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Title: CIA Whistleblower Exposes Black Ops Targeting School Kids Milk!
Published: 2018-07-08
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-abawjaWA
Title: CIA Whistleblower Exposes Black Ops Targeting School Kids Milk!
Published: 2018-07-08
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-abawjaWA
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[Music] in this edition of probable-cause Sibel Edmonds guest is Vern Lyon a former CIA operative and co-author of the brand new book eyes on Havana memoir of an American spy betrayed by the CIA welcome Vern Lyon this is this is gonna be a very interesting interview I just finished reading your book here eyes on Havana the book you wrote with your co-author professor Phillips whirling and2/121
it's a must read book as I was telling you before we started recording it's a must read book for everyone and anyone with many books we usually say well people who are interested in topics such as this and this and this should take a look into this book it's a great book but for this book I'm going to say it's a must read for everyone so3/121
welcome to our show and let's start with who is Vern Lyon have you give us a little bit of personal history who you are what you did and how did this book eyes on Havana came about well I mean I was born and raised here educated at Iowa State University I became an aerospace engineer at a young age became a pilot at a young age I4/121
was always interested in aviation I remember on my birthday when the Soviets launched a Yuri Gagarin into space I remember October of 1957 when Sputnik was launched so all of that fueled my desire as did many young men in the United States to be part of the space race so that's what I devoted myself to my studies everything I wanted to do stemmed from that but5/121
unfortunately my country was involved in the quagmire of Vietnam and as the years went by while I was in college the the nation became more involved with each passing month as more and more young Americans were called to participate in that war and we were all worried about what was going to happen to us as individuals and as I was worrying about that I contemplated joining6/121
me Air Force because I was a pilot and I thought well maybe that would keep me out of the really hot spots but that's when the government came calling and offered me at the time what I thought was a fantastic opportunity not only to serve my country in a very special way but also to avoid being shot at in a rice paddy on the other side7/121
to world so being naive and Jana and wanting to save myself I accepted their offer and that and boiled me with the CIA my senior year at Iowa State they needed IDs and ears on campus because President Johnson didn't believe J Edgar Hoover who was thoroughly convinced that all student protests in the United States was being paid for and manipulated by Moscow so President Johnson said8/121
well let's start an illegal program here and put our own eyes and ears on major college campuses and let's find out if it's true or not so that's how I became involved in the CIA my senior year and after that year I accepted a really good job McDonnell aircraft and st. Louis I'd be working on the Gemini spacecraft the two-man spacecraft I would be working on9/121
the phantom f-4 fighter and the f-111 swing-wing fighter being built by General Dynamics along with McDonnell so I was involved not only in aircraft propulsion and design but also with spacecraft and I loved it but the agency hadn't forgotten about me so they came calling with a very unusual calling card and to this day I believe the incident that happened with the port st. Louis in10/121
1966-67 was their responsibility and the the story about all of that of course is in my book the book was written over a period of Oh 20 years bits and pieces of it I always thought I needed to do that to get my side of the story told but I never had the courage to put it all together I did present it to the CIA pre-publication11/121
Board which is required by the security oaths that I signed and twice they sent it back to me with good 80% redacted and said you can't print this you can't print that they never gave me a good reason why other than your security agreements don't permit that and the agency had a policy where if you were an a an officer in good standing and you wanted12/121
to retire and he wanted to write a book they would allow you to write it they would publish one copy they would print it put it in their library you would have access you could read it any time you want to do as well as any other CIA officer but not the public well I didn't accept that so I just sat on the manuscript thought about13/121
publishing it over the years until I met Professor Philip Turing and he wanted me to add a chapter to his anthology about the CIA on campus and I guess I was the only officer he knew that had been recruited while still at college to the other authors in his book mostly academics and I was the only one with hands-on experience so he helped me write the14/121
chapter included it in his publication I think that was back in 2012 I believe and he told me that most of the comments that he received on that book regarded my chapter so he encouraged me to write my own story and I told him it was basically done but it really needed polishing and he and I agreed that because I'm an engineer I think like an15/121
engineer I write like an engineer you know B follows a and C follows B and very boring stuff so he really helped me put this thing together he thought maybe the same publishing house that published his previous book would be very interested in this because they they enjoyed his first book the CIA on campus so when we finished the manuscript I guess before it was finished16/121
he'd submitted a sample to McFarland and they said yeah we'll do it when we finished the manuscript several months ago they they decided to publish it gave us a publication date I am sorry that the original manuscript was 200,000 words and the book ended up being a little over 92,000 so there's a great deal of information that was not included but I think they did a17/121
good job stitching the bits and pieces together so that it flows and I think it provides the reader with a way to follow the process from who I was as to how I was recruited and to what happened in all the intervening years and the price that I paid for that we're not gonna give away too much here on the book and and we urge people18/121
and especially our own viewers we have a pretty decent sized community of subscribers to our website who are interested not only in geopolitics but civil liberties but also the operations of ours our intelligence agencies law enforcement agencies but let's go back to President Johnson and the CIA and the recruitments in campuses across the country and it is called it was called operation chaos correct after was19/121
how long how long did it go this operation chaos well officially unofficially is started back in 1965 it wasn't officially named WH chaos or MC chaos until 1973 I believe it may have been a year or two before that but the program didn't continue much beyond 1975 and there were if I remember correctly between 30 and 35 people like myself who were recruited into the program20/121
and we were not outstanding in any field and that's because they wanted us to blend in on the college campuses to be nondescript if you will also to get involved but never with our signatures we would go to meetings we would collect information we would provide that to our handlers but we would never officially become part of say that the Socialist Party or any of these21/121
groups that were protesting the war even though some of the recruits in this program I believed actually traveled abroad got involved in demonstrations or what-have-you to build their bona fides and that's how they earned acceptance into the communities that they were collecting intelligence on so it was a well-thought-out program it was entirely illegal but it was ordered by President Johnson to be done and a Richard22/121
Helms who had risen in the ranks of the CIA and had become director consulted with the office of security of the CIA and they decided to implement this program even was entirely illegal and the way it went we have many people especially within the mainstream media who basically subscribe or they pretend to subscribe to this window wrestling notion that CIA sees all those operations after the23/121
church committees etc what would be your response to people who say all those things end it and they stop and they did not continue those illegal operations inside the United States and by day I mean the CIA what will be your response I think it's very obvious that they did not do that and I bring up one incidence in in my book after I got out24/121
of Leavenworth and hoped form these two associations of former national security officers that included former FBI and m.i.a and CIA and I was invited to speak to the students of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and the president of that private university dr. Richard Rose had been a CIA officer for a number of years and he allowed Kodak Corporation to open laboratories on the25/121
campus and they were using students from that university to fall sick cow knee counterfeit passports counterfeit documents they fabricated news stories and all of this was done and the nineties and that kind of thing continues today they didn't stop they just went farther underground and they they try to cover it up buried a little bit deeper but it's still going on and in fact that was26/121
part of a program called officer in residence with the CIA approached most major colleges and universities and said look we will provide you with a ranking CIA officer maybe one that can no longer work abroad because their identity was blown well we will provide you an officer we will pay his salary all we asked from the University of the college is you provide him an office27/121
space and access to student files so that he can select students to take special classes and struction and guidance from him and this program went nationwide and then they even lowered it down to the high school level so there they've done nothing but expand this type of operation absolutely I attended George Washington University in 1990s and I have three passports I have Turkish Passport Iranian passport28/121
US passport I speak three four languages but there were several attempts to recruit me within the university there actually through two of the professor's I had there for political science and international relations but every time that they approached me it was under the guise of State Department so they would never say the CIA but it was always you know with your qualification and your major and29/121
etc we want to talk with you about certain positions within the State Department what what is your reaction to that I mean is it is it a norm as far as you're concerned that it's a State Department no well what did the CIA used to do this they would approach as you know when you arrive in the United States you go through immigration and before you30/121
go through customs you are in no-man's land between Immigration and Customs and that's where the CIA is domestic contact service the DCs would pull aside people they were interested in maybe somebody who had visited North Korea maybe somebody had been to Moscow maybe somebody had been to Hanoi they would pull them aside to interrogate them and maybe threaten them you know don't tell anybody we talked31/121
to you or if they recruited on to say maybe on your next trip to that same country you could look at this particular area you could read about a particular person and provide that information to us when you get back and they always hid it under the the State Department intelligence collecting and only after you agreed and you had signed your life away would they tell32/121
you who they who you would really be working for and when they recruited me on campus they actually came pretending to be representatives of a aerospace engineering firm in Huntsville Alabama that I already interviewed and turned down their offer so it was a pretty sneaky if you ask me I'm surprised they didn't come directly to recruit you do certainly at all the qualifications to be recruited33/121
well it's very interesting because the same agency the CIA they were the main reason my uncle and during the same period of time in 1960s he got a scholarship he was used to live in Iran and to Alabama University he was an airplane engineer and you may even know him because the timeframe is pretty close to when you were there but this was during the also34/121
the the the riots with the racial related uprisings etc and they tried to recruit him and he actually refused and what they did they pulled his scholarship away and they deported him and meanwhile they send a memo to shah of iran saying that they have identified him as a communist leftist and he was also joining certain african-american communities with the segregations etc but they deported my35/121
uncle he was getting his PhD there and they deported him back to Iran when he was where he was tortured so he actually I would say it's a pretty audacious for them to try to recruit me when my family had history being on the other side of the CIA the same thing with my father he was a surgeon he was a doctor in Iran and because36/121
he had certain book including Stein ways book they accuse them of being part of the union organizers and a communist and in 1973 they had him in jail there they pulled his toenails and this is a surgeon this is a doctor so being on the other side for me it was in some ways amusing to see that they would even attempt to to recruit me which37/121
my answer would have been no no matter what but then later on after 9/11 when I started working for the FBI one of the things that I was told by the agents FBI agents there that even though they had some cooperations with the agency with the CIA CIA always planted several people within the FBI to keep an eye on FBI's own counterintelligence gathering here in the38/121
States and and again it was a lot of times it was done under this desk that called coordination with the State Department and it was always done under the State Department now you you were active you were doing this you were part of operation chaos and at some point you just got disgusted and you said you didn't want to have anything to do with it correct39/121
well yeah as the end of my senior year approached I had to make a decision whether to continue with the CIA because they I think they were pleased with what I did although I they never told me that they all were they always just said while you're doing a good job and we were they dangled in front of me the possibility of a career in the40/121
CIA on graduation if I met all of their requirements which I think I did but I had two issues going on number one I wanted a career in the aerospace business and I wanted to stay close to home because I was engaged at the time and I didn't want to go too far from my fiance so I made the decision to accept a job in st.41/121
Louis Missouri which was like a seven hour or non-stop drive from Des Moines and I told him that and they accepted that gracefully I think and they said they understood that I'd studied all these years to be an aerospace engineer but they also told me that you know Verne if we ever need you can we rely on you and I responded by yeah you know if42/121
I can help you out just let me know and I'll see what I can do and that's kind of where we left the the relationship between me and the CIA but that opened a door for them because the my contacts in the agency were very interested in what I was doing as an amateur racketeer as an aerospace engineer this leads me to believe that some time43/121
during my senior year in perhaps even prior to that they had hatched this idea of having somebody like me inserted into Cuba reason being that Fidel Castro had gone around the island and spent money building these small dams buying diesel engines they had water pumps because he wanted two or three growing seasons a year to do that needed to make it rain so that it would44/121
fill up these ponds that he had built and to make it rain there were only two or three ways of doing that at the time and my expertise happened to be in one of the fields that provided the instrumentation to do that so I really think that the CIA had this operation in mind for at least a couple of years prior to my telling me no45/121
when I graduated I'm going to become an engineer and go to work in that industry but they had other ideas and then there was this incident of CIA trying to set you up do you want to tell us a little bit about that in some broad broad ways and and and how that took you into Cuba after I left the CIA and graduated I went to46/121
work for McDonald aircraft in st. Louis McDonald aircraft sat on the east side of the Lambert field and st. Louis that was their airport and I lived on the west side of the airport and I worked with a group of Engineers and two different design groups and I also continued a collaboration with my two brothers back in Iowa we were still building and launching rockets and47/121
getting him more sophisticated each time so around Christmas my fiance and I there's a lot I couldn't tell her anyhow they the relationship came apart so I didn't go home for Christmas I was going to stay in st. Louis and I had Watson Christmas presents and I asked secretary in the office where I work she'd help me wrap them and add also prior to that purchased48/121
some low-grade dynamite to take home for my brothers to use in our amateur rocket air experiments and I had a lot of that in my apartment and one night before Christmas I'd been invited by some of my fellow engineers at McDonald to go with them to the Playboy Club one of the engineers was a member there and I'd never been to one we didn't have any49/121
in Iowa at the time so that was that was kind of a exciting thing to be invited to and I I agreed and I drove to the Playboy Club downtown st. Louis that I think was a Friday evening and I was enjoying my time with my fellow engineers and whatnot and on the way home we had to drive past the airport one of the engineers that50/121
was with me had left his car there so we had to drive by the airport and I had to drop him off to pick up his car and we noticed there are all kinds of flashing lights police cars they're everywhere maybe there have been an accident maybe a plane had crashed but it was late at night and we figured we'd find out following morning in the51/121
newspaper so in the morning the news the papers the television was all about a small explosion that ruined a couple of windows and a bench in a waiting area in the airport so now we knew what the the excitement had been that night and I gave it no more thought I went to the secretary's office or a home and apartment and we we wrapped my Christmas52/121
presents she asked me to drive her to work on Monday morning I agreed no no surprise me that Monday morning she called me and said that she was going to drive herself I thought that was fine so hard to work and a couple hours later some gentleman showed up along with security from McDonald aircraft and they sealed my desk and they wanted to go out and53/121
see my car so I went outside with him showed him my car they opened it up there was nothing there of interest so they took me back to where I lived and on the way they asked me if I I had any dynamite I said yeah and I told him why there was no reason not to when we got to where I lived there was also54/121
like 50 cars with their lights flashing looked like a circus and apparently some officers had already gone upstairs I think they were from the st. Louis Police Department from the county were st. Louis was located I think you were state police I think the ATF was there I think the FBI was there I think everybody in their role and they came out and said well you55/121
told us you had X number sticks of dynamite I don't remember how many I believe it was 10 but they only find seven so that were the other three well I have no idea you know anyhow they arrested me that day and charged me with bombing the airport but I said hey wait a minute you know call these engineers I was with Friday night at the56/121
Playboy Club you got the wrong guy here they said well where's the dynamite I don't know the answer to that question because after they arrested me and they charged me with this a federal judge insane was set this huge bail that I couldn't make obviously and I had no defense team I had no money I just started my job I've been on the job for a57/121
few months so the world looked pretty bleak and some hometown attorneys showed up and said look we'll find somebody license to practice law in st. Louis we'll get this all straightened out and a couple of attorneys did come to see me the judge Lord a huge bond amount down to $500 just out of the blue so they let this a cubist airport Bonner go for five