Chapter 21
The Colonel
Remarkably, this movie character looks very much like the Colonel I met on the “Magic Bus”
As we all recently witnessed in 2001 with the fabricated false pretenses used to invade Iraq, a government that controls or otherwise manipulates the mainstream media can not only get their way in the world, they can make facts from fiction. Back in 2001 the former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil was writing his book “The Price Of Loyalty”, which documents what he and every other Cabinet member knew and directly heard from George W. Bush less than 90 days after he was “elected” (actually appointed by the Supreme Court). Specifically Bush told all of his lieutenants to “Find me an excuse to invade Iraq”. This was music to the ears of our shadow government and Secretary of Defense Rumsfield, Cheney, and the good folks at Haliburton who would later win dozens of no-bid contracts that would earn them $39 Billion in profits from 435
the 10 year adventure. More than $60 Billion in commercial profits were garnished from the Iraq invasion.
(Ironically, the oil America tried to steal is
now being purchased by the Chinese.)
One by one the actors took the public stage with the New York Times, Reuters, AP, UPI, and all the other major newsies in the audience. One by one the actors played their roles quite well and spoon fed the public a tale spun from lies and fabrications including… 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam
was responsible for 911 (George W. Bush) was buying enriched uranium in Africa had accumulated weapons of mass destruction was a unpredictable lunatic would attack Israel to provoke a war or retaliate
Even Colin Powell, the most credible and honest person of the Bush regime was duped into joining their choir. The song they sang in perfect harmony scared the hell out of America. Thanks only to George Wilson of the CIA and other honest insiders, the truth was eventually leaked out, that all of the above was totally fabricated to justify a multi-billion dollar oil grab, but by the time the truth became known, over 2,000 American soldiers and over 150,000 Iraqi civilians had already been killed. To me at least, all the people who deliberately told these lies are war criminals, .since they knew full well that their lies would directly result in deaths of thousands and plunge America into the biggest national debt in U.S. history. Today more than 12 years later, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and 7 of 10 Iraqis insist life was much better when Saddam was around. Baghdad, once a modern and thriving city still is rubble and $23 Billion in cash that Bush bragged about sending to Iraq to rebuild the city has simply vanished with American Paul Bremer the last one to sign for the money. How could $23 Billion just disappear? And Congress is not even looking for this money. First we Americans were fooled by our leaders and then robbed by them. Not one of them have been prosecuted. Why? 436
On a similar but much smaller scale, some whistleblowers and other disclosure threats are targeted with lies that when done correctly, are quite believable. We saw with the Iran Contragate scandal how everyone who told the truth was discounted as a convicted drug dealer, or a Cuban refugee, or some other unsavory title to make them appear less believable. When the truth cannot be hidden, or disproved, our government spin masters resort to attacking, smearing, or discrediting the messenger bearing the truth.
While jailed at MCC Miami, I met Lloyd the accountant/auditor who could prove the Nugan Hand bank of Australia was one of many owned by the United States via proxy through CIA fronts. They made Lloyd into drunkard who could not be believed. He even told me how one night before he was to give an interview he “had an accident” 15 minutes before his arrival at the hotel where he was to meet a BBC reporter for a 1 hour initial interview. A man pretending to be drunk bumped into him in the hallway of the hotel and spilled a full glass of pure gin onto his person and then offered profuse apologies. He did not think the “accident” was part of any scheme at the time, but he later learned why the BBC never ran with the story. The reporter was sent a fake medical report claiming Lloyd was in rehab for acute alcoholism during the time he claimed to be auditing banking transactions related to the Nugan Hand Bank. It was not true of course and because Lloyd wreaked of gin the night of the interview, the reporter never questioned the source of the report. Only nine months later did Lloyd ever learn about his fabricated “drinking problem.”
It takes creative and brilliant minds to scheme like this and there is no s hortage of them within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons who will routinely tell reporters that an inmate who alleges prison or government corruption is a drug addict, homosexual, or suffers from mental disorders. In my case, three reporters tried to visit me but only one succeeded. The prison staff made sure I would not be able to talk with her however. 437
Lake Butner in North Carolina is a special medical facilities prison for those in federal custody and many prisoners especially those alleging government crimes are sent here to be officially certified as crazy. Because the prison is rumored to be especially comfortable with cable TV and plenty of recreational facilities, many inmates gladly go there not knowing what awaits them. Of course the vast majority of prisoners jailed there are truly in need of medical treatments like dialysis, surgeries, cancer treatment etc. But those most dangerous political prisoners are scheduled for a “psychiatric evaluation”, the first step in becoming certified as a nut case. Lake Butner serves a very useful and convenient purpose for government officials who have crimes to conceal.
While I was touring the country on the magic bus, I met a man known only as “The Colonel”. He never told anyone his name . I recall that he was about six feet tall with brown hair, hazel eyes and a full mustache.
He was a bit
eccentric when he spoke, but that was not often. He seemed to speak only to disagree about something or to make a request. He was not one to engage in a social group conversation, but if addressed he would politely reply. In speaking with him, it became obvious to me (from my own military training) by his vocabulary and mannerisms that he was a military man of high rank. Fo example, he would always refer to the toilet area as “The lat rine” and when talking about the food at Lake Butner, he called the cafeteria “the mess hall”. After spending five days with the Colonel he finally confided in me that he was assigned to the U.S. Army’s Medical Corp. for eleven years and was on active duty for almost fifteen years.
He said he was assigned to a special research
unit at Fort Dietrich in Maryland where he was responsible for “researching” strains of viruses and bacteria. He claimed he was second in command of a special “classified” project that lasted five years.
He was a patriot to the core after years of service and still felt some responsibility to maintain secrecy about his “classified” work for the Army. Only 438
after I had convinced him I was a federal agent who also had a security clearance did he start talking more freely and eventually let slip that his group was working to weaponize certain viruses and bacteria.
But every eight
hours he was forced to take “medication” prescribed to him while he was at Lake Butner for his “pysch evaluation”.
Once that medication kicked in, he
became quite introverted and non-conversive and only wanted to draw pictures. One of the pictures he drew will haunt me forever. It was a pencil sketch of soldiers in Vietnam invading a village and rounding up all the women. The men were all shot dead and laying on the ground and grief ridden children were crying in the background. But the “rifles’ they carried by the intruders were not rifles at all but rather elongated hypodermic needles. I asked the colonel what the drawing was supposed to be and he just replied “nothing you could understand nor should know about.” was his cryptic answer. When I asked him to try me with an explanation he just shook his head and waved me off.
I would have to wait approximately si x hours for the meds to wear off and take advantage of that two hour window of clarity before the next dosage would be given. I only had about seven such sessions before we were finally separated. When I had asked him why he was arrested in the first place, he said he was not allowed to discuss it. But this did not make a lot of sense to me because the Army has their own criminal justice and prison. Why was he in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system?
He finally fessed up that he had resigned as a form of protest and when arguments ensued about his pension benefits, he was probably perceived as a hostile witness and disclosure threat. After resigning he would have to be charged as a civilian. The catch all charges are either “conspiracy” or “tax evasion” and the Colonel said he was charged with both. When I asked if I could read his indictment and legal papers, he said they were taken from while 439
he was at Atlanta stop of the bus tour. He never did tell me what he was protesting about, but I would get a clue in a n unusual gift he would give me later.
This man was a walking encyclopedia on cell and micro-biology and explained to me in unbelievable details how his team was developing a self-mutating virus that could never be tracked to its source (because of its continuous mutation)
He said they were instructed to develop a virus that could be
sexually transmitted, undetectable, and would debilitate the infected within three to six months. He claimed they had developed three such viruses but none of them worked within the desired time frame. One of them that he described to me, I would later learn when I became a certified AIDS counselor after my release from prison was suspiciously similar to the HTLV virus being researched in Europe. We in America would later learn about the HIV virus the hard way. Was it the same virus? I cannot be certain and it would be irresponsible for me to say “yes”. But in some of his most lucid periods the Colonel told me that they had tested the virus at various veteran hospitals around the country on 300 test subjects and they had no doubts that a single active hooker could ultimately cause the infection of over 3,000 men within a year. This man was clearly a knowledgeable and high educated scientist. He said he was from Michigan and graduated from Duke University.
Then I witnessed a quite bizarre incident, When we arrived at El Reno prison in Oklahoma, there were five or six of us put in a temporary holding cell, a clear signal that we would not be here very long – perhaps no more than a day or two. When the guards brought us our meal and dinks, they would not give The Colonel the same cool aid drinks that the rest of us were drinking.
They gave
him a separate glass of yellowish-green fluid and he did not protest. Apparently he knew or liked the stuff. Or simply didn’t think to ask why he was drinking something different than the rest of us.
He made a toast to all of us that was 440
also quite strange “To the new world order – by any means necessary”. And then laughed before chugging down his drink. “What the hell is he talking about? Maybe he is crazy!” I thought to myself. I had never heard a word about any “New World Order” and would not for at least another five or six years, about the same time I learned about the secret Bildeberger Group that Henry Kissinger made famous by his active participation.
About 20 minutes later the Colonel began acting weird and was swatting at imaginary bees he said were swarming all around him. He was clearly hallucinating and then began shouting in a genuine panic. Surprisingly, there was a med tech in a white lab coat standing just outside the cell with a video camera taping the entire episode without ever once attempting to neither help nor sedate the Colonel. It was as if he knew something like this was going to happen and he was sent to document it. In fact, I recall that he was standing there from the time the food cart arrived with our meals and drinks. Finally the guards removed the colonel from our cell and led him away. I would never see him again, and today I surely regret not prying his name from him.
I was so impressed with his drawing that he had gifted it to me. I would keep it and guard it with poetry I had also written which I always buried inside my folder of “Legal Papers” which allegedly are “off-limits” to curious guards. But when my book manuscripts and legal papers were first stolen from me at the Kenlands in Miami, this treasured art fell into the hands of Uncle Sam. It truly belonged in a museum. I had planned to include his drawing in this book because my brief encounter with “the colonel” was a memorable one.
When I previously asked the Colonel why he was on the Magic Bus he told me that one of the guards told him “it is for your own safety – some bad guys are looking to find you”. Were those “bad guys” really some reporters? 441
Only a day after the Colonel was taken away, I was laying down on the uncomfortable bench in the holding cell trying to catch a quick nap despite the din of activity, arguments and fights going on. A roll of toilet paper was my pillow. Sleep was elusive but I was trying my best when I heard some guard shout “Wake up Weastler”. Since I had my eyes closed I had no clue he was pointing at me. Another prisoner shook my shoulder “Wake up dude” . I protested “My name is not Weastler” as I thought there might be another prisoner nappng in the cell. I now heard the cell door opening but still my eyes were glued shut as I was determined to sleep and find a better place in a dream – no matter how short that escape might be. I suddenly felt myself being pulled off the bench and quickly awoke. I was the feet of a big burly guard who was clearly corn-fed. Again I repeated, “I am not Weastler” With a bit of sarcasm and humor the guard replied “I beg to differ good sir” in his thick European accent as he showed me my jail card (a 5 by 7 inch index card that carried my mug shot and pertinent persona; details and prison number) In big red letters the word “Whistler” was printed at the top of the card. You won’t have time to file any BP-10s here my friend, let’s go. In prisons and jails around the country, guards label prisoners and flag them in red ink on their jail cards to warn other guards of potential problems when handling a particular inmate. Labels like “Spitter”, “HIV” or “S” (for snitch – a government informant who has to be kept separate from other prisoners). Gang members were also flagged to keep fights and killings to a minimum. But in some prisons bored guards would actually put 1 or two “Bloods” in cells with “Cryps” just for free entertainment. For the first time I saw my jail card and frankly was not too surprised to learn my name to the guards had become “Whistler”. “If only they knew” I thought and laughed to myself.
By the way, BP-10s are official complaint forms filed by naïve or dumb prisoners who actually believe someone will care about your problems in prison. Before I wisened up in prison I filed a record 24 of these forms at MCC 442
Miami, mostly about my mail and document theft by Foster and denial of phone access, etc. I would have a good hoot to go back and read them today. The prison administration hated these forms which only represented more paperwork for them, but it gave them a chance to be creative in an otherwise boring and routine job. No matter how well-documented a complaint would be, and no matter how many eye-witnesses to abuse or theft you had, there would never be any fault-finding or wrong-doing of prison staff included in any replies. We once joked that if we reported the murder of prisoner b y a guard the reply would probably come back as “After a complete and thorough investigation by our security team, it was discovered the inmate slipped and fell upon his own knife as he approached the accused guard” Any prisoner who file more than one of these BP 10s were simply perceived as a “trouble maker” and flagged as such on their jail cards.
I was taken away for quickly medical exam. The young prison doc apparently was aware of my hunger strike back in Miami, and asked me what provoked it. I gave him a quick summary. He was apparently new to the prison system and was not yet jaded. I spent an hour talking with him long after he took my blood pressure and suggested I ask for Lipitor when I arrived at my destination. When I asked where that might be he said he was not allowed to tell me. In only one hour I trusted this guy enough to relay a message to Ty West. I told I did not need to know where my destination would be, but I asked him to please relay that destination to Ty West and gave him the telephone number I had memorized. He promised that he would make the call and wished me luck
After the magic bus finally deposited me at FCI Ashland, after Ty West had gave up his 90 day quest to interview me. He would tell me later that his supervisors did not have the budget to cover more trips, and besides, the elections were over. Perhaps Liston’s murder and the IRS hit list was no longer worth reporting, or at least no longer a headline story. I had roughly four 443
months of relative peace without any abuse at Ashland.
But then one day, I was summoned to admin and told I was being transferred to another facility. I thought this was quite strange since I had such a short time remaining on my prison sentence by now. Even though I should have been released nine months before (according to my sentencing guidelines) I now had less than six months remaining after Foster made sure I missed my probation/parole hearing with this unscheduled bust tour of America. Why would they send me to yet another prison?
I simply asked.
The young clerk
who had no background information on the nature of my case innocently answered, “To Lake Butner” Without protesting, I casually asked why. “BOP in Washington wants some medical exams run on you I was told”. How strange, was I also going to be sent for a “psychiatric evaluation” and then be certified as “mentally disturbed”. I was genuinely concerned about this since I had already started writing this book. Was this book the reason I was being sent to Butner? It was no secret at that time that I was writing a book as guards found it and had copies made during a cell search. But at that time I was careful to avoid the chapters pertaining to prison corruption and had only gotten to Chapter five.
But I was damn lucky. What was perhaps a stroke of good timing on my behalf took place. Before I was swooped away from Miami on the magic bus, I had previously submitted a 2255 writ of habeas corpus pro se to the Southern District Court of Florida. This motion would require a hearing that would compel my appearance in Florida. Three days before I was supposed to be shipped to North Carolina, a judge in Florida issued a court order to have me transferred to Florida for the hearing I had requested. I breathed a heavy sigh 444
of relief as I envisioned myself also getting addicted to whatever drugs the Colonel was drinking in that fluid that looked like Gatorade. Had I been sent off to Lake Butner I would surely have been labeled as “mentally dysfunctional” and what little credibility I had left would be gone forever.
I now reflect back upon that visit I would receive from reporter Susan Candiotti from WPLG Channel 10 TV. I had been drugged for that interview, and now wonder if she thought I was the really the drug addict that I heard someone mention when she asked about my condition. I talk about this event in a another chapter. The point I wish to make here is that the government has the resources to transform fiction into fact and vice versa.
There were many attempts to “break” my spirit and while I was jailed in solitary confinement that ranged from prolonged isolation, to sleep deprivation for 72 hours, to drugging, to what I call psychological torture (i.e. telling me that my mother died and it was a shame I could not attend her funeral, when in fact she was fine, living at home and only wondering why I had not called her in two months) During my sleep deprivation treatment, I was also burned with cigarettes on my arms to wake me if I dozed off and when even that did not bother me anymore, buckets of cold water or freezing CO2 fire extinguishers would be used. Even though the weather in Miami is tropical, the solitary confinement unit is air conditioned and kept at about 8-12 degrees Celsius. When they keep you naked in a concrete cell with a bed made from steel and take away your mattress and bedding, hypothermia is a daily occurrence for some. The cold bothered me the most as well as the confined space. Even before I came to prison I was a border-line Claustrophobic and became one while in solitary confinement. Everyone has a breaking point and mine was growing very close. Shivering, hungry, and extremely longing my friends and family, I was close to giving in and signing whatever they wanted when in a strange twist of fate, I was saved by the magic bus ride. During all that abuse I 445
mentally escaped by taking my mind to more pleasant places – memories of my past scuba diving in Puerto Rico or times spent with my first love Karen. I can only imagine the horror those Iraqis went through at Abu Ghraib. I only got a small taste of the abuse they were subjected to and it was hell on Earth for me.
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BTW… I can now easily understand why and how Bradley Manning was probably coerced into accepting a guilty plea after he also spent almost a year 449
in solitary confinement and led to believe his situation was hopeless. That boy was psychologically abused until he conceded and needs to be thoroughly interviewed by an independent psychologist from the Red Cross and a reporter who has the courage and integrity to collect and document the truth.
Wherever he may be today, I hope the Colonel learned how to save himself with his own mind – or what may be left of it. He was roughly in his mid 50s when we met, so there is a chance he may still be alive.
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