|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
W. TODD ZECHEL - Bio
W. Todd Zechel, 62, known mainly as "Todd," has been a champion of human and civil rights
all of his adult life, fighting against evil and lies, and embracing truth and justice. Born in
St. Clare Hospital, Baraboo, WI, raised in Prairie du Sac, WI, he has been disabled for the past
ten years due to brain and nerve damage caused by a stroke. Both the Social Security and
Veterans Administrations have classified him as disabled, and he was also found to be diabetic
two years ago. Yet, he struggles on for his causes, researching and writing reports about U.S.
government misconduct and other forms of government corruption, suppression and injustice.
He gives voluntary service as Director of Operations of Associated Investigators Group, which strives to expose
government misconduct and help the downtrodden. He receives no re numeration for this voluntary service, nor is
he affiliated with any political party, organization or idea logy. In the past, he risked his life on a daily--even
hourly--basis, as he served to gather intelligence about organized crime and drive it out of Wisconsin. All this
without fanfare or even public acknowledgment.
In spite of Zechel frequently being in an adversarial role, vis-a-vis the CIA and other intelligence agencies and
components, he established relatively close friendships with such luminaries as the late Arthur Lundahl, founder
and original Director of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center [NPIC], where U-2, SR-71 and satellite
recon photos were analyzed, the late Dr. Herbert "Pete" Scoville, former director of the CIA's Office of Scientific
Intelligence and arms control advocate, the late Alvin E. Moore, former CIA and Navy guided missile intelligence
expert and patent attorney for Werner Von Braun and Herman Oberth,
German and U.S. rocket pioneers, Dr. Benton Jamison, former U.S. Air Force scientific researcher and now-retired
New York university professor with whom Zechel co-wrote THE ULTIMATE SECRET, and several other intelligence
and military high-level officials, some of them on a confidential basis.
Zechel began his career in UFOlogy in 1976 as the National Director of Research for GSW,Inc., a Phoenix-based
group specializing in computer enhancement analysis of UFO photos and films. In 1977 while working in New york
City as a technical consultant for Scotia-American Productions, an international film company, he filed a Freedom of
Information Act [FOIA] lawsuit against the CIA, which had claimed in a letter to GSW that its only interest and
involvement with UFOs was the January 1953 Robertson Panel--statements Zechel knew to be totally untrue. In
1979 the GSW suit achieved a partial victory, although the CIA made numerous false statements about its
involvement with UFOs in its Court filings and false claims about its UFO-related files. GSW's attorney, Peter
Gersten, attempted to have the CIA cited for contempt to court for its falsehoods, but Judge John Pratt threw out
GSW's motion as one day too late, even though the CIA had surpassed it's court-allotted time by 88 days.
In 1978 Zechel founded and became the original director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) and became
the editor/ publisher of JUST CAUSE. The seminal issue was the January 1979 issue in which Zechel wrote his
classic expose` of the CIA's covert penetration and destruction of NICAP, once the nation's leading and most
powerful civilian UFO group.
After 1980, Zechel realized President Reagan was going to gut the FOIA, which he did, and the Golden era of UFO
disclosure under Jimmy Carter was over. But, for example, Zechel had forced the release of over 500 documents
related to the 1975 Oct/Nov UFO flap over SAC B-52 bases and missile sites from Maine to Montana, during which
UFOs had hovered within 10 feet of missiles silos and within 100 feet of nuclear weapon storage areas. Plus the
incredible September 1976 Iranian F-4/UFO encounter north of Tehran in which a secondary UFO had attacked a
pursuing F-4 interceptor head-on.
Zechel is a former communications specialist with the Army Security Agency/National Security Agency [NSA],where
he was cleared for TOP SECRET/Crypto,COMINT, Special Compartmentalized Intelligence. In the early/mid 1960s
Zechel volunteered for two special intelligence missions in Viet Nam, first in Saigon, then near Phu Bai, even though
as the Viet Nam war dragged on his access to top-level intelligence convinced him that the Viet Nam conflict was a
horrible waste of lives and billions of dollars--not so much because of American soldiers' failures but mainly
because the U.S.-created South Viet Namese government and their soldiers did not have the will to win, hence their
rapid collapse after America pulled out.
Zechel has been a freelance investigative journalist and documentary TV/film producer for the past 27 years.
Although he currently resides in his hometown of Sauk-Prairie, Wisconsin, he has lived and worked in New York
City, Washington, DC [College Park,MD] and Los Angeles, CA, where he worked on documentary TV and films
projects for five years.
Associated Investigators Group was formed in 1993 and is comprised of concerned former U.S. intelligence and
security personnel. It is a not-for-profit, CONFIDENTIAL group, which has no memberships other than its invited
investigators, charges no fees and sells nothing. Its original reports about intelligence agency misconduct were
mailed to selected recipients. More recently Associated Investigators Reports have been sent on-line over the
internet to selected recipients, including news media outlets and elected officials.
Zechel is best-known for filing and winning an FOIA lawsuit against the CIA, which in 1979 forced the CIA to
release or acknowledge several thousand documents it had claimed didn't exist. This led to a banner front-page
article about the suit in THE WASHINGTON POST, as well as front-page articles in hundreds of newspapers around
the country and world, and to Zechel being invited to appear on NBC-TV's TODAY SHOW, where he was
interviewed by co-host Jane Pauley. Hundreds of other TV and radio interviews followed. Around the same time,
Zechel wrote and co-produced a syndicated investigative radio series in conjunction with a top-rated
Washington,DC FM radio station, and later to co-producing two 90-minute documentary specials for Japan's
number one TV series, THE THURSDAY NIGHT SPECIAL. Besides writing UNDER INTELLIGENCE CONTROL and
THE ULTIMATE SECRET, Zechel has been the editor/publisher of investigative newsletters JUST CAUSE, FOR
YOUR EYES ONLY, and most recently, ASSOCIATED INVESTIGATORS REPORTS. He was also featured in the
book ABOVE TOP SECRET by British journalist Timothy Good. Zechel was also written about in such magazines as
OMNI, PARADE, TV GUIDE and others. More recently, he has written investigative articles which were posted on
www.eyepod.org.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Zechel gathered intelligence for the FBI about organized crime, most notably
about the Cleveland-based Reuben Sturman syndicate, which controlled over 75% of the world's porno, with
connections to New York's Gambino Crime Family [La Costa Nostra (LCN)] through Ettore "Terry" Zappi, a Gambino
Captain; Gerald Lyle Hemp, a point man for Chicago's Giancana/Califano LCN family, international narcotics
trafficker and contract killer; and others. Sturman and Hemp were driven out of Wisconsin, of which Zechel had an
important role in neutralizing the LCN in Wisconsin. Sturman died in prison in 1997; Hemp is on the lam from a
Florida prison camp where he was serving a 40-year sentence for international narcotics trafficking.*
In 1978 and 1979, while living in Washington, DC, researching for a book, Zechel teamed up with Art Harris, a
Pulitzer-Prize nominated investigative reporter for the WASHINGTON POST under Metro editor Bob Woodward, to
write a series of highly revealing articles for the Sunday POST about organized crime in America.
Zechel intends to publish a book detailing the plot by ________ and its ________ cohorts to murder President
John F. Kennedy for daring to try to stop _______ from developing ________________. He has been researching
and investigating the Presidential assassination for over thirty years. Please bear in mind that this is the first
well-documented report on the Kennedy Assassination to name the actual conspirators, with informed inside details
about the special CIA squad which carried it out in conjunction with ____________, including the mastermind of the
plot, CIA Counterintelligence Chief, James Jesus Angleton.
*Hemp was importing shipments of 350 kilos of cocaine from Colombia, murdered several FBI informants and while
on the lam performed contract murders.
