Some like it Hot, Some like it too Hot! By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

St. Valentine’s Day – a commercialized celebration of romance and flowers that had already come to stand for the worst in what it means to be American – just got a lot worse. A super bowl celebration in Kansas City gone mad with – according to police – absolutely no evidence of violent extremism or terrorism to blame it on: Just good old fashioned American gangsterism that ended in extreme terror, fear and death. Or maybe it was something more to the two men charged with killing one young woman  and wounding 22 others ranging in age from 6 to 47 with at least half under the age of 16. Maybe it was just their way of saying happy Valentine’s Day to an American society blind to its own way of getting things done through extremism and terrorism, just the way Al Capone said it on February 14, 1929. Now that was the St. Valentine’s Day massacre we all got groomed to love. The one when Al Capone’s gang gunned down Bugs Moran’s gang in a Chicago garage full of bootleg liquor. Al Capone merged mob violence with Romance in 1929 and thanks to Billy Wilder’s 1959 Hollywood film Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon  – Valentine’s Day has been that way ever since.  But there was another Valentine’s Day massacre fifty years later in Kabul Afghanistan that got a lot hotter than Billy Wilder could ever have imagined about 1929. 

Everybody knows the assassination of JFK took the United States off a course towards world peace and cooperation following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but how many people know that the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs on February 14, 1979 ensured that the US would permanently pivot back to the same Apocalyptic course that was inaugurated with the murder of JFK.

So, this story is about that other Valentine’s Day massacre as described in our book Valediction Three Nights of Desmond and to start we want to go back to 1979.

Few people today realize what failure in the Vietnam War really meant to the people who made American policy. To quote from author Fred Kaplan’s 1983 Wizards of Armageddon “Vietnam brought out the dark side of nearly everyone inside America’s national security machine. And it exposed something seamy and disturbing about the very enterprise of the defense intellectuals, [Formerly known as the New York Intellectuals]. It revealed that the concept of force underlying all their formulations and scenarios was an abstraction, practically useless as a guide to action.”

Nevertheless by the mid -1970s the same people who’d created that “abstraction” were busy reinventing themselves from a “fringe movement” into a Neo Conservative political force and in 1976 – the year of Jimmy Carter’s election  – joined forces with old right-wing Hawks and Defense Democrats to oppose Détente and Strategic Nuclear Arms Limitation by convening an official panel called the Team B. Recommended by Leo Cherne, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and approved by CIA Director George Bush, Team B’s stated objective was to determine whether the CIA had underestimated Soviet capabilities and to no one’s surprise their ideological analysis not only changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees but went on to prophesy that the Soviets would soon exploit  this American weakness to invade a neighboring country.

A veil of intrigue surrounded the creation of Team B from the start. Leo Cherne along with his young partner, future Reagan CIA director William Casey, had written the book on militarizing the American economy in a 1939 manual titled Adjusting Your Business to War. And in a fall 1941 newsletter they’d prophesied the U.S. wouldn’t enter the war in Europe until “a triggering event occurs in the Pacific.” 

John Arthur Paisley, the CIA’s liaison charged with reviewing Team B’s conclusions (and a Team B critic) disappeared in September 1978 while writing his report on a boat in Chesapeake Bay. A body fixed to diving weights and shot in the head “execution style” was later found that failed on numerous accounts to match his description. And yet Paisley’s death was ruled a suicide and the body cremated.

A campaign waged by Team B supporters would claim the discrepancies proved Paisley was a KGB mole and that the real Paisley had been whisked away behind the Iron Curtain – but in the end no proof of KGB hijinks ever emerged.   

In the final analysis Team B’s real objective was to avoid the American system of checks and balances and politicize intelligence by delivering the levers of power to followers of Leo Strauss and turn reality into whatever they wanted. As described decades later by a horrified ex-member of the neocon fraternity – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Neoconservative agenda of Team B was to scare the government into establishing a full mobilization and endless war against Russia and in this, they ultimately succeeded. 

Following the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, this new neoconservative alliance led by Richard Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, continued to lobby against Strategic Nuclear Arms Limitation and Détente and found a powerful ally in President Carter’s national security advisor – the well-known Russophobe, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski had helped elevate Carter to the presidency as a member of the Trilateral Commission, a Rockefeller-funded group whose goal was to restore U.S. hegemony after the Vietnam War. In return Carter appointed him to the exclusive national security advisor post which Carter had elevated to cabinet level and which Brzezinski then reorganized to assume control over CIA covert action and seize power from the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. In the words of neoconservative author David Rothkopf “it was a bureaucratic first strike of the first order” with Carter doing precisely what he’d promised not to do.

According to former Secretary of Defense and CIA director Robert Gates, despite President Carter’s campaign promises to establish better relations with the Soviet Union, upon coming into office in January 1977 Brzezinski immediately began destabilizing pro-Soviet regimes and looking for a place to trap the Soviets. Then, in an effort to fulfill Team B’s prophecy he activated covert action inside Soviet territory bordering Afghanistan hoping to provoke a response. By April of 1978, Brzezinski’s efforts were bearing fruit when a radical Marxist group led by the U.S. educated Hafizullah Amin seized power in a bloody coup in Kabul. And by the time the new American Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph “Spike” Dubs arrived that May, the Afghan trap was ready to be sprung.

A proponent of détente and opponent of Brzezinski’s anti-Soviet plots, Dubs was a Soviet expert who had served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis and again as chargé d’affaires in 1973-74. His posting to Kabul came at a critical tipping point in U.S. Soviet relations. According to former Washington Post reporter Selig Harrison, Dubs’ assignment was to coordinate a multinational and UN effort to control narcotics production and trafficking in Afghanistan – establish a close personal relationship with Amin and detach him from the Soviet Union. But he knew dealing with Amin – the Machiavellian mastermind behind the coup who’d been elected president of the CIA-affiliated Afghan Student Association while receiving a Masters at Columbia in the early 1960s – would be tricky.

Following official State Department policy put Dubs in direct opposition to Brzezinski and the goals of Team B as well as a covert entity known as the Safari Club which was standing-in secretly for the CIA. As the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once explained to a gathering of Georgetown University alumni, the Safari Club was an off the books alliance between national intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms and focused on fighting communism.

Dubs arrival on the scene was intended to bring Afghanistan’s new government closer to the U.S. while keeping the Soviets out but with the Safari club working against him the chances were close to zero he could succeed. Destabilizing Afghanistan satisfied a long list of interlocking agendas and it would soon become obvious that Dubs would have no support from the Russophobe Brzezinski. First and foremost, Afghanistan’s strategic position was crucial to the designs of an emerging globalist cabal looking to migrate the booming drug trade from Southeast Asia to the opium-growing Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan where a friendly government could protect it. To the Saudis it provided the opportunity to spread its radical Wahhabist doctrine to Central Asia’s Muslim population while gaining control over oil pipeline routes to Europe. And to the Americans it was the ideal location to inflict a humiliating and low cost revenge on the Soviet Union by giving them their own Vietnam.

The CIA had set the stage for conflict in 1977 with an absurdly fabricated report that the Soviets would soon run out of oil, putting them desperately in need of new outside resources. This disinformation would soon find its way into Carter administration efforts to blame the Soviets for the coup in Afghanistan as Brzezinski and the CIA warned of a Soviet master plan to take over the oil fields of the Middle East, using Afghanistan as a stepping stone.

Adding to those dangers was an outright civil war over foreign policy inside the White House which pitted Brzezinski against Secretary of State Cyrus Vance whose State Department intelligence unit found no evidence of Soviet complicity in the 1978 Marxist coup and dismissed Brzezinski’s claim as a Cold War fantasy. But that fantasy was becoming real for both Moscow and the American Ambassador Adolph Dubs as he struggled to balance his influence with the Soviets who were becoming convinced Amin was on the CIA payroll.

To make things worse, by that fall as the uprising in the countryside grew, Amin wrestled for power inside his party and proceeded to imprison and execute many of his political rivals. Rumors spread that he was seeking an agreement with the CIA’s favorite, the well-known drug-dealing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fellow member of the Ghilzai clan who’d been trying to overthrow the Afghan royal family for more than a century. 

Nevertheless Dubs continued to press on secretly, meeting with Amin 14 times over the next few months, wanting to keep a back door open to American influence while not triggering Soviet countermeasures. Dubs knew that Brzezinski’s covert action was intended to lure a Soviet response. He’d even asked the State Department for an analysis of a possible Soviet invasion before leaving Washington. But when Dubs complained about the destabilization, Brzezinski blocked the State Department from doing anything about it and then sent Thomas P. Thornton from the National Security Council to tell Dubs to knock it off.

By February of 1979, Dubs was an ambassador out ahead of a State Department policy that was being burned to the ground by Brzezinski. And then on the morning of February 14, a kidnapper posing as a police officer stopped Dubs’ armored Oldsmobile on the way to the U.S. embassy and got the Ambassador to open the door.

Followed by three additional kidnappers they demanded to be driven to the Kabul Hotel in the center of town and took the Ambassador to room 117. Nothing about the abduction made sense. The Hotel was the worst place for the kidnappers to have chosen. The lobby was crowded and filled with Afghan, Soviet and Iraqi security accompanying a high level diplomatic mission. The room 117 was indefensible from the street outside and the door to the room was locked. The original policeman who’d stopped the car disappeared into the crowd the minute they’d entered the lobby and the kidnapper sent downstairs to get the key was immediately apprehended.

When news reached the Embassy, Bruce Flatin, the Embassy’s first secretary returned to the hotel using Dubs’ armored Oldsmobile and noticed the U.S. flag had been removed from the car’s right front fender and its American eagle top was missing. Had this been a signal to the kidnappers?

When Flatin arrived the hotel lobby was swarming with police and Afghan troops—Police Chief Mohammed Lal, Internal Affairs Superintendent Major Saifuddin; and Yosuf Sahar, Chief of the Anti-Smuggling Unit. Flatin informed the Afghan police that the room where Dubs is being held should not be stormed under any circumstances and was given assurances by the Russians that it wouldn’t.  But as the morning wore on the Afghans began to take action.  

Back at the embassy the deputy U.S. chief of mission was told by the State Department to negotiate with the kidnappers and not do anything to endanger the ambassador but failed to reach Amin by phone. Simultaneous to these events in Kabul, Iranian students had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Carter and Vance were out of town on a diplomatic mission to Mexico and caught off guard. Under Secretary of State Warren Christopher took charge at the White House but sent mixed signals about what to do to the embassy in Kabul.

Hours passed. Rumors abounded as numerous other members of the Embassy staff trickled into the hotel; CIA officer Warren Marik and Drug Enforcement Agency attaché Harold “Doug” Wankel arrived around noon. Wankel had a close working relationship with Superintendent Taroun and Anti-Smuggling Chief Sahar from an ongoing DEA funded drug enforcement program. Wankel had just met with Sahar on January 17, to cosign a payment of 11,700 Afghanis to an Afghan drug informant. 1.17, 11,700 and room 117 all falling into place like tumblers. What a strange coincidence.

Flatin met with a Russian security officer and told him he wanted to talk to the ambassador. Minutes later he was asked to come upstairs where he knelt at the keyhole and conversed with Dubs at length about the situation until the police informed him to tell your Ambassador that exactly ten minutes from now he is to fall to the floor.

Flatin retreated to the foyer at the top of the stairs where he saw Police Chief Mohammed Lal preparing an assault team. Lal was known to be a dangerous psychopath and Flatin realized he’d taken control of the operation.

Flatin learned from the Soviet advisor for the first time that the Afghan police were working under a deadline imposed by the kidnappers. The U.S. Security Officer transmitted over his radio that the Afghans were now acting under someone else’s orders. But he didn’t know who.

Wankel, Marik, and two other embassy staff carried a stretcher upstairs to the foyer. A man who was assumed to be KGB provided a weapon to a member of the Afghan assault team. The Soviet advisors positioned the Afghan snipers across the street. Afghan commandos moved into position near the door. Flatin observed there were no Soviets present or involved with the assault team.

At 12:45 a presumed Soviet advisor went to the window and signaled five minutes to the Afghan police snipers on the bank balcony.  Then at exactly12:50 a gunshot rang out inside the room. The single gunshot was followed by heavy gunfire in the corridor, inside the room and from the balcony across the street. Smoke and flying debris filled the hallway for what seemed a full minute until the Soviet advisor reappeared at the window and waved his arms. Flatin headed for the splintered door but was held back by Police Chief Lal who entered ahead of him. He then heard four more loud bursts inside the room. Then silence.

Wankel, Marik and the two embassy staffers rushed to the room with the stretcher as Flatin peered inside. He saw the Ambassador slumped dead in a chair by the wall with multiple gunshot wounds to his head and body, his two kidnappers sprawled nearby. The floor was covered in water from radiators shot up in the barrage. Flatin observed that half of the Ambassador’s clothing was wet, as if he’d been lying on the floor and somebody had propped him up in the chair. But was he killed from the bank balcony or by someone in the room?

The conflicting interpretations of how Adolph Dubs died reveal the stark divisions inside the Carter White House.  Flatin is a State Department diplomat tasked with maintaining American policy. Wankel and Marik are DEA/CIA policemen who are clearly aligned with Brzezinski’s agenda of demonizing anything Russian.

The DEA/CIA connection itself is a Nixon-era marriage from hell intended to provide a law-enforcement cover for CIA covert action and political assassination. Wankel’s background is Detroit police street-thug narcotics—paying off informants, dealers, pimps and prostitutes. Marik is covert agent provocateur—specializing in propaganda and political subversion. In their minds the KGB is guilty whether they did it or not.

Flatin stood outside the door as the two dead kidnappers were dropped at his feet while the third was wrestled down the stairs and out the door very much alive. Flatin never saw the policeman/kidnapper gone missing until later that night when the police displayed four dead bodies and claimed he was one of them. 

As the ambassador’s body was driven away, Wankel, Marik and a third embassy staffer returned to the scene of the crime and discovered the room had been stripped of evidence. Upon inspection Wankel maintained that Dubs was killed immediately by Soviet directed gunfire from the bank balcony across the street and died slumped in his chair. But Flatin’s observation that “one-half of Dubs’ body was wet as though he had been lying on the floor” as instructed, contradicted it. Wankel’s opinion implicated the Soviets; Flatin’s implied that Mohammed Lal had executed him. But even more importantly; the autopsy revealed that Dubs had been killed by four bullets to the head which were fired at close range and were not the same caliber as the bullets fired from the balcony.

And then there’s the cable from deputy U.S. chief of mission Bruce Amstutz denying that there even was a second shootout.  Did Amstutz fail to listen to the Embassy staffers waiting in the hallway who witnessed the events surrounding the second shootout? Or was he trying to divert responsibility from the Afghan police inside the room in order to conform to the Brzezinski line?

A pattern emerges. Unnamed Americans claim the Soviets wanted Dubs out of the way so they could set up for an invasion. But the rules of the game make ambassadors virtually untouchable. There was no upside to killing one, and a big downside. And there was plenty of evidence to show the Soviets didn’t want to invade.

Others claimed the Soviets were afraid that Dubs would win Hafizullah Amin away from their control. But Hafizullah Amin was never under Soviet control and in fact Dubs spent most of his final days demanding to know from his CIA station chief whether Amin had been working for the CIA all along. But with Brzezinski controlling the media directly from the White House, no one got a whiff of the engineering that had been going on behind the scenes, and with the Soviet invasion ten months later the issue would be buried alongside Dubs’ body.

The Dubs’ killing revealed the same kind of prearranged set-up featured in JFK’s assassination with “the lone gunman theory” and with the same results. JFK’s assassination ended the original effort to compromise and cooperate with the Soviet Union following the Cuban Missile crisis. It wasn’t until the reality of Vietnam could no longer be denied that President Johnson was forced to reinitiate a policy of détente. President Carter was elected to further that détente but with the assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs that promise would never be fulfilled and made the Soviet invasion inevitable.

It was by no coincidence that only days after that invasion on December 27, 1979 the leader of Team B, Richard Pipes announced on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report that détente was officially dead. Team B had accomplished its mission of a total bureaucratic takeover.

In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who had been given the power to implement the Team B agenda by President Carter gave an interview in which he bragged about luring the Soviets into Afghanistan and that president Carter was fully aware that the Soviets would be provoked by these actions to invade.

But it was not until 9/11 that the full impact of the Neoconservative takeover began to show, and that Brzezinski’s willful manipulation of the American government had caused a permanent institutional damage that would soon spread to every aspect of American life through the war on terror. 

Cover Photo – File:80-G-473742 (TR-15628) (22528690987).jpg – Wikimedia Commons

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011). Their novel The Voice , was published in 2001. Their memoir, The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond was published by TrineDay (2021) and The Valediction Resurrection was published by TrineDay (2022). For more information visit invisiblehistory, grailwerk and valediction.net