Morongo Reservation

Morongo Reservation (Indian reservation)
Morongo Casino, Riverside County, California
Locations	Riverside County,California

The Morongo Reservation or Cabazon reservation is an Indian reservation for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, located in Riverside County, California.

The CIA and its front company the Wackenhut Corporation have been accused of using the Cabazon reservation for drug running, arms production and the development of a compromised version of the Inslaw PROMIS surveillance computer program, and of murdering people to cover up these activities.

In 1978 the the Cabazons hired the non-Indian consultant John Philip Nichols to direct their business activities. He brought a mob-connected casino operation to the reservation, among other shady business ventures. Nichols pleaded no contest in 1985 to two felony counts of soliciting the murder of two people he believed were dealing drugs. The killings were never carried out and he spent almost two years in prison. His son and grandson later took over the Cabazon activities.

Reservation

Established as the Portrero Reservation by executive order in 1876 under President Ulysses S. Grant, it is more than 35,000 acres (14,000 ha) in size. Approximately 954 of the 996 enrolled tribal members live on the reservation.

Casino

The Cabazon Band owns the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. In 1980, Palm Springs-based mobster Rocco Zangari, part of the Chicago Outfit, opened a card room at the Cabazon Reservation.

From EIR

The ABC News "20/20" program showed that organized crime figures Irving "Slick" Shapiro and Rocco Zangari ran the casino for Nichols, and that one Tommy Marson, previously convicted of bankruptcy fraud in an organized crime skimming case, lent Nichols $50,000 in startup money.

Wackenhut/CIA people

Wackenhut/CIA people at the Cabazon reservation:

• John Philip Nichols - Tribal administrator. Hired by the tribe in 1978. Not a member of the tribe. Claims to have participated in the assassination of Salvador Allende and an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
• John Paul Nichols - Son of John Philip Nichols.
• Marc Nichols - Son of John Philip Nichols. Took over Cabazon activities in 1990.
• Michael Riconosciuto - Scientist, Director of Research at the Cabazon facility. Computer programmer and weapons developer.
• Jimmy Hughes - Mafia hitman. Became security director of the tribe's casino after Alvarez was killed until 1984. Later became a minister in Miami.
• Glen Heggstad - Private investigator. Accused by Deputy Attorney General Michael Murphy of hiring Jimmy Hughes to kill Fred Alvarez. He was never charged and the case was dropped.
• Richard Babayan - CIA contract employee.
• G. Wayne Reeder - Business partner of John Nichols. Attended a late 1981 arms demonstration with Contra leaders Raul Arana and Eden Pastora.

John Philip Nichols

According to John Connelly:

In 1978, 12 years before Casolaro began focusing on the Coachella Valley, an expert at applying for government grants arrived there from Florida. He had come to advise the Indian tribes of the desert on how to get government money. He was Dr. John Philip Nichols, and this land of illusion was the perfect place for him: The grandfatherly-looking Nichols was not what he said he was then, and he is not what he says he is now.

Nichols represented himself as a published expert on "socio-health and economic-development planning"; he said he had been active in this field, in both the United States and South America, for more than 25 years. His eleven-page resume said he had spent more than 20 years working for Pro Plan International, an economic-development firm. It also said he had been a labor organizer, had managed a Coca-Cola operation in South America and was an ordained minister and a Ph.D.

Nichols must have made a good impression when he arrived, because he was immediately hired to administer the health-insurance fund of the Morongo Indians, one of the desert tribes. His relationship with the Morongos, however, was brief; they claimed he hadn't delivered the services he'd promised. But Nichols got a second chance, for he had also favorably impressed Joe Benitez, the tribal chairman of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians in Indio, California.

Nichols claimed to have earned his Ph.D from the Philathea Theological Seminary, which has no record of this.

Nichols is listed as a medical doctor in Zurich, Switzerland.

In 1959, Nichols was arrested in Milwaukee for mishandling Teamster funds. Nichols claims that he "took the fall for Hoffa and his friends." The charges were dropped. Interpol records show that Nichols was arrested in Washington D.C. in 1964 on a fugitive warrant. There is no record of the arrest in the National Crime Information Center database and Nichols claims it never happened.

Nichols worked for Harold Okimoto from 1968 to 1972 and became vice president of Okimoto's company Preventor Security Center.

Spy Magazine obtained "confidential correspondence that indicates Nichols has wide-ranging contacts in the world of spooks, operatives, and government officials."

Early Cabazon activities

Art Welmas said that "Nichols always had money", but "where and how he got it was always a mystery."

Nichols soon began a successful business selling tax-free cigarettes by mail. California sued the tribe for tax evasion and won in court but was not able to recover any money.

After Cabazon

In 1985, he attempted to hire a hit man to kill two drug dealers who were supplying his girlfriend with heroin. He offered the hit men $500 and the possibility of steady work in Las Vegas or South America. After pleading guilty, he spent 18 months in prison.

Cabazon Arms trade

In 1979, Nichols recruited Peter Zokosky, former president of arms manufacturer Armtech, to begin plans for a munitions plan at Cabazon. The Cabazon Band obtained Defense Department clearance to manufacture munitions in 1983. Nichols attempted to recruit La France Specialties of San Diego to build the weapons plant.

According to Carol Marshall:

Because Indian reservations are sovereign nations and do not come under federal jurisdiction, Wackenhut International had formed a partnership and entered into a business venture with the Cabazon Indians to produce high-tech arms and explosives for export to third-world countries. This maneuver was designed to evade congressional prohibitions against U.S. weapons being shipped to the Contras and middle eastern countries. In the early 1980’s, Dr. John Nichols, the Cabazon tribal administrator, obtained a department of Defense secret facility clearance for the reservation to conduct various research projects. Nichols then approached Wackenhut with an elaborate “joint venture” proposal to manufacture 120mm combustible cartridge cases, 9mm machine pistols, laser-sighted assault weapons, sniper rifles and portable rocket systems on the Cabazon reservation and in Latin America. At one point, he even sought to develop biological weapons.

A La France memorandum of May 13, 1983 discussed an urgent request by Nichols for the manufacture, within 90 days, of:

a 9mm machine pistol, an assault rifle with laser sighting, a long-distance sniper rifle with a one-mile-plus range, a portable rocket system, a night-vision scope and a battlefield communications system "that cannot be detected by current technology."

May 13, 1983 was the day that Congress passed H.R. 2760 which forbid the government from aiding the Nicaraguan Contras.

Wackenhut claims that no weapons were ever produced at Cabazon.

The Desert Sun has scores of documents from attorneys outlining proposals for arms manufacturing on the Cabazon reservation, located 7 miles from Indio, with security firm Wackenhut Corp. An undated letter from the tribe's late administrator, John Philip Nichols, describes a few of the items they hoped to manufacture at what was being called Cabazon Arms: 9 mm machine pistols, assault rifles with laser sighting, long-distance sniper rifles and a "small portable rocket system, cartridge activated." But nothing was ever produced on the reservation, as U.S. government contracts weren't awarded, according to Wackenhut officials. With no money flowing in, the company ended the relationship in October 1984.

As reported in the Napa Sentinel:

Nichols, according to former Reeder employees and published accounts, had a plan in the early 1980's to build a munitions plant on the Cabazon Indian reservation near Palm Springs in partnership with Wackenhut, a Florida security firm. The plan fell through.

Weapons manufactured at the Cabazon reservation may have been sold to Iraq through the Sitico company of Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali.

Biological weapons development

A letter of January 20, 1983 from John P. Nichols to Harry Fair of Tactical Technology discussed Nichols's possession of "a unique list of agents and production techniques related to biological warfare", referred to an earlier plan involving Stormont Laboratories, and suggested the use of biological weapons "in small countries bordering Albania or large countries bordering Soviet Union."

Murder of Fred Alvarez

Fred Alvarez accused Nichols of mismanaging the tribe's money.

Alvarez's sister Linda Streeter claims that after Alvarez began investigating, Nichols tried to set him up for a drug arrest.

"In early June [1981] they sent Fred to Denver to attend a conference." She says that while he was at the conference, someone offered him a large amount of money to carry drugs back. Alvarez refused. "When he got off the plane," she says, "the police grabbed him, threw him spread-eagle against a car and searched him and his bags."

Alvarez was murdered on July 1, 1981 while Nichols was out of town with Zobosky and Frye. When Zobosky informed Nichols of the murder, "Nichols seemed unaffected, like he already knew." Nichols reported the death of Alvarez to Frye who said "okay" and hung up. The detective assigned to the case was a friend of Nichols who performed a cursory investigation and went on vacation in two days.

In 1984, Nichols's bodyguard Jimmy Hughes claimed that Nichols and his sons John Paul and Mark gave him $5,000 to deliver to two hit men in Idyllwild. According to Hughes, Nichols justified the killing as necessary to maintain the secrecy of a "U.S.-government covert action."

In 2008 Hughes admitted that the killing of Fred Alvarez was "a mafia hit" by "political people."

In 2009, the California Department of Justice took over the investigation of the Alvarez case by citing conflicts of interest in the local police department, and was criticized for failing to arrest suspects known to the local police. Jimmy Hughes was arrested in late 2009 and was denied bail, but was released nine months later on the direction of California Deputy District Attorney Michael T. Murphy who said that prosecutors had "lost confidence to proceed in the prosecution in this case" following interviews with "key witnesses" identified in "old evidence" from the 1980s. Glen Heggstad claims that Murphy falsified the warrant application for Hughes and sought to prevent Heggstad from testifying.

Saudi involvement

From Carol Marshall:

Meanwhile, in 1980, Dr. John Nichols obtained the blueprints to Crown Prince Fahd’s palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia, and drafted a plan to provide security for the palace.

The Saudis were interested enough to conduct a background check on the Cabazons. Mohammad Jameel Hashem, consul of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., wrote former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk at his offices in Washington D.C. and noted,

"According to our black list for companies, the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians/Cabazon Trading Company and Wackenhut International are not included.

According to a memo of August 1, 1980 by Robert Kirk of Wackenhut, "Translated, that meant that neither the Cabazons or Wackenhut were Jewish-run enterprises."

After 1985

After John Philip Nichols was arrested in 1985 for attempting to hire hit men, his son John Paul Nichols became manager of the Cabazon tribe. Under John Paul's administration, the Colmac Corporation built a $150 million power plant on Cabazon land which did not hire a single Cabazon.

Mark Nichols married into the Cabazon tribe in 1985 and became tribal administrator in 1990. His wife Virginia Welmas became treasurer and secretary of the Cabazon Business Committee.

In 1990, the Department of Housing and Urban Development paid for the construction of a pari-mutuel offtrack-betting parlor.

In 1991, Nichols hired armed guards to prevent former tribal chairman Art Welmas and Fred Alvarez's sister Linda Streeter from entering a meeting where they had planned to petition for Mark Nichols to be removed as tribal administrator. Welmas and Streeter were expelled from the tribe and each fined $50,000 for talking to the press about their concerns over the tribe's management.

Danny Casolaro

Danny Casolaro had made plans to visit the Cabazon reservation before he was murdered in 1991.

It was claimed that Robert Booth Nichols was one of Casolaro's sources.

Western Environmental

The Cabazon band leases land to the Western Environmental soil recycling plant in Mecca, California, which has been accused of using the tribe's sovereignty to avoid following environmental laws. Workers at the plant have blamed their ill health on contaminated soils and have accused Western Environmental of dumping soil without fully treating it.

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References

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