Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Douglas Dietrich did not shut down the US Army Post Presidio

For decades, Douglas Dietrich has based his own credibility on falsely claiming that he was responsible for single-handedly causing the closure of the US Army Post Presidio and by extension, removing an entire Division from the United States Army.


6th US Army


The Sixth Division of the US Army had its headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco.  The 6th Army's primary goal and mission objective was to provide training to Reserve Units serving the 12 Western States.


Dietrich continues to claim that he had been exposing child abuse occurring at the Presidio Child Development Center in 1986.

Dietrich says he was secretly reporting to law enforcement and personally caused the arrest of Gary W. Hambright, who he also claims was his former art teacher in high school.

He also claims to have been the "understudy" of Lt.Col. Michael Aquino.
Michael Aquino consistently denied ever knowing or being involved in any way with Dietrich until his death in 2019.  

His book:  Extreme Prejudice: The Presidio "Satanic Abuse" Scam, contains information and copies of official documents that refute Dietrich's story.

My research found:

- Douglas Dietrich was living in Oakland, Ca (not San Francisco) at the time.

- He was never a civilian librarian employed by the DOD at the Presidio.

- He agreed to a delayed enlistment in the USMC in October 1986.

- No evidence Dietrich was involved as an informant or contributed to the investigation

- Dietrich had no knowledge of Gary W. Hambright.  Dietrich has falsely claimed Hambright was the Director of the Child Development Center.

- Dietrich was never consulted by local media sources.

- No evidence Michael Aquino was involved with Dietrich.

- The Presidio was closed during a post-Cold War reduction in force following an act of Congress in 1988.




Background:  

Book, McMartin Pre-school, Presidio, Satanic Panic

                                                Michelle Remembers - Wikipedia






                 Dates of scandals:  1983-1990 and 1986-88


STATEMENT FOR WITCHCRAFT, SATANISM & OCCULT CRIME - FIFTH EDITION by Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. 
March 26, 1993

The "Satanic scare" of the 1980s

In 1980 a Canadian psychiatrist named Lawrence Pazder published Michelle Remembers, a book in which his client / wife Michelle Smith alleged that (a) as a child she had been sexually abused by Satanists and (b) because the experience had been so traumatic, she had repressed all memory of it until Pazder's "therapy" revived it.

On September 30, 1990 London's Mail on Sunday newspaper, as the result of extensive investigation into Smith's background - to include interviews with her father, her first husband, her neighbors, and Canadian occult historians of the 1950s - exposed the book as a fraud. But in the intervening ten years Michelle Remembers inspired a devastating epidemic of copycat accusations directed against legitimate Satanists, non-Satanic occultists, and many other innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the occult.

A secondary theme - Satanic preying upon children in day-care facilities - was invented by Judy Johnson, a woman diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia by the UC Irvine Medical Center, when in 1983 she alleged that Michelle-style "Satanic sex rituals" had been practiced on her child at the McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles. A witch-hunt, swollen with zealous prosecutors and abuse- finding "therapists", commenced which again provided inspiration for a flood of similar accusations, witch-hunts, massive financial claims, and publicity posturing across the United States. Johnson's role was quickly forgotten. Four months before the McMartin trial started in 1987, police found her lying naked and face-down in her son's bedroom, dead of an alcoholism-related liver disease - her phone off the hook and the Yellow Pages opened to "Liquor Stores". (Los Angles Magazine, October 1989).

McMartin trial in 1987:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial

"Accusations were made in 1983, arrests and the pretrial investigation took place from 1984 to 1987, and trials ran from 1987 to 1990. The case lasted seven years but resulted in no convictions, and all charges were dropped in 1990. By the case's end, it had become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history.[2][3] The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s."

https://web.archive.org/web/20150827051451/http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/sat33.htm

Satanic panic : the creation of a contemporary legend : Victor, Jeffrey S : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Dates Dietrich has presented:  1983 (GED) - 1986-88 (Presidio scandal)


From the dates Dietrich gives in his "bio",  he was working full time as a Civilian DOD employee "Librarian" at the Presidio Post Library while also attending college(s) full time until 1989.

I have discredited those claims in previous posts on this blog.

"Proof Dietrich was never a Librarian" Parts one and two.

He also claims that he was re-hired by the DOD as a "Librarian/Military Reference Technician"  from 1991  to 1992 while also attending an acting school.


Dietrich wrote:

"By 1986 “Mission-creep” (ever-expanding and improperly delegated responsibilities) in my duties as a Postal Librarian eventually exposed me to bloodcurdling stories of abuse relayed by the children using the Post Library's Children's Room that the elder staff kept dismissing as childhood fantasies.

The Child Development Center on-Post was managed by Gary Willard Hambright (b.1952—d.1990), an ordained Southern Baptist Minister without a pulpit who had been my Graphic Arts instructor at the John O’Connell Vocational Institute.

By the time I succeeded in forcing the multiple authorities involved in investigating the ongoing assaults against the base’s underage population to act on my evidence against him (he openly maintained reams of his child pornography “in plain sight” by secreting it in the storage area of John O’Connell’s Commercial Illustration Studios as “art reference) –  it was January 5th, 1987." 

"Indeed, my exposure of the location of “Mr. Gary’s” pedophiliac pornography stash as located off-Base limits (in an SFUSD San Francisco Unified School District facility no less, placed his particular case within Municipal – as opposed to Federal – jurisdiction.

 This enabled the one woman whom I considered the only truly professional investigator to be involved in this interdepartmental circus – the tall, naturally blonde, and thoroughly righteous Sergeant Sandi Gallant of the SFPD Intelligence Division, a nationally recognized Specialist in Satanic Crime(s) – to place “the Right Reverend” Hambright in San Francisco County Detention." 


The Day Care center was building 387, (not 666) located next to the Post Library (building 386 built in 1960) where Dietrich falsely claims to have been a DOD Librarian.

Dietrich claims to have witnessed children with bleeding anuses while working in the library and treated them by using tampons he had taken from the library's women's bathroom as "first aid".

Think about that.  What were unsupervised, injured children doing in the library, hundreds of feet from the Child Development Center?  And how could he possibly have treated any of them as he described without their parents knowing or eventually finding out?


Dietrich was never a DOD civilian employee and did not have access to the Presidio  (1986). 


This document, obtained from the Department of Defense Manpower Data Center (DMPC) shows Dietrich was employed by the DOD  for 90 days as a US Marine recruit.

Had he ever been employed as a civilian by the DOD, his job title and dates of employment would be shown.  

No such details are shown.  Proving Dietrich was never employed as a civilian by the DOD.




Presidio Scandal:

Dietrich claims Gary W. Hambright was his art teacher in HS. Dietrich would have had no association with Hambright after 1983 but suddenly begins reporting him to the SFPD in 1986-87, specifically detective Sandi Gallant, claiming Hambright had a stash of child porn hidden in the art department supplies at John Oconnell High School and was also abusing children at the Presidio Daycare Center.  


Hambright was a substitute teacher who had worked in San Francisco schools for many years until he took a job at the Presidio Development Center in June 1985.

Hambright was arrested for the first time in December 1986 and indicted in January 1987  following a November 1986 complaint by Joyce Tobin (wife of US Army Captain (Chaplain) Michael Tobin, assigned to the Presidio concerning their 3-year-old son David Tobin. 

Not as a result of any report to police by Douglas Dietrich. 

The fact Hambright was a substitute teacher is a key piece of information that indicates Dietrich likely only saw Hambright in his art class as a substitute from time to time, and only until 1983 when he says he received a GED. 

Police and media reports made no mention of a secreted stash of child porn at John Oconnoll HS, in fact, possession of child porn was never associated with Hambright.

And since he did not work as a librarian at the Presidio Post Library, Dietrich would also have had no idea Hambright was working at the child care center.  Dietrich likely became aware of this in December 1986 or early 1987 from local news reporting Hambright's arrest.

This was also one month after Dietrich agreed to a delayed enlistment in the USMC.


Dietrich did not close down the Child Care Center:

September 22, 1987 

"A fire which the Army deemed to be accidental, destroyed the Army Community Services Building adjacent to the Presidio's daycare center. Strangely enough, “the fire occurred on the autumnal equinox, a major event on the satanic calendar,” as the Mercury News noted. The fire also destroyed some of the center's records. 

“Three weeks later, fire struck again, this time at the daycare center itself.” Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms determined that “both fires, contrary to the Army's finding, had been arson.” 

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/cil0y8/the_pedophocracy_by_david_mcgowan/


LOS ANGELES TIMES

"ARMY WILL CLOSE CHILD-CARE CENTER":

 November 16, 1987

The Army announced it is closing and demolishing a child-care center at its base at the Presidio after allegations that as many as 60 youngsters were sexually abused there.

Maj. Greg Rixon, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the Presidio Child Development Center would be closed Friday and a new center would be opened by April.

A Presidio spokesman, Bob Mahoney, said the closing, which was disclosed Saturday, was for ”health, safety and sanitation reasons and not as a result of allegations of child abuse.”

But Representative Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said Army officials had told her earlier that some children were afraid to return to the center.

Incredibly, no mention was made by local news sources of the fire in relation to the closing as directed by the Presidio Post Commander.


Dietrich did not work with local reporters:

Dietrich claims to have worked as a consultant to San Jose Mercury News reporter Linda Goldston for a lengthy article she published in July 1988: 

But his bio states he was in Iraq from April to August 1988 working as a propagandist for the Ba'ath Party.

"Written by Linda Goldston, (in consultation with Douglas Dietrich, who was secretly providing evidence to San Francisco Law Enforcement at the time,) and originally printed in San Jose Mercury News on July 24, 1988."   

https://douglasdietrich.com/2019/11/01/child-abuse-at-the-presidio-the-parents-agony-the-armys-coverup-the-prosecutions-failure/


Excerpt from the article:  (Which includes a phrase written by Goldston that Dietrich used for years when describing Hambright).

San Jose Mercury News 

July 24, 1988. 

by Linda Goldston

"Hambright, 35, was an ordained Southern Baptist minister without a pulpit. After moving to the Bay Area in 1977 from his home in Tacoma, Wash., he worked as a substitute teacher in San Francisco schools before taking the $7.59 per hour job at the daycare center in 1985. 

At his arraignment, he described himself as “an educator, not a criminal.” His close friend Gordon Grover, a beauty salon owner, said the thin, pale man with blond hair is “probably one of the most gentle people you will ever know.”

“He’s always got time to give kids a hug when they’re crying” Grover said “He’s just really a kind person.”

After the arrest, Hambright took part-time jobs cleaning houses and washing windows. He lived with friends and continued to be closely associated with Dolores Street Baptist Church in San Francisco."

https://americasmiachildren.com/child-sexual-abuse-at-the-presidio/


Dietrich claims Hambright lived in a church:

Dietrich would have been required to physically file a written police report with the SFPD. Yet no such report exists and no mention of Dietrich has ever been made in any court transcript, police document, or news report associated with the scandal.

Two addresses were associated with Hambright in the initial report by Joyce Tobin and the SFPD Search warrant for Aquino and other documents:  208 Dolares St and 1206 Valencia St (Mission district)

Not the Dolares St Baptist Church at 1268 Sanchez St, San Francisco, CA where Dietrich claimed Hambright was living.

The case against Gary Hambright collapsed in February. And in March 1987, when a federal judge disallowed hearsay testimony from parents and therapists, prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed. 

Michael Aquino:

Lt. Col Aquino had been assigned to the Presidio until 1986 when he was selected to attend the National Defense University in Washington, DC  where he also attended George Washington University until 1987.  Aquino and his wife were largely unaware of the scandal at the Presidio while on Temporary Assigned Duty (TAD) living in Washington, DC.

Unfortunately for Aquino, a fellow Army Officer, Captain (Chaplain) Michael Tobin, and his wife began making allegations against him in the summer of 1987 following his reassignment to the Presidio. Ultimately, Aquino was never charged nor indicted and the accusations against him were eventually found to be baseless.

Aquino's alibi:

Dietrich’s claim that he "vouched for Aquino" to investigators that Aquino was not in San Francisco or at the Presidio on any of the alleged dates is disproved by Aquino himself, in his own alibi that he provided to the SFPD, FBI, and Army CID.

Aquino documents the details of the scandal pertaining to himself in his 2014 book "Extreme Prejudice: The Presidio Satanic Abuse Scam" where no mention of Douglas Dietrich is ever made.

https://www.docdroid.net/Ag1gdyH/extreme-prejudice-the-presidio-michael-a-aquino-pdf



Radio influence of Mae Brussel:

Popular radio host and researcher Mae Brussel had been following the scandals beginning in 1983 with the McMartin Preschool and later the Presidio until 1987 and reported about and commented about them on the radio.  She continued to do so following the acquittal of Gary Hambright and the subsequent accusations against Michael Aquino in the summer of 1987 and the resulting investigations. 

Douglas Dietrich may well have listened to Brussels radio shows during the time he was living in Oakland, CA. 

I believe this was the first time Dietrich heard of Michael Aquino and his connection to Satanism and that this inspired Dietrich to create the bizarre story many years later of his own involvement in order to achieve attention and credibility within the conspiracy community.


Enlistment in USMC

In October 1986, (two months before the first arrest of Gary Hambright) Dietrich agreed to a one-year delayed enlistment in the US Marine Corps and became a USMC "poolee," The program was designed by recruiters to motivate and better prepare potential recruits for basic training.

Dietrich would have participated in these activities with other "poolees" and any outstanding issues such as traffic tickets or court fees or fines would have been resolved and paid for by the USMC with the recruiter personally visiting the appropriate offices with the potential recruit in tow.

Had Dietrich actually been an active informant to local law enforcement about Hambright and the Presidio child abuse scandal, his recruiter would have known about it because this would have posed a serious impediment to his enlistment as it could have potentially required him to testify as a witness during a trial.

The same would have applied to his involvement in the case of Michael Aquino who was under investigation beginning in July 1987. 

But Dietrich was never an informant and had no involvement with the Presidio whatsoever.  He completed his year as a "poolee" and was processed at the Oakland, CA, Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) where he underwent physical, dental and medical evaluations and signed a contract of enlistment that guaranteed him the rank of E-2 (PFC) upon completion of boot camp and took the Oath of Enlistment. 

The document shows his place of enlistment to be Oakland, CA, not San Francisco, CA as he has claimed.


This proves that Dietrich was not living in the City of San Francisco during the Presidio Child Care Scandal (1986-1987).

Dietrich then reported for recruit training on Oct 19, 1987, at MCRD San Diego, CA.  
One month after the suspicious fire at the Presidio daycare center occurred, and one month before the daycare center was closed prior to being demolished in November 1987.

But for some unknown reason, Dietrich was determined by his Drill Instructors and Recruit Series Commander to be unfit for service and given an Entry Level Separation Dischcharge (ELS) on January 11, 1988.

Obtaining Dietrich's records:

The documents were legally obtained, by me, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act of 1974 from the National Archives and Records Administration in 2016 and are considered to be "a matter of public record"

My request was screened and processed by Document Technicians at the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO.  The NA Form 13164 clearly states the information was "Releasable Under the Freedom of Information Act" 

They were neither altered nor forged and the public display of these documents does not violate the Privacy Act and is allowed under the guidelines of "Fair Use" for the purposes of investigative reporting and education.



Douglas Dietrich was not a US Marine because he did not complete the 90 days of basic training (active duty as a recruit), and did not meet the 180-day minimum active duty requirement for being a US Veteran.


Base Closure:

As the Cold War drew to an end, the Department of Defense prepared to make adjustments to its budget and prepared for a reduction in force (RIF) including the deployment of US Forces abroad and its forces on bases within the continental United States (CONUS).

A similar reduction in force had previously been conducted by the US Army in 1975 following the war in Vietnam.

In May 1988, four months after Dietrich was given an Entry Level Separation from the USMC, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) included the Presidio among its list of nearly 150 DOD facilities across the country and overseas to be closed. 

The Presidio then began the process of "drawdown" and finally sent its remaining training units in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991.

In October 1994 the Sixth Army was officially inactivated and the Presidio was closed as an active U.S. Army installation per BRAC. The Presidio was then transferred to the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service.


Aftermath at SFPD Intelligence Division:

(Of which Sandi Gallant had been a member for many years)

According to a December 19, 1990 report by the San Francisco Examiner, “Massive S.F. Police Shakeup” 

 “Massive S.F. Police Shake-Up”  New Chief Casey to Reassign 16 of 22 Captains, Abolish Department Intelligence Unit  by Larry Maatz of the Examiner Staff  Malcolm Glover of The Examiner Staff contributed to this report.  December 19, 1990  In one of the most far-reaching shake-ups in the history of the San Francisco Police  Department, newly-appointed Police Chief Willis Casey is disbanding the Department’s  controversial Intelligence Division and is reassigning 16 of the force’s 22 captains.  Within the week Casey also will announce the reassignment of more than half the  department’s 78 lieutenants. “Simply put, it’s time for a change,” Casey said late  Tuesday. “I can’t make it any more clear than that.”  Casey plans to announce the changes Wednesday."

(Aquino, Michael. Extreme Prejudice: The Presidio Satanic Abuse Scam (p. 268). 

In addition, the US Army since 1988 had been left to deal with the nearly $60 million dollars in lawsuits by parents made against it. 

The parents' claims were denied by the US Army but the greedy parents then filed civil suits that resulted in messy civil trials involving monetary awards which the parents were later found to have controlled and extorted from the children for years long after the scandal.


Conclusion:

Many more related details can be found here in a previous (2019) post about the Presidio Scandal etc.

Dietrich "Exposed the Presidio Child Abuse Scandal" Lie: Michael Aquino, The Presidio and Mae Brussell"

https://rkcolejr.blogspot.com/2019/11/i-exposed-presidio-child-abuse-scandal.html


Sources:

http://www.franciscodacosta.com/articles/sixth_army.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Realignment_and_Closure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Base_Realignment_and_Closure_Commission

https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/post-to-park.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria

http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/aquino01.htm

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