
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8  Num. 63
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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GENE "CHIP" TATUM -- CA. JULY 1996
==================================
Abbreviated transcript of Gene Tatum's appearance on the Rob Lori
radio show out of Tampa, Florida.
 
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[...continued...]
 
ROBERT LORI:
Gene Tatum is back  with  us,  live.   You're listening to "Radio
Activity," WMNF, in Tampa.
 
So tell us more about  these  Oliver  North  "camps."   It  seems
pretty  hard  to imagine that Oliver North, who was a White House
aide, had the time to go down  and  do all this:  to set up these
camps and to be so involved in what you say is cocaine  smuggling
when,  I  think it was the Kerry Commission looked into this, and
others, and nobody's  found  the  hard  proof.  There's been some
witnesses who have come forward to make these allegations in  the
past.   But nobody has come up with a video tape or anything like
that.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
That's interesting.  And let  me  qualify that Commission's task:
those commissions were tasked with looking at the arms  sale  and
the  illegal  cover  up  of  information  on that.  They were not
tasked to look into drug activity.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
So if these video tapes  exist  and  if the flight records exist,
why not just release them and make them public?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
Because the video tapes exist showing other  people,  along  with
Mr.  North.  If I were to release those tapes -- the 1994 call to
me threatened my children.  (I  have four children, who live with
their mom.)  I will not allow  that  to  happen.   I  don't  mind
exposing  Mr.  North,  Mr.  Rodriguez.   Mr. Nir can no longer be
exposed because I was tasked with eliminating him in 1988.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Okay,  let's  talk  about   that.    Amiram  Nir  is  an  Israeli
intelligence person.  And I'm not sure whether he worked for  the
government or not. Tell me more about Amiram Nir.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
He  was  the  Prime  Minister  of  Israel's primary consultant on
terrorism.  He was associated with Israeli intelligence.  I'm not
going to say it was Mossad.   It was Israeli intelligence of some
sort -- because of his knowledge.
 
And when you say "Mr. North's time  to  build  these  camps:"  He
designated that to General Alvarez of Honduras -- he was the army
Chief  of Staff -- and to Enrique Bermudez(sp?), the commander of
those North camps. *They* actually built those camps.
 
I think I saw Mr. North  one  time in Honduras -- no, twice.  I'm
sorry.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
So in terms of "taking out" Amiram Nir, what  was  your  role  in
that?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
I was to fly a 4-man  team  to a southern Mexico town, outside of
Morelia.  Mr. Nir was involved  in  an  avocado  packaging  plant
which,  I  don't  know  if  it did or didn't package avocados, or
packaged something else.  I  was  not  involved in that.  I *was*
involved in eliminating him before he  could  appear  before  the
commissions to testify in 1989.
 
I  flew  a  4-man team in.  There was a radio beacon put in, with
the frequency given to us,  put  on  Mr. Nir. We triangulated the
position.  The 4-man team went to that position to eliminate  Mr.
Nir. However apparently there were two signals, and one was in an
aircraft,  a  small  aircraft.   I think it was a Cessna T-210, a
small, charter aircraft.
 
When I fly a mission as a combat helicopter pilot, into a foreign
country, we normally  fly  in  what's  called  "the Archer Mode,"
which is an armed mode.  We  would  fly  an  aircraft  with  full
Stingers  on  one  side  of  the pod, and we would fly a, about a
one-quarter to one-third charged  missiles  on  the right side of
the aircraft, so that we could scare away base aircraft based  in
the  country  that  we  were in, rather than shoot them down.  We
would rather scare them away than shoot them down.
 
Unfortunately, this missile, the  proximity missile that I fired,
took down the aircraft and killed two people on board.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
And one of them was Amiram Nir?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
That's correct.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
The shoot-down took place at a time when the Iran-Contra  scandal
was on the front pages of American newspapers, right?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
That's right.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
So  what's your theory about why your superiors wanted him "taken
out?"
 
 
GENE TATUM:
I believe that  he  could  have provided embarrassing information
about the involvement of Mr. Harari, directly linking,  probably,
Israel,  to  the  manufacturing  and  trafficking  of cocaine.  I
believe that he could implicate  the Vice-President of the United
States, George Bush,  in  the  trafficking  of  cocaine.   And  I
believe  he  could implicate several others, including Mr. North.
And I believe that he was prepared to implicate them.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Who ordered you to "take out" Amiram Nir?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
It came through  Major  Rodriguez,  who  actually  ended up being
Felix Rodriguez.  Most of the orders that we would receive  would
come  through  that  particular  mode.   Now  this,  you  have to
understand,  was  after  Iran-Contra.   So  the  order  came from
Rodriguez, but it was actually from George Bush.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Now how do you know it was from George Bush?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
Because I spoke to Mr. Bush concerning it.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
And how did you speak to him? Did you speak to him face-to-face?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
Via land line.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
And what did he tell you?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
He explained to me that Mr. Nir was a threat, that he was  trying
to expose the movement and the trafficking, and that he needed to
be  "taken  out."   And  he  told  me  to pick up my Archer Team,
relocate  to  El  Salvador,  that  tactical  fuel  [unclear]  and
tactical beacons would be set up.   I  was to move my aircraft to
those beacons for re-fueling, and eliminate Mr. Nir.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Now what was your frame of mind, as...
 
 
GENE TATUM:
Let me qualify that:  I was also told that this was  an  approved
mission  by  the  Mossad and that it was primarily for the Mossad
that we were doing this.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
So the Mossad viewed  Amiram  Nir  as  a renegade agent, and they
wanted him "taken out" as well.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
That's the understanding that was given to me, yes.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
What was your frame of mind?  Did you have any compunction  about
carrying out the killing of people?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
No.
 
Let  me  qualify  how  many  people  I've had to kill in my life:
within 5 feet of me,  probably  about  30; within 200 feet, about
80; and beyond that, I don't know, because -- probably thousands,
with missiles and so forth.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
So you were pretty gung-ho, U.S. Military.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
Absolutely.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
I mean, you followed orders.  And when somebody said, "Do  this,"
you did it.  Because you believe in your country and you believed
in what your leaders were telling you.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
That's correct.
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Let's  back  up  for just a moment, and talk about the very first
covert operation that you  say  you  were  involved in.  You were
involved in Southeast Asia, in a  covert  operation,  during  the
Viet Nam War. Tell us about that covert operation.
 
 
GENE TATUM:
[CN:   Tatum  told  how  he  joined  the  Air  Force  in the late
'60s/early 70's, was trained  as  an  air traffic controller, and
went on to advanced schooling:   Army  jump  school;  escape  and
evasion school, with jungle training; sea survival school; diving
school.  He said he was then sent on temporary duty into Thailand
to  help  set  up  a  communications center.  Task Force Alpha, a
large intelligence force, was also there.  Tatum said he was then
"volunteered" into an assignment  which  apparently is how he got
involved with covert operations.  From there, according to Tatum,
he worked with successive White House administrations.]
 
Our  mission  in  "Pegasus" was to align foreign leaders, foreign
financiers, and foreign countries with the policies of the United
States, using first of all diplomacy.  If diplomacy did not work,
then it was turned over to the Pegasus unit to work in one of the
three arenas that  we  were  professionals  at  working at.  [CN:
i.e., blackmail, intimidation, and murder.]
 
 
ROBERT LORI:
Let's talk about this "Operation Pegasus." How old is Pegasus?
 
 
GENE TATUM:
I'm told, by various intelligence sources around the world,  that
Pegasus  is  an operation that's been in place since probably the
'50s.  It was  originally  designed  to  spy  on spies.  In other
words, to look at the CIA and the National Security Agency to see
who is loyal, who is doing what.  {1}.  And that *was* a  portion
of Pegasus's duties; there was a section...  *My* duties included
simply  flying -- "fancy taxi driver," I should put it, sometimes
armed.
 
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{1} Tatum's info on  Pegasus  is  corroborated by Trenton Parker.
See CN 6.54 and CN 6.89  for  more on Parker, who appeared on Tom
Valentine's *Radio Free America* show in 1993.  Parker has talked
about this "Pegasus" unit, saying that it was secretly set up  by
Harry Truman to keep an eye on the CIA.
 
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