The Finders - Sources

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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Tyler Rabbit » Sun Jan 25, 2015 10:39 pm

Plutonia » Sun Jan 25, 2015 6:28 pm wrote:Glad to read that you weren't molested in the woods, Mr Rabbit, but I think that you may have missed my point, which was just to be cautious and thorough, because look where it went in the UK. That's all.

Thanks, Plutonia. You were addressing what I said about why would TPTB be interested in raising kids in nature. My response was a bit more broad than your specific concern. Sorry about that. Cheers.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby elfismiles » Mon Jan 26, 2015 2:06 pm

I want to see a nice animation of that analogy. :sun:

Tyler Rabbit » 25 Jan 2015 07:11 wrote:...I do think he was like a canvas onto which people projected their own notions- and I think he'll continue to be..
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:24 am

So the two pieces of information contained only in the final (highly suspect) Customs report are two of the most widely repeated accusations about the Finders. One, that members had passports apparently stamped for travel to Russia, North Korea & North Vietnam. And two, that the CIA shut down the investigation because it was an "internal matter."

Global travel throughout many countries was obviously part of Pettie's agenda from what I've read so far of Terrell's account, though not to those specifically forbidden places. So it's not exactly that far-fetched of an accusation; perhaps someone was just lying about which countries were actually marked as visited in the seized passports.

As for the second point, it seems more like something out of a movie script. But on the other hand, it is useful to remember that Pettie had numerous documented and self-avowed connections to the CIA. Boasting about your links to Air America doesn't exactly make me feel like you'd be my kind of leader or spiritual guide (or whatever.)

This Pettie interview is something worth revisiting:

Q: What do you make then of these stories that connect the Finders up to a pedophilia ring in the CIA?

A- The pedophiles and all that stuff..

Q: That's all smear?

A; I just kept open house to a lot of the counter-intelligence and intelligence people over the years. I have been reported to their security officers probably plenty of times for trying to find out what's going on in the world. I've tried all of my life to get behind the scenes in the CIA. I sent my wife in as a spy, to spy on the CIA for me. She was very happy about it, happy to tell me everything she found out. She was in a key place, you know with the records, and she could find out things for me. And my son worked for Air America which was a proprietary of the CIA. There are some connections, but not to me personally.

Q: But do you have any suspicions ... the Finders sounds like a real open group that attracts a lot different elements ... disinformation stories could be planted by certain elements to try to connect it to pedophilia...

A: The reason the CIA wouldn't hire me is that they wouldn't have the control factor over me. That's one of the things. They may have used me at some time without me knowing it. They have categories of unwitting agents. Maybe you two were sent here by them. But I'm pretty open about this kind of stuff, though. They wouldn't hire me as a contract employee because 1 wouldn't sign the papers. Anybody that's a contract employee must sign an agreement and then they pay you out the money. Well, I don't need the money, but I am trying to find out all about them. Basically, the one sentence about the CIA is that I have been studying them since before they were born, I was studying them back in the 30s. It was ONI back then [Office of Naval Intelligence], and then the Coordinator of Information comes on, and after that it turns into the OSS and OSS turns into the CIAU and the CIAU turns into the CIA. So I've been studying that all of my life. But I wasn't personally working for them.


Oh, none of that is suspicious sounding.

Here's a very interesting (and weirdly coincidental for me) excerpt from The Gamecaller:

Our intellectual life is active in San Francisco and we make many new connections. Architect Christopher Alexander comes over for a visit to see our urban warehouse vision and we visit his beautiful Berkeley Hill house with its collection of oriental rugs. Diane develops a rapport with Margo St. James, former prostitute and founder of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). We go to talks by social critic Theodore Roszak, World Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand, Noetic scientist Willis Harman and visionary Buckminster Fuller. I’d read the accounts by John Steward Service of his visit to the encampment of Mao Tse Tung at the end of the long march and his efforts as an American Foreign Service officer for a less caricatured understanding of the Chinese leaders who created the People’s Republic. I thought that he would be a person worth serving in some way. So, I write a letter offering my services, but I’m turned away by his wife at the door. A valuable lesson about how fearful famous people are when approached by strangers.

“Fame, fortune and power are driving a pretty high percentage of the people in this country,” Pettie says when I tell him about hiking the Berkeley Hills to the Service house. “Almost nobody knows how dangerous it is to seek fame. It’s very hard to hold on to who you are once you become famous, but millions of people keep on going after it. The most dangerous thing is to gain fame, but not have a fortune to go with it. But being a servant to the rich and famous is actually better than being famous and will give you a unique perspective and a better position to seek your own true nature.”

“Who are the best ones to become servants to?” I ask.

“I suppose that the best would be somebody that you think is a hero, so you could get up close and discover their feet of clay,” he says. “But better than that might be serving people who are on the cutting edge of positive change before they become famous. You can find them, but it takes some research. To my way of thinking, the two activities in life that pay the biggest dividends are learning and serving. And when you’re learning, without trying to feather your own nest, you’re serving. Know everything and do nothing until your knowledge is called for by the people that you’re loyal to. Make what you know available to people with the highest vision that you can find. But don’t push it. Offer things once in a soft voice and if they pick up on it, fine. If not, keep on learning. Be ready when some persons come along and want what you’re offering.

“Until then just be the D.C.I.A, the Divine Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is a good model for the way to handle information. It’s there and it’s available to the right people, but they have to go through the right channels to get it and they have to ask the right questions. The Jesuits are also good models. They were the intelligence agency for the Pope, at least in theory. The truth is that they usually knew more than he did.”

An Episcopal priest, Dick Young, who’s studying at the Pacific School of Religion, is fascinated with our communal way of life and has attached himself to me. He comes over every day and sits in our meetings. I feel inadequate and embarrassed when he treats me like a mentor. One night he stays over at the warehouse.

That night I have a dream: I’m visiting a beautiful castle. I’m led by a robed figure through room after room and up into the tower with a view of the countryside. The figure never turns in my direction, so I’m unable to see a face. Then we retreat to a basement stairway. My guide stands aside and points down the steps. I start to descend. As I get near the bottom, I can see an open stone door leading to the side. A light begins to glow from inside the door and becomes brighter and brighter. A loud voice says: “Are you ready to be filled with the spirit of Saint Ignatius Loyola?” I wake up shouting “No, no” and realize how puny my efforts at community are. That day I go to the library and read for hours about how Saint Ignatius was a mortally wounded soldier who took refuge in a cave in Spain and, near death, had a vision that inspired him to start the Jesuit Order.


Is "Divine CIA" supposed to be a positive reference, or to make good people want to be involved in whatever he's doing? I understand the thin line between con-man and guru, and so do not judge him negatively just for acting evasive and saying deceptive things. But to me, saying that kind of thing while actually being connected to the CIA is another matter.

All I see from Pettie is a bunch of wishy-washy evasiveness so I guess it's only natural to assume something bad. Stuff like this doesn't tell me anything, really, and there's a lot more where this came from:

To my way of thinking, the two activities in life that pay the biggest dividends are learning and serving. And when you’re learning, without trying to feather your own nest, you’re serving. Know everything and do nothing until your knowledge is called for by the people that you’re loyal to. Make what you know available to people with the highest vision that you can find. But don’t push it. Offer things once in a soft voice and if they pick up on it, fine. If not, keep on learning. Be ready when some persons come along and want what you’re offering.


Sounds like the kind of talk you'd expect from evangelical Christians or something. Who are the best ones to become servants to? is such a great question.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:28 am

I actually didn't mean earlier in this thread to casually bring up a reference to Inslaw/PROMIS as if it were relevant. It's just that I'm researching some things in that area right now and can't help but notice the recurring role of Customs in the whole PROMIS story. Who was the head of that agency when Martinez was writing his reports? I know that one of the heads of Wackenhut was Commissioner up until Reagan was elected....

-

OK, it was William von Raab:

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... on_raab__1

Autumn 1988: CIA Has Secret Slush Fund for Covert Operations at BCCI; Fails to Tell US Customs about It

In 1991, the Financial Times will report, “[T]here are persistent allegations that slush funds [at the criminal BCCI bank] were used for illegal, covert CIA operations.” US Customs Commissioner William von Raab will later allege that in the autumn of 1988, as he is preparing arrests regarding drug money laundering charges against a BCCI subsidiary in Florida, he approaches CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates for help. Gates does give Raab a CIA document about BCCI. But, according to the Times, “Gates failed to disclose the CIA’s own use of BCCI to channel payments for covert operations, which the customs chief learned about only later—and thanks to documents supplied to him by British customs agents in London.” The Times will cite the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal as one example of how the CIA used BCCI for covert operations. [Financial Times, 8/10/1991]


http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-03/ ... 1_von-raab

Controversial Leader of Drug War : Customs' Von Raab: He Knows His Duty, Does It

June 03, 1986 | PAUL HOUSTON | Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — When a U.S. prosecutor refused to help the Customs Service with a crackdown on pornographic mail entering the port of New York from Scandinavia last year, William von Raab, the flamboyant, bantamweight customs commissioner, took matters into his own hands.

He found a cooperative U.S. attorney in North Carolina and had customs agents divert all Scandinavian mail to a port in that state. Although Postal Service officials put a stop to that practice several weeks later and threatened Von Raab with criminal action for slowing the mail, the commissioner vowed to renew his crusade.

"We may have lost that battle, but we're going to try to win the war," he said in an interview Monday.

The episode typifies the controversial way that Von Raab, called "Little Caesar" by critics, has run the Customs Service for nearly five years. A 5-foot, 2-inch lawyer with reddish-brown hair that fits his feistiness, he has transformed the agency from a routine checker of cargo and luggage into an aggressive warrior against drug smugglers and exporters of military contraband.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Tyler Rabbit » Fri Jan 30, 2015 6:25 am

Have never met the man but have recorded many hours of people talking about him and his ideas. To me he had good ideas and bad ones. Telling those who gathered around him the best way to deal with the authorities is to stay silent and don't cooperate in any way- like civil rights era activists- is probably a bad idea. So was telling the two men that if anyone asked, to say they were taking the kids to Mexico..

Some of Petties philosophies were very much of the time, but I think he had some good ideas too. Like thinking of life as a game, or more specifically an adventure. Trying to keep learning and having fun. and while his early stage child rearing ideas described in Tobe's book, might seem a tad drastic to me, I do agree kids get stifled by the education system and by the immediate immersion in the extremely overwhelming world of adults and society in general. Similarly while I'd probably never live in a classic communal situation, I can certainly understand the logic and attraction..

Anyway I've got 45+ hours of footage to go through and log before I can even begin to edit. Not to mention a couple interviews I need.. Will post an occasional update and definitely let yall know when the doc is complete. Just please know, am going to cover most of the subjects that place The Finders in conspiracy lore, and personally have done just a shit ton of research on those subjects, and will be glad to talk about them in depth with anyone who cares to ask after the doc is out, but am seeing this as a film about the Finders, not the "Finders Case" I can't say it'll be 100% objective (haven't seen many docs that are) but it's not going to be an "investigative" piece either..
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:03 pm

Tyler Rabbit, thanks for sharing your perspective on this. It really is appreciated. Also appreciate that you consistently act like an ideal forum contributor by not getting easily offended :)
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Tyler Rabbit » Fri Jan 30, 2015 6:22 pm

Cheers! Likewise!
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Feb 13, 2015 2:02 pm

Updated URL for the 1987 press coverage in linear format: http://www.mediafire.com/view/y1rsx1dp2 ... nology.pdf
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:48 pm

Check this out:

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/arch ... SetId=1112

LETTER:THE SELECT COMMITTEE HAS BEEN INFORMED THAT CERTAIN/CUSTOMS AFFILIATION WITH CIA IN FLORIDA
RIF#: 104-10309-10033 (04/12/76) CIA#: OFF. OF SEC WORK FILES


Image

FWIW. Not exactly surprising, I know. It just seems to me that this is an interesting angle to look at this from: the extremely shady affairs of US Customs and also Washington MPD.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:39 am

https://archive.org/details/TheFinders

"Uploaded by Emma Best on 6/3/2017"

Haven't had the chance to really dive into reading these (heavily redacted) documents yet.

It would be easier for me to accept the reasonably plausible scenario that the evidence was imagined by one Customs agent, if the document wasn't full of blank spots at key points:

Image

Image
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:01 am

"alleged narcotic activities" from 1983, "Security Matter - Anarchist" from 1971:

Image

This list is reproduced several times, but only one version is different:

Image

Apparently the guy whose name has been handwritten in died in 1992, at the age of 48:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 3a7ac3bea3

JOHN H. STITCHER JR.

D.C. Police Officer

John H. Stitcher Jr., 48, a retired D.C. police sergeant who had been a security officer with the Australian Embassy here since September, died of septic shock May 28 at Southern Maryland Hospital.

He moved here and joined the D.C. police in 1969. He was a uniformed officer with the second and sixth districts and then was a plainclothes officer in internal affairs and the intelligence division. He retired in 1989.

Mr. Stitcher, who lived in Upper Marlboro, was born in Cumberland, Md. He served in the Army from 1961 to 1969, becoming a staff sergeant. He was stationed part of the time in West Germany.

He was a member of St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Upper Marlboro. He had done volunteer work at the church's school.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Jul 05, 2017 12:07 pm

More:

Image

So additional investigation was requested after all (this point is underlined) because one of the Finders was [redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted]

Image

This fills in key parts of the story, namely the role of Von Raab and the reason why Customs was contacted. Except that it doesn't, since the entire paragraph has been redacted.

Image

The attempts to obtain the documents that were reportedly seen were unsuccessful until March 31, 1987 when [redacted] met with Sgt. John Stitcher, MPD, [redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted]. It should be noted that Sgt. Stitcher is now deceased.

John H. Stitcher Jr, stationed with the Air Force at Patrick Air Base, Fla.

From 1966 to 1975, the Space Coast was the second most visited spot by VIPs, after Washington, DC, a result of the Space Program. A protocol officer was assigned to Patrick to coordinate these visits, about 3 weekly consisting of 10 to 150 people.


viewtopic.php?p=565078#p565078

nashvillebrook wrote:The school I was at that had the ESP card test was at Patrick Air Force Base, which is home to the "Space Wing." So -- the military space program -- or, the "secret" space program in Levenda's construct. We moved to the space coast of Florida when I was 10 and I lived in a neighborhood that had once been "base" housing. Such a strange little strip of land. One neighbor was Austrian with a thick accent and no discernible means of support. Many families in my neighborhood ALL came down from the same town in Delaware, which I thought was weird. There were weird electronic things that would happen around the house -- like my stereo speakers would pick up CBs and once even seemed to transmit what we said into them (truckers called us "gypsies" as in "get off our channel you gypsies.").

i remember being SO excited about the ESP cards. Like, we're FINALLY getting somewhere! Unfortunately, I was only good enough to get a little over 50% which was super disappointing. And...as far as I can remember, we never returned to this.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Marionumber1 » Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:29 pm

I have some potentially interesting information to add about the Finders. Last month, the Tallahassee PD completed a public records request I made for their documents concerning the Finders case, and they sent me 74 pages. I have them scanned in and available to view here. There are also a bunch of observations I made about these documents on a wiki I maintain.

The creepy child molestation aspects that largely only appear in the US Customs report do find circumstantial support in these TPD docs. Among the evidence (which I summarize on that wiki page):

* The Finders men, transporting 6 children with them, were carrying a pack of Trojan condoms

* HRS investigators indeed said that two children had signs of sexual abuse

* Mary, one of the children, became very apprehensive and uncomfortable when asked about sexual abuse

* One time around Christmas, the women came downstairs naked in front of the children

Also quite fascinating is that the Finders warehouse had books concerning mind control in the library. I believe this is a new detail that hasn't been reported elsewhere.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Freitag » Thu Sep 21, 2017 12:29 am

Marionumber1 wrote:I have some potentially interesting information to add about the Finders. Last month, the Tallahassee PD completed a public records request I made for their documents concerning the Finders case, and they sent me 74 pages. I have them scanned in and available to view here. There are also a bunch of observations I made about these documents on a wiki I maintain.

The creepy child molestation aspects that largely only appear in the US Customs report do find circumstantial support in these TPD docs. Among the evidence (which I summarize on that wiki page):

* The Finders men, transporting 6 children with them, were carrying a pack of Trojan condoms

* HRS investigators indeed said that two children had signs of sexual abuse

* Mary, one of the children, became very apprehensive and uncomfortable when asked about sexual abuse

* One time around Christmas, the women came downstairs naked in front of the children

Also quite fascinating is that the Finders warehouse had books concerning mind control in the library. I believe this is a new detail that hasn't been reported elsewhere.


Great contribution, bookmarked it to read through when I have time.
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Re: The Finders - Sources

Postby Marionumber1 » Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:52 pm

I've been looking a bit more through the FBI documents on the Finders. As pointed out in an earlier comment, a frustrating amount of pertinent details are redacted, but there are still some curious details that slip through. Here's something interesting on page 24 of one document:

Enclosed for Washington Metropolitan Field Office (WMFO) is a copy of a Washington Metropolitan Police Department (WMPD) P.D. 854 investigative file report, date 2/19/87 stamped "Confidential” and "Do Not Disseminate," and an undated handwritten note from Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney [REDACTED]


A Washington Times article from December 17, 1993, written by the same person who broke the Craig Spence story, said:

A Metropolitan Police document dated Feb. 19, 1987, quotes a CIA agent as confirming that his agency was sending its personnel to "a Finders Corp., Future Enterprises, for training in computer operations."


Looks like that "Confidential" document in the MPD report is the one talking about CIA links to the Finders. This not only confirms the Washington Times story (which some have doubts about due to its right-wing bias and affiliation with Rev. Moon, something I can't exactly blame people for), but also provides a source for the CIA linkage outside of USCS agent Ramon J. Martinez's imagination, and possibly matches with what Martinez's "third party" source said about the report being "classified secret". Of course, it isn't "classified secret" strictly speaking, but this proves that at least part of the MPD file was specifically meant to be made unavailable for review. Not that it stopped someone at the FBI from getting a copy...

What happened to other parts of the MPD report? See page 12 of the same document:

[REDACTED] of the Washington METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT's (MPD) Property Division, advised Special Agent (SA) [REDACTED] FBI, Washington Metropolitan Field Office (WMFO) that his office was unable to locate any records relating to evidence obtained by MPD concerning the investigation of the "FINDERS" Group.


So we have a Customs document with evidence of child abuse that's been called into question, an FBI agent (Athena Varounis) who maintains she didn't see those items, and the MPD missing any records on what was collected.

I can't say that Martinez seems entirely clean or that the incongruities in the Finders narrative don't trouble me, but this makes me suspect that the "official conspiracy theory" about the Finders isn't too far off from the truth.
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