ADVENTURER DEVOTES ENERGY TO ANTI-COMMUNIST CAUSES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000706940028-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: August 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE APP
ON PAGE ~T Q
LOS ANGELES TIMES
1 August 1985
Adventurer Devotes Energy
to Anti-Communist Causes
By PAUL DEAN, Time. Staff Writer
A March article in the Soviet newspaper
Izvestia publish its o is on
aggres-
sors and rites anculprits . ancondemned Jack Wheeler as an ideol 'cal
0
gangster working under the auspices o e
CIA.
Wheeler loves the first accusation. He is a
little huffy about a second. But together,
He- said, its a rave review. en the Soviet
Los Angeles Times
Union calls me that, it means I'm starting to
get under their skin. Ideological an ster.
I'll proudly refer to myself as that. CIA
auspices. Look, anybody who has incurr
their oviet displeasure isot of the
CIA. The 're ver conspiracy mined...."
So, it s ou be noted, is Wheeler. His
mail goes to a Malibu box number while his
gardener goes to a residence "somewhere in
West Los Angeles." No sign on that home
identifies it as headquarters of Wheeler's
neophyte Freedom Research Foundation.
Similar security (albeit more anti-crackpot
than a barrier to the serious assassin) has
been imposed on the date and destination of
his next overseas trip.
That's because recent Wheeler dealings
and wanderings have been to Afghanistan
with the Moujahedeen freedom fighters ...
to Angola with Jonas Savimbi's UNITA
guerrillas . . . to Cambodia and Nicaragua
and Mozambique and any other place where,
he says, native and armed insurgents are
opposing Soviet imperialism.
All of which, Wheeler agreed, justifies
that editorial evaluation by Izvestia.
It also has proved the viability of a point,
Wheeler added, and maybe the existence of
a pattern.
For the Third World, Wheeler believes, is
rejecting Soviet imperialism in these '80s as
it rejected American imperialism in the '50s.
Marxism and totalitarianism, he has testified
to government groups, are being moved
aside by revolutions (within nations popu-
lated by 120 million people) pushing for
democracy and Western values. He sees the
empire of Soviet Russia crumbling, maybe
teetering to follow the fall of the British and
French empires.
Produced An Alliance
And in June, in the rebel stronghold of
Jamba, Angola, Wheeler stood among the
hunted (who also happen to be the hunters)
of Laotian jungles and Afghan hills and saw
one of his unusual ideas produce a bizarre
solidarity-a contra conclave of anti-com-
munist guerrilla leaders from Nicaragua,
Afghanistan, Laos and Angola. It produced
an alliance known as Democratic Interna-
tional.
"Now there's something starting up in
South Yemen," Wheeler continued.
"There's a clandestine radio operating
there. Surinam may have something. But
these are embryonic and nothing like the
anti-Marxist movement in Angola with its
50,000 guerrillas ... (or) the situation in
Mozambique, twice as big as California,
where guerrillas have free run of the
countryside, the government is collapsing
and there are no elections, no food.
"I've been to these countries. Three times
in Nicaragua. Three times in Afghanistan.
Twice in Angola. Once each in Mozambique
and Cambodia. I've lived with the insur-
111
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gentig traveled with them, and I see Finally there's Wheeler the in-
the goals are the same, the argu- tellectual, anthropologist, author,
d i
il
i
ar an
t
s
meat-and, rhetoric sim
an' It ism ~t to understand
that Soviet Russia is the last great
19th-Century imperialist empire,
but' IM ideological empire and a
totalitarian one, not like the
French and British empires. And
like=aiiy imperialist empire, it must
one" day collapse. I have no idea of
the rate of collapse, but on the
edges at least, it is collapsing...."
Wheeler, 42, could well be con-
sidered an unarmed (although he
has hefted assorted automatic
weaponry, as self-protection while
walking foreign fields) soldier of
political fortune; a Lawrence of Los
Angeles intent on keeping his juic-
es flowing.
Tllgt is.indeed part of him. Yet he
also?io a man who addressed sea-
siona. of. the Congressional Task
`We only get one crack
at life. It lasts but
the snap of a finger.'
Force on Afghanistan in February
as easily as he slipped across alien
borders in Afghan clothing in
March. Politically, he is "an advo-
cate of individual liberty and some-
times that puts me on the left,
sometimes on the right. I could be a
pro-defense libertarian, but I just
don't think in categories."
Then there's Wheeler the un-
abashed;,.uncomplicated American
patriot functioning on compelling
combinations of attributes; educa-
tion and physical strength, mental
discipline and personality, pushi-
ness with balance . . . and an
unquestionable, unquenchable
sense of adventure.
Son of the late Jackson Wheeler,
a Los Angeles TV personality,
young Jack was the nation's youn-
gest Eagle Scout at 12. He climbed
the Matterhorn at 14. He swam the
Hellespont and was living with
Amazon headhunters at 17. Then
he hunted man-eating tigers in
Vietnam and discovered a cannibal
tribe in New Guinea and rode an
elephant across the Alps to retrace
Hannibal's route and went sky
diving on the North Pole and wrote
an appropriate how-to book ("The
Adventurer's Guide") about all of
it.
I.)ives by Credo
It: has been to satisfy his credo:
"We only get one crack at life. It
lasts but the snap of a finger. What
a waste, what a shame, if you are
lowered away, for all eternity,
without once having your mortal
soul purged with the emetic of high
adventure."
bachelor and philosopher ... a
melange fully reflected throughout
that home somewhere west of La
Cienega.
A mailbox-red, 1952, Corvette-
powered, 130-miles-per-hour Al-
lard K2 is parked outside. The
bookshelves belong to Thomas
Paine, Aristotle, Victor Hugo, Jules
Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The mantle is spread with trophies
frocp the cerebral to the cranial-a
framed doctorate in philosophy
from USC (1976) above a glass case.
hol4ing a shrunken head from
Java.
Wheeler, tanned, safari-shirted
and barefoot, says it's all working
together now. His love of adven-
ture. His scholarship. "There are
people," he explained, "who al-
though they are scholars and intel-
lectuals, reading about it is not
enough. They have to see it, to
experience it. I am one of these
people."
Wheeler began his insurgency
experience two years ago. There
had been a discussion on the Af-
ghanistan situation with a maga-
zine writer. Angola was the topic
when talking with a friend from the
was state chairman of Youth for
Reagan during the gubernatorial
campaign of 1966) just happened to
be on the telephone with old friend
and White House speech writer
Dana Rohrabacher and the topic
was Nicaragua. .
"I was in my office looking at a
map of the world I keep on the
wall," Wheeler said. "All of a
sudden the map looked different. I
told my friend. 'I'm looking at one,
two, three, four, five, maybe six
Third World countries where there
are anti-Soviet guerrilla wars.' He
said. 'My God, Jackson, you're
right.'
"It was like a Gestalt. I suddenly
saw the world differently and that
something very important was go-
ing on ... the related parts of a
geopolitical phenomenon rejecting
Soviet imperialism."
The Third World wars, Wneeter
agrees, were quite visible. Wash-
ington was and is funding some
guerrilla groups. "There had been
perusal of the pieces," he explained,
"but nobody had attempted a sys-
tematic study of the entire phe-
nomenon of anti-Soviet guerrilla
warfare. Since I had a background
of getting into remote places, since
I have a background in professional
philosophy, social and political,
that made me a candidate."
He decided to visit. Funded by a
grant from the Reason Foundation
of Santa Barbara, a 7-year-old,
nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank
dedicated to free society concepts,
he spent 5~ months researching
contras of the Third World.
In subsequent articles published
by Reason magazine, Wheeler de-
scribed marching with Nicaraguan
Democratic Force patrols for four
weeks. In Afghanistan he told of
skirting Soviet outposts and pick-
ing through valleys and villages
devastated by Russian helicopter
gunships. A year ago Wheeler was
writing from Cambodia and the
Khymer People's National Libera-
tion Front; then to Laos among
Hmong guerrillas; then into Burma
where tribal rebels are resisting
the offbeat Socialism of Gen. Ne
Win.
Famine as Weak
He reported his question-and-
;answer interview with Mozam-
bique resistance leader Alfonso
Jacama, was told of forced famine
as a weapon of civil war and
photographed a child without
hands. The youngster, he said, was
injured by a Russian booby trap
disguised as a plastic toy.
Wheeler taped one interview
with an insurgent he considers
typical of the whole.
The man had worked to buy a
bicycle but was told by local offi-
cials that he could not obtain
something just for himself. It had to
be a group purchase for a collective
of at least five persons.
The man, on tape said: "Why five
people? I work for myself but they
say: 'You buy for five people.' I
don't like this communism here.
Very impossible that one."
Wheeler, in person, said. "He's
talking about freedom. It's not just
that he wants a bicycle. It's that he
cannot spent the money he has
earned on something he wants. He
understands the inseparability of
political and economic freedom."
The trip, Wheeler continued,
confirmed his theory that Soviet
influence is crumbling throughout
the Third World. "Why? One,
because it doesn't work. Soviet
Marxism is an economic failure
wherever it is tried. Two, the
(Marxist) people who fought for
freedom in many of these countries
only to get a dictatorship worse
than the first one. And in Afghani-
stan, it was a stark effort to
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conquer an independent people.
"Through Latin America, Africa
and Asia, there has been a marked
shift away from socialism, dicta-
torships and sympathy towards the
Soviet Union ... and a shift
towards the free market, towards
democracy and a greater regard for
Western values.
"Then you start to look at the
situation in Eastern Europe. There
Ware no armed insurgents, obviously,
but Solidarity is alive and well and
their (Soviet) entire hold is erod-
'Wheeler's tour produced a series
of articles for Reason magazine and
opinion pieces in the Wall Street
Journal and Washington Times. He
has addressed college campuses,
the Humphrey Task Force on Af -
ghanistan, the Cato Forum in
Washington, the Committee for a
Free Afghanistan, congressional
subcommittees-and written let-
ters to editors wherever an anti
contra editorial has appeared. A
book, "Pebbles in the Sling," is in
manuscript form.
"I have had congressmen, sena-
tors and people in the White House
tell me that 'hat I've said has
revised their view of the world,
that the Russian juggernaut is
running out of steam and that our
(American) ideals are inspiring
people throughout the Third
World," Wheeler said.
Eighteen months ago he founded
the Freedom Research Foundation,
a two-person group (Wheeler and
Laurie Biederman, a research as-
sistant with the National Security
Division of Rand Corp.) operating
as study center of worldwide, an-
ti-communist insurgencies. Fund-
ing is by private donation with a
current annual operating budget of
$50,000.
As its director, Wheeler devel-
oped the idea of a multinational
alliance of freedom _ fighters. He
says he took the thought to Lew
Lehrman of New York, drugstore
heir, GOP conservative leader and
a power with Citizens for America,
a private group that promotes
policies of the Reagan Administra-
tion. It materialized as the June
meeting in the Angolan bush.
"All my life I've had this dream
to do a great damage to the Soviet
Union," Wheeler said. "To anyone
who believes in dignity and free-
dom, the Soviet Union is a great,
evil institution. I have a chance to
contribute to its destruction and
I'm going to take it."
MIs the CIA assisting his dream-
-"The CIA knows well how I
ey re screwing in A -
gnanisian, how they Vietnamized
e situation in Mara" a With
men MIA tary a visers in the
field trying to run the contras to e
point w here eve military dec
on becomes a political decision,"
Whee elerr said."As far as Me agency
is concern, it no business
running covert operations. We
need an intelligence gathering
agency, but covert an_ param~
opera ons should be runty
e Defense Department."
Wheeler wants to build his
dream into a snowball.
"By the time the Kremlin tries to
stop it, the snowball will be too big
and there will be too many people
involved...."
He does not doubt his effective-
ness.
"Enough is happening. That
(Angola) meeting took place and
my idea happened. Sure I'm having
an effect. Don't forget, I'm an
ideological gangster...."
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