by Uri Dowbenko

Speculation about the mysterious origin and funding of the so-called Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has continued for decades.

The history of FEMA as an illegal unconstitutional entity has been most recently exposed in an unprecedented lawsuit against the CIA and its alleged drug trafficking and money laundering operations.

In September 1998 a $63 million lawsuit (Case No. 98CV11829JLT) was filed by Massachusetts attorney Ray Kohlman on behalf of former Green Beret Bill Tyree.

Kohlman, a former legal investigator for attorney William Pepper in the Martin Luther King murder trial of James Earl Ray, filed a 101-page complaint on behalf of his client.

The suit, replete with five inches of affidavits and appendices, names the Central Intelligence Agency, former Massachusetts Governor A. Paul Celucci, former Massachusetts Attorney-General Scott Harshbarger, former CIA director and US President George Bush and self-admitted government assassin D. Gene Tatum as defendants in a far-reaching case involving US Government sanctioned drug smuggling, murder, and coverup.

Bill Tyree is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife -- a case eerily similar to that of Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, a Ft. Bragg doctor who was framed for the murder of his wife and children in the early 1980s.

"In the mid 1970s, while serving in Panama, Tyree and other Green Berets were led into Colombia under the command of Green Beret Colonels Cutolo and Baker to plant radio beacons, so that plane loads of cocaine could fly below Colombian and US radar, and land undetected in Panama," writes former LAPD officer Mike Ruppert in his newsletter (From the Wilderness, P. O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, http://www.copvcia.com).

"Orders for these missions came from the CIA's Ed Wilson and Tom Clines," continues Ruppert. "Tyree had been a part of many secret missions and was losing his taste for it. His wife was keeping a diary [for which she was presumably murdered, and which later disappeared]."

"Five Special Forces Colonels -- Cutolo, Baker, Malvesti, Rower and Bayard -- have died under mysterious circumstances since. The heart of the Tyree documentation consists of an affidavit allegedly written by Colonel Cutolo who was also Tyree's commanding officer at Fort Devens, Mass. at the time of Tyree's arrest. Both were then with the 10th Special Forces."

"That fifteen page document gives precise details of CIA drug operations using Special Forces personnel. It also describes how Tyree was framed for the murder of his wife and how Special Forces personnel were used to intimidate and conduct illegal electronic and physical surveillance of anyone who might expose CIA drug dealing."

According to the complaint in the lawsuit, "the Plaintiff [Tyree] alleges that the Defendants CIA and George Bush were negligent and failed at the conclusion of Operation Watchtower to monitor the post-Watchtower events and seek legal congressional funding for the origination of FEMA (Federal Emergency Managemnt Agency), and this failure led to the concealment and coverup of Operation Watchtower, written about in the diaries of Elaine Tyree, seized illegally and turned over to Colonel Carone and then to the CIA, which ensured that the Operation Watchtower drug trafficking operation would remain covert, allowing the drug profits from this Operation to be used to circumvent Congress and fund FEMA and continue the pattern of criminal activity."

Colonel Carone, who died in 1990, was a CIA paymaster and Mafia-connected money launderer, who incidentally held the rank of full colonel in Army Intelligence. As Oliver North's bagman, he also couriered large amounts of cash in and out of the country.

Carone's Complex Relationships
According to former FAA investigator Rodney Stich, "Carone had complex relationships." In his underground bestselling book Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA, and Other Covert Agencies, Stich writes that Carone "was a member of the Gambino family with connections to other crime groups in the eastern part of the United States, a detective on the New York City vice squad, a member of the military and a CIA operative."

Stich writes that "Dee [Ferdinand, Carone's daughter] said her father was a detective and bagman in the New York City police department, collecting money that was distributed to captains and inspectors as payoffs for looking the other way where drugs were involved..."

"Referring to CIA-Mafia drug trafficking, she said she knew from what her father said that the drugs coming from South America, went to the Colombo, Genovese and Gambino families, and that it was a joint CIA-Mafia drug operation under the code name Operation Amadeus. She said that during World War II, Operation Amadeus was involved in transporting Nazi officers from Germany into South American countries. According to her father's notes, Operation Amadeus split into several other operations, including Operation Sunrise and Operation Watchtower."

Tyree's lawsuit alleges that "to coverup Operation Watchtower which was one of several illegal drug operations that produced a profit which was used in turn to help originate and implement FEMA violating: a. Separation of powers: the executive branch brought about an agency (i.e. FEMA) which has the authority to suspend the US Constitution, (e.g. further suspending legislative and judicial branches), but is vague in its verbiage as to what does constitute an emergency and fails to list what, if any duties the legislature and judiciary will have to perform if the US Constitiution is suspended."

Even though the origin of FEMA has remained historically unclear, Tyree's lawsuit alleges that FEMA, created by Executive Order, is illegitimate "since Congress had to approve FEMA for two specific reasons: (1) FEMA is a vaguely written Executive Branch created agency that has the power to suspend the US Constitution and put the legislative and judicial branches of government out of work; (2) FEMA is an Executive Branch creation that clearly affects all three branches of Government capable of silencing the voice of the people, (i.e. legislative) and the legal redress of the people, (i.e. judiciary)."

FEMA was allegedly created by Executive Order 12148 which became law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry. In other words, Congress was bypassed for FEMA's authorization as well as its funding. But if Congress never authorized the "agency," where do operational expenses come from?

Tyree's lawsuit alleges that laundered drug profits were the initial source of funding.

According to the lawsuit, "the Plaintiff alleges the Defendants CIA and George Bush did intentionally engage in the complained of conduct herein to conceal: (1) the origins of FEMA and that profits from drug trafficking by the CIA were used in some part to originally fund FEMA and the drafting of the FEMA infrastructure." Two "FEMA"s?

In an even more astounding allegation, the lawsuit claims that Colonel Carone told the Plaintiff that "Colonel Ollie North worked on developing a plan known as FEMA, which would in an ill-defined national emergency, allow the US Military to take control of the United States to ensure National Security" and that Colonel Carone said that "FEMA" originally stood for "Federal Emergency Military Action." (i.e. Martial Law), but was retitled Federal Emergency Management Agency because it would be better received by the people of the United States.

The late Colonel Carone also claimed that "he took drug profits that were clean and laundered in 1982-1984 to the following: NSC -- Colonel Oliver North who used the funds to create and develop FEMA." [p. 88 of the lawsuit]

Colonel Carone also testified that "FEMA was one of those off-the-shelf creations that was funded through the giant black operations fund which came about from drug trafficking operations instituted by the CIA which Congress has no idea of and no control over," that "the FEMA Chain of Command, rules and regulations that he had seen violated the US Constitution, and actually established a succession to the Office of the President in the event of an emergency that circumvented the Vice- President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives."

Carone said "NSC used drug trafficking profits to start FEMA without congressional approval... a 1981 NSC Directive written by Frank Carlucci [states]: `Normally a state of martial law will be proclaimed by the President. However in the absence of such action by the President, a senior military commander may impose martial law in an area of his command where there had been a complete breakdown in the exercise of government functions by local authorities.'"

"Colonel Carone said a literal interpretation of the 1981 NSC Directive was that a local yokel national guard commander could institute martial law, and the actions of FEMA, without local citizens ever knowing how FEMA came to be, or what FEMA was originally intended to be about, would automatically be triggered without any type of presidential order... Congress doesn't even have the purse strings on this one. It's all from the Black Operations Fund which Congress will never force the US Intelligence Community to admit even exists."

None dare call it fascism, but due to this explosive lawsuit, the origin of FEMA and its funding may finally be known.

On the other hand, don't hold your breath. If this lawsuit escapes the black hole of so-called "national security law" or the clutches of a corrupt judiciary, it will be a major miracle.