there, the body is mutilated by sea life to such a degree that any signs of a struggle are difficult to identify.
In the days after Colby's demise, I was disturbed by the many parallels to the Foster death: the circumstances that just didn't add up, the outrageously phony initial press reports, the quick official rush to judgment by investigative agencies, the questionable autopsy.
My feathers were ruffled more when I received a call from Peter Birkett, an investigative reporter from Britain's Daily Express. Peter had been rushed over to the United States, he said, because the paper's intelligence sources in MI5 had claimed Colby was assassinated by U.S. government operatives. Peter's job was to ferret out the facts.
The Express is a credible paper, and Peter seemed genuinely interested in the truth. He had heard about my Vince Foster reporting and was told by contacts in Britain that I could offer him some insight. I told him my concerns, notably the unreported Colby connection to Davidson's newsletter.
Peter began his own investigation and gave me progress reports as things unfolded. He spoke to the local police, some of whom, he claimed, didn't buy the boating story accident. For one thing, one of the investigators told Peter that Colby's body was found fully clothed. His socks were on, but his shoes were missing. Colby always wore shoes when canoeing, particularly on a blustery April day.
Peter told me that the cop asked incredulously: "How did his shoes come off? In the middle of a heart attack or stroke, he began untying his shoes after his canoe capsized?"
Peter left for England with few answers and more doubts.
In the weeks after the death, I bumped into a former, very high intelligence official who served in the Reagan administration. He was quite agitated about Colby's death. He believed that the Clinton White House must have gone ballistic when they saw Colby's endorsement of Davidson's newsletter. This former official had little doubt the hit was ordered at the highest levels.
He drew for me a diagram of the main players at Strategic Investment organization and explained that Colby was at risk because he "gave the whole thing credibility."
I have no idea whether Colby was murdered. His unusual death, added to the many others with some Whitewater connection, was not something that could be ignored.
By the beginning of 1963 a series of Communist cease-fire violations had put the lie to Hanoi's adherence to the Lao peace agreement.
I am shocked that Communists violated an agreement.
Why did we not send Shambo then instead of waiting until Christmas Eve 1968 to send him into Cambodia?
You and I both.
It's been a fun ride though. :-)f
Gardenspankentruppen Gretchen Offbuster mit grabender Stab
LOL!
Thanks for the additonal info on Colby. I remeber all the Clinton/Colby stories going around when he died.
Why am I not surprised?
Heck, the biggest Polish problem is that people who think the same way as we do live far away across the ocean
We have the same problem now that Canada has gone Socialist, no neighbors who believe as we do. :-(
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