"Messer im Kopf"

Wed Nov 13 20:54:20 PST 1996

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 ph at netcom.com wrote:

 p> In the late 1970s Germany was in a limited state of turmoil due to
 p> fears of "terrorist" (1) groups, particularly the Baader-Meinhoff
 p> gang.  Around this time a curious incident occurred.  The German
 p> government had had some success in apprehending some gang leaders.  In
 p> response, the others hijacked a Lufthansa jet and demanded that the
 p> government release their friends.  Four of the leaders of the gang
 p> then died in prison.  The government declared these deaths to be
 p> suicides, but considerable doubt surrounds this claim.  The government
 p> certainly wanted to discourage further hijacking experiments.  The
 p> elimination of the gang leaders would certainly have sent a strong
 p> message.  The logic is compelling.  On the other hand, it is not
 p> inconceivable that the deaths were suicides intended to discredit the
 p> government.

I lived in the Netherlands and West Germany in 1970 (working as a
nightclub singer, no less!), also a time of terrorist activity and
mysterious deaths.

The persistent buzz was that West German intelligence set up the
terrorists to be hit by elements of the US Army's CID.  I do not know if
this is true or not, though nothing would surprise me after having
during the same period blundered into Kafkaesque personal conflicts with
major US intelligence players who were quite literally insane.

Proving the axiom that no plot device is to cheap for real life, fifteen
years later I was working as a tech in exec/diplo security, frequently
contracted to a huge - but low-profile - company whose name has been
inextricably linked to the CIA for the past forty years or so.  Much of
my job was doing wirework in the various safehouses they maintained,
some of which were enormous mansions kept to stash foreign dignitaries
if the need arose.  They maintained their own private security force
that was tacitly authorized to undertake special ops in any of the 83
host countries in which they operate.  They had their own EOD and
hostage negotiation/rescue teams that were frequently "in the field."
These were heavyweights recruited from some of the scariest outfits in
the world.

But, to get to the point of this shaggy-dog story, among the specific
threats we were tasked with intercepting were elements of the Red Army
Faction and Baader-Meinhof, both still considered to be dangerous as
late as the mid-'80s, though they never showed up in my AO during my six
years on the job (a Sikh separatist flap during the Golden Temple
episode was as close as I came to real action and it was a false alarm,
though pretty sphincter-tightening for about an hour as, due to a
fuckup, I was the first and only one on site, with nothing to protect me
but a digital multimeter and a farty little hip pocket .380 holding five
rounds).

What I wish to make clear in this discussion is that - to my direct
personal knowledge as a participant - there are innumerable deniable
assets that do the bidding of governments and corporate interests around
the world in the field of anti-terrorism.  These assets can _and do_
"handle" situations that the righteous citizen would assume to be the
exclusive purview of the CIA, Mossad, etc.  Though I had no direct
knowledge of such executive actions I, do not doubt that these
operations include "neutralization" of troublesome elements.

Fascinating damn gig.  Wish to hell I could write that book about it
without "creating problems" for myself.