The Child Prostitution Sex Ring Involving the Bush Whitehouse

HOMOSEXUAL CHILD PROSTITUTION RING INVOLVING GEORGE BUSH SR.
ARCHIVE OF PUBLISHED ARTICLES OF YET ANOTHER OF MASSIVELY SUPPRESSED STORY INVOLVING THE FAMILY WHO IS ABOVE ALL LAWS - THE BUSHES

In the high stakes world of global politics, it is common practice to procure sexual favors in the hopes to gain leverage or to gain power through blackmail. It's done all the time. The Soviets did it. The Americans do it, and many other countries as well. This following is the bizarre and very real child sexual prostitution ring involving the Republican elite of Washington. And the trail leads right up to George H. W. Bush. Read the chilling story.

KARLYN BARKER, WASHINGTON POST, JULY 24, 1990: The alleged leader of what authorities have called the largest male prostitution operation in the Washington area surrendered to federal agents yesterday and pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges that have been filed against him and three alleged accomplices. Henry W. Vinson, 29, of Williamson, W.Va., a coal miner's son accused of setting up the homosexual escort service, was arraigned in U.S. District Court here yesterday afternoon after turning himself in to Secret Service agents . . . At a news conference after the arraignment, [U.S. Attorney Jay] Stephens said the investigation into the alleged prostitution ring "is concluded" and that the indictment, which was unsealed yesterday, focused on those who allegedly set up the ring rather than on clients who reportedly patronized it. Asked about earlier reports that some of those clients included high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Stephens said the investigation had not revealed "additional conduct which suggests criminal conduct on behalf of other people." . . . The Vinson case provoked additional notice after The Washington Times published reports last summer suggesting that the alleged prostitution ring had been patronized by government officials. The Times named as clients several low-level government employees and Craig J. Spence, a Washington lobbyist and party-giver who, the paper said, took friends and prostitutes on late-night tours of the White House. Spence was found dead in a Boston hotel room last fall, and authorities ruled his death a suicide . . . To date, however, investigators have disclosed no evidence linking any high-level government official to the escort service.

THE ARTICLES BELOW CHRONICLE THE VERY REAL BEHAVIOR OF THE POWER ELITE IN AMERICA

MINGO MESS BAFFLING TANGLE The Charleston Gazette Editorial; Pg. P4A July 03, 1997, Thursday

P ERHAPS world chess champion Garry Kasparov (or his nemesis, the Deep Blue computer) would have the mental capacity to keep track of the amazing complexities involving Mingo County public officials.

Vinson vowed that he'd never be convicted, because he said his "call boy" service had been utilized by officials of the Moore administration in Charleston and by officials of the Reagan-Bush White House in Washington.

Consider:

State Sen. Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, was indicted on federal wiretap charges in his messy divorce, but was found innocent.

Former Mingo Sheriff Gerald Chafin - no relation to Truman, and part of a rival Democratic faction - likewise was indicted on federal wiretap charges, supposedly stemming from an attempt to blackmail a "whistleblower" deputy, but likewise was found innocent.

Ex-Sheriff Chafin, a mortuary owner, was appointed coroner by Mingo County's commissioners - but state rules require that coroners be physicians, so he couldn't take the post.

Next the commissioners gave the job to Dr. Diane Shafer of Mingo County, who previously was convicted of bribery in nearby Kentucky. (She had been under investigation in Kentucky for suspected overbilling, but she married the overbilling investigator and gave him $ 42,500. They both were convicted of bribery, and he of bigamy, but the convictions were set aside. West Virginia's Board of Medicine has set August hearings on whether to revoke her license.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Shafer may - or may not - have married a former Mingo coroner, Henry Vinson, who was convicted of running a male prostitution ring in Washington, D.C.

Vinson, also a mortician , had been ousted as Mingo coroner after he was convicted of making harassing phone calls to a rival funeral home director. Then he was accused in a paternity suit. Next he moved to Washington, where he was charged with operating "Dream Boy," a male escort service.

While the Washington investigation was in progress, Vinson "died" and his obituary was printed by newspapers around West Virginia - but his sister in Mingo County said the obit had been phoned to papers as a hoax.

In 1990, Vinson vowed that he'd never be convicted, because he said his "call boy" service had been utilized by officials of the Moore administration in Charleston and by officials of the Reagan-Bush White House in Washington. But the next year, he pleaded guilty and got a five-year prison term.

Now Vinson's sister says she thinks he's married to Dr. Shafer. Reporter Maryclaire Dale (who is white) called Dr. Shafer's office Monday and talked to a man who called himself "Henry Shafer." When she asked if his name is Henry Vinson, he screamed: "Would you like to come and have sex with me, you [racial obscenity]?" Is this another count of phone harassment?

Well, that's just this week's developments in murky Mingo, where public officials have always been bizarre.

Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield led strikers in a historic shootout with Baldwin-Felts detectives; Sheriff Johnie Owens "sold" his elected office to another politician for $ 100,000; Kermit Fire Chief "Wig" Preece and his relatives sold drugs from the firehouse - that's public life in the Deep South coal county.

Mingo residents must wonder if they're living in a zoo.

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

C raig J. Spence, an enigmatic figure who threw glittery parties for key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, media stars and top military officers, bugged the gatherings to compromise guests, provided cocaine, blackmailed some associates and spent up to $20,000 a month on male prostitutes, according to friends, acquaintances and records.

How a man whom even his closest friends describe as a flawed, malevolent personality managed to court Washington's biggest names is a quintessential Washington story.

The 48-year-old D.C. power broker has been linked to a homosexual prostitution ring currently under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office. Its clients included several top government and business officials from Washington and abroad.

Among the clients identified in hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by The Washington Times - and identified by male prostitutes and escort operators - are government officials, locally based U.S. military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals.

Mr. Spence's influence appeared unlimited, aptly demonstrated by his ability to arrange midnight tours of the White House, according to three persons who said they took part in those tours.

"It was a show-the-flag time for Craig Spence," said one person who went on a July 3, 1988, tour that included two male prostitutes. "He just wanted everyone to know just how damned powerful he was," said the person. "And when we were strolling through the White House at 1 o'clock in the morning, we were believers."

One man who was on the tour but asked not to be named for fear it would damage his business said it was cleared by a uniformed Secret Service guard whom the man had seen attending Mr. Spence's parties as a bodyguard.

"For once in his life, Craig was doing something nice. We just thought, neat, we get a free midnight tour of the White House," the man said. Another person on the tour said the group walked through all the public areas of the White House and "even took pictures of ourselves in the barber's chair."

After arriving in Washington in the late 1970s, Mr. Spence was hosting parties during the early Reagan years attended by, among others, journalists Eric Sevareid, Ted Koppel and William Safire; former CIA Director William Casey; the late John Mitchell, attorney general in the Nixon administration; conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly; Ambassador James Lilley; and Gen. Alfred M. Gray, the commandant of the Marine Corps.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-in-chief of The Times, went to dinner once at Mr. Spence's home to honor Mr. Lilley.

Efforts to reach Mr. Spence in the past week were unsuccessful. He contacted The Washington Times yesterday in response to a telefaxed message but hung up when queried about his activities.

According to many current and former friends, Mr. Spence was a dangerous friend to cultivate. 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.

One man described having a limousine sent to his home by Mr. Spence and being brought to a gathering at which several young men tried to become friendly with him. "I didn't bite; it's not my inclination," the man said. "But he used his homosexual network for all it was worth."

The man, a business associate of Mr. Spence who was on the White House tour, said: "He was blackmailing people. He was taping people and blackmailing them."

One former friend said he saw an 8-foot-long, two-way mirror overlooking the library of Mr. Spence's home which, he said, he was later told was used for "spying on guests."

Georgetown University law professor Richard Gordon said he was a close friend of Mr. Spence's until his "behavior began deteriorating quite markedly."

Mr. Gordon recalled being at a gathering at Mr. Spence's home and having a conversation with veteran NBC and CBS correspondent Liz Trotta.

"We were sitting in a corner, talking about our mutual concern about Craig's physical condition. He came down later and said he had been listening to us and didn't appreciate it at all," Mr. Gordon said.

Ms. Trotta, contacted in New York City, yesterday confirmed Mr. Gordon's comments and said it was "one in a series of incidents" in which she began to question Mr. Spence's emotional and physical stability.

"He was fragmenting right before our eyes," she said. "I was very concerned about him."

One former Reagan administration official who worked at the U.S. Information Agency and is an open homosexual said he went to private parties at Mr. Spence's home and saw a great deal of recording and taping equipment.

"It was my clear impression that the house was bugged," he said. Another man, an Air Force sergeant who worked for Mr. Spence as a bodyguard, said: "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."

Several others confirmed that Mr. Spence had bragged on several occasions that he had his house bugged and that conversations between guests often had been overheard. They said Mr. Spence often would come down late to parties he hosted and told close associates that he had been listening to what was being said about him.

Several people also said Mr. Spence boasted about getting control of the million-dollar home on Wyoming Avenue by blackmailing clients in Japan.

William Harbin, a former U.S. Foreign Service official who worked for Mr. Spence in the mid-1980s, said: "He pretty much blackmailed a Japanese client. He had represented this firm in Washington, the Policy Study Group.

"The Japanese put up the money for Spence to buy a big house on Wyoming Avenue," Mr. Harbin said. "I heard he later had a quarrel with this Japanese because he was really using this house to advance his own purposes, not for the Japanese. But he threatened to expose that they had transferred the money illegally, so it made the Japanese back down."

Another longtime friend confirmed that Mr. Spence bragged about the Wyoming Avenue deal, saying he had beaten "a very rich, old-line Japanese family."

Secret Service spokesman Bob Snow, when asked yesterday for records about Mr. Spence's visits to the White House, said only the White House counsel could authorize release of the material.

C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel, said he did not know why Mr. Snow referred The Times to him, adding that he was unaware that his office was required to release such information. "I just don't know anything about that," Mr. Gray said. "But maybe there's something I don't know about." Federal law enforcement authorities, including the Secret Service, involved in the probe of the homosexual prostitution ring have told prostitutes and their clients that a grand jury will deliberate over evidence gathered in the ongoing investigation throughout the summer.

Hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and personal accounts and made payable to the Washington-based escort service operated by the homosexual ring, have been examined by The Washington Times.

Mr. Spence, a former ABC-TV correspondent who covered the war in Vietnam, was one of the biggest spending clients of the homosexual prostitution network, according to credit-card vouchers obtained by The Times. For example, on Oct. 5, 1988, he made four separate payments totaling $1,525 with his American Express card for male escorts from Professional Services Inc.

On. Oct. 8, he paid $600 for male escorts, and another $600 payment Oct. 20, the documents show. There were some months when Mr. Spence spent as much as $20,000 for male escorts hired to provide him sexual services, according to documents and interviews with prostitutes who served him.

Many of Mr. Spence's guests soured on his hospitality when his darker behavior emerged. A case in point is his relationship with former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova.

According to Mr. diGenova, he attended a few of Mr. Spence's parties both as U.S. attorney and after he left the government to enter private practice. He eventually traveled to Japan last December on a business trip with Mr. Spence and Wayne Bishop, chairman of the Washington law firm of Bishop, Cook, Purcell & Reynolds, where Mr. diGenova works.

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

A dministration officials continued yesterday to stonewall reporters on the growing federal "call boy" investigation, apparently hoping the scandal will fade before President Bush is asked his view of a late-night White House tour that reportedly included two male prostitutes.

"Mr. Bush knows about the story. Yes he does. He's aware of the story," said one White House source who, like virtually all the others, insisted on anonymity.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, who heads the Secret Service, reluctantly conceded yesterday at the White House that the agency is looking into the July 3, 1988, tour - one of several arranged by a Secret Service officer for lobbyist Craig J. Spence.

Meanwhile, White House sources confirmed that President Bush has followed the stories of the late-night visit and Mr. Spence's links to a homosexual prostitution ring under investigation by federal authorities since they were disclosed June 29 in The Washington Times. But top officials won't discuss the stories' substance, reportedly even among themselves.

"Mr. Bush knows about the story. Yes he does. He's aware of the story," said one White House source who, like virtually all the others, insisted on anonymity.

Press officers have rebuffed repeated requests to obtain Mr. Bush's reaction and decline to discuss investigations or fallout from the disclosures.

"I don't have anything on that," said Deputy Press Secretary B. Jay Cooper, the latest member of the press office to respond.

"There's no gain in talking about it," explained an official who declined to be quoted by name. "It only makes the story grow and helps keep it alive."

The president has not had "serious discussion" about the reports even with his most senior aides, including Chief of Staff John Sununu, according to another source.

Reports on the matter have been included in the Daily Press Summary, a comprehensive half-inch-thick digest of print and broadcast media stories and editorials prepared by a division of the White House press office for the president and aides throughout the complex.

Because the summary is an internal document, officials would not disclose its reports on the news stories. One official said, "I'm sure that the story was summarized, but the president also reads The Washington Times and The Washington Post."

Mr. Brady, the ranking administration official to speak publicly about the episode, appeared nonplussed when asked yesterday about Reginald A. deGueldre, a uniformed White House officer who moonlighted as Mr. Spence's bodyguard and arranged the late-night White House tours.

C raig J. Spence, the Washington lobbyist and power broker, was the subject of a Secret Service investigation even before a February raid on a homosexual prostitution ring to which he has been linked, The Washington Times has learned.

Mr. Spence arranged at least four midnight tours of the White House, including one June 29, 1988, on which he took with him a 15-year-old boy whom he falsely identified as his son.

The Secret Service last week expanded its investigation with inquiries about friends and associates of Mr. Spence.

Two of those friends are former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division.

During interviews last week with friends and associates of Mr. Spence, the Secret Service made copies of photographs from a July 4, 1988, party showing him mugging for the camera with Mr. diGenova and Miss Toensing, who in one photo is draped in an American flag.

It was on that same weekend that Mr. Spence arranged a 1 a.m. tour of the White House, which one participant said included two male prostitutes.

The Secret Service also wants to talk to Mr. Spence, but has been unable to locate him, according to persons the agents have interviewed.

Mr. diGenova couldn't be reached yesterday for comment. He has been interviewed twice by The Times over the past two weeks. In the first conversation, he described a fleeting contact with Mr. Spence which, he said, was based solely on mutual business interests.

In a second conversation, he said he attended a few of Mr. Spence's parties, as U.S. attorney and later after he left the government to enter private law practice. He eventually traveled to Japan last December on a business trip with Mr. Spence and Wayne Bishop, chairman of the Washington law firm of Bishop, Cook, Purcell & Reynolds, where Mr. diGenova works. Business contacts made on the trip proved fruitful and are still being pursued, he said.

"When I got back from Japan, some anonymous person suggested that he [Mr. Spence] might be using cocaine. Well, of course my antennae went up right away, and I checked those rumors out . . . and found much to my surprise that people suspected the worst," Mr. diGenova said.

At that point, Mr. diGenova said, he severed his relationship with Mr. Spence. He said he didn't report his findings or concerns to authorities.

Although the Secret Service hasn't said what sparked its interest in Mr. Spence, one of the persons questioned by the Secret Service said investigators appeared to be "interested" in the connections the lobbyist had made.

The Secret Service was the lead agency in a Feb. 28 raid on a house on 34th Place NW used by a homosexual prostitution ring, a ring with which Mr. Spence spent up to $20,000 a month, according to call boys, his friends and documents obtained by The Times.

The federal investigation, headed by the office of U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens and conducted by Secret Service agents, appears to be aimed at determining whether Reagan and Bush administration officials and others were compromised by Mr. Spence, through the use of female and male prostitutes and with electronic audio and video eavesdropping at parties at his house in the fashionable Kalorama neighborhood in Northwest Washington.

Another focus of the probe, persons interviewed by the Secret Service have told this newspaper, is whether White House security was compromised by the late-night tours arranged by Mr. Spence.

Mr. Stephens has said only that his office is investigating "possible credit-card fraud" in connection with arrests made in the 34th Place raid. But numerous sources have told The Times that the Secret Service is asking about Mr. Spence's activities.

Secret Service agents on Friday also asked a former Spence colleague detailed questions about attempts by the lobbyist to obtain information about the Delta Force, an elite U.S. commando team involved in top-secret military operations.

The former friend said Mr. Spence had given a gold Rolex watch to a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who is now associated with Army anti-terrorist units. Later, according to the former friend, Mr. Spence alluded to the gift of the watch and asked the veteran detailed questions about the Delta Force operations.

The Vietnam veteran was one of six persons on the July 3 White House tour , arranged by Mr. Spence. A uniformed Secret Service guard, who admitted the group to the White House and served as an unofficial host, also told The Times that he had received a gold Rolex watch worth about $8,000 from Mr. Spence but said Mr. Spence had asked for nothing in return.

Mr. Spence collected key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, media celebrities and high-ranking military officers, among others, for his glittery dinner parties at his Kalorama home. According to friends, visitors to Mr. Spence's Wyoming Avenue NW house and records, the host eavesdropped on some gatherings to compromise guests and blackmailed some associates with threats to disclose their indiscretions.

TOKYO
apanese nuclear-physicist-turned-politician Motoo Shiina has been described here as "a good friend of the United States" - and as a shrewd businessman who may have passed U.S. aerospace secrets to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Shiina has declined to answer telephone inquiries on his dealings with Mr. Spence, but has responded cautiously to direct questions through a lawyer, Chikahiko Soda. The questions have dealt mainly with a loan by Mr. Shiina to Mr. Spence to purchase the Wyoming Avenue NW house where homosexual parties took place.

"If his [Mr. Shiina's] involvement in any of this is true, then it would create a serious political problem for Shiina and his political life will probably be damaged considerably," said Hisao Imai, a well-known Japanese political commentator.

Mr. Imai, head of the Japan Commentators Association and a former political editor of Sankei Shimbun newspaper, said yesterday that there is hope among younger ruling Liberal Democratic Party members that Mr. Shiina will be a future party leader or even prime minister.

"If we lose him, this is a great loss not only for the LDP [the ruling Liberal Democratic Party] but for the nation," Mr. Imai said.

"The reason that Mr. Shiina is touted as a rising star is that he has been previously untainted by any scandal and he is an internationalist," said another political commentator, Kan Ito.

With his own independent style of diplomacy he has established himself as a leading expert on U.S.-Japan relations, analysts said.

Although several Diet members speaking anonymously yesterday described Mr. Shiina as a "true internationalist" and "good friend of the United States," one Japanese magazine came close to calling him a spy for the Soviet Union.

The magazine "Shukan Shincho," a popular weekly, raised past allegations that Mr. Shiina leaked sensitive U.S. information to the Soviet Union - allegations the magazine said have never been explained.

The magazine quoted a newsman covering the Japan Defense Agency as saying that General Dynamics Corp. in 1979 allowed Mr. Shiina to photograph on microfilm specifications of the new F-16 fighter.

In exchange, the newsman was quoted as saying, Mr. Shiina agreed to lobby for the company's involvement in the joint U.S.-Japan production of the FSX jet fighter.

The magazine noted that stories surfaced in Japan that the technical data of the F-16 was leaked to the Soviet Union by "the son of an influential Japanese politician." No name was given, but the magazine followed with a description of Mr. Shiina's father, the late Etsusaburo Shiina, who was a former LDP kingmaker and holder of several key Cabinet posts.

But Mr. Ito said yesterday, "Any charges that he is soft on the Soviet Union doesn't add up in my opinion. He's always speaking out about the Soviet buildup in Northeast Asia."

Mr. Ito also said, "Mr. Shiina is regarded as well-informed on foreign affairs and defense matters and has been known to criticize both ruling and opposition members for talking nonsense on those subjects in the Diet."

That sounds familiar, Satanism, child abuse, and grave desecration is not new.... We hear about it in the news and we see some kid dressed in black with suicidal lyrics.. but where did they learn this behaviour?

T hree female prostitutes took part in a sex party at the Australian Embassy in November that included several members of the embassy staff, according to one of the women involved who worked for an escort service now under federal investigation.

She said she had been to Mr. Spence's house on at least four occasions and that during each visit she had sex with young soldiers whom Mr. Spence bragged he was blackmailing

The prostitutes had sex with at least three men each during the party that lasted a little longer than three hours, said the woman. She said she was paid $800 in "crisp, new $100 bills" after the job.

The young blonde former prostitute, who asked that she not be identified, described the men she had sex with as middle-aged, adding, "We're not talking Crocodile Dundee here."

The escort service which employed the woman is one of several tied to a Washington area homosexual prostitution ring that serviced officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, media representatives, lawyers, businessmen and others.

The former prostitute also said she had sexual encounters with U.S. military personnel at the behest of former Washington lobbyist Craig J. Spence, a major client of the male call-boy ring, and with a high-ranking Canadian diplomat at his waterfront Georgetown home.

She provided details about her jobs, including the names of some clients, which have been confirmed by The Washington Times.

Both the diplomat and one of Mr. Spence's soldier-bodyguards have admitted they had sex with the woman under the exact circumstances she described.

The U.S. Attorney's Office is probing alleged credit card fraud involving the escort services, and the Secret Service is looking into possible security breaches that may have occurred during late-night tours of the White House arranged by Mr. Spence for his friends. Two male prostitutes went on one of the tours, according to a person who participated in the 1 a.m. White House walk-through.

The former prostitute, who was interviewed on several occasions by The Times, described in detail paid sexual meetings with foreign diplomats, both in their homes and in Massachusetts Avenue embassies, scheduled through Jet Set, the escort service which the woman said supplied the Australian Embassy party.

The woman said that during the late afternoon November embassy party, the group, which included the two other women she came with, a few other women she believed were prostitutes and a dozen or more men, met in one large office-type room.

"The men I had sex with took me one at a time into a smaller room nearby which was like an office, it had office-type furniture," the woman said.

The men never identified themselves beyond first names, she said. "There wasn't a lot of small talk. We were there for one thing."

The woman also described the interior of the embassy, correctly gave its address and location on Massachusetts Avenue, and depicted the furnishings of the room where she said the sex occurred.

Australian Embassy officials, when told on July 6 of the woman's allegations concerning the party, originally said they would turn the information over to U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens for a full investigation.

However, John McCarthy, minister of congressional liaison for the embassy, said during a second interview with The Times that he and his staff had conducted an extensive internal investigation - coordinated by Australian Federal Police stationed at the embassy - and, while not ruling out the possibility that the November affair had occurred, had concluded that the woman's story was "improbable."

A report of that investigation concluded, "We cannot completely exclude that a clandestine function did occur, but our investigations have made clear that it would have required a great deal of planning beforehand to gain entry surreptitiously."

The report said, "The embassy's investigations produced no corroboration of the allegations."

An Australian television station, informed of the woman's charges by The Times, met with the former prostitute and determined that her story was valid. A story concerning the allegations ran yesterday on an Australian network news program.

NEW YORK -
H e must have thought he was still wearing his red-lined black cape, his wide-brimmed black felt hat and his trademark silk handkerchief dangling at a precise angle from his tailored Edwardian-cut suit.

"How do you think a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did?" Mr. Spence asked, his hand fondling the razor blade like the flesh of a lover. "It's because I had contacts at the highest levels of this government.

His plain white knit shirt was wrinkled and soiled, with smudge marks on the back and shoulders from a night on a bench in Central Park. His high-top white Reebok athletic shoes were scuffed, his pants rumpled and loose.

With his belt missing, an unshaven Craig J. Spence - the onetime Washington lobbyist of the rich and powerful who is a focus of a federal investigation - kept tugging at his pleated khaki pants to keep them from falling down.

"Do you know who you are talking to?" he demanded in a loud voice as he moved his back along a wall of a friend's fashionable East Side apartment, his right hand tightly clutching a razor-blade dispenser from which he slid a double-edged blade. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

So began a rambling, eight-hour interview of Craig Spence, the object of a monthlong search by print and television reporters and agents of the the Secret Service. The interview ran from midafternoon Monday until shortly before midnight.

Federal authorities have been pursuing him as part of an investigation into allegations of credit-card fraud involving a Washington-based homosexual prostitution ring he frequented and possible security breaches during late-night tours of the White House that he arranged.

After an initial and volatile discussion about suicide and a tense moment in a narrow hallway during which he menaced two reporters with the razor, Mr. Spence decided to hold court to "impart a few words of wisdom" and to "educate the unwashed" about journalism, politics, government operations, life and death.

"Death, you know, is only painful to the ones you leave behind," he said, congratulating himself on what he suggested was an excellent quote and encouraging the reporters to write it down. "As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to it.

"At 48, I'll still look good in hell."

What followed was bizarre, highlighted by moments of brilliance and wit, outrageous and obnoxious behavior, unbridled and spontaneous humor, and profound and unrelenting bragging.

"How do you think a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did?" Mr. Spence asked, his hand fondling the razor blade like the flesh of a lover. "It's because I had contacts at the highest levels of this government.

"They'll deny it," he said, his voice rising with anger. "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?"

Mr. Spence's recollections of times past are filled with the names of many of Washington's powerful and those of influential men and women from other countries. Most of the claims are documented in dozens of filings at the Department of Justice, which are required of lobbyists who work for foreign governments.

What they all had in common, Mr. Spence said, was that they used him for their personal gain, and when things went bad, they forgot his name.

"I can't think of one person who hasn't benefited personally from knowing me," he said. "I had the world at my house, and now they don't know who I am."

During the interview, Mr. Spence picked continually at his nose and rubbed his finger across the outline of his shabby mustache. He snorted and coughed up mucus. He constantly rubbed his left eye until it was red, and he said his vision was blurred.

NEW YORK
C raig J. Spence, the once-powerful Washington lobbyist under scrutiny by the Secret Service for late-night White House tours and theft from the presidential mansion, was arrested here last week for carrying a loaded gun and crack cocaine.

Mr. Spence hinted the tours were arranged by "top-level" officials, including Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President Bush and now ambassador-designate to South Korea. "Who was it who got Felix Rodriguez [the CIA's former Costa Rica station chief, who became embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair] in to see Bush?"

Mr. Spence, who has spent recent weeks prowling this city's finest hotels, cutting deals with inmates to protect himself in jail and eventually sleeping on a bench in Central Park, faces up to eight years in prison.

Monday, in a tense eight-hour interview with The Washington Times at a friend's apartment where reporters had tracked him, Mr. Spence said the discovery in 1986 that he had AIDS triggered his descent into using call boys and crack.

In a conversation that plumbed the depths of morbidity and self-pity, Mr. Spence caressed a shiny, double-edged razor blade he said he would ultimately use to kill himself and alluded frequently to his impending suicide, a move he said he would take before AIDS debilitates him.

Asked how he thought he would be remembered in Washington, he quoted Carl Sandburg: "Does it matter in the dust and the cool tombs . . ."

Mr. Spence said he left Washington early in July after becoming aware - through news accounts - of the Secret Service investigation. He spent several nights in expensive hotels in New York, rapidly spending his diminishing funds, according to hotel records and his account.

He was arrested July 31 at the Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd Street in Manhattan. According to police records, police took Mr. Spence into custody after a disturbance there. A loaded 9mm pistol was seized, along with a small amount of crack.

He spent parts of the next three days in jail before being released on personal recognizance Aug. 2. He faces another hearing Aug. 28. Maximum sentences for the charges against him total eight years in prison.

Mr. Spence's account of the episode considerably colored the drab prose of police reports. He said he had set up a meeting with a call boy who arrived with drugs.

When the male escort attempted to steal $10,000 in cash and traveler's checks from his room, according to Mr. Spence and police reports, Mr. Spence started the ruckus that led to the arrest.

"They put me in the Tombs [slang for the New York jail] for three days without a phone call," Mr. Spence said. "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."

Mr. Spence, who is central to an investigation into the theft of Truman administration china from the White House and a male call-boy ring raided in February by D.C. police and federal agents, has eluded Secret Service agents and reporters since his dealings were first reported by The Times on June 29.

Mr. Spence, 48, who is being sought by the Secret Service to testify early next week before a grand jury empaneled by U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens, said the late-night tours could not have been set up by uniformed Secret Service Officer Reginald deGueldre. Officer deGueldre and another officer were suspended without pay last week as a result of the ongoing White House investigation.

"Reggie couldn't have arranged anything," Mr. Spence said. "Poor Reggie is a nice guy. I gave him a Rolex watch unsolicited, and he later gave me this little 'dish,' as Rosalyn Carter would say, out of the Truman china. I didn't ask for it.

"Reggie's like an elevator operator pushing the buttons. But he is not the guy who can clear it for you to get in the elevator."

Mr. Spence hinted the tours were arranged by "top-level" officials, including Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President Bush and now ambassador-designate to South Korea.

"Who was it who got Felix Rodriguez [the CIA's former Costa Rica station chief, who became embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair] in to see Bush?" Mr. Spence asked when pressed to say who got him inside the White House. He agreed that he was alluding to Mr. Gregg.

Mr. Gregg yesterday dismissed the allegation as "absolute bull." Vacationing in Delaware, Mr. Gregg said the only time he met Mr. Spence - at an April party the lobbyist arranged for former South Korean Prime Minister Nam Duc Woo - he found him to be "a thoroughly unpleasant character."

"It disturbs me that he can reach a slimy hand out of the sewer to grab me by the ankle like this," Mr. Gregg said. "The allegations are totally false."

Mr. Spence said all of the parties he held at his Kalorama home were bugged by "friendly" intelligence agents.

He described in detail how he rigged his apartment with listening devices in electrical outlets in the walls after he was approached by an intelligence agency that he refused to identify.

"They basically just wanted to be sure that nothing was being said that shouldn't be said," he said.

He boasted that he had "created" important Japanese politicians, conducted covert operations for Central American governments and traveled in a circle of high-ranking closet homosexuals in Washington. He said he would not identify homosexuals in the Bush administration.

"I'm not going to smear the Republican Party," he said.

Mr. Spence described other midnight White House tours, including one he said he arranged for a group of powerful Japanese businessmen who, he said, photographed themselves in the Oval Office.

He alluded frequently to even deeper mysteries. "All this stuff you've uncovered, to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I've done. But I am not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on without knowing," he said.

After he became aware of Secret Service interest in his activities, Mr. Spence said he destroyed audio tapes and hundreds of photographs, many obtained surreptitiously during his parties. By the time the Secret Service raided his apartment in July, he said all that was left behind was his AZT anti-AIDS medicine.

A Secret Service source confirmed that the agency served a search warrant at the Massachusetts Avenue apartment and that agents did in fact find vials of AZT.

Careening from the wit that had won him powerful friends to glum resignation that "my life is over," Mr. Spence reserved his deepest bitterness for former acquaintences who he said have now forsaken him. "I've had the world at my house and now they don't know who I am," he said. "But they did come, didn't they?"

Mr. Spence said that he frequently used call-boy services and that he liked "handsome young blond, 19-year-old boys," but he said he had not spent $20,000 a month for them, as reflected in credit card documents obtained by The Times. These charges were inflated illegally by one escort service manager, he said. He declined to elaborate but said he fired his accountant over the matter - although it was never turned over to authorities.

During his hour as a Washington host, Mr. Spence dressed in Edwardian finery and lived extravagantly, affecting touches such as scarlet-lined capes and stretch limousines.

A male escort ran and provided homosexual and bisexual prostitution services from a U.S. congressman's house on Capitol Hill on a periodic basis from late 1985 through mid-1987 , The Washington Times has learned.

"I had instructed him [Davis] not to use my apartment for his illegitimate purposes ... It just never occurred to me that he'd bring people over. I guess I was lied to."

"I had reason to believe that he might be trying to do that," said Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, who confirmed in an interview with The Times on Wednesday that the escort had access to his house in the 200 block of 8th Street SE.

"And when I found out about it, I kicked him out [in August 1987]," Mr. Frank said.

Mr. Frank said he knew that the call boy - who asked to be identified by his professional name Greg Davis - was a practicing prostitute. But he denied knowing that his former lover was involved in a prostitution ring.

"I thought I could get him to stop," Mr. Frank said of Davis, whom he employed with personal funds as a housekeeper and chauffeur.

A senior-level Senate staffer, whom The Times has interviewed and chosen not to identify, confirmed this week that he called Davis' "massage" advertisement in City Paper, a District weekly newspaper, "about two years ago" and went as instructed to meet the male escort at a Capitol Hill house.

Davis told him the house was Mr. Frank's, and from the aide's description and documents obtained by The Times, the place they met has been identified as the congressman's home.

Davis said that when he used Mr. Frank's residence to operate the escort services, he or an accomplice would transfer the escort services' telephone calls from his residence to the congressman's number via call-forwarding.

The prostitute, who was living with a fiancee at the time, said he used the ploy because she was unaware of his activities.

Davis also said that he serviced customers at the congressman's house.

A former call girl who worked with Davis and often spoke to Mr. Frank on the phone confirmed this telephone switching operation. She said that she helped run the escort services, and also had sexual relations with clients in Mr. Frank's basement home.

Mr. Frank confirmed that he sometimes spoke to the female escort but assumed she was just a friend of Davis', not a prostitute. He also said that on at least one occasion he remembered a "strange phone call" from somebody asking for Davis and his service.

"The guy said a woman's name that he was supposed to meet," Mr. Frank said. "I was suspicious, but could not prove anything at the time."

The congressman also said that he was told by his landlords several months before asking Davis to leave that there were "strange things going on" in the apartment with lots of people "coming and going."

Mr. Frank said, too, that "one time, somebody came to the door and I told him to get out."

When asked why he did not inform the police about Davis' activities, Mr. Frank replied: "I had reason to believe that he was doing that [running an escort service], but I didn't have anything to take to a judge or to the cops."

Mr. Frank initially denied either knowing of or condoning Davis' profession. But during questioning, he acknowledged that he was aware that his lover was a working prostitute.

"I had no idea that he was doing anything other than personal [prostitution]," Mr. Frank said.

"I knew that he personally did some [sex-for-hire] stuff, but had no idea" about a larger operation that advertised in local newspapers, including City Paper and The Washington Blade, a weekly gay newspaper, the congressman said.

Mr. Frank, one of two openly homosexual members of Congress, said he met Davis by responding to Davis' "escort/model" advertisement in The Washington Blade.

"I met him sexually and had a personal relationship with him," Mr. Frank said.

He said he subsequently allowed the male escort to use his house and car for almost 18 months after first having paid sex with him in April 1985.

Mr. Frank also said that Davis accompanied him on several politically oriented functions and also helped to arrange a speaking engagement at a conference put on by the American Association of School Administrators.

Davis said he accompanied Mr. Frank to the White House in 1986 to witness President Reagan's signing of immigration and naturalization legislation.

"He said he was on probation and I tried to help him out. I got him a lawyer and I hired him [Davis] to work for me - no governmental money," Mr. Frank said. "He was my driver, my housekeeper . . . who took care of the car and took it to get it inspected."

The congressman said he wrote a letter to the U.S. Capitol Police authorizing Davis, who also has been linked to the homosexual prostitution ring now under investigation by federal authorities, to have access to the House garage as his driver. Mr. Frank also said Davis played on his congressional softball team.

"That was the only official thing I did," Davis said.

Mr. Frank said he did not withhold federal income taxes or Social Security from Davis's salary. "I considered him to be a consultant," he said.

A male prostitute convicted of drug trafficking and sex offenses against a minor used the Chevy Chase Elementary School in late 1987 to run his prostitution operation after the school's principal began buying sex from him , an investigation by The Washington Times has revealed.

The call boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus, Mr. Massaro said.

The principal, Gabriel A. Massaro , conceded in a two-hour interview with The Times Wednesday that he had a four-year relationship with the prostitute and provided him with a guidance counselor's office and telephone at the model "magnet school" even while children were in classes elsewhere in the building .

The 48-year-old principal also confirmed that he told the school's custodian to give the prostitute - who told The Times that he has also worked for a homosexual prostitution service now under investigation by federal authorities and the subject of earlier articles - unlimited access to the building .

Their relationship ultimately soured, Mr. Massaro said, in part because the prostitute used his credit card number without his permission to pay for a personal ad in The Washington Blade, a weekly newspaper of the homosexual community.

"I knew he was an escort, but I didn't know he was running an escort service," Mr. Massaro said. "I couldn't condone it from going out of here . . . He may have done that, but I did not know that."

The escort, who asked to be identified as Greg Davis, the alias he uses in personal ads, told The Times he was at the school at Mr. Massaro's invitation "on a fairly regular basis" during October and November 1987 and that he regularly used drugs in the building during that time.

Davis said Mr. Massaro "was very aware of what I was doing and what was going on" when he was at the upscale Montgomery County school, which enrols about 350 children, aged 9 through 12, in the third through sixth grades.

"I would be allowed to use the telephones to check my [computerized answering] service and to set up appointments [with homosexual and heterosexual clients], as long as they weren't set up at the school - that was the arrangement," the prostitute said in one of several interviews.

Davis said Mr. Massaro also explained to him how to turn off the school's audio security system so his calls would not be overheard.

Mr. Massaro confirmed that such listening devices were installed in the school ceilings but denied telling Davis how to have the security system turned off.

"How would I know that these devices were in operation at the school unless he had warned me about them?" Davis asked.

"I normally used the time between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. to set up the appointments for that evening with any of the ladies or myself. And then after 10 o'clock I would have a person who was used as the driver for the [escort] services pick me up at the school. He would pick me up about 10 p.m.," Davis said.

On at least one occasion, Davis claimed to have performed homosexual sex with a client in the guidance counselor's office.

The 45-year-old man who came to the school to have sex with Davis "was a regular client that I knew," the prostitute said. "When I told him that he was going to come to a school, at first he sounded concerned on the telephone. In a joking sort of manner, he asked me if he was being set up.

". . . The client, after thinking about it for a couple of minutes, said, 'Well, it might be a kick.' That was his response. In other words, it was a turn-on for him," Davis said.

The Times has been unable to locate the customer to confirm Davis' story.

The prostitute said that Mr. Massaro did not know "that I had met a client at the school."

"He knew me well enough to know that that was possible and told me that that was not supposed to be done," Davis said. "For the most part, I agreed. I went along with it because it was a threat to the security of the [prostitution] service to have anybody come to the school."

Davis also said Mr. Massaro never knew that his driver went into the school or about the drug use in the building. "I would be there maybe three out of the five nights a week," the prostitute said.

Mr. Massaro said Davis came to the school several times a week during the two-month period in question.

The principal's secretary, Peggy Monday, confirmed Davis's access to the school, but said she saw him no more than once a week. Mrs. Monday said that Mr. Massaro explained Davis' presence at the school by saying the man was a friend of his.

"I would either use his [principal's] office or I would use a guidance counselor's office upstairs" on the school's second floor where 6th grade classrooms and a science lab are located, Davis said.

Told that Davis had given The Times a detailed accounting of his call boy activities and criminal convictions, the principal conceded that he was aware of Davis' work as a prostitute.

Mr. Massaro said he knew the prostitute was still on probation for felony drug and sex offenses and undergoing court-ordered psycho-sexual therapy when he allowed him to use the school's facilities.

A former school counselor, Mr. Massaro said he talked to Davis's sex therapist about his court-ordered treatment after the call boy's felony conviction in 1982 on four charges: possession of obscene material, production of obscene items involving a juvenile, oral sodomy and possession of cocaine. Davis was convicted in 1975 of cocaine distribution.

"There were some afternoons when he just had nowhere to go, so I would just let him come here to the school and just use the bathroom and stuff like that," Mr. Massaro said.

"[The prostitute] used that [counselor's] office," the principal said.

Asked if he authorized the escort free use of school phones, Mr. Massaro responded, "Oh, yes."

Pressed whether Davis might have molested or tried to molest any children at the Chevy Chase school, the principal said, "Oh God, no. He couldn't have. I don't think so. No."

Davis said he had no dealings with any of the children who attended the elementary school.

The call boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus, Mr. Massaro said.

"I introduced him to one of the custodians and the custodian just let him use the facility," he said. "I told him [the custodian] that he was my friend."

"I would leave at five and I thought he [the prostitute] would leave shortly thereafter, but before the custodian would close the building," Mr. Massaro said.

Davis said he advertised his services as an "escort/model" in the classified section of The Washington Blade. He also advertised homosexual escort services under the name "Male Ad" and services for bisexual threesomes under the name "Bi-Couples."

S tephen L. Gobie wanted a sugar daddy, but Barney Frank turned out to be "Sweet'n Low" instead - "a sweet guy, low on cash."

Gobie insisted again as he has in previous interviews that he used the congressman's apartment as a base for a prostitution service - with Mr. Frank's knowledge.

That's what he called his congressional sex partner, Gobie said in exclusive interviews with The Washington Times.

"In this business, the term 'sugar daddy' is popular for a person that supports you and sponsors you financially as well as otherwise," the prostitute 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.' "

Gobie called "preposterous" the Massachusetts Democrat's claim that he was the male hustler's Henry Higgins, intent on helping him straighten out his life while paying him about $20,000 a year to be Mr. Frank's housekeeper and driver.

"The true story is there were no such compensations anywhere near that level of money . . . I would say the total dollar value that came to me from the beginning of the relationship [was] maybe less than $2,500," Gobie said.

Gobie insisted again as he has in previous interviews that he used the congressman's apartment as a base for a prostitution service - with Mr. Frank's knowledge.

One of his clients was Washington power broker and former Japanese lobbyist Craig J. Spence , who has been linked to the homosexual prostitution ring being investigated by federal authorities.

Gobie also said he would willingly appear before the House ethics committee which is expected to investigate Mr. Frank's relationship with the prostitute, "if my lawyer told me that it was in my best interest."

Mr. Frank has acknowledged purchasing sexual services from Gobie after contacting him through an advertisement in The Washington Blade, a newspaper catering to the homosexual community.

The congressman also has admitted knowing of Gobie's continued work as a prostitute while on Mr. Frank's personal payroll from mid-1985 to early 1987 and while Gobie continued to have unlimited access to his house in the 200 block of Eighth Street SE.

But Mr. Frank has denied knowledge of Gobie's operating a prostitution service from his house and has requested the ethics probe in part out of fear that Gobie will embellish his story to improve the chances of selling it as a book.

The differing accounts in this unfolding story of a troubled 18-month liaison between one of the House's leading liberals and the man Mr. Frank says pushed him into publicly acknowledging his homosexuality seem to capture the inherent contradictions in both of their lives.

Mr. Frank, a portly middle-aged Boston career politician when he met Gobie, led the fight in the state legislature in the 1970s for urban "combat zones" for prostitutes. Calling the world's oldest profession "a victimless crime," Mr. Frank now says he was victimized by Gobie.

The prostitute, in turn, a 28-year-old hooker when Mr. Frank answered his ad for "hot bottom and large endowment," rejects being labeled homosexual or bisexual. Instead, he said he's a heterosexual who isn't good at deviant sex.

"My proclivities, my heterosexuality, precluded me from being a successful escort for men because sex was almost non-existent, and the strength of my relationships with men was strictly on my character, personality and my sense of humor," Gobie said.

"But being able to to have people call you and respond [to ads], and continue to be successful and have repeats - people calling you again - is difficult. And then I realized that I was not going to make it as an escort, either for women or for men . . . So I thought if I was going to make it at all, I would make it actually running escort services as a madam because I have a good sense for business."

Coloring Gobie's accusations, however, are a series of criminal convictions dating to 1975. He was convicted at 17 for the felony sale and possession of cocaine in Fairfax County.

Gobie was convicted on four felony counts in 1982: possession of obscene material, productions of obscene items involving a juvenile (taking photos of a 15-year-old girl with whom he was having sex), oral sodomy and possession of cocaine.

Gobie, whose professional name in the underground prostitute trade is "Greg Davis," grew up the son of a Marine Corps master sergeant who was a budget analyst at the Pentagon.

"He was a very strict conservative person from the military, . . . your traditional gung-ho Marine . . . He wanted to lock me in my room for the rest of my life until I agreed to get a haircut," Gobie said.

It was an unhappy boyhood marked by rebellion all the way, Gobie said. He defied all his parents' moral values and teachings.

"At six, I performed oral sex on my first female. She reciprocated. She was five," Gobie said. "I was having orgasms from age nine on . . . My father came to me at the age of 14, I believe, the first time in the basement of my house to discuss sex with me, and I cut him off right away and I said, 'Dad, I probably know more than you do at this point.' "

By age 14, Gobie had been labeled "incorrigible" by Fairfax County juvenile authorities for skipping 9th grade classes at West Springfield High School and refusing to return home on Friday afternoons.

"Me and my friends at 15 were watching X-rated movies on the family projector down in the basement when my family was watching TV upstairs," he said. "A friend of mine worked at a medical building as a janitor at night and he got them out of the psychiatrist's office who used them for sexual marriage counseling."

A year away from home during his sophomore year at a southwest Virginia boarding school failed to mend Gobie's ways, despite his claims of a promising record.

"I was a standout basketball player [at the private school]. I played for the school team. And I also brought my grades back up to an acceptable level," he said. "I wasn't real concerned with making straight As. That wasn't a goal of mine. If it had been, I would have."

BOSTON -
C raig J. Spence, the once-powerful lobbyist who entertained and influenced Washington's elite, died Friday much as he had lived: dressed in a tuxedo in Boston's most expensive hotel, listening to Mozart with three dollars in his pocket.

Mr. Spence told several friends that the call-boy operation was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and other federal authorities as a possible CIA front. He told the friends that the CIA used the service to compromise other federal intelligence officials and foreign diplomats.

Now, many questions may never be answered about the man who was a focus of a federal grand jury investigation for spending $20,000 a month on male prostitutes, orchestrating unauthorized late-night tours of the White House and possibly bribing a Secret Service officer and a member of the Army's Delta Force.

On a mirror in Room 429 of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Mr. Spence on Friday left his final enigma in the form of a suicide note.

With a black felt-tip marker he had written, "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."

As a postscript, he wrote, "To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience."

Mr. Spence was found by hotel employees Friday afternoon lying on his bed, fully clothed, with a telephone cradled in his ear and a Walkman headset containing a cassette tape of Mozart's "A Little Night Music" around his neck, police detectives and other sources said.

Boston's medical examiner had made no official finding on the cause of death yesterday. "That may take as long a couple weeks," said a spokesman for the office. Mr. Spence's body was being held by the medical examiner, who had performed an autopsy, while police tried to contact his survivors.

Found hidden in a false ceiling in the bathroom were seven small packets of Xanex, a prescription anti-depressant, with one pill removed, Detective Sgt. James McDonald said. Also found were Mr. Spence's will and birth certificate.

Mr. Spence was attired in the style he affected at his lavish dinner parties, according to the police report: "black Tux with white shirt, bow tie, white suspenders, black socks and shoes."

"There was no sign of foul play whatsoever, no marks on the body," said Boston Police Detective Robert Harrington. "It was as if he had fallen asleep talking on the telephone."

The door of the hotel had been barricaded with the room's other double bed and a chair, according to a police report. Hotel maintenance workers had to saw through the door to enter the room. The only other way into the room was through a fourth-floor window facing a busy street.

Mr. Spence may have attempted to save himself after taking an intentional overdose, according to police investigators.

"Someone from Washington called the hotel that day and said a Craig Spence had called the caller and may be sick," said a police detective. "But the hotel couldn't find a Mr. Spence registered. It turned out he had checked in under an alias, C.S. Kane." Friends theorized the alias was an ironic takeoff on Orson Welles' fictional hero Citizen Kane, whom Mr. Spence often said he admired.

"The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."
- Craig J. Spence, two weeks ago at a Washington dinner party.

T he room where Craig J. Spence died was awash in the small mysteries and ironies that had followed him - and that he had perpetuated - since he came to Washington in the late 1970s, already an enigmatic figure with strange Asian connections and friends in high places.

The sergeant, who also participated in the July 3 White House tour, allegedly was asked by Mr. Spence for information on Delta Force, a special forces counterterrorism unit based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

On the bed was a newspaper clipping referring to CIA undercover agents. Scrawled on the mirror was a note written to some unnamed "chief," which also contained an obscure phrase in Japanese, "Nisei Bei," which means second-generation American.

But hidden from view, in the room's false ceiling, were personal papers, including a birth certificate describing his arrival as a small-town, middle-class boy - a heritage he spent his life trying to restyle.

"Death, you know, is only painful to the ones you leave behind," Mr. Spence told The Washington Times during an interview in August. "As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to it. At 48, I'll still look good in hell."

The focus of a summer sex scandal, Mr. Spence was found dead Friday in his room at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston. He had celebrated his 49th birthday just three weeks ago at a lavish Washington party.

The Ritz was among Mr. Spence's favorite hostelries, one of several posh accommodations he demanded in his frequent travels throughout the United States, Europe, South and Central America and the Orient.

"I've always been a first-class person in a second-class world, but I've learned to adjust," he said in the interview. "But there are places I've found where a civilized man can exist with some style and dignity."

Mr. Spence's name surfaced this summer after The Times identified the former lobbyist and prominent social host - who could arrange unauthorized late-night tours of the White House for his friends with a single telephone call - as a major client of a homosexual prostitution service being investigated by the Secret Service, Metropolitan Police, the U.S. Attorney's Office and a federal grand jury.

That investigation centered on a homosexual call-boy service that operated out of a house on 34th Place NW. The ring's clients, according to hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by The Times, included government officials, military officers, foreign and U.S. businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals.

The vouchers showed that Mr. Spence spent as much as $20,000 a month for call boys from various escort services run by the ring, including Man-to-Man, Dream Boys, Ultimate First Class and Jovan. He admitted in the interview with The Times that he had used credit cards to purchase sexual services, but strongly hinted of having "firsthand information" about people "high in government" who also were involved.

During the past few weeks, Mr. Spence told several friends that he knew "for a fact" that the call-boy operation was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and other federal authorities as a CIA front. He told the friends the CIA used the service to compromise other federal intelligence officials and foreign diplomats.

Mr. Spence claimed in the interview that he had worked for the CIA on numerous occasions and had been instrumental in a number of covert actions in Vietnam, Japan, Central America and the Middle East - a claim denied by the agency.

"How do you think a little faggot like me moved in the circles I did?" he said. "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?"

The grand jury investigation begun in June by U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens was described as a "credit card" probe. It is not clear, however, how vigorous federal prosecutors have been nor where the case may be headed.

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. Those who were questioned were being asked mainly about national security concerns and possible security breaches at the White House.

Among those not contacted by law enforcement officials or the grand jury were:

* Officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations who were identified in The Times as having used the call-boy service and paid with credit cards.

* Those running the prostitution ring raided in February, and persons who kept the credit-card records of visits with prostitutes by people who worked in the Reagan and Bush White Houses.

* Any of several high-profile friends of Mr. Spence's who attended parties at his Kalorama home or spoke for pay at numerous seminars he sponsored as a registered foreign agent.

* Prostitutes who said they serviced Mr. Spence and military personnel whom the former lobbyist hired as bodyguards.

"I haven't heard one word from the U.S. attorney, the FBI or anyone else," said one of the men whom Mr. Spence got into the White House for a 1 a.m. visit on July 3, 1988. "The Secret Service talked to me back in the summer, after the stories were out, but nothing since then."

Mr. Spence was one key figure who was handed a subpoena more than two months ago but had yet to testify. What arrangements had been made with the former lobbyist are not known. Mr. Spence vowed during the August interview, however, that he would "never be brought back alive before any damned hearing."

Mr. Stephens has declined to comment on the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Strasser, who is handling the matter before the grand jury, also has refused comment. A spokeswoman, Judy Smith, said yesterday that the U.S. Attorney's Office would have no comment on Mr. Spence'sdeath or its potential impact on the investigation.

P enthouse magazine's anxiously awaited account of sexual adventuring by congressmen quotes a female prostitute as corroborating Steven L. Gobie's earlier story that Rep. Barney Frank knew Gobie was operating a bordello in the congressman's Capitol Hill apartment.

According to Gobie, Mr. Spence told him, "Do you know what kind of power you can have over people if you've got something on them? . . . I need boys and girls for people in government and high-level businessmen for my parties, for individuals, for whatever comes up."

The woman, identified only as Lyn, said Mr. Frank called the apartment from his office before coming home to see whether she had finished with her "trick."

She called Mr. Frank's claim that he didn't know what was going on in his Eighth Street SE apartment in his absence "baloney."

The explicit magazine article about Gobie and the sex-for-hire world in which he said he procured prostitutes for famous clients - "Washington's Mayflower Madam" - was written by Art Harris of The Washington Post and Rudy Maxa of Washingtonian magazine.

"Barney would call and ask, 'Are you entertaining company?' " the female prostitute told the authors. "And I'd say, 'Yeah, but they're about to leave.' And he'd say, 'I'll give you 20 or 25 minutes.' "

Many of the details of Gobie's Penthouse story had been reported earlier by The Washington Times, but the article nevertheless cast new light on the underground world to which Gobie says he introduced Mr. Frank.

Mr. Frank's office did not return telephone calls from The Times seeking comment on the Penthouse article. The congressman also would not be interviewed by the authors of the magazine piece.

Mr. Frank, 49, whose actions are under investigation by the House ethics committee, has acknowledged purchasing sexual services from Gobie, 33, and other male prostitutes. He also has admitted employing Gobie as a personal assistant while knowing that Gobie continued to work as a call boy, but has insisted that he did not know that the services of prostitutes were being sold from his apartment.

The congressman has said he threw Gobie out in the summer of 1987, ending their two-year relationship, after he discovered the call boy was running a prostitution business from the apartment.

"Barney was hot," Gobie told the magazine. "He said, 'The landlord found out what's going on. One of your girls asked if this was the place to come for escort interviews. . . . Do you realize what could happen if The Washington Post got a hold of this?' "

But Mr. Frank has conceded that he remained in touch with Gobie through New Year's Day 1988, even allowing the prostitute continued use of his car with its congressional license plate.

In the Penthouse article, Gobie said Mr. Frank even offered him $10,000 to $12,000 to help him relocate to Florida. Gobie, who once said he thought about opening up an escort business along Florida's "gold coast," said he rejected the offer.

Gobie has said Mr. Frank, whom he dubbed Sweet 'n' Low for "sweet guy, low on cash," was aware of the larger prostitution operation and delighted in being told about the call boy's sexual encounters.

Mr. Frank also has admitted to using congressional stationery to write several letters to Virginia probation officials to persuade them to shorten Gobie's probation stemming from felony convictions for drug offenses and for sex offenses involving a minor girl.

A Williamson doctor facing an August medical licensure hearing and a possible criminal retrial in Kentucky was recently named Mingo County's medical examiner.

"A physician has nothing to gain from a suicide. A mortician does."

Diane Shafer , who was charged with bribing a Kentucky hearing examiner she later married, will replace former sheriff and funeral home owner Gerald Chafin, who had been named county coroner earlier in the month. Shafer is apparently now married to or involved with Henry Vinson, the former Mingo County coroner who served time in prison for running a Washington, D.C., male prostitution ring which reached the White House.

Since 1975, all West Virginia counties have been required to have a physician serve as a county medical examiner, responding to homicides, suicides, accidents and questionable deaths. The examiner's role is to survey the body, talk to police on the scene, and gather information for the state medical examiner offices in Charleston, Morgantown and Wheeling.

The Mingo County post had been vacant for about a year, forcing police to wait up to two or three hours for a medical examiner to come from Charleston.

In early June, Mingo County commissioners appointed Chafin county coroner. He has had his own legal troubles in recent years, having been twice indicted on federal wiretap charges that were later dismissed.

"I told them he really doesn't fit the guidelines. Do you have a physician down there? Then she [Shafer] called," State Medical Examiner Irwin Sopher said.

Sopher knew of Shafer's controversial history, which included a bribery conviction in Kentucky that was later overturned, the current loss of her Kentucky medical license and a prior suspension of her West Virginia medical license.

"Well, she has a license to practice medicine, and I discussed some of these things with her, and I think she'll be able to handle some of this," Sopher said. "The job is mainly a reporting position.

"They don't do examinations, or actual autopsies."

He said the job pays $50 per case, making it difficult sometimes to attract physicians. At times, nurses, dentists, funeral directors or other people have served as interim coroners, as is currently the case in about six counties, Sopher said.

Sopher said the Mingo County medical examiner would typically handle about 60 cases a year.

Shafer's criminal conviction on bribery charges in Kentucky was overturned in 1995 by the state's Supreme Court.

The retrial had been set for earlier this year but was apparently postponed. Shafer said she thinks the charges will be dropped. She was convicted in Kentucky state court of bribing Gregory Holmes, a Kentucky hearing examiner who was reviewing charges she overbilled insurers for her work. Holmes, a blind and already married 39-year-old lawyer, cleared her of wrongdoing 10 days after they were allegedly married and after Shafer allegedly gave him $ 42,500. Holmes, who denied marrying Shafer, was convicted of bigamy and bribery. A medical board panel in West Virginia found probable cause to take

During a 1982 investigation into the use of "drugs and sexual activity to lobby congressmen," Shoffler did indeed advise congressional investigators to look into a male prostitution ring that serviced Capitol Hill. The veteran police detective believed that the sex ring might be linked to high-flying Washington lobbyist, Robert Keith Gray, who had more than a few connections to CIA folk. According to Peter Dale Scott, some Washington investigators also suspected that the gay sex ring was connected to DC crime boss Joe "the Possum" Nesline.

Most interestingly, the Watergate madam, Heidi Rikan, was a girlfriend of mobster Joe "the Possum" Nesline, whose alleged connection to the Capitol Hill gay sex scandal a decade later aroused the suspicion of Washington detectives.

Assorted boyfriends and former husbands of both Rikan and her sometimes roommate, Maurine "Mo" Biner (who married key Watergate figure John Dean, which makes Mo a pivotal character, according to scandal revisionists) were associated with the Quorum, an early 1960s "swingles' club run by Bobby Baker, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson. Scott surmises that all roads led to Baker's club for a reason: the Quorum functioned a lot like the mob-and-intelligence-infested sex traps of the 1970s.

It was Bobby Baker who introduced President Kennedy to an East German bombshell named Ellen Rometsch, whom JFK, true to form, promptly bedded. Scott speculates that J. Edgar Hoover leaked word of this international indiscretion to the press. Whether or not Hoover was behind the leaks, they nearly ignited a global scandal.

Hougan, Jim. "Secret Agenda: watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA." New York: Random House, 1984.

Scott, Peter Dale. "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK." Berkeley, CA: University of California press, 1993.

[And who was one of Nesline's best buddies, and landlord? Yep. Nathan Landow. Mr. Landow knows the 'game', and has for a long time.]

The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report has been classified SECRET and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired.

No further information will be available. No further action will be taken.

A Secret Service officer assigned to the midnight shift at the White House was interrogated for more than 10 hours Monday about his association with Craig J. Spence - Washington lobbyist; host to the capital's political, business and media elite; and patron of homosexual call-boy services - and the officer was said to have failed a lie-detector test.

The officer, Reginald A. deGueldre, accepted a gold Rolex wristwatch valued at $8,000 in return for "unspecified favors" from Mr. Spence, for whom he arranged at least four middle-of-the-night private tours of the White House for high-ranking military officers, well-known figures in the news media and male prostitutes.

President Reagan was in the White House residential quarters during one of the Spence visits, which was restricted to the West Wing, site of the Oval Office.

U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens, meanwhile, widened his investigation of the homosexual prostitution ring, which has ensnared Mr. Spence and several key Reagan and Bush administration officials.

Mr. Stephens' office is now looking closely at the White House tours and the activities of Mr. Spence, 48, a consultant to Japanese government officials and others.

John Pyles, the Secret Service special agent assigned to direct the investigation of allegations of breaches of White House security, said only, "We're not in a position to talk about this."

Mr. Pyles and Secret Service spokesman Allan Cramer said they were ordered to refer inquiries about the investigation to Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Strasser, who is preparing evidence for presentation to the federal grand jury.

"You'd have to ask them why they referred you to me," Mr. Strasser said yesterday. "There is nothing I care to say to you about this at this time."

The Secret Service, after accounts were published in The Washington Times, has talked to people who took the July 3, 1988, White House tour set up by Mr. Spence, several of those interviewed say.

The agents are investigating possible security breaches by those who entered the White House compound as well as by Officer deGueldre, The Times was told.

One of those reached yesterday by the Secret Service said questioning focused on Mr. Spence and his associates. Questions were also asked about Mr. Spence and the use of cocaine.

Officer deGueldre failed the portion of a polygraph test involving favors he may have done for Mr. Spence, the law enforcement official said. The Secret Service officer visited on several social occasions with Mr. Spence, who was said to have held out the offer of a high-paying security industry job in Florida to him.

Officer deGueldre, who said he immediately reported himself to his superiors when the story of the late-night Spence visit appeared in the June 29 editions of The Washington Times, said he had done nothing wrong.

"To this day, I still believe that Craig is still an American hero," the Secret Service officer said. "The guy never hit on me. . . . My relationship to him was officer to citizen. . . . That's how I met him - when I was walking the street (as a patrolman in the embassy area of the fashionable Kalorama neighborhood where Mr. Spence lived).

"The first time he called me was maybe five years later," Officer deGueldre said. "He said he wanted to be my friend and invited me to a party. . . . I was shocked.

"I was introduced on a one-to-one basis with some very important people. . . . I met top brass, politicals . . . I was invited to a lot of functions at Craig's house. There was all kinds of heavy types there."

But, the officer added: "I had no idea about sex, drugs, nothing like that. . . . A lot of stuff now makes sense though. . . . I always suspected he worked for the CIA."

O .K., you guys over there on 15th Street, if you sleep through this one, too, you ought to go back to Dubuque to sell shoes.

That's the energy and curiosity level of a lot of Washington reporters. They get a press flack's lie and that satisfies them.

When last we left those wonderful folks at The Post, they were explaining that the way to cover the Great Summer Sex Scandal, starring Craig Spence and a cast of frightened dozens, was to tell their readers that actually there's no story there.

"The Bombshell That Didn't Explode" is the way Eleanor Randolph, the O.P. media critic, described on Aug. 1 the story that everybody in town has been talking about since the story broke here June 29. The Wall Street Journal even did a story about how The Times had got the best of The Post.

"Journalists have been left debating whether The Times published a blockbuster or a 'blockbluster,'" she wrote. The second 'l' in "blockbluster" was supposed to be the equivalent of a nudge and a wink from the classy Miss Randolph.

Leonard Downie Jr., the managing editor at The Post, stroked his chin whiskers, put on his wise-old-owl look, and told her: " . . . we [had] already reported about this raid and we wondered what more there was in this story that we would want to publish." What he didn't say, but what his readers could only conclude, was that he couldn't get anybody to find out. So he just wondered.

The usual suspects were brought in to help. Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times conceded that his newspaper defers to The Post and The New York Times to decide what's news in Washington, and said he sent reporters out to see whether there was a story and they couldn't find anything.

Howell Raines of The New York Times seemed, as usual, a bit dazed by it all. He agreed there was "obviously some kind of investigation going on," but danged if he could figure out what it was about. He said

West Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Sopher, who hired Diane Shafer  was on the medical team that examined the remains in Oswald's coffin to determine the identity of the exhumed corpse.

Alexandra Colen, "Some Post-Christian Realities," The Human Life Review, Spring 1997 issue, pp. 53-60.

The author, a member of the Belgian Parliament and former lecturer at the Universities of Ghent and Antwerp, discusses the pervasiveness and excesses of pedophilia and pedophilia-related murders and underground events ("The Pink Ballets") in Belgium. Pink Ballets and Protected Pornographers ... "Post-Christian Realities" by Alexandra Cohen (Human Life Review, Spring 1997)

Of course, this is all very complicated and convoluted, that's how they know they can get away with anything.
That's how they got away with the Kennedy hit.
By burying their actions under a mountain of outrageous and heinous acts,
they can count on most peoples natural tendency to disbelieve
that such nice looking people like the Bushes could be capable of being such monsters -
That such evil could exist.
It is chilling that such evil people like the Bush family really do exist.
But they do.

Know Your Enemy