Vermaat: Leon Panetta's Links to Anti-

CIA Hardcore Leftist Community

January 11, 2009

Intro by Rene Guerra

Emerson Vermaat, MA (law), is an investigative reporter specialized in terrorism,

crime and the former East German and Soviet intelligence services. He frequently
visited the Middle East and North Africa, usually for Dutch television. He made a TV
news report in 1996 on "The Making of a Suicide Bomber," aired in over 40 countries
(World Television News, WTN). In a 1997 Dutch study on Islamic fundamentalism
and terrorism he described the central role of Osama bin Laden in international
terrorism, being the first European journalist to do so. In 1987 he published a lengthy
article on "The East German Secret Service: Structure and Operational Focus"
(Conflict Quarterly, University of New Brunswick, Canada). He also interviewed a
number of former KGB and CIA officers.

Website: www.emersonvermaat.com

Emerson Vermaat has published a demolishing exposé (a copy of which is at the

bottom) that reveals ---professionally documented--- the link of Barack Obama's
nominee for CIA Director, Democrat hack Leon Panetta, with the Institute for Policy
Studies (IPS --- www.IPS-DC.org). The IPS is another of the numerous fronts of the
hardcore left using euphemistic and deceiving names to disguise their true nature.

Noticeable is that the IPS, as Vermaat proves it, has been, from its very inception, a
hardcore-left front dedicated, along with its several child fronts, to discrediting and
sabotaging America's intelligence apparatus, particularly the CIA, which Panetta will
direct for Obama.

Many naives will find Vermaat's revelation shocking, without realizing that nothing
else could be expected from Obama, a confirmed Marxist and, most likely, a Leninist
also.

Not in vain, during the presidential campaign, Obama promised "change," leaving the
meaning of his "change" dangling, as he didn't dare to reveal that such "change" was
actually about changing America to socialism.

(The "middle Americans clinging to their religion" and the "Joe the Plummer"
incidents clearly revealed ---to the educated mind--- Obama's true intentions; anyone
versed in Marxism noticed Marxist dialectics in the wording Obama used in both
Freudian slips.)

The gullible, including solid conservatives, don't stop repeating that they feel
comfortable in Obama's ideological mix of people in his cabinet. He has craftily
chosen, from fellows with past un-recanted deep hardcore associations and alliances
(Hillary Clinton/Stalinist lawyer Robert Treuhaft; Leon Panetta/IPS; etc), to individuals
of apparently impeccable credentials.

Great comfort, the gullible find in that Machiavellian "mix."

They feel comfort at Obama not having come up with William Ayers as Attorney
General, without knowing that Obama's current cabinet is a "transition government,"
a stratagem used by the hardcore left to deceive suckers. The term "transition
government" means, in hardcore-left jargon, a government (or cabinet) purposely
designed as a left/center/right mix to bamboozle the ingenuous. Once well
entrenched, the leftist at the helm (Obama, in this case) replaces most, if not all, the
center/right part of the mix with hardcore leftists: the "transition" is consummated.

It is highly probable that Obama's CIA, with Panetta heading it, will be the seed of
Obama's preannounced Civilian National Security Force (CNSF), the Cheka/Gestapo
monster he promised to create if elected.

This is an unimaginable and extremely dangerous situation where America is now,

with Obama having grasped the Presidency. True Americans must do all they can
legally do to rein in Obama, otherwise the America our Founding Fathers bequeathed
us will be lost forever.

Wake up, Americans . . . before it is too late! Before the CNSF henchmen come
knocking at your door in the middle of the night!

Now, to Vermaat's article:

Obama's Preferred Future Spy Chief Leon Panetta Supported Communist-Linked Anti-
CIA Think Tank
Obama's Preferred Future Spy Chief Leon Panetta Supported Communist-
Linked Anti -CIA Think Tank

January 9, 2009

Obama's Preferred Future Spy Chief Leon Panetta Supported Communist-

Linked Anti-CIA Think Tank

By EMERSON VERMAAT

January 8, 2009 - San Francisco, CA -

PipeLineNews.org - Leon Panetta, president-
elect Barack Obama's choice for future chief of
the CIA, previously strongly sympathized with
the "Institute for Policy Studies" (IPS), a
Washington based leftist think tank known for
its bitter opposition to the intelligence
community, notably the CIA. As a member of
Congress Panetta supported the IPS's
"Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy
Line" in 1983. He was also one of the
congressmen who biennially commissioned IPS to produce an "alternative" budget that
dramatically cut defense spending. He did so together with, among others, fellow
democrat John Conyers, known for his close links to the World Peace Council (WPC), an
organization financed and led by the former International Department of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (ID-CPSU). And there is even more shocking
information: the Soviet Russian secret service KGB appeared to be highly interested in
the activities of IPS. This controversial think tank was targeted by a number of KGB
agents who will be mentioned below.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a huge file on the Institute for Policy
Studies and its founders. Some of the FBI documents are quite revealing. The IPS was
founded in 1963 by Markus Raskin and Richard Jackson Barnet.

An FBI "Memorandum" dated May 4, 1970, classifies Richard Barnet as a "communist."

The FBI Memo says that the IPS "think factory helped train extremists who incite
violence in U.S. cities, and whose educational research serves as a cover for intrigue, an
political agitation." "Barnet is a close associate of Markus G. Raskin and Arthur I.
Waskow. Barnet's public speeches are anti-U.S. in content." 1

During the Vietnam War Barnet openly sided with the North Vietnamese communists.
The FBI Memo says:

"Barnet appears to be the Institute for Policy Studies foreign policy representative and
expert. He has traveled to Europe, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam on several
occasions and participated in conferences with top level officials of the North
Vietnamese government. On his last visit to Hanoi in November 1969, he was quoted in
the Washington Post newspaper as saying in a public speech to the North Vietnamese
people, that the Vietnamese are fighting 'against the same aggressors that we will
continue to fight in our country."

During the February 1969 trip to meet with the North Vietnamese in Paris, Barnet was
identified as traveling with Cora Weiss, a national leader of the Women's Strike for
Peace, and Rennard Davis and Dave Dellinger, both leaders of national prominence in
the New Left Movement and convicted defendants in the Chicago 'Conspiracy 7' trial." 2

"Known contacts with intelligence agents from Soviet and Soviet bloc
countries" (FBI)

The most interesting part of the document is the assumption by the FBI that Barnet
was not just a communist fellow-traveler or sympathizer. There are, the FBI 1970
Memo says, "known contacts with intelligence agents from Soviet and Soviet bloc
countries":

"In view of Barnet's activities, it is indicated that he has demonstrated his willingness to
use his position of influence with the IPS to discredit and undermine U.S. policy, both
foreign and domestic. Also from his known contacts with intelligence agents from Soviet
and Soviet bloc countries, plus his conferences with the North Vietnamese. It appears
that he could conceivably be considered a potential espionage agent." 3

A later FBI document also classified IPS co-director Barnet as a "communist," providing
details about his "contacts with Soviet Embassy personnel." The East Coast communist
newspaper "Daily World" published one of Barnet's speeches in its issue of August 6,
1970.4

The same FBI document, dated May 13, 1971, declares: "Barnet has been identified as
having had contact with United States Soviet Embassy personnel, given a public speech
stating that Nixon will use nuclear weapons in Vietnam." This, by the way, was Barnet's
speech published by the "Daily World." Barnet said: "Nixon will find himself in a position
in which he may be strongly disposed to use tactical nuclear weapons in Indochina."5

S. Steven Powell was employed as a kind of intern at the IPS's Washington office. He
managed to win the trust of many prominent staff members. But he had "strange
encounters with communist East Bloc diplomats who frequent the Institute of Policy
Studies." They were KGB agents who obviously tried to recruit IPS staff members or
were involved in what could be interpreted as a variety of intelligence operations. One
of them was Valeriy Lekarev, Third Secretary of the Department of Cultural Exchange at
the Soviet Embassy in Washington and, according to Powell, "chief liaison between the
Soviet Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada and IPS." Former KGB officer
Stanislav Levchenko whom I interviewed several times, told me that this Moscow based
"Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada" was riddled with KGB and GRU
(=Soviet military intelligence) agents. One of them was a general named Mikhail
Milshstein. (I also interviewed Milshstein; it was at a conference of a Soviet Communist
Party front organization – in Vienna.)

Just in one year, Mr. Lekarev had been seen at IPS more than a dozen times, as had
another Soviet diplomat, Victor Taltz, S. Steven Powell writes in his thorough study
"Inside the Institute of Policy Studies." 6 For some reason, Lekarev was remarkably
interested in Powell's future career. Powell: "When I talked about the possibility of
going into the foreign service or becoming a foreign correspondent he perked up." 7
Powell claimed he would be interested in traveling in and writing about the Soviet
Union. But he soon noticed Lekarev's strange behavior when he was about to meet him
in a restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue:

"I got there early and took a table outside, with a good view. Shortly thereafter, I
noticed Lekarev walking away from the restaurant. He appeared not lost, but as if he
were concerned about being followed. Five minutes later he reappeared from the other
direction, apparently having walked around the block." 8

After the lunch Lekarev suggested to set up another lunch appointment. "How about
two weeks from today?" he asked. He further suggested to go to another restaurant
and he would pay the bill. He also paid the bill this time. Powell grew more and more
suspicious:

"I was somewhat startled when Lekarev produced a wad of money to pay our modest
bill. I had learned that most Soviet diplomats don't have the privilege of expense
accounts - a sign of a diplomat's intelligence status is his cash supply or credit card." 9

This observation is entirely correct. It was in April 1978 that Arkady N. Shevchenko –
United Nations Under Secretary General and former adviser to the Soviet Foreign
Minister Andrei Gromyko – shocked the world diplomatic community by seeking refuge
in the United States. Shevchenko writes in his memoirs "Breaking with Moscow":

"It was easy to distinguish KGB professionals from diplomats and others. The first
giveaway was money. The KGB had it and spent it much more generously than real
diplomats. (...) They (the KGB agents, V.) had money to entertain lavishly. (...) Only the
KGB pays its people well enough for them to afford the best in Western clothing. The
clothes they wear and the drinks they buy are legitimate expenses, because the second
thing that gives away an intelligence operative is the effort he makes to cultivate
foreigners." 10

Shevchenko also says that KGB agents were allowed to freely cultivate as many
foreigners as possible whereas other Soviet diplomats were much less at liberty to do
so. He claimed that the Soviet mission at the United Nations was riddled with KGB and
GRU agents ("nine out of twelve as well as a Czech, a Hungarian, an East German, and
a Bulgarian"). 11

S. Steven Powell mentions a few other Soviet diplomats who sought to cultivate IPS
staff members or showed up at IPS conferences in New York or Washington: Victor
Taltz (see above), Igor Mishchenko, Anatoly Manakov, Pavel Pavlov and Vladimir I.
Strokin. 12

IPS closely cooperated with the "Riverside Church Disarmament Program" (RCDP) run
in the 1980s by the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Cora Rubin Weiss. Weiss was the
daughter of a Russian emigrant named Samuel Rubin who voted for the Communist
Party ticket in the 1936 general election of the five boroughs of New York City. 13 A
Dutch intelligence report says about Rubin: "Shortly before the outbreak of the Second
World War Rubin aroused some interest because of his membership of the Communist
Party and the underground Comintern in the United States." 14

In 1937 he founded "Fabergé perfumes," based in New York and Paris and
subsequently became a millionaire. In 1949 he established the "Samuel Rubin
Foundation," with initial assets under $ 10 million. This foundation later donated huge
sums of money to the IPS and its daughter organization in Amsterdam, the
Transnational Institute (TNI). 15

Cora Rubin Weiss was married to Peter Weiss who was Chairman of the Board of
Trustees of IPS. 16 He was known as a pro-Cuban activist. Cora Weiss and the Rev.
William Sloane Coffin – who spoke Russian – frequently met Soviet diplomats who took
an active interest in the "Riverside Church Disarmament Program" trying to promote
Soviet communist causes (members of the Riverside Church were encouraged to visit
the Soviet Union, for example). KGB officers Yuri Kupralov, stationed in Washington
D.C, and Sergei Paramonov, under U.N. diplomatic cover, participated in RCDP
conferences. KGB officers Sergei Divilkovsky and Vladimir Shustov were also frequently
present. 17

The intensive IPS/TNI campaign to discredit the CIA

Both the IPS and the Riverside Church were vocal opponents of U.S. policies in general
and of the U.S. intelligence community in particular. There was a concerted effort to
discredit the CIA and the NSA with the active participation of Peter Weiss, Markus
Raskin, Saul Landau (a personal friend of Fidel Castro's), Morton Halperin, William
Schaap and former CIA agent Philip Agee. The "Center for National Security Studies"
(CNSS) was created by IPS not just to hamper U.S. intelligence agencies in gathering
intelligence, but to ban all these activities as well. An "Organizing Committee for the
Fifth Estate" was created in 1974 and IPS co-founder Markus Raskin joined the
"Advisory Council." This committee published the magazine "Counterspy" which
revealed the names of CIA operatives. One of the names published by "Counterspy"
was that of Athens' CIA station chief Richard L. Welch who was subsequently murdered
(1975). Former CIA agent Philip Agee was the driving force behind "Counterspy." 18

But Agee was not just a former disaffected CIA officer. He took the unusual step of
defecting to both the Cuban intelligence service DGI and the Russian secret service
KGB. Former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin writes that Agee's KGB code name was "Pont."
According to Mitrokhin, who had access to numerous highly classified KGB files, the KGB
actively assisted Agee in writing his book "Inside the Company," a best-seller published
in 1975. "He was the KGB's "most valuable asset to discredit the Agency," Mitrokhin
says." 19And he adds:

"While Agee was writing his book in Britain, the KGB maintained in contact with him
through its co-optee, Edgar Anatolyevich Cheporov, London correspondent of the
Novosti news agency and the Literaturnaya Gazeta. At Service A's ('Service A' was,
among other things, in charge of 'disinformation,' V.) insistence, Agee removed all
references to CIA penetration of Latin American Communist parties from his typescript
before publication." 20

The KGB was equally helpful when Agee planned to write a book on the CIA in Africa:

"Early in 1979, Oleg Maksimovich Nechiporenko of Directorate K and A.N. Itskov of

Service A met Agee in Cuba and gave him a list of CIA officers working on the African
continent." 21

"Files noted by Mitrokhin claim that the Covert Action Information Bulletin was founded
'on the initiative of the KGB' and that the group running it (collectively codenamed
RUPOR), which held its first meeting in Jamaica early in 1978, was 'put together by FCD
Directorate K (counter intelligence). The Bulletin was edited in Washington by Bill
Schaap, a radical lawyer codenamed RUBY by the KGB, his wife, the journalist Ellen Ray
and two other disaffected former members of the CIA, Jim and Elsie Wilcott." 22

In 1973 the IPS founded the "Transational Institute" (TNI), a daughter organization in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A Dutch intelligence report says that is was Samuel Rubin
himself who was "the driving force behind the creation of TNI." 23 In 1976 the Rubin
Foundation donated $ 400,000 to TNI. (Rubin died in 1978.)

When former CIA agent Philip Agee was about to be expelled from Britain where he had
found temporary refuge, the Transnational Institute immediately invited him to
Amsterdam. One of the people he met there was Gretta Bedier de Prairie-
Nieuwenhuizen. "Nieuwenhuizen" is Gretta's maiden name, "Bedier de Prairie" was the
name of her husband at the time. Mrs. Bedier de Prairie was present at the act that
allowed Agee to remain and work in Europe. After he arrived in Amsterdam, the Dutch
Internal Security Service (BVD) advised the Dutch government to deport him. But in
March 1978 Agee married the American singer Gysela Ingool, who was then living in
Hamburg. Gretta Bedier de Prairie was present at the marriage as an official witness.
Thanks to his marriage to an American woman in Hamburg, Agee was able to settle
there. 24

After her divorce Gretta married the Dutch banker Willem Duisenberg. From now on she
was known as "Gretta Duisenberg." It did not take very long before she began to
embrace radical Palestinian causes.

One of the interesting people who financially supported Philip Agee during the latter's
stay in Amsterdam was a Pakistani man named Mahtaq Malik. Malik also happened to
be a rather close friend of Gretta's. (He frequently visited Gretta's Amsterdam home in
the Bernard Zweerskade.) The same Malik was one of the most prominent drug dealers
in the Netherlands. (Gretta Duisenberg's own son was a drug dealer, too; he managed
to escape from a Thai prison and subsequently returned to the Netherlands where his
mother proudly embraced him.)

Concluding comments

Leon Panetta is not the best choice for heading the CIA. There are serious reservations
in Washington about his qualifications for such an important position. Of course,
Panetta can in no way be associated with hostile foreign intelligence services. But his
previous support for a dubious think thank like the Institute of Policy Studies – an
outspoken anti-CIA lobby group, manipulated in the past by former Soviet intelligence
services is anything but a recommendation for a job like CIA chief. Such a display of
naivete should become him ill.

There are better candidates, Richard A. Clarke, perhabs. He, at least, is a man who is
really familiar with the current security threats. He was one of the first who raised the
alarm about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Barack Obama should not make the same
mistake that former president Jimmy Carter made when he appointed admiral Stansfield
Turner head of the CIA in 1977. Having little or no experience in intelligence matters,
Carter's new spy chief "eliminated much of the CIA's HUMINT capacity (=human
intelligence, V.) and severely damaged Agency morale."25 The Agency turned blind,
began to underestimate the real threats to American and global security. This proved
fatal in the case of Iran where the Shah, a U.S. ally, was forced out of power by
religious fanatics supporting Ayatollah Khomeni. We still suffer the consequences of that
grave error - that fatal temporary flaw in American intelligence capabilities.

Emerson Vermaat, MA (law), is an investigative reporter specialized in terrorism, crime

and the former East German and Soviet intelligence services.

He frequently visited the Middle East and North Africa, usually for Dutch television. He
made a TV news report in 1996 on "The Making of a Suicide Bomber," aired in over 40
countries (World Television News, WTN). In a 1997 Dutch study on Islamic
fundamentalism and terrorism he described the central role of Osama bin Laden in
international terrorism, being the first European journalist to do so. In 1987 he
published a lengthy article on "The East German Secret Service: Structure and
Operational Focus" (Conflict Quarterly, University of New Brunswick, Canada). He also
interviewed a number of former KGB and CIA officers.

Website: www.emersonvermaat.com

1. United States Government, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Memorandum to

Director, FBI, Bufile 105-185148, from Sac. WFO (100-45302) (P), May 4, 1970, p. 1
("communist"), p. 2 (Confidential). Author's file on IPS/TNI.

2. Ibid., p. 2, 3.

3. Ibid. p. 3.

4. United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, WFO 100-

45302, Title Richard Jackson Barnet, May 13, 1971, p. 1 ("Character: Security Matter –
Communist"), p. 3, 4 (Daily World). Author's file on IPS/TNI.

5. Ibid., p. 4.
6. S. Steven Powell, Covert Cadre. Inside the Institute for Policy Studies (Ottawa,
Illinois: Green Hill Publishers, Inc., 1987), p. 329.

7. Ibid., p. 333.

8. Ibid., p. 332.

9. Ibid.. p. 333, 334.

10. Arcady N. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), p.
240.

11. Ibid., p. 243.

12. S. Steven Powell, op. cit., p. 329, 331.

13. 1936 General Election New York City. For the Confidential Use of the Special
Committee on Un-American Activities, Official Report. The names and addresses of the
voters for the Communist Party Ticket (author's file on IPS).

14. Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD), Institute of Policy Studies (confidential Dutch

intelligence report, 1982), p. 2. Author's file on IPS/TNI.

15. Institute of Policy Studies, Funding sources, p. 2 (author's file on IPS/TNI; this is
not an official IPS document but the information is reliable). In 1976 the Rubin
Foundation donated $ 475,000 to IPS and $ 400,000 to TNI, with an additional $
75,000 for "General Support."

16. Institute for Policy Studies, Tax Schedule V, 52-0788947, June 30, 1979, p. 2; flyer
Institute for Policy Studies 1982-1983. Auhor's file on IPS/TNI.

17. Author's source, New York (1986).

18. Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) (confidential Dutch

intelligence report, 1982), p. 7, 8.

19. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, op. cit., p. 269, 300-301.

20. Ibid., p. 301.

21. Ibid., p. 304.

22. Ibid. p. 303.

23. Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD), Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) (confidential

Dutch intelligence report, 1982), p. 2; Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, Transnational
Instituut (TNI) (confidential Dutch intelligence report, 1982), p. 1.
24. Emerson Vermaat, More troubling than inflation? Wall Street Journal Europe
October 17, 2002, p. A 10; Emerson Vermaat, Gretta Duisenberg – gefährlicher als die
Inflation? Der Tagespiegel (Germany), October 21, 2002.

25. W. Thomas Smith Jr., Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency (New York:
Checkmark Books/Facts On File, 2003), p. 229.