The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

McFarlane’s replacement by Poindexter as National Security Advisor on 4 December 1985 did not alter the pattern of deceit. North continued to work to prevent dissemination of information about his activities. On 16 June 1986, North sent Fernandez a KL-43 message that stated in part:

I do not think we ought to contemplate these operations without [Quintero] being on scene. Too many things go wrong that then directly involve you and me in what should be deniable for both of us.

On 15 May 1986, Poindexter sent this computer message to North:

I am afraid you are letting your operational role become too public. From now on I don’t want you to talk to anybody else, including Casey, except me about any of your operational roles. In fact you need to generate a cover story that I have insisted that you stop.

North responded to Poindexter on the same day with a computer note that said «Done.» North subsequently had Robert Dutton inform Enterprise employees in El Salvador that the resupply operation had been taken over by a new entity known as «B. C. Washington.»

Nevertheless, on 10 June 1986 Poindexter reminded North via computer: «I still want you to reduce your visibility.» […]

In the summer of 1986, Congress renewed its inquiries. On 21 July 1986, responding to a House resolution of inquiry, Poindexter sent letters to two committee chairmen, stating that McFarlane’s 1985 letters to Congress accurately described the activities of the NSC staff. When members of the House Intelligence Committee questioned North in person, he falsely denied his Contra-support activities.

The deception continued after one of the resupply organization’s planes carrying Hasenfus was shot down in October 1986. Congress was about to authorize resumption of Contra support by the CIA, with an appropriation of $100 million. Administration officials denied any connection with the aircraft. In October and November 1986, North altered, destroyed, and removed documents and official records relating to the resupply operation. On November 23, 1986, he lied to the Attorney General to conceal Secord’s operation and his own responsibility in directing the secret resupply activities and the control of the funds used to finance them. Between 22 and 29 November 1986, Poindexter unsuccessfully tried to delete from the White House computer system all of his communications with North. Finally, on December 8, 1986, McFarlane told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he was unaware that the government or citizens of Saudi Arabia had been involved in financing the Contras. […]

Pope John Paul I

Even in Italy, land of the conspiracy, no plot comes more entangled than the death of Pope John Paul I.

When white smoke puffed above the Vatican on 26 August 1978 to signal the election of Albino Luciani to the papacy no one was more surprised than Luciani himself. A Vatican low-profiler, Luciani was a deeply modest man, who refused the papal tiara at his coronation and endeared himself to many, not just Catholics, by his smiling kindness.

Just 33 days later, he was dead. According to the Vatican, John Paul I’s death was natural. But then they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Suggestions that the new pontiff’s demise was anything but natural circulated immediately, fuelled by the easily disprovable lies and oddities emanating from Vatican itself:

At first it was announced that John Paul had been found dead in his bed, with a copy of Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ propped before him, by his secretaries Magee and Lorenzi; in fact, the body was discovered by a nun, Sister Vincenza.

The Vatican blamed John Paul’s untimely death — he was 66 — on his heavy smoking. But he didn’t smoke.

A false time of death was issued.

Most controversially of all, a post mortem was not conducted because, insisted the Vatican, post mortems on pontiffs are prohibited by Vatican law. Yet a post mortem had been conducted on the remains of Pope Pius VIII in 1830.

Within 24 hours of his death John Paul I was embalmed.

John Paul I had enemies as well as friends. David Yallop, in In God’s Name (1984), identifies Vatican reactionaries, Freemasons, and Mafiosi as an unholy alliance which loathed the new Pope — loathed him enough to murder him by the administration of digitalis to initiate a heart attack. According to Yallop, the liberal John Paul I was intending to soften the Catholic position on contraception, thus raising the ire of Vatican conservatives. The Freemasons of Propaganda Due (P2), meanwhile, feared a papal expose of their secret caucus inside the Vatican. More worried still were the Mafiosi, who believed that the new pontiff was intending to clean up the Vatican Bank.