Witch Traffickng Part II

This is the second part in an examination of child sex rings in the United States, as well as its ties to the US intelligence community, drug trafficking and Satanism. Part one in this series examined the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s, and its links to the Salem witch trials, in addition to the scale of missing and abused children across the US. The first part can be found here.

In this series I'm going to examine a series of pedophilic rings with deep backgrounds and rumors of occult practices. Grab the popcorn.

First up are our old friends the Finders, who I've mentioned in conjunction with several modern instances of bizarre, and at times state sanctioned, child abuse here and here. For our purposes, here is a run down:

"On February 4. 1987, a concerned citizen notified the Tallahassee Police Department -he had observed six white children, 'poorly dressed, bruised, dirty, and behaving like wild animals,' in a Tallahassee park. The children were accompanied by two well-dressed white males driving a white 1979 Dodge van with Virginia plates.

"The Tallahassee police responded to the call and took the children and adults into custody. The adults refused to cooperate, and one produced a business card that stated he planned to exercise his Constitutional right to remain silent. Police officers noted that the children, whose ages ranged from three to six, could not adequately identify themselves or their custodians and were 'unaware of the function and purpose of telephones, televisions, and toilets.' The children also said that they were not allowed to live indoors and were given food only as a reward. The Tallahassee police charged the two adults with felony child abuse, and they were held on a $100,000 bond. The children were placed in protective custody.

"Police officers found documents in the van that enabled them to tentatively identify the two adults and partially identify the children. They also found documents containing two Washington, D.C. addresses -one of which corresponded to the van's vehicle registration.

"The Tallahassee police suspected child pornography; they contacted the US Customs Service (USCS), which has a Child Pornography and Protection Unit. Shortly thereafter, Detective James Bradley of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) contacted Special Agent Ramon Martinez of the USCS. Detective Bradley indicated that the Tallahassee arrests were probably linked to a case that he was investigating in the DC area, involving a 'cult' called the Finders. An informant had told Bradley that the Finders operated various businesses out of a warehouse in DC and housed children at a second warehouse.

"...And on February 6, the MPD, accompanied by the USCS, executed search warrants on the warehouses. Rummaging through the first warehouse, they found jars of feces and urine and also a room equipped with several computers and printers and a cache of documents.

"'Cursory examination of the documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes,' wrote Martinez. 'The instructions included the impregnation of female members of... the Finders, purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping. There were telex messages using MCI account numbers between a computer terminal believed to be located in the same room, and others located across the country and in foreign locations. One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese Embassy.

"The investigators also discovered documents that discussed 'bank secrecy,' 'high-tech transfers,' 'terrorism,' and 'explosives.' To their astonishment, they even found a detailed summary of the events surrounding the arrest in Tallahassee the previous night and instructions that were broadcast via a computer network. The instructions advised the 'participants' to move the 'children' through different police jurisdictions, and 'how to avoid police attention.'

"Martinez and the MPD officers also found a large collection of photographs. A number of the photos were of nude children, and one appeared to be a child 'on display' in a way that accented the 'child's genitals.' An MPD officer then presented Martinez with a photo album. The album contained photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets slaughtering two goats. The photos portrayed the slaughter, disembowelment, skinning, and dismemberment of the goats by the children. The photos showed the removal of the male goat's testes and the removal of 'baby goats' from the female goat's 'womb,' and the presentation of a goat's head to one of the children.

"'Not observed by me but related by an MPD officer were intelligence files on private families not related to the Finders,' Martinez continued in his report. 'The process undertaken appears to be have been a systematic response to local newspaper advertisements for baby-sitters, tutors, etc. A member of the Finders would respond and gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity, occupation, etc., of the family. The use to which this information was to be put is still unknown. There was also a large amount of data collected on various child care organizations."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pgs. 10-12) 

Seemingly this would be enough to land the Finders in hot water. But things are different when one has connections.

"A February 10, 1987 article in the Washington Post reported on a news conference kicked off by MPD Chief Maurice Turner, Jr. This news conference occurred after the CIA intervention, and at it Chief Turner backpedaled with ferocity, rejecting allegations that the Finders were involved in satanic rituals or child abuse. The chief also elevated the Finders from a cult to a 'communal group.' He neglected to mention that the Finders were a communal group that reportedly had an interest in 'purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping,' and also an interest in 'terrorism' and 'explosives.' He omitted discussing the jars of feces and urine as well.

"Two days after Chief Turner's press conference, an FBI spokesman said that their investigation of the Finders was 'winding down' because the Bureau hadn't 'uncovered any evidence of federal violations.' The two adult Finders taken into custody by Tallahassee police had their felony child-abuse charges reduced to misdemeanors. Six weeks later the abuse charges were dropped altogether, and the children were eventually returned to the Finders."
(ibid, pg. 13)

As noted in the prior piece of this series, FBI nonintervention will be a reoccurring theme in this topic. The reference to the CIA pertains to a curious meeting Special Agent Martinez of the USCS had when attempting to contact the MPD in relation to the Finders.

"Approximately a month after the MPD executed the warrant, Agent Martinez set up an appointment with Detective Bradley to review the documents that had been seized at the two warehouses. His report stated that he was to meet Bradley in early April. On April 2, 1987, Agent Martinez arrived at MPD. headquarters at approximately 9:00 A.M. He was in for a shock. Detective Bradley was unavailable, but he spoke to a 'third party' who was willing to discuss the Finders only on a 'strictly off the record basis.'

"'The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter,' Agent Martinez concluded in his report. 'The MPD report has been classified secret and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired. No further information will be available. No further action will be taken.'"
(ibid, pg. 12)

And indeed, no further action was taken.

The Finders' main warehouse was located about four miles from the affluent Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood in Washington, DC. Their secondary warehouse, the one where they supposedly kept their 'kids,' was located a mere seven to eight minutes away. Over the years the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood has housed two of the most notorious figures in the child trafficking conspiracy circles. One of them was a Republican lobbyist known as Craig Spence.

"Consider the case of Craig Spence, a behind-the-scenes Republican powerbroker in Washington. In June 1989, the Washington Times published a story that sent shockwaves rippling across Capital Hill. It seemed that Spence had been deeply involved with a callboy ring that supplied young boys, some of them very young boys, to the elite of both political parties, as well as to visiting dignitaries...

"Among the revelations in the case was that Spence had taken some of his call-boy escorts on private, late-night tours of the White House. The tours, of which there were at least four, were cleared by a uniformed Secret Service guard who moonlighted as a bodyguard at Spence's parties. Spence hinted that the tours were arranged by the national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Donald Gregg, for whom Spence once sponsored a dinner. One of the tours occurred just after Spence stopped by the Nightline studio to see his friend, Ted Koppel. Spence reportedly introduced Koppel to a 15-year-old boy, who Koppel later claimed Spence had introduced as his son. Koppel though had been a close friend for over twenty years and surely knew that Spence did not have a teenage son. Koppel first met Spence in Southeast Asia when Koppel was serving as the ABC bureau chief in Hong Kong, and Spence was nominally working as an ABC correspondent in Vietnam.

"Spence openly boasted on working with both the CIA and ranking members of the Reagen and Bush administrations. He claimed that he had been involved in covert operations in Vietnam. Japan, Central America and he Middle East. His claims were scoffed at and he was largely portrayed as a self-important blowhard. There are indications, however, that Spence was involved in covert operations as far back as Vietnam, where he could well have been working under journalistic cover. An associate of his from that era told the Washington Post: 'Spence pulled disappearing acts in Vietnam... sometimes for weeks at a time... Then he'd turn up, refusing to say where he'd been.'

"'The sex? That's done all the time,' a former Bush economic adviser told the press. 'If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department provides it. It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. They have a special fund set up for that.' What the unnamed adviser did not say was that such services were provided not as a courtesy to the dignitary, but as a way to compromise and control. Allegations quietly arose that the callboy ring, and Spence's parties, were part of a CIA sexual blackmail operation. Spence's Washington mansion was said to be overflowing with surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras and microphones and an abundance of two-way mirrors. It was also alleged that cocaine flowed freely at Spence's parties, and that he could have been involved in bringing drugs in from El Salvador.

"The Spence story never really registered on the national media's radar screen. Despite being a largely Republican scandal, it was completely ignored by such pillars of the purportedly liberal press as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. The story soon disappeared entirely and Washington and the media proceeded to pretend as though nothing had ever happened. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trial was quickly covered up. Some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order and the U.S. Attorney's office issued a gag order on the release of information. By the time that Craig Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel less than five months after the story first broke, he had been all but forgotten. He had earlier told a friend: 'I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won't be.'

"Spence was reportedly found lying on his bed in room 429 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, wearing a tuxedo and with a telephone cradled to his ear and a Walkman headset around his neck. He had, according to the Independent, 'no obvious signs of injury,' and 'police refused to comment on the cause of death.' The door to the room was barricaded. Written on the mirror were several messages, one of which read: 'Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always say, you can't ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.' Another was an apology to the hotel: 'To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience.' A third was an unexplained Japanese phrase: 'Nisei Bei.' The hotel registry showed that the room the apparent suicide victim was found in was occupied by 'C.S. Kane.'

"Spence had been subpoenaed by a grand jury but had not yet been called to appear. As it turned out, very few witnesses ever did appear before that grand jury. Spence had also reportedly agreed to provide Penthouse magazine with 'lurid details of Washington's bisexual wonderland.' His story, needless to say, was never told."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 31-34)

A close associate of Spence's, and another notorious figure in conspiracy lore, is the former the Franklin Credit Union head and Nebraska state Representative Larry E King. King is an individual that acquired a seemingly deep background early in life.

"King went on to graduate from Central High School in 1962 and then enrolled at Omaha University, where he eventually took up pre-med studies. Becoming disillusioned with pre-med, he signed up for a four-year hitch in the Air Force in 1965, rising to the rank of sergeant...

"A 1973 article in the Omaha Sun was the first media mention I found of Larry King. According to the article, the Air Force sent King to Thailand to be an 'information specialist' as the Vietnam War was raging, and he handled 'top secret' military communications."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pg. 32)

Thailand is of course one of the most notorious destinations for child prostitution and sex tourism in general in the entire world -David Carradine himself bought the farm in Bangkok, allegedly. One can only imagine what kind of 'information' King was compiling during his tour there. Regardless, he soon found himself on the fast track once back in the states and the ride didn't let up until the Savings and Loans scandal began to break out in the late 1980s.

"Throughout the 1980s, the middle-aged King, tall and corpulent, had been described as a 'GOP high-roller' and 'the fastest rising African-American star' in the Republican Party. He was Vice Chairman for Finance of the National Black Republican Council, a sanctioned affiliate of the Republican National Committee. King also ardently campaigned for the 1988 presidential bid of his 'personal friend,' George H.W. Bush. In a 1988 flurry of name-dropping, King told a reporter for Omaha's weekly Metropolitan of his lofty connections atop the political food chain: 'I know some of the people I admire aren't very popular. Ed Meese. The late Bill Casey of the CIA. And I love former Chief Justice Burger. Those are the people I really like to talk to. Bill Casey... I thought so very highly of him.'

"....He had an array of diverse business ventures, but his primary day job was manager of an Omaha credit union, created to provide loans for Omaha's underserved black community. The full name of the firm was the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union.

"On November 4, 1988, federal agents descended on the Franklin Credit Union, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) would ultimately conclude that $39.4 million had been stolen. King would be indicted on 40 counts that included conspiracy, fraud, and embezzlement. Federal law required annual audits of federally regulated credit unions, but King possessed the political juice to stave off audits for years."
(ibid, pg. 17)

Eventually 37 of the 40 charges were dropped, with King pleading guilty to three. He was given three consecutive five year prison sentences for a total of 15 years. He was paroled in 2001. Many feel that this was only scratching the tip of the iceberg. King had ties to some of the darkest political currents of the 1980s, including the Iran-Contra scandal, of which his bank may have been laundering money for. Former Nebraska state senator and CIA asset John DeCamp writes:

"Former political associates of King, sources on Capital Hill, and intelligence specialists suggest that Larry King was one of dozens of owners and directors of savings and loans and other financial institutions, used by the CIA to help finance covert operations. From their information, a picture takes shape.

"S&L managers, allegedly including King, would secretly lend CIA operatives bundles of depositors' money, supposedly on a 30-day basis. In some instances, hundreds of thousands and even millions of these dollars would be flown out of the United States, to destinations such as Switzerland and the Bahamas. The money would be invested for profit in short-term high-yield financial instruments or other overseas hot-money schemes. Before federal auditors could notice any money missing, it would be returned. Some of the profit would be used to pay off cooperating financial officers and other intermediaries. The rest was funneled into slush funds for covert operations.

"But the CIA would not always return the money. In 1990, a U.S. congressional committee was forced to investigate allegations that the CIA's financial machinations had been a factor in the collapse of several S&Ls. In an explosive series of articles in the Houston Post, investigative reporter Pete Brewton wrote during 'an eight month investigation into the role of fraud in the nation's savings and loan crisis, the Post has found evidence suggesting a possible link between the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime in the failure of at least 22 thrifts, including 16 in Texas.'

"One of the S&Ls named by Brewton was the Denver-based Silverado Savings & Loan, on whose board sat Neil Bush, son of the president. Sources have alleged that Silverado and Larry King's Franklin Credit Union had financial dealings with one another, but no independent confirmation has been obtained.

"U.S. House of Representatives Banking Committee hearings on the Franklin Credit Union, held in 1989, did place Larry King in the right locations for covert operations. They established that during the 1980s, King traveled several times to Jamaica, where Lt. Col. Oliver North and other Iran-Contra principals transacted a lot of banking. They heard testimony that Franklin's chief accountant, Tom Harvey, together with his mother Mary Jane Harvey, made several trips to Switzerland, in the time period millions of dollars disappeared from the credit union.

"In a memo dated June 18, 1989, Jerry Lowe noted that Larry King often received phone calls from Switzerland, that the staff at Franklin Credit Union had heard that King took money to Jamaica, and that Tom Harvey took money abroad, on numerous trips to Spain.

"Direct ties of Larry King to persons and institutions active in Iran-Contra are a matter of public record. In 1987, according to the World-Herald, King donated $23,350 to Citizens for America, a group that sponsored speaking tours for Oliver North and Contra leaders. CFA was a key public relations group for Iran-Contra; King was a founding member and one of its largest contributors.

"According to his May 22, 1989 interview with Omaha radio station KKAR, King was trying to bring North to Nebraska. A former security guard for King has sworn that he saw North attend at least one of King's parties, a party at which children were also present."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pgs. 172-174)

These 'parties' referenced in the last paragraph are by far the most controversial allegations surrounding King -They were supposedly a key feature in a vast child sex trafficking network that King oversaw. Reports of this network began to emerge publicly when the Nebraska state senate begin its own investigation of Franklin.

"A special senate 'Franklin Committee' was established and tasked with looking into allegations of financial improprieties, but soon found itself instead investigating claims of child prostitution, child pornography and ritual homicide. Committee members began receiving anonymous threats...

"The Omaha operation, described... as a 'large ring of powerful pedophiles,' appears to have been in business for several years -with the knowledge of, and for the perverse pleasure of, a variety of city, state, and federal authorities. Jerry Lowe, the first investigator assigned to the case by the Franklin Committee, reported back: 'The allegations regarding the exploitation of children are indeed disturbing. What appears to be documented cases of child abuse and sexual abuse dating back several years with no enforcement action being taken by the appropriate agencies is on its face, mind-boggling.'"
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 35-36)

Much speculation has emerged over the years as to what really went down behind the scenes at the Franklin Credit Union. Unfortunately, we will likely never know as the Powers that Be have been in a mad rush to suppress/discredit all evidence and witnesses relating to Franklin since the story first began to break.

"Equally disturbing is the evidence presented of the massive cover-up that was perpetrated by the FBI, local police, a grand jury assigned to the case, and of course the ever-compliant media. The cover-up involved... the untimely deaths of at least fifteen key players in the scandal -including Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori, whose private plane was blown out of the sky on July 11, 1990 with Caradori and his eight-year-old son on board. Caradori had been threatened frequently, as had the witnesses from whom he was gathering information...

"..Just as appalling as the trail of dead witnesses was the fact that the child victims, rather than the perpetrators, were arrested and thrown in prison. One of them, a young female victim, achieved the rather dubious honor of spending more time in solitary confinement than any other woman in the history of the Nebraska penal system. She was sentenced to 9-25 years in prison for allegedly committing perjury. Her sentence was ten years longer than the one Larry King received for looting his financial institution of $40 million."
(ibid, pgs. 36-37)

DeCamp, a member of the Franklin Committee, remarks:

"The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigation not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator. Rigging grand juries, harassment of witnesses, incitement to perjury and tampering with evidence -federal personnel were seen yo apply all of those techniques in the Franklin case...

"In 1988 and 1989, according to testimony to the Legislature's Franklin committee, the FBI claimed to be interested in Franklin money issues, but not child abuse. Dennis Carlson of the Foster Care Review Board testified to the Franklin committee, citing state Assistant Attorney General William Howland, that U.S. Attorney Tom Thalken had said 'that the federal authorities were investigating Mr. King... But he said basically their investigation was confined to the money issues, and they were not specifically investigating allegations of child abuse.'

"Howland's part-time investigator, Vlahoulis, told the Franklin committee that it was his impression the FBI had information on private charter flights, something Gary Caradori would confirm in a dramatic way.

"Moreover, as advertised in a May 12, 1990 article in the World-Herald, the FBI had been looking at Franklin since 1987, for over a year before it was closed! The FBI men could hardly have been unaware of the Franklin ambiance, not to mention the bedroom in the new addition, and the evidence shows that they were not. It was reported in the Lincoln Journal in December 1988, as summarized by Jerry Lowe for the Franklin committee, that 'an ex-employee who is not identified said that when FCU shut down, FBI agents immediately began asking questions regarding child pornography, drugs and the lifestyle of Larry King.'

"Caradori's notes of March 14, 1990 record that on the day of the federal agents' raid, he was told by a member of the accounting firm that was auditing Franklin, that

a large amount of pornographic material was taken out of the credit union, including videos and photographs depicting sexual acts. I was told that if Friedrichs or any of the other people working for the CPA firm that was contracted by the government would say anything, that they would automatically lose their jobs.

"That evidence was never made available to the Franklin committee, nor its existence publicly acknowledged by the FBI. All warrants concerning the raid were sealed by U.S. Magistrate Richard Kopf."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pgs. 182-184)

So, just how far down the rabbit hole does Franklin lead? To fully appreciate that, we need to reconsider Larry King's former Sheridan-Kalorama neighbor, Craig Spence. Henry Vinson, the convicted former owner of a escort service Spence flooded with cash on a monthly basis, had an interesting story to tell journalist Nick Bryant.

"Vinson told me he became Spence's go-to guy for hookers and also his confidante, and Vinson maintains that Spence invited him to his Kalorama home on numerous occasions. 'I was probably at Spence's house twenty to twenty-five times,' Vinson told me. 'Spence loved cocaine and little boys -he was addicted to sex and addicted to drugs. He was definitely a pedophile.'

"Dropping by Spence's house on one occasion, Vinson says, he was introduced to Spence's friend Larry King. Vinson remembers meeting King perhaps ten times. 'King and Spence were in business together, and their business was pedophilic blackmail,' said Vinson. 'They were transporting children all over the country. They would arrange for children to be flown into Washington, DC and also arrange for influential people in DC to be flown out to the Midwest and meet these kids. I think that these kids were mostly marginalized -kids that no one cared about. King would talk about bringing in boys from Boys Town in Nebraska, and Craig Spence talked about that too.'"
(The Franklin Scandal, pgs. 311-312)

Bryant goes on to write:

"Rumors that Franklin Credit Union funds ended up in the Reagen administration's illegal Contra war chest even made it into the Lincoln Journal, and Larry King fondly name-dropped his friendship with CIA Director William Casey, but rumors and name dropping do not a CIA operation make. However, Paul Rodriguez and his colleagues had sources state that Craig Spence was a CIA asset; Spence himself claimed he was a CIA asset and confessed that his home was bugged by 'friendly' intelligence agents. Henry Vinson also told me that Spence confessed to him he was a CIA asset and that his blackmail enterprise was CIA-affiliated.

"Vinson claims to have informed federal prosecutors that the pedophilic blackmail enterprise of King and Spence had connections to the CIA. The CIA has denied its affiliation to Spence, and Vinson is a convicted felon, but thousands of documents were sealed in Vinson's case. The documentation salvaged by the Washington Times is at odds with the statements issued by the US Attorney concerning Vinson's clientele, but it corresponds to Vinson's allegations.

"Should we believe Vinson, the convicted felon, whose statement concerning his VIP clientele are corroborated, or the government that covered up the names of Vinson's clientele and refuses to unseal the documents in his case? The unsealing of Vinson's case files may elucidate the alleged connections of King and Spence's pedophilic pandering to the CIA. If Vinson's documentation is unsealed, and shows that he revealed to the feds that King and Spence were pedophilic pimps connected to the CIA, then it would be incumbent on the Department of Justice to tell America whether those allegations were investigated or simply ignored and covered up. If the Department of Justice has a sincere interest in the welfare of children, it should unseal those documents and provide the American public with answers."
(ibid, pg. 492)

This is certainly a complex web we're navigating -a callboy ring in DC, a pedophilic ring in Nebraska with possible ties to the one in DC, and the Finders organization operating within a few miles of the chief pimps fingered in both affairs. Oh, and all three rings may be on the pay roll of the CIA, with the FBI actively covering up their existence. And all the while, Lt. Col. Oliver North and Iran-Contra loom somewhere in the background along with Salem of 1692.

So, what does it all mean? Trip into the next installment of this series, which can be found here, for further instructions.