Spycraft - Melton [180]
No sooner was the case of the fraudulent documents settled in the Central African Empire, than more documents, all bearing the same fictitious letterhead, began appearing throughout Africa, including Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, Senegal, Gabon, and Guinea. Each detailed some fiendish American plot, including invasion and assassinations. 19 Although laughable in retrospect, these false rumors and obvious forgeries were taken seriously by many Third World leaders. In Guinea, President Ahmed Sékou Touré announced he would cut the throats of all Americans in Guinea if America were to invade his country.20
Africa was rife with supposed plots of “imperialist”-sponsored invasions based on fabricated documents that found eager buyers among the unsophisticated intelligence services of newly formed African countries. Over the following months, Crown traveled to half a dozen African nations to discredit the forgeries through irrefutable scientific analysis and defuse the suspicions of the Third World leaders.
The end of this forgery scheme came in December 1972 when Côte d’Ivoire security officials apprehended a Liberian citizen, Lemuel Walker, in Abidjan.21 His merchandise claimed to show an impending CIA invasion of the countries of Gabon and Mali based on fabricated letters, memos, letterhead stationery, blank documents, cachets, and identification cards from the nonexistent American group. After being arrested, Walker was unceremoniously rolled up in a rug to immobilize him and sent back to Liberia to face charges. There, under interrogation, he admitted to at least eighteen political misinformation operations targeting Guinea, Ghana, the Central African Empire, Egypt, Libya, Gabon, and Lebanon.22
Among Walker’s possessions, authorities found a forged ID that identified him as Walter H. Clifford, “Assistant Director” of the “Central Security Commission—Special Interlligence [sic] Agency, National Security Counsel [sic].”23 Walker had a dozen aliases along with a well-practiced sales pitch and a rap sheet that dated back a decade. His approach to African intelligence services had been both clever and simple. Flashing forged identity papers produced by a local printer to establish his bona fides, Walker approached embassy officials by claiming to work for a Western intelligence agency. Once inside an embassy, he would spin a tale of intelligence intrigue for his diplomatic audience. His pitch was straightforward: As a “secret agent,” he became recently blessed with a conscience that compelled him to turn against his imperialistic employers in favor of the greater good of African nationalism. His merchandise, though bogus, contained a few kernels of truth gleaned from reading Time and Newsweek magazines.24
The embassy officials, with little ability to verify Walker’s identity or authenticate his materials, would accept and forward the documents to their governments. Playing on the paranoia of local leaders, Walker found a willing, if not somewhat frugal, market for his clumsy forgeries. During his trial, the profit from the scheme was estimated to total a modest $3,307, which he supplemented along the way by forging checks and skipping out on hotel bills.25
Common criminals, such as the entrepreneurial Walker, are not new to political forgeries. Unstable political environments and intelligence services with limited resources or experience have historically proven attractive targets for forgers and con men. Immediately following World War II, forgers flourished by selling documents to the West eager for information relating to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.26 Working alone or in émigré groups, these hustlers sold bogus intelligence reports generated in so-called “paper mills” that sprang up throughout Europe.
Nearly always containing a few grains of truth culled from public sources, these counterfeits purported to provide intelligence on everything from Soviet troop strength to chemical weapons research.