Part 5:The Franklin Scandal...A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal....Washington, DC

This aspect might be{no might be about it}the least looked at angle of the Franklin Scandal. This chapter also has a creepy contemporary feel to it that is hard to miss given the headlines of Pravda over the last month.

The Franklin Scandal...A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal
By Nick Bryant

—Chapter Five— 

Washington, DC 

Though the overkill of federal firepower focused on vaporizing Franklin initially seems bizarre and perplexing, events were concurrently unfolding in Washington, DC that shed light on the events in Nebraska. As I’ve previously noted, Gary Caradori was in contact with Washington Times reporter Paul Rodriguez, who was in the process of illuminating the skin trade in our nation’s capital while Caradori was working for the Franklin Committee. Rodriguez appeared in Conspiracy of Silence, and, shortly after I made my initial Franklin-related trek to Nebraska, I phoned him, and we talked for twenty minutes or so. Our first conversation centered primarily on Gary Caradori—he was greatly impressed with Caradori’s investigative talents. Rodriguez thought Caradori was neither corrupt nor delusional, and he too was of the opinion that Caradori and his son had been murdered. 

Our subsequent conversations not only touched on Franklin but also on child exploitation in the United States—I found him to be deeply concerned about the organized sexual abuse of children. We talked on four or five occasions before I visited him at the Washington Times. By 2003, the Washington Times had promoted Rodriguez from a reporter to the managing editor of Insight, a magazine that accompanied its Sunday paper. 

The Washington Times has a reputation for echoing the views of the conservative right; it is owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. And driving down DC’s New York Avenue to the newspaper’s headquarters, I traversed a gauntlet of “Moonies” selling flowers. As I’ve attempted to sort out Franklin’s facts from fictions, I’ve navigated metaphorical and literal streets that have never ceased to surprise me, and my jaunt down New York Avenue to the Washington Times encompassed both types. 

Rodriguez’s secretary ushered me into his cluttered office, and he gave me a firm, gracious handshake. He took a seat behind his desk and leaned backwards as we talked. Though Rodriguez projected the appearance of several Ivy League, New York publishing apparatchiks I’ve dealt with over the years, his outward demeanor belied his exceptionally seasoned street smarts. He was born in Haiti, and as a child he moved with his family to Venezuela. Revolution swept Venezuela in the 1950s, and his stepfather “disappeared,” prompting the family to move to Texas. After a short time there, they relocated to the Washington, DC area.

As a teenager, Rodriguez combined flirting with hooliganism and being an altar boy. He eventually drifted to college for a year or two before a news service hired him. Rodriguez gradually worked his way up the news service’s totem pole to become a senior White House correspondent. He then leapt to a second news service, where his beat was the US Congress—the Washington Times hired him as a reporter in February of 1989. 

Shortly after Rodriguez joined the Washington Times, the US Secret Service and DC’s Metropolitan Police Department busted a DC escort service being run out of a house located on a quiet cul-de-sac of two-story colonial homes at 34th Place Northwest. The raid garnered very little fanfare in the media, and it was downplayed by law enforcement, even though the Secret Service played an integral role in the bust. When Rodriguez started poking around for information about the escort service, he had no idea that he was dancing on the edge of a wormhole that would deliver him to a parallel universe. 

Purveyors of the skin trade and their customers are loath to cough up information to journalists who might shine a light on their illicit activities, but Rodriguez was dogged as he pried into the workings of the escort service. He eventually managed to glean the escort service’s mother lode: lists of hookers and clients and also the customers’ credit card vouchers and canceled checks. Rodriguez followed the vast paper trails to a shocking and murky underworld that was fraught with perils: His house was broken into, his life was threatened, his children were threatened, and he was followed. 

As Rodriguez delved deeper and deeper into DC’s skin trade, he found that children were prized commodities among some of our nation’s powerbrokers. Rodriguez eventually met a “particularly unsavory” male hustler who claimed that he dealt in children. After Rodriguez cultivated a rapport with the hustler, he challenged him to back up his claims of dealing in children. 

“He boasted that he snatched kids off the street and sexually abused them for days if not weeks at a time,” Rodriguez told me. “He passed the kids around to various clients, and then dumped the traumatized kids on the street. He arranged for me to have an extended purchase of a minor for sex services, and he set up a meeting to effect that purchase. He called me to say that the ‘package’ had been procured, and I needed to cough up a substantial sum of money for the quote, unquote ‘rental,’ which of course I did not carry out, but, rather, I turned the information over to law enforcement.” 

Rodriguez also cultivated a rapport with a male prostitute who had a long rap sheet of felonies that included possession of obscene material, production of obscene material involving a juvenile, and distribution of cocaine. This hustler was the subject of a series of Washington Times articles written by Rodriguez. The articles were a window into the hustler’s upper-echelon clientele, which included Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who confessed to purchasing his wares. The hustler told Rodriguez that he had a protracted relationship with Frank and actually serviced clients at Frank’s apartment, which Frank confirmed. 

“In this business, the term ‘sugar daddy’ is popular for a person that supports you and sponsors you financially as well as otherwise,” the hustler said. “In this case, I had a nickname for Barney—it was ‘Sweet’N Low’—sweet guy, low on cash, that’s what the moniker stood for.... And I told him that…. And he said, ‘Hey, I’m only a congressman, I don’t make a million dollars a year.’” 

Frank admitted to Rodriguez that the hustler accompanied him to several political functions, and also assisted him in arranging a speaking engagement at a conference sponsored by the American Association of School Administrators. The hustler revealed to Rodriguez that he accompanied Frank to the White House in 1986 to witness President Reagan’s signing of immigration and naturalization legislation. 

The same hustler plied his trade with the principal of an elementary school who hid behind the guise of a happily married heterosexual. The principal gave the hustler around-the-clock access to an office at the elementary school, where he napped, phoned clients, and reportedly turned a trick. Rodriguez interviewed the principal about his arrangement with the hustler, and, after he brought up the hustler’s prior conviction for the production of obscene material involving a minor, he asked the principal if the hustler had abused the elementary school’s students. “Oh God, no,” the principal replied. “He couldn’t have. I don’t think so.” 

Both Frank and the principal interceded on the hustler’s behalf with Virginia parole officials after his conviction for producing obscene material with a minor. Frank wrote at least four letters to probation officials with his official letterhead: “Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.” The principal also had a meeting with the hustler and probation officials in Frank’s apartment, though Frank stated to Rodriguez that he didn’t attend the meeting. 

In addition to servicing Frank and the principal, the hustler sold his wares to a DC lobbyist, who requested that the hustler provide him with children. The hustler told Rodriguez about the lobbyist’s request, and Rodriguez coaxed him into helping law enforcement set up a sting to nail the lobbyist. The lobbyist offered the hustler at least $500 if he arranged “an evening with either a female or male child.” Virginia’s Alexandria Police Department had the hustler phone the lobbyist to discuss a transaction for a thirteen-year-old “blonde girl,” and they recorded the conversation. 

The police then wired the hustler, who stopped by the lobbyist’s house to consummate the transaction. After fifteen minutes, the police had heard enough— they moved in and arrested the lobbyist. The lobbyist had the big bucks to hire a top-flight attorney, who sprung him on a technicality—the police’s wiretap was ruled illegal. The lobbyist’s attorney would later be appointed a federal magistrate. [And that is how the cesspool in Washington rolls DC]

Rodriguez had been burrowing into DC’s seamy underside for months, enduring a succession of horrors, when he got wind of an actual auction of children. He was never able to corroborate the auction’s existence, even though the mere mention of it shocked him. Both Paul Bonacci and Rusty Nelson told me about auctions they attended in Nebraska and Las Vegas, but the very idea of children being auctioned off in America was anathema to me, and I found it almost impossible to believe them. However, I eventually befriended a reputable and top-notch private detective in Nebraska named Dennis Whalen, who told me that he had actually attended such an auction in search of an abducted child. 

The documentation that Rodriguez salvaged from the escort service on 34th Place was one strand of a vast, tightly woven rug shrouding an enormous pile of dirt. As Rodriguez doggedly tugged on the strand, more and more dirt piled up. After Rodriguez managed to unravel a corner of the rug, he started to uncover the shady exploits of a DC “powerbroker” named Craig Spence, who was in the habit of racking up a monthly $20,000 tab at the raided escort service. Spence had ties to the CIA, blackmail, and Larry King. 

A 1982 New York Times profile of Craig Spence, “Have Names, Will Open Right Door,” had described the then-forty-one-year-old Spence as “something of a mystery man.” The svelte Spence was fond of dressing as an “Edwardian Dandy.” At the time, Spence had an unblemished, boyish face that seemed to contradict his receding brown hair and moustache. The article talked about Spence’s diverse business ventures: consultant, party host, registered foreign agent, and, last but not least, “research-journalist.” 

The New York Times article also commented on Spence’s enigmatic personality. The reporter talked to a handful of Spence’s business associates who found him to be “extremely conservative in his political views and secretive about his work, refusing to disclose the identity of his clients.” 

The New York Times made a point of discussing Spence’s lofty social connections, and his “ability to master the social and political chemistry” of Washington. Spence had the uncanny guile and connections to assemble “policy makers, power brokers, and opinion shapers” at the parties he threw at his posh Victorian home on Wyoming Avenue in DC’s upscale Kalorama neighborhood. According to the New York Times, Spence’s parties and black-tie affairs sparkled with a veritable Who’s Who of “congress, government, and journalism.” The article read as if Spence had a direct line to Mount Olympus. 

Indeed, throughout the 1980s, Spence collected the rich, powerful, and influential with the dexterity of a coin collector amassing rare coins. His parties and seminars boasted journalists Eric Sevareid, Ted Koppel, and William Safire. High-powered politicians—including Senators John Glenn of Ohio and Frank Murkowski of Alaska—attended. Former Ambassadors Robert Neumann, Elliott Richardson and James Lilly also came. John Mitchell, the disgraced former Attorney General under Richard Nixon, was a close friend of Spence and a frequent party fixture. Spence’s soirees also attracted high-ranking military and intelligence officials. In fact, CIA Director William Casey seemed to be particularly fond of Spence and his highflying get-togethers. Spence once threw a glitzy birthday bash for his friend and right-wing closet homosexual Roy Cohn, and his friend William Casey was one of the guests of honor. Larry King, as you will recall, discussed his friendship with William Casey in an article in Omaha’s Metropolitan. 

In addition to having an apparent direct line to Washington’s elites, Spence had a penchant for capes, stretch limos, and brawny bodyguards. He also had an extremely inflated sense of self-importance that was evinced by his telephone etiquette: It wasn’t uncommon for him to answer telephone calls by saying, “This is God—speak.” After being arrested for driving under the influence, he listed his occupation as “millionaire.” 

To the outside world, journalists writing fluff, and even among his friends, Spence truly was “something of a mystery man”—a Jay Gatsby of sorts. Various friends of Spence attempted to delve into his childhood and background, but abruptly hit a firewall. Moreover, Spence had a habit of spinning various yarns about himself that were contradictory, and seemingly designed to obfuscate his origins. So putting together a brief chronicle of his life is somewhat like trying to reassemble an excavated mosaic that has missing pieces, and pieces from other mosaics haphazardly strewn in the mix.

Popular consensus suggests that Spence was born in upstate New York, even though it’s been reported that he claimed to have sprung from New England Brahmins. Popular consensus also suggests that Spence attended Syracuse University before transferring to Boston College. A former Boston College classmate recalled him tooling around campus on a Vespa motor scooter, listening to folk music in coffeehouses, and covering his tuition with student loans. If her account about the student loans is accurate, I think Spence being a Boston blueblood can be ruled out. A second former classmate at Boston College said Spence was fond of faking an Australian accent and passing himself off as an exchange student. In 1963, Spence graduated from Boston College with a degree in Communications and Broadcasting. 

After Spence’s graduation, Massachusetts’ governor hired him as a press assistant. Spence then became a press secretary for Massachusetts’ State Speaker prior to landing a job as a correspondent for New York’s WCBS. He then signed on as an ABC-TV Vietnam correspondent in 1969. Spence was always a conundrum among his fellow Vietnam correspondents. He would often disappear for weeks at a time, and one fellow correspondent remarked about Spence’s inside track on seemingly clandestine information: “Craig always looked like he had learned something that no one else knew.” [smells like a spook to me D.C]

As a Vietnam correspondent, Spence also started to display the bombast that would characterize his later life. Vietnam correspondents sarcastically referred to the US Army’s afternoon press briefings as the “Five O’clock Follies,” and they would look on amazed while a grandstanding Spence asked Army personnel snide and provocative questions that were disruptive to the briefings. 

Spence left both ABC and Vietnam in 1970 and moved to Tokyo, where he ostensibly made a living as a freelance radio correspondent throughout the early and mid-1970s. While in Tokyo, Spence forged a business relationship with Japanese politician Motoo Shiina, who was the president of the Policy Study Group (PSG), a Tokyo-based enterprise funded by monies from both Japanese government agencies and private industry. The primary objective of PSG was to encourage and advance Japanese business interests by teaming up Japanese businessmen with influential Americans and captains of industry. Shiina would be Spence’s first documented victim of blackmail. 

Spence and Shiina signed a formal agreement in July of 1979—Spence would serve as an “overseas representative” for PSG and receive a baseline salary of $10,000 a month. Under the contract, Spence was to receive additional compensation for conducting seminars, producing reports, and other ancillary services. Spence’s agreement with PSG turned out to be lucrative, netting him well over $600,000 between 1979 and 1983. In 1979, Shiina also put cash on the barrel for Spence to buy his showpiece Kalorama home. In addition to serving as a residence for Spence, the home would be “Shiina’s embassy” in DC and the American headquarters of PSG. 

Motoo Shiina was in his late forties when he joined forces with Spence. Shiina wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill Japanese politician—he descended from a noble family that had groomed him for political prominence. His father, Etsusaburo Shiina, was a wealthy businessman who had held several key Japanese cabinet positions. Japan’s political pundits considered Shiina’s father to be the behind-the-scenes kingmaker of Japanese politics. “Motoo’s father, Etsusaburo, who was a great man, asked me to help his son, who he saw as playboy,” said Spence of his relationship with Shiina. 

The younger Shiina’s political pedigree swept him into the Japanese Diet, or parliament—he was a rising star in the country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and political insiders felt he was a shoo-in to become Japan’s Prime Minister. “Liberal Democrat” was a misnomer for Shiina’s politics: He was an arch conservative and a hawk. The younger Shiina had the juice to convince the leaders of his party to break Japan’s postwar one-percent cap on defense spending and also to cooperate with President Reagan’s missile-defense initiatives. 

Though Shiina amassed considerable power in his homeland, he never actualized the political stardom of his birthright, because bad press in Japan would plague him during the 1980's. Some of the bad press was engendered by his relationship with Craig Spence, but the first spate of truly damning press revolved around accusations of Shiina’s passing US military secrets to the Soviets: Shiina’s stance as a hawk had enabled him to become a leading authority on the Japanese military and a principal link between the Japanese Diet and the US government concerning matters of defense. 

He was courted by various US defense contractors vying for contracts with the Japanese government, including General Dynamics Corporation, which manufactured the state-of-the-art F-16 fighter. A Japanese magazine implied that General Dynamics allowed Shiina to photograph specifications of the F-16 on microfilm because he consented to promote the company’s participation in a joint US and Japanese venture to produce a new cutting-edge jet fighter. Though the magazine didn’t specifically mention Shiina’s name, it reported that technical data about the F-16 had been leaked to the Soviets by “the son of an influential Japanese politician” and then gave a fairly definitive description of Shiina’s father. In some Japanese political circles, it was thought that the CIA had hatched the story to discredit Shiina and nullify his rise to power. 

A second wave of negative press entailed Shiina’s relationship with Spence. The Washington Times reported that Shiina shelled out $345,000, via two bank transfers, so Spence could purchase his posh digs in DC. Shiina initially denied that the “loan” to Spence was made specifically for the house, but PSG documents describe the house as a “joint venture” between the two. By 1983, however, the partnership of Shiina and Spence had gone seriously south, and Shiina demanded that Spence vacate the premises. In court papers, Shiina stated the following about the home: “I was advised that staying at the house while Spence was there could be damaging to my reputation.” 

Spence’s refusal to leave the house provoked Shiina to sue him, and Spence filed a countersuit. Spence readily admitted that he had signed two promissory notes for the $345,000, and he didn’t deny that the money hadn’t been repaid. But Spence apparently had an ace up his sleeve—he told friends that the $345,000 was “hot” and had been wired illegally. Spence’s attorneys made repeated attempts to force Shiina’s disclosures about his personal finances, but he invariably refused, citing his congested schedule in Japan. Finally, in June of 1984, Spence’s attorneys succeeded in obtaining a subpoena that required Shiina to sit for a deposition and also required him to turn over financial documentation that pertained to the purchase of the house. 

The Washington Times reported that Shiina and Spence came to an accord on the day of the scheduled deposition. “The money came into the country illegally from Hong Kong, and I knew it,” Spence said of their settlement then. “That’s why I could be so sarcastic in my deposition. I knew they wouldn’t push it.” The Washington Times also quoted a business associate of Spence’s chiming in on the last-minute settlement: “He pretty much blackmailed the Japanese client.” Shiina dropped his colossal damage claims against Spence, and Spence received a nice bonus. Spence agreed to pay Shiina $345,000 with 6% interest for the home— Spence sold the house in 1988 for $900,000. He pocketed over $500,000 from the sale and paid Shiina $376,000. 

The Washington Times articles on Spence and Shiina sparked concern among some federal officials and members of Congress. A Republican congresswoman, citing the Washington Times and also articles from the Japanese media, voiced her concerns on the House floor about the links between Spence and Shiina. She surmised it might have been Spence, instead of General Dynamics, who furnished Shiina with the F-16 specs that were possibly turned over to the Soviets. “I bring this to the floor today, Mr. Speaker,” she said, “because I am frankly puzzled that these stories are out—in print both in Japan and in America—and there seems to be no official investigation into what to me are very grave charges.” 

In court papers, Shiina disclosed he was “advised” that lodging at Spence’s house “could be damaging” to his “reputation,” and a series of articles by the Washington Times on both Spence and his home confirm Shiina’s concerns. Spence’s house was bugged for blackmail, and his specialty was sexually compromising the powerful. The Washington Times claimed that he spent thousands a month on prostitutes to fuel his blackmail enterprise. Party-goers to Spence’s home would be provided with whatever tickled their fancy—even children. Rodriguez heard from various sources that Spence and Larry King had a partnership of sorts when it came to pandering children and blackmail.[this sure sounds like it has a VERY contemporary ring to it,does it not?D.C]  

“I had been told by several prostitutes along with law enforcement that there were connections between Craig Spence and Larry King,” Rodriguez told me. “The allegations were that Spence and King hosted parties and were involved in a variety of nefarious activities: The allegations included Spence and King hosting blackmail sex parties that included minors and illegal drug use.” 

In interviews I conducted separately, Rusty Nelson and Paul Bonacci also reported a pandering partnership between Spence and King. I interviewed Nelson first about the connections between Spence and King, and he disclosed to me that he met Spence on three occasions, twice in DC and once in Omaha. Bonacci said King repeatedly flew him to DC and that he met Spence on approximately ten occasions. I questioned both Nelson and Bonacci about the sexual blackmail parties and inquired if it was Spence or King who provided the children. Nelson and Bonacci gave me almost identical answers: They encountered children at the DC parties who hadn’t been flown from Omaha to DC by King, and they believed that Spence had provided those children. 

Rodriguez and his fellow reporters at the Washington Times expended considerable amounts of ink fleshing out Spence’s blackmail enterprise: A Washington Times article from June of 1989, “Power Broker Served Drugs, Sex at Parties Bugged for Blackmail,” revealed the strange goings-on at Spence’s DC home: “Several former associates said his house on Wyoming Avenue was bugged and had a secret two way mirror, and that he attempted to ensnare visitors into compromising sexual encounters that he could then use as leverage.” 

According to interviews conducted by Washington Times reporters, Spence had an eight-foot-long, two-way mirror overlooking his library that gave him a prime vantage point for “spying on guests.” Bugs were also scattered throughout various nooks and crannies within his house. A Georgetown law professor and longtime friend of Spence’s remembered being at Spence’s home and having a conversation with a second friend of Spence’s about their host’s seeming physical deterioration, as Spence was HIV positive. “We were sitting in a corner, talking about our mutual concern about Craig’s physical condition,” said the law professor. “He came down later and said he had been listening to us and didn’t appreciate it at all.” The other friend, a veteran NBC and CBS correspondent, corroborated the law professor’s story. 

A business associate of Spence’s told the reporters that Spence delivered him to one of his parties in a limousine; and when he arrived at the party, a number of young men made friendly overtures towards him. “I didn’t bite; it’s not my inclination,” said the business associate. But he too remarked on Spence’s predilection for blackmail: “He was blackmailing people. He was taping people and blackmailing them.” 

A former Reagan administration official who worked at the US Information Agency attended soirees at Spence’s home, and he disclosed to Washington Times reporters that he personally observed a cornucopia of recording and taping equipment. “It was my clear impression that the house was bugged,” he said. An Air Force sergeant whom Spence employed as a bodyguard corroborated accounts of blackmail: “The house was definitely bugged. I can’t say what he was doing with the information. I don’t know that. But he was recording what occurred there.” 

The same article also mentioned that some of Spence’s parties were a snowstorm of cocaine. “I know he was a coke freak,” said a business associate of Spence’s. The article also quoted one of Spence’s friends: “I heard he was selling drugs or smuggling drugs into the country from El Salvador.” The Washington Times interviewed other party-goers who said the coke had less exotic origins—dealers in DC. 

In a July 1989 article, Washington Times reporters interviewed a female prostitute whose services were occasionally procured by Spence—she too discussed blackmail. The prostitute said that Spence summoned her to his house on at least four occasions to have trysts with soldiers Spence employed as bodyguards—he boasted to her that he was blackmailing the soldiers. Spence once coerced the prostitute into taking a bath with two men and himself—she told the reporters that the bathtub foursome devolved into “an unhappy outing.” 

A couple of months after the bathtub foursome, the prostitute was contacted by one of the participating soldiers. The soldier said Spence had pictures of the “unhappy outing,” and that he had blackmailed the soldier into “beating up a couple guys” in lieu of his wife being slipped the pictures. The soldier carried out Spence’s directives, but Spence didn’t live up to his word: He showed the wife the pictures nonetheless because the soldier refused to have sex with Spence. The soldier told the prostitute that the pictures had resulted in a separation from his wife. 

The Washington Times amassed a number of sources—on and off the record— confirming Spence’s blackmail enterprise, but the Washington Post was having none of it. A Washington Post article cited the Washington Times headline “Power Broker Served Drugs, Sex at Parties Bugged for Blackmail” and scoffed, stating that Spence’s former Kalorama home was “attracting gawking news hounds.” The Washington Post attempted to debunk the Washington Times’ accounts of Spence’s house being wired for blackmail with an unnamed source, whom it christened the “skeptical guest.” 

The skeptical guest said that he was at a party where a friend of Spence’s challenged Spence’s assertions that his home was bugged. The Washington Post reported that the friend got down on her knees and “found wires and cables all over the room at the floor level.” The friend “also found metal fasteners that could have been listening devices.” But the skeptical guest assured the Washington Post that “one of the so-called bugs was a button-release on a table.” 

The skeptical guest also claimed that he just happened to attend the party where the Georgetown law professor and veteran NBC and CBS correspondent were discussing Spence’s ill health when Spence suddenly appeared and expressed his disapproval to them for talking behind his back. The skeptical guest declared that there “was never a bug hanging over their heads.” A second unnamed source at the same party said it was “obvious” to all that the two were “gossiping about Spence.” [The Post and the New York Times might as well be Pravda,as all 3 are nothing more then official voices of the State and their intelligence agencies DC]

The Washington Post concluded that “Spence may have been up to something with the electronic equipment,” but his “clairvoyance, it seems, was strongest when his bodyguards were present and within earshot of the supposedly bugged conversations.” It’s interesting that the Washington Post at least admitted “Spence may have been up to something with the electronic equipment,” even though it just couldn’t bring itself to ponder the possibility of blackmail. The Washington Post shot down Spence’s bugging by saying “it seems” his extrasensory powers were a byproduct of his bodyguards being “within earshot” of guests, but the newspaper didn’t provide sources for “it seems,” except for, perhaps, the “skeptical guest.” I suppose it didn’t strike the newspaper as strange that Spence had bodyguards in the first place. 

The Washington Post also reported that Spence’s parties were dull affairs. After dinner, Spence’s guests would sit around “in a perimeter” and have rather drab conversations about “trade policy.” The newspaper dusted off a quote from a 1980 article extolling the virtues of Spence’s little get-togethers: “Not since Ethel Kennedy used to give her famous Hickory Farms seminars for great minds of our time during the days of Camelot has anyone staged seminars successfully on a continuing social basis in Washington.” [And I have some awesome desert land,soon to be beachfront property for sale DC]

Spence would divulge to Washington Times reporters that “friendly” intelligence agents bugged all the parties at his Kalorama home, and he repeatedly alluded to the fact that he was in the CIA. Rodriguez and his fellow reporters looked into Spence’s claims of being CIA. “We had sources disclose that Spence wasn’t a direct employee of the CIA, but they confirmed Spence was a CIA asset,” Rodriguez told me. 

The Washington Times also reported on Spence’s frequent hints to friends and associates that he was affiliated with the CIA, and the Washington Post targeted that too. The newspaper quoted a friend of Spence’s who was a former unofficial liaison to Communist China: “If he’s CIA, we’re in worse shape than I thought.” Interestingly, the Post actually included remarks from an associate of Spence’s who concurred with the Washington Times’ reportage. “I really thought he was CIA,” said the associate. “He always tended to be a bit mysterious.” 

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post disputed Spence’s stratospheric connections among DC’s power elite, but the Washington Times ran a salacious June 29, 1989 story that highlighted Spence’s astonishing ability to play the puppeteer and pull strings: “Homosexual Prostitution Inquiry Ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush.” The article’s subheadline read: “‘Call Boys’ Took Midnight Tour of White House.” The article reported that Spence arranged a 1:00 A.M. tour of the White House that included a couple of male hookers! 

The article also revealed that Spence stopped by DC’s ABC studios shortly before the midnight tour and introduced a fifteen-year-old boy to his old friend Ted Koppel. The Washington Post quizzed Koppel about his friendship with Spence, but Koppel declined to speak “in-depth” about Spence, because Koppel said that he planned to write a story about him—two decades later I’m not aware of Koppel ever writing anything about Spence. 

The Washington Times disclosed in subsequent articles that Spence arranged similar “midnight tours” of the White House on at least three additional occasions, and one of the late-night sightseers was a fifteen-year-old-boy. But the articles didn’t report if it was the same fifteen-year-old boy that Spence introduced to Koppel. Paul Bonacci claims that he went on late-night White House tours. 

Though President George H.W. Bush’s staff was initially mum on the midnight tours, a “White House source” parceled out a few words, insisting on anonymity. “Mr. Bush knows about the story. Yes he does. He’s aware of the story.” Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater eventually discussed a Secret Service probe into the tours, but maintained the probe didn’t raise concerns about the security of the first family. Responding to questions about hustlers roaming the White House in the middle of the night, First Lady Barbara Bush replied that she didn’t feel threatened and said it was “good” that the Washington Post wasn’t pursuing the story. It would later come out that a Secret Service officer purloined some of the White House’s Truman china collection for Spence—Spence proudly displayed a plate of the china in his living room. 

The Secret Service concluded that a uniformed White House officer who moonlighted as a Spence bodyguard had arranged the late-night White House tours. But Spence begged to differ—he implied that they were set up by Donald Gregg, who had been a national security adviser to Bush when he was Vice President, becoming President Bush’s ambassador to South Korea. Gregg dismissed Spence’s allegation as “absolute bull.” Gregg later told the Washington Times that he had met Spence once—at a party Spence threw for a former Prime Minister of South Korea. Though Gregg said he only had one encounter with Spence, the latter must have made an extremely bad first impression. “It disturbs me that he can reach a slimy hand out of the sewer to grab me by the ankle like this,” Gregg said of Spence. 

As the Secret Service investigation into Spence’s late-night White House tours started to heat up, he would reportedly be targeted with a federal subpoena. The subpoena-wary Spence surreptitiously slipped out of DC and was nowhere to be found—rumors had him surfacing in Florida, Boston, and even New Hampshire. In true Spence fashion, he emerged from the shadows in New York with a bang: The NYPD busted him for possession of a handgun, cocaine, and a crack pipe. 

On July 31, 1989, New York police received a frantic phone call from Spence—he phoned the NYPD from his room at Manhattan’s swanky Barbizon Hotel on the Upper East Side. The police intercepted Spence galloping out of his room: “This guy Craig Spence comes running out of the room screaming that the other guy has a gun.” As it turned out, Spence just happened to have been smoking a little crack with a twenty-two-year-old male prostitute who attempted to rob him. “Spence claimed the kid had taken the gun and intimidated him and snatched $6,000 out of his hand,” said a responding police officer. 

Spence was charged with criminal possession of a pistol and possession of an illegal drug. He was thrown in “the Tombs,” an immense jail in lower Manhattan that houses those awaiting arraignment or trial, and then released on his own recognizance three days later. Spence was looking at a maximum sentence of eight years. “They put me in the Tombs for three days without a phone call,” Spence said of the experience. “I survived by offering to be the valet to the biggest thug there, a man appropriately named Heavy, and giving him half my bologna sandwich. I had to teach him not to pronounce it ‘val-ay’ like some parking attendant.” 

After Spence’s arrest in New York, a pair of Washington Times reporters bustled off to the Big Apple, where they located Spence at a friend’s ritzy East Side apartment. The journalists duly noted that the political bigwig looked the worse for wear: Spence had eschewed his trademark Edwardian-cut suit for a rumpled and soiled white knit shirt, crumpled khakis, and scuffed-up Reebok running shoes—he was unshaven. Spence eventually granted the reporters an eight-hour interview that was indeed bizarre. 

Throughout the interview, Spence clutched a dispenser of double-edge razor blades, eventually dispensing one. He caressed his arm with the razor blade, smiled, and suddenly thrust the razor to the chest of the first reporter and then to the chest of the second reporter. “I am not a person to fool with,” Spence declared after an uneasy pause. “You should know that by now.” 

After Spence threatened the reporters with the razor blade, he launched into a protracted diatribe of self-importance, asserting he had carried out assignments for the CIA on numerous occasions—assignments that were crucial to covert actions in Vietnam, Japan, Central America, and the Middle East. “How do you think a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did?” Spence asked. “It’s because I had contacts at the highest levels of this government. They’ll deny it, but how do they make me go away, when so many of them have been at my house, at my parties, and at my side?” 

Spence also intimated to the reporters that his various comings and goings exposed by the Washington Times were merely the tip of a vast, clandestine iceberg. “All this stuff you’ve uncovered, to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I’ve done. But I’m not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on.” The two reporters went to dinner with Spence at an Italian restaurant, and then “he disappeared into the night, not to be seen again.” 

Spence lay low for the next couple of months, but in October of 1989 he threw a lavish birthday bash for himself in DC. “The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated,” he said to his friends at the party. 

Shortly thereafter, he had a “video postcard” delivered to various friends and associates. In the video, Spence was seated on a leather chair in his dark green dining room as he waxed philosophic about the government, intelligence community, life’s changing fortunes, and Winston, his Maltese dog, whom he said news reports had slandered as “a terrier.” “The pressures on us over the past several years have been, let us say, significant,” he said in the videotape. “Keeping a cheerful spirit in the midst of these pressures isn’t easy, but Winston’s holding up, and I’m working at it.” 

After Spence dished out criticism of the Washington Times, calling it “a local, cultowned newspaper,” he conveyed a parable about the intelligence community: “Some of you may know when it comes to the intelligence community, there is no such thing as coincidence. Now, I’m not sure I’ve seen the whole picture yet myself.” Spence then ended the video on an upbeat, patriotic note, like Edward R. Morrow signing off: “I’ll close by telling you I’m sure that in the end the truth will come out, and this too will pass. Now, I may be naïve about my optimism, but I’m an American, proud of my country and confident of the fairness of its people. So take heart, good friends, and share that pride and that confidence with me. Good night and God bless.” 

Spence was, in fact, signing off—approximately two weeks later he would be dead. His body was found on a bed in a room at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, attired in a black tuxedo, white shirt, bow tie, white suspenders, black socks, and shoes. Walkman headphones were straddled around his neck—he had been listening to Mozart’s “A Little Night Music.” The enigmatic Spence left an enigmatic suicide note on the room’s mirror: “Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can’t ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.” The suicide note even had a thoughtful postscript: “To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience.” [Well the clowns did a much better job covering this 'suicide', then our contemporary one diverting everyone's attention at this time DC]

Citizen Kane was Spence’s favorite movie, and he had signed into the hotel as C.F. Kane, its protagonist. His death would be ruled a suicide—an overdose of the antidepressant amitriptyline. Next to Spence’s body on the bed was one final enigma: a newspaper clipping about then-CIA Director William Webster’s attempts to protect CIA agents summoned to testify before government bodies—the Washington Times reported that Spence had indeed been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating the 34th Place escort service. 

Inexplicably, the US Attorney for Washington, DC took an unusual interest in Spence’s death. The Boston Medical Examiner’s Office customarily released the cause of an individual’s death within days of his or her demise, but a high-ranking Boston city official said the US Attorney’s Office in Washington requested that the information not be released. A second Boston official said “there has certainly been an interest” by the US Attorney’s Office in police and autopsy reports in the case. A spokesman for the US attorney declined to comment on the odd request: “The investigation is ongoing before the grand jury. I cannot make any comment about it.” 

The US Attorney’s excessive interest in Spence’s death and its request that the information not be released are the final enigmas in the life and death of Craig Spence, who emerged from a mysterious, shadowy netherworld to linger at the apex of power in our nation’s capital for a decade or so before receding over death’s threshold, leaving innumerable questions unanswered. But, perhaps, Spence had an insight into his final destination: “At 48,” he told Washington Times reporters, “I’ll still look good in hell."

The escort service on 34th Place that was busted by the Secret Service and DC police—the very same escort service Spence flooded with cash on a monthly basis —was owned by Henry Vinson. Like Japanese politician Motoo Shiina, Vinson woefully regrets the day he met Craig Spence. 

Vinson’s name popped up in a number of the Washington Times’ articles on Spence, and I made my first phone call to Vinson shortly after I embarked on this investigation. I did a White Pages Internet search for all the Henry Vinson's in the US and started making calls. Both the Washington Times and the Washington Post mentioned that Vinson was a native of West Virginia, and I initially targeted the Henry Vinson's in the Southeast, a relatively short list. After just a handful of calls, I reached the Henry Vinson in question—he was living in his native West Virginia. 

Vinson had transformed himself into a successful, legitimate businessman, and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about talking to a journalist about his past. I apologized for imposing on him, and he consented to answer a few questions. At this point, I had yet to interview Rodriguez, Nelson, or Bonacci, and the only ties I had found linking Spence and King were rather vague allusions in DeCamp’s The Franklin Cover-Up and also in Conspiracy of Silence, where Bonacci described a pedophilic pandering partnership between Spence and King. One “on the record” assertion connecting Spence and King, especially by an individual with the troubled history of Bonacci, and DeCamp’s vague aspersions, certainly didn’t provide the corroboration I felt such an allegation deserved. I knew that Bonacci’s assertion, in and of itself, would never satisfy editors or publishers in New York. 

I asked Vinson two questions: “Were Spence and King partners in pedophilic pandering?” and “Were Spence and King hooked up with the CIA?” 

He responded with an unhesitant, nonchalant “Yes” to both questions. He then mentioned a former high-ranking official in the Department of Justice, whom he described as a “pervert”—he said that Spence and King provided him with “little boys.” I was shocked by the name, but Vinson made such a preemptive, impromptu mention of the individual that it rang with authenticity. In fact, because I had completely surprised Vinson with these questions, and his answers about Spence and King were so unhesitating and prompt, those answers had a ring of authenticity too. 

I certainly wasn’t expecting to track down the Henry Vinson with such relative ease, and at that time I still harbored considerable skepticism concerning the purported partnership of Spence and King. So I really wasn’t expecting the answers he gave me. Given that I was utterly unprepared to find Vinson, let alone talk to him, I didn’t even tape the conversation. After our brief conversation, I asked Vinson if he would give me an “on record” interview. He didn’t say yes, but then he didn’t say no. 

I would spend the next two years courting Vinson for an interview. I attempted to be tactful by occasionally phoning him and writing letters, but, like most individuals I’ve interviewed about Franklin, Vinson wasn’t eager to go “on record.” I attempted to be friendly yet persistent. Vinson, though, would prove to be unresponsive. Finally, I made a trek to rural West Virginia where he lived and worked—I left an after-hours voicemail on his office phone. In my message, I said I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and I would like to talk to him. I emphasized that my jaunt to West Virginia had been unsolicited, and he certainly wasn’t obliged to meet with me. We talked the next day, and he acquiesced to a meeting. 

Vinson wanted to size me up, and we talked for maybe half an hour in one of his business’ vacant offices. He didn’t grant me an interview at the time, nor did I request that he grant me one—I just wanted to introduce myself and start forging a rapport with him. 

By the time I made my trip to see Vinson, a source in DC had told me that Vinson had confided in him about his relationship with Spence and King: I offered Vinson obscure details I knew, and he was impressed by the fact that I had done my “homework.” At the conclusion of our conversation, Vinson assured me that he would seriously consider granting me an interview—he consented approximately six months later. 

Vinson’s route from his humble origins as a West Virginia coal miner’s son to running the “largest homosexual prostitution ring” ever uncovered in Washington, DC is a winding one, and not without darkly humorous aspects. After Vinson graduated from high school in a remote corner of West Virginia, he attended and graduated from Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. In 1982, Vinson was hired as a funeral director at a funeral home in Williamson, West Virginia. A couple of years later, Vinson opened a funeral parlor in West Virginia and was also appointed interim medical examiner for West Virginia’s Mingo County. Vinson served as Mingo County coroner from 1985 to 1986 before resigning amidst controversy— one of the controversies centered on a widow who alleged that Vinson left her husband’s body in his funeral home for several weeks because she didn’t pay him. 

He, however, blamed his troubles on prejudice against gays. 

Vinson left small-town West Virginia in 1986, seeking his mortuary fortunes in the big city of Washington, DC—he went to work as a mortician for a family-run chain of funeral homes in the DC area. A trio of brothers managed the funeral homes for their elderly parents. “Henry Vinson was a nice fellow when I hired him as a funeral director,” said the eldest brother, who ran the business. “He was very good with grieving families.” 

Vinson, however, quickly grew disenchanted with the funeral biz and decided on vocational redirection. The plan he hatched to nearly monopolize the gay escort services in the capital was nothing short of brilliant. Escort services tend to be fly by-night operations and they have relatively short half-lives—when their operators bolt to whereabouts unknown or they fold, their phone bills are almost always in arrears. So Vinson went through the DC Yellow Pages, phoning escort services. If the escort service’s phone number was disconnected, he would simply call the phone company and agree to pay the defunct escort service’s phone bill in exchange for the number. “I started buying all the phone numbers, and before long I was running the largest male escort service in Washington, DC,” said Vinson. He assumed the phone numbers of such businesses as “Man to Man,” “Jack’s Jocks,” “Dream Boys,” etc. 

Shortly after Vinson leapt into the escort business, his phone was ringing off the hook. He also hired a bevy of the gay clubs’ version of Chippendales to moonlight as escorts, and he quickly had a thriving enterprise. The small-town kid from West Virginia had become a high-flying success in the big city, but Vinson would fly a little too high: Mysterious figures started drifting into his life that would mark the beginning of the end of his escort service and freedom. The first one was a muscleladen man in his thirties, who identified himself as “Tony,” and, according to Vinson, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Terminator, the futuristic cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Tony just sort of showed up—he knew everything about everybody.” 

Vinson claims that Tony suggested he expand his business by developing the capability to process credit cards. Vinson had kept in touch with one of the brothers who helped to manage the funeral homes where he was employed, and the latter agreed to process credit cards. The brother opened a credit card merchant account under the auspices of selling funeral accessories. So frolicking with one of Vinson’s escorts might be chocked up to an urn or two, burial markers, or, perhaps, for extended sessions, a mahogany casket. 

All was well in the world of twenty-six-year-old Henry Vinson until the fateful day he received a call from Craig Spence. At first, Vinson welcomed the prolific business Spence solicited, thousands and thousands of dollars a month. Though Vinson was a “whiz kid” of sorts, he had yet to shake the vestiges of naïveté that were part and parcel of growing up in rural West Virginia. It would take him a while before he realized that doing business with Spence was equivalent to making a Faustian pact, and by then it was too late. 

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.” 

In addition to Spence’s flaunting his depraved lifestyle, Vinson said Spence was also fond of flaunting his connections and blackmail equipment. “Spence showed me the hidden, secret recording devices that were scattered throughout his home,” Vinson recalled. “Spence often alluded to the fact that he was connected to the CIA, and it was obvious to me that he was very well connected. There were people at his home who said they were CIA, and at least one or two Secret Service agents—I believe that it was some of the CIA operatives who installed Spence’s blackmail equipment. Much of Spence’s influence came from the House of Representatives and the Senate, and he told me he was blackmailing Congressmen. I believe that Spence was blackmailing for both the CIA and for his own personal purposes.” 

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 most likely 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.” 

Vinson found both Spence and King abusive, bullying, and manipulative. He remembers that Spence and King initially attempted to coax him into procuring children for them via a soft sell, but he said he refused to be a party to pedophilia or pedophilic pandering—“I made it clear to both that I didn’t want to get involved with underage children.” Vinson asserts that Spence and King then overtly pressured him and made threats in an attempt to have Vinson provide them with minors—he still refused. Despite Spence’s significant infusions of cash into Vinson’s business, he grew weary of Spence and King’s threats and opted “to stop dealing” with them, “because they were such a pain in the ass.” 

When Vinson decided to disengage from Spence and King, he maintains, he discovered that his Faustian pact didn’t have an exit clause. By this time, Spence had disclosed to Vinson that “Tony” was, in fact, the alias of a CIA operative who worked with Spence—“Tony never said he was in the CIA, but Spence said he was in the CIA.” After Vinson severed his ties to Spence and King, Spence sent Tony and some of Tony’s colleagues over to Vinson’s home to have a little chat with him and help him reassess his decision. 

“Tony and a few others actually came over to my house and broke out the windows and busted up the place!” Vinson’s voice amplified considerably, as if the event happened just last week. “I was afraid he was going to kill me! He was very violent, and Spence used Tony and his group for a lot of his dirty work. They were very well trained, especially in covert operations.” Tony’s visit to Vinson forced him to reassess cutting off Spence and King, but he insists that he still refused to provide minors—I’ve talked to a former DC employee of Vinson’s who supported that insistence. 

As Vinson discussed the sordid exploits of Spence and King, I asked him a few questions specifically about King. He didn’t hold King in very high esteem and described him as “cunning.” Vinson then recalled a conversation he had with King that was “strange as hell,” literally. “King said they had clients who actually liked having sex with kids as they tortured or killed the kid. I found that totally unbelievable. I thought it was the most far-fetched thing I had ever heard.” Later in my interview, Vinson actually backtracked to King’s grisly disclosure, inquiring if it was true. 

In February 1989, Vinson claims, Spence wanted him to participate in a creative financing scheme involving government monies that Vinson felt was a tad too shady —he balked at Spence’s idea. This time, however, Spence didn’t send Tony over to Vinson’s house: He summoned Vinson to his condominium on Massachusetts Avenue—he had sold his Kalorama home the previous year. An uneasy Vinson showed up at Spence’s condo to find only Spence and an extremely high-ranking official in the Department of Justice—Spence had previously disclosed to Vinson that he provided this official with adolescent boys. 

According to Vinson, the Justice Department official attempted to intimidate him into joining Spence’s scheme, and Vinson continued to balk. Finally, the official dispensed an overt threat: “I can withstand a background check. Can you?” Those words apparently rang in Vinson’s ears for a very long time, because shortly after their meeting, Vinson told me, he started to encounter considerable federal difficulties: “The Secret Service served a search and seizure on my house within seventy-two hours—I assumed the Secret Service was used because they also worked with Craig Spence.” 

Vinson’s escort service was initially raided on February 28, 1989. The US Attorney for DC, Jay Stephens, impaneled a federal grand jury to investigate the escort service in June of 1989. Stephens said that “credit card” fraud would be the focus of the grand jury, and the Washington Times reported that the Secret Service was the primary investigative entity behind the investigation, but a Secret Service spokesmen declined to discuss the case with reporters—saying they were ordered to refer all inquiries to DC’s Assistant US Attorney Alan Strasser, who was assigned to present evidence to the grand jury. Strasser wasn’t very talkative either: “There is nothing I care to say to you about this at this time.” 

After the grand jury commenced, the Washington Times’ Rodriguez questioned Vinson about the federal investigation. “Somebody set us up because they were scared about what we knew about high government officials,” said Vinson. “I think it’s because they wanted to get our files. We had some very big-name clients in all walks of life—on Capitol Hill, the military, and even the White House. You’d be surprised. Barney Frank isn’t the only one in a high-powered job that uses such services.” (Frank Gobie, the hooker who carried out services for Congressman Frank, had been employed by Vinson’s escort service.) Vinson also dispensed a quote that suggested he was the man who knew too much, and the feds wouldn’t dare come after him: “And anyways, if they do try to indict me, I’ll have some good stories to tell.” 

In a July 1989 Washington Times article, Rodriguez reported that six plain clothes Secret Service agents kicked in the front door of a Vinson relative who lived in West Virginia. The relative said that the Secret Service agents didn’t even bother to knock before smashing the door open, and they held a gun on her husband. After ransacking the house for well over two hours, the agents left with “small scraps of paper.” The relative told Rodriguez that the agents warned her “not to tell anybody about the raid.” The Secret Service also descended on the dwelling of Vinson’s mother. 

Meanwhile, back in DC, Washington Times reporters discovered that the federal grand jury prosecutors had been rather lackadaisical: “The Times, in contacting a number of principal witnesses and active participants in the case, discovered that few of them had been interviewed and only a handful asked to testify before the grand jury. Several key figures had not been contacted at all.” The Washington Times would report that Vinson and his cohorts in the escort service hadn’t been called before the grand jury—nor had Craig Spence, even though it had issued him a subpoena. 

“I haven’t heard one word from the US Attorney, the FBI, or anyone else,” said a participant of a late-night White House tour interviewed by the Washington Times. “The Secret Service talked to me back in the summer, after the stories were out, but nothing since then.” 

Washington Times reporters talked to one midnight White House tour attendee who testified before the grand jury. The grand jury witness had been a “long-time acquaintance” of Spence’s and “spent considerable time” in his home. He described a prolonged interview with prosecutor Strasser and Secret Service agents and then a brief Q & A in front of the federal grand jury. “They pulled out a picture book containing the White House china collection and asked me about the Truman china,” said the witness. “They wanted to know if I had seen anything like that. They strongly intimated that more things were missing.” 

The witness disclosed that questioning by federal authorities became most detailed when it turned to the subject of the late-night tours. “They asked if we went in any offices, if I had seen any documents or if any documents had left the White House,” he said. Though the witness spent numerous hours at Spence’s home, Washington Times reporters noted that the grand jury didn’t pose any questions to him about credit cards, about Spence’s involvement with the homosexual call-boy ring, or about the ring itself. Moreover, federal prosecutors apparently didn’t feel compelled to question him about Spence’s blackmail equipment and blackmail activities, which, by that time, had been the subject of Washington Times articles. The feds seemed considerably more concerned about missing china than Spence’s sexual compromise of public officials.

The federal grand jury would eventually indict Henry Vinson and three of his lieutenants on various felony charges, and Vinson was arraigned in July of 1990. Vinson’s forty-three indictments included credit card fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and violation of the Mann Act—he was staring at 295 years in prison and fines exceeding $2 million. Shortly after Vinson’s indictments were unsealed, he told me his mother received a phone call from someone claiming to be a reporter for the Washington Post, suggesting that her son hire DC attorney and future Fox News star Greta Van Susteren, whose services he promptly enlisted. 

Interestingly, Van Susteren had grown up in Wisconsin, where her father was a judge and a political mover and shaker—her father had been a campaign manager for the infamous Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, and McCarthy had been the best man at the wedding of Van Susteren’s parents. As I’ve previously mentioned, Roy Cohn was a good friend of Craig Spence, and Cohn more or less served as McCarthy’s “best man” during the latter’s notorious witch hunt for Communists in the 1950's. 

“At first, Greta Van Susteren said we’ll go to trial instead of entering a plea agreement,” Vinson said, “because with all these high-ranking officials the government will not want to go to trial. She said that the government wouldn’t want this type of embarrassment.” 

In fact, Rodriguez reported that Van Susteren filed an eleven-page motion to mandate the release of Vinson’s clientele list. Van Susteren argued that the names of Vinson’s patrons should not be protected, because, if the government’s claim was accurate, and the “escort” service was actually a prostitution ring, the clients were criminals or aided a criminal enterprise. 

But Assistant US Attorney Alan Strasser, who had overseen the grand jury and was prosecuting Vinson, refused to make “unedited” client lists public—his dubious excuse was that he feared “intimidation of government witnesses due to the embarrassing nature of the case.” US District Judge Harold Greene sided with the prosecution and barred public disclosure of the client lists. 

The feds then reached into their bag of tricks in an effort to silence Vinson: Assistant US Attorney Strasser filed a memorandum with the court that recommended Vinson be sentenced above the statutory guidelines for his crimes, even though he was already facing life in prison, since his escort service allegedly hadn’t screened its escorts for HIV and, therefore, had spread the virus. 

Vinson maintains that as the government was squeezing him to keep his mouth shut, Van Susteren started dancing to a different tune and suggested a plea bargain—he consented. He told me that she allowed the feds to debrief him for hours on end and wasn’t even present at the debriefings. “Everything the government wanted to do is what happened,” said Vinson. “Greta Van Susteren didn’t make herself available for the debriefings, which I find incredible, thinking back on it. But I had never been through anything like that before; so I didn’t know what to do or expect.” 

Vinson also claims that he disclosed all of Spence and King’s nasty little secrets to the feds. “They spent about a week debriefing me, and I was very honest and cooperative with them—I told the feds that King and Spence were using children to blackmail politicians. I told them that Spence and King were affiliated with the CIA.” 

Vinson ultimately settled on a plea bargain of sixty-three months—“They explicitly told me not to talk to the media for that minimal sentence.” By the time of Vinson’s sentencing, the feds had emotionally pulverized him, and the person who showed up to be sentenced was vastly different from the person who boasted he had “some good stories to tell” if indicted. Before Judge Greene meted out five years, Vinson contritely told Greene, “My behavior has certainly not been very complementary. I’m sorry if I did hurt society.” The judge then went on a bizarre rant about the lenient sentence Vinson was receiving, considering prosecutors had originally called for him to be sentenced above the guidelines, but the judge opted not to buck the prosecutors. So Vinson was sentenced, he kept his mouth shut, and the feds sealed all the evidentiary documentation in his case, effectively putting the US seal on a cover-up in Washington, DC that would reach all the way to Nebraska. 

After Vinson pled guilty, the Washington Post reported that US Attorney Stephens declared that the federal investigation into Vinson’s escort service found no evidence that its patronage had ties to anyone “with any political or military organization” except for the federal employees whose names had already been made public. 

Though Vinson initially thought the truth would set him free, he eventually realized that he had the misfortune of being the locus of a sprawling government cover-up: “I think that my arrest was orchestrated from the highest levels of the government. I thought the truth would come out, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Later it came out that there were no high-ranking officials involved with my escort service—everything about the government’s investigation was a lie.” 

In addition to interviewing Vinson, I’ve talked to two of the three individuals who were arraigned and sentenced with Vinson for operating the escort service—the third refused to talk to me. In my conversations with Vinson and his associates, the names of eminent government officials who patronized the escort service have come up, including a US Congressman. The escort service’s documentation salvaged by the Washington Times corroborates their contentions: “There were high-ranking US government officials, foreign government officials, law enforcement, clergy, and members of the press,” said Rodriguez about the lists of Vinson’s clientele retrieved by the Washington Times. “There were members of the United States Congress on those lists too,” he added. 

The Washington Times documentation corroborates Vinson’s claim that the “government’s investigation was a lie.” The feds then sealed thousands of documents, ensuring the investigation was covered up, and they have been absolutely unwilling to unseal the documents. “I’ve been told that over 25,000 documents were sealed in perpetuity,” said Rodriguez. “We’ve attempted to unseal those documents on two occasions but were rebuffed. We’ve been told ‘It will be a cold day in hell’ before those documents are ever unsealed.” 

Should we believe Vinson, the convicted felon, whose statements concerning his VIP clientele are corroborated, or the government, which covered up the names of Vinson’s clientele and refuses to unseal the documents in his case? Absent any evidence to the contrary, it seems obvious that the government was protecting Vinson’s customers and perhaps Spence and King’s pedophile blackmail enterprise. 

Shortly after Vinson and his accomplices were sent up the river, the Washington Post ran an article dismantling the Washington Times reportage on Spence, Vinson, blackmail, etc.: “The Bombshell that didn’t explode; Behind the Times’ Scoop and Press Coverage of the Call-Boy Ring.” In the article, the Washington Times reportage was slandered as “yellow journalism” and having not “much substance.” The article’s author said she had talked to other reporters around DC: The reporters had been interested in pursuing the story until they “checked with the Secret Service,” who said that the “raid was relatively routine.”[I beg to differ,as the Secret Service does NOT routinely raid random 'escort services',I would be willing to wager that the above 'raid' is the only one in it's history DC]  The article also discussed “a key law enforcement official” who had been gracious enough to have “lunch at the Post” and “assured the staff that the investigation was primarily on credit card fraud.” 

The Washington Post, the very same newspaper that broke the Watergate story, said it concluded that the Washington Times “Bombshell” had no substance because an unnamed government official said so. Government officials had also been adamant that the allegations swirling around Nixon during Watergate had no substance, so the Post’s rationale for its hatchet job on the Washington Times seems a bit disingenuous. 

The “Bombshell” article also quoted the Los Angeles Times’ DC bureau chief: “To tell the truth, the reason editors in L.A. weren’t interested in it was that the New York Times and the Washington Post hadn’t been interested in it,” he said. “If they had, our editors would have said, ‘Where’s the story?’” 

So the major media concluded that there was no story, and kicked the Washington Times to the curb. The Washington Post dedicating so much ink to dismantling the Washington Times reporting could be written off as competition, or there may have been a more ominous reason. Vinson disclosed to me that a high-flyer at the Post, who paraded as a married heterosexual, frequently used his escort service. This individual doesn’t show up in any of the Washington Times documentation, and I’ve never been able to corroborate Vinson’s disclosure. But if it is true, the individual in question would likely have had the juice to seriously malign the Washington Times reportage to the Post’s editorial staff, and might have had a hand in putting the kibosh on the Post’s pursuit of the story. 

The Washington Post’s “Bombshell” article prompted a rebuttal article from the Washington Times’ managing editor—”A little outrage for the children?” The managing editor commented on federal law enforcement’s informing the Post that the story was a non-starter: “That’s the energy and curiosity level of a lot of Washington reporters. They get a press flack’s lie and that satisfies them.” He also commented on the reach of his newspaper’s reportage wrapping around various institutions, including a school. “This morning’s accounts show the male prostitution ring to have reached into Congress, the White House and a public elementary school,” he wrote. “But unless this city, the Congress, the journalists who live here, and the US Attorney’s Office have lost the last vestige of public and private decency, we can expect a little outrage on behalf of our children” [my emphasis]. 

Rodriguez and his colleagues were sliced and diced for their reportage on Spence et al., but their investigative feats were remarkable, revealing a large mound of dirt that had been left intact for quite some time, and their series of articles were nominated for a 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Local Investigative Specialized Reporting. 

The Boston Globe’s articles on the Boston transit system won the Pulitzer that year. The Washington Times series of exposés wouldn’t even make it to the status of a Pulitzer finalist: Texas’ Port Arthur News reporting on “shoddy waste disposal” and Newsday’s investigation into a “Long Island sewer scandal” would be nominated finalists. 

I, too, found the mainstream media unreceptive to my reportage on King and Spence, even though I didn’t wear the albatross of being affiliated with the Reverend Moon. Shoehorning Franklin into an article was very tough, but I managed to whittle the story down to the barest of facts. My efforts, however, were met with only incredulity and rejection—I think two or three mainstream magazines gave the story a hard look, but the rest dismissed it out of hand. 

But as I shopped the article around, I found myself having an extraordinary encounter with serendipity. A friend phoned me and excitedly said he wanted to meet. Throughout my Franklin investigation, my home phone has at times clicked like someone is transmitting Morse code on the line—current technology enables phone taps to be silent; so either my phone line has had snags that the phone company couldn’t find or the incessant clicking has been overt harassment. A number of my friends are aware of my problematic phone line, but most don’t have paranoid inclinations, and we generally talk quite freely. My friends and I also live extremely mundane lives, devoid of illicit activity and deviance; so if, in fact, my line has been tapped, those listening in are privy to humdrum conversations. Consequently, for a friend of mine to insist that we discuss something face to face is very, very rare. 

We met at a bar on 14th Street in Manhattan—he told me an interesting tale indeed: A close friend of his is a retired, highly-decorated NYPD detective, who had actually been at the Barbizon Hotel the night Spence was busted for possession of a handgun and cocaine. The detective had a confidential informant, a hustler, who parceled out information to him about illicit drug activity, and the retired cop said his informant was one of three hustlers with Spence at the Barbizon that night. As the acrimony was escalating between Spence and the hustler who was arrested with Spence, the informant phoned in an SOS to the detective. When the informant had scrapes with the law, the cop would intervene on his behalf, and the informant definitely felt that the Barbizon bedlam required him to call in a few markers. 

So the detective arrived at the Barbizon to find his confidential informant, two other hustlers, Spence, and a high-ranking NYPD honcho. The high-ranking NYPD honcho was livid about the cop being at the Barbizon, because he had been in the midst of partaking of the hustlers’ wares along with Spence, and the detective was out of his jurisdiction. A second high-ranking NYPD official had arrived on the scene a few moments earlier, and he told the cop and his informant to split. 

The cop and the hustler took off and bid each other a good night. The cop didn’t have a clue about Spence, and he thought the second high-ranking NYPD official was primarily there to run interference for the NYPD honcho, who had been caught with his hand in the honey jar—rumors about his homosexuality had floated around the NYPD for years. 

But this was not the end of the story for the detective. The next morning he received a call from the second NYPD official at the Barbizon, and he had a little mission for the cop: He wanted him to drive Spence’s car down to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC—of all places. 

This mission struck the cop as extremely peculiar; so he phoned his informant, and they agreed to meet after the cop picked up Spence’s car. After the phone call about Spence’s car, the detective quickly came to the realization that the informant’s call from the Barbizon had opened up a Pandora’s box—he wanted to know the box’s exact dimensions and its contents. The cop collected Spence’s car, a navy blue Datsun 280Z, and then picked up the informant, and they had a long chat as they drove south on Interstate 95. 

The informant divulged that he had been a “boy-toy” in a nationwide pedophile network, and that the pimps were Craig Spence and Larry King. He had been in the network since early adolescence, and had recruited other kids for the network. The cop was dumbstruck by the informant’s disclosures. 

Before the cop made it to the Watergate, he dropped off the informant a few blocks away. After he arrived at the Watergate, he was greeted by a handful of “suits”—he said they were “CIA, FBI, or Secret Service.”

The suits had the cop proceed to the hotel’s parking lot, and he was directed to a parking space that was right next to an identical navy blue 280Z! The suits then ushered the cop to the hotel’s lobby, where he said he had the good fortune of meeting a seated Larry King. The cop distinctly remembers that King wore a tropical shirt and khakis and didn’t bother to stand up when the cop introduced himself: He merely offered his left hand for a lackluster handshake. The cop was given an envelope that contained his “expenses,” and instructed to drive the replica 280Z back to New York. He left the Watergate, picked up his informant, and they drove north. 

I initially wondered about the rationale for switching cars while Spence was sleeping off his coke binge in the Tombs. Towards the end of his life, though, Spence had become an unrepentant coke and crack addict, and thus an extremely loose cannon. It would have been a major hazard to have him ricocheting around New York with compromising pictures stashed in his car—if he had any—and the switch while he was incarcerated makes sense from that perspective. 

The cop’s story is certainly a strange one, but when it comes to Franklin strange is the norm. The story becomes even a little stranger because of what happened just before my friend phoned me, requesting that face-to-face. 

While I had been shopping my Franklin article around to New York-based magazines, the cop’s informant received a call from someone claiming to be with a “magazine.” The caller wouldn’t disclose the name of the magazine and asked the cop’s informant a number of questions relating to Franklin and my article. Here’s the interesting part: The informant wasn’t mentioned in any of the newspaper articles regarding Spence’s bust at the Barbizon; the newspapers only named the hustler arrested with Spence. After the informant was contacted, he immediately phoned the cop and said they needed to talk. 

I’ve surmised that the informant may have been contacted to determine if, since I live in New York, I had stumbled upon any of Spence’s or King’s New York shenanigans. But the truth of the matter is that I hadn’t been digging in New York, even though victims told me they had been flown there, because the Washington Times articles offered me such a rich compost in DC to dig around in. If my surmise is correct, it is certainly ironic that I never would have discovered the cop and his informant had someone not learned of my investigation, and decided to make a phone call to the informant to find out what I might have discovered. 

My friend had given the cop a thumbnail sketch of me and my Franklin investigation months earlier, but the cop’s run-in with Spence had been approximately seventeen years earlier, and he didn’t make the connection until the day his informant phoned him. Following the cop’s talk with his informant, he gave my friend a call that elicited a rapid-onset interest in my work. 

After my friend and I had our chat about the cop, the informant and the phone call, I requested that he introduce me to the cop. When the cop retired from the NYPD, he started working security for a variety of New York nightclubs. The cop finally agreed to meet me because my friend vouched that I was a stand-up guy. I met him at a nightclub where he worked security. The cop knew Spence and King were tied to something extremely heavy, and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about imparting information to me. But I intermittently showed up at the nightclub and gradually earned his trust. 

As I cultivated the cop’s trust, he gave me more and more of the story, but I never pushed him. At a certain point, I asked him if I could use his information—he said he would have to give it some consideration. He was impressed that I kept my word about our conversations being off the record—I easily could have taken the information and run. I turned up at the club a couple of weeks later, and he consented to be a source.

I then questioned him about the nuances of his misadventure, and he filled me in further on the story I’ve just related. The cop even attempted to coax his informant into meeting with me, but the informant was absolutely unwilling to emerge from the shadows. 

The cop’s account of King and Spence running a nationwide pedophile ring was my fifth confirmation on their partnership, and it provides further proof of Franklin’s DC flipside. Though the Nebraskan heartland is a world removed from the capital’s bustling hub of power, a number of parallels emerged. The first parallel was unbridled malfeasance by the federal government: The Department of Justice under US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh played an integral role in the cover-ups in both Nebraska and DC. 

According to both Alisha Owen and Troy Boner, at least one esteemed official in Nebraska’s US Attorney’s Office threatened them with perjury charges if they did not recant their tales of the Franklin pandering network. But even if one has difficulties embracing Owen’s and Boner’s words at face value, Nebraska’s federal grand jury conclusion that Franklin didn’t entail the transportation of children across state lines for immoral purposes was so contrary to the abundant evidence indicating otherwise that it’s difficult to conclude that this grand jury wasn’t also a cover-up. 

On the DC flipside of Franklin, Washington’s US Attorney’s Office is reported to have exerted the same inexorable pressure on Vinson that the FBI exerted on Owen, Boner, and Danny King. A federal grand jury in DC, conducted by the US Attorney’s Office, nailed Vinson with a forty-three-count indictment. It then directed that he be sentenced above the guidelines: Vinson was looking at untold years in prison. And he said that on the advice of his lawyer, Greta Van Susteren, he ultimately caved in—just as Boner and Danny King caved into the government’s will. 

Though the US Attorneys for Nebraska and DC had relatively comparable roles in their cover-up of Franklin, it appeared that the FBI primarily carried out the feds’ dirty work in Nebraska, and the Secret Service served as the feds’ principal heavy in DC. We’ve already seen FBI tactics of intimidation in Nebraska, and the Washington Times provided a couple of examples of the Secret Service’s terrorizing of Vinson’s relatives, which included kicking down a door and holding a Vinson in law at gunpoint. So ultimately, the evidence points to several federal agencies being used to cover up Franklin: the US Attorney’s Offices of Nebraska and DC and both the FBI and Secret Service. 

As noted earlier, an Omaha World-Herald editorial gave the seal of approval to the state’s grand jury report and severely trashed Paul Bonacci’s credibility: “This person, Paul Bonacci, told a story so patently ridiculous that none but the most naïve could swallow it.” However, when Gary Caradori first videotaped Bonacci in May 1990, the latter related King’s “compromise” exploits in DC. Though Bonacci has made some outlandish statements as he’s struggled through the acute throes of his mental illness, it would have been nearly impossible for him to know about the DC blackmail had he not been deeply involved with King—even Owen, Boner, and Danny King weren’t privy to Larry King’s DC deeds. In a later interview that wasn’t videotaped, Karen Ormiston told me, Bonacci stated to her and Caradori that King’s pedophilic pandering partner in DC was Craig Spence. 

Moreover, Bonacci told Caradori that King’s DC townhouse was fitted with a basement room that only locked from the outside, and kids who were acting up would be thrown in the room for an indefinite spell. Rodriguez was granted access to King’s DC townhouse after he vacated the premises, and, in fact, found a basement room that only locked from the outside. Again, it would have been nearly impossible for Bonacci to be cognizant of the basement room had he not actually been to King’s DC townhouse. So even some of the DC nuances of Bonacci’s “patently ridiculous” story are corroborated.

next
State v. Owen

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a journalist, I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of artistic, cultural, historic, religious and political issues. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Copyrighted material can be removed on the request of the owner.