Chapter 47

Food For Thought

Rather than raise your eyebrows with my own allegations and experiences, I thought
that perhaps my readers might want some third party confirmations. To that end, I have
added this short chapter with the comments of over dozen credible people, some of
whom devoted their careers to keep drugs off the streets and away from the school
yards. So without further adieu…

"Our covert agencies have converted themselves to channels for drugs."

--Senator John Kerry, 1988

"It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras...We can
produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been
called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because
it would threaten national security."
--Senator John Kerry at a closed door Senate Committee hearing

"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related

agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."
--Dennis Dayle, former chief of DEA CENTAC.(Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics:
Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. x-xi.)

"There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, on the payroll of, and
carrying the credentials of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while
involved in support of the contras."
—Senator John Kerry, The Washington Post (1996).

“Although you were the first to report Nelson and Jeb you weren’t the last.
Frankly, I did not believe you at first until Nelson actually gut busted in 1997 in
Saskatchewan. Shortly thereafter Chip Tatum and Ted Gunderson confirmed your
claims. But as you suspected, Mueller told our field agents that we had an official
“Hands Off” policy on Nelson’s smuggling operation”.

As for Cheney’s insider trading, I reached out to John Wheeler at the SEC a while
ago and asked him to contact you while you were still in Miami, but apparently
you were traveling quite a bit”

-FBI OPR Chief John O’Neil in 2000 telephone conversation with this author.

“Yeah, we knew about Nelson and his Canadian loads for few years now, but
Ottawa told our boys to stand down, and believe me, none of us are happy about
this bullshit.”
- RCMP Yves Goupil in his first 2009 Beijing interview with this author
“Everything you told me about AFG, Chism, Noriega, and their ring checked out
Tony, but I was not the one calling the shots, and after I turned in my reports I
was told some agents from Washington were taking over the case and would be
in touch with you.”

– Former Miami FBI agent, Maury Berthon.

“Tony, you have to be careful. Finta told Terry (Nelson) he was going to take out a
contract on you and he asked me where you live and work. I told him you lived in
Kendal but sooner or later his guys will find you.” – Insider Erling Ingvladsen. (About two
weeks before Fort Apache drive by shooting incident in 1994 – See affidavits of Ingvaldsen in Chapter 19)

“(Felix) Rodriguez told me that if I stick to their story they will release me after the
elections. If I tell the truth, I will be facing another 15 years minimum behind bars.
And now old man Bush stopped taking my calls. If anything happens to me, get
the phone to that Kwitny guy from the Wall Street Journal. I already told him
about you and I will introduce you on his next visit. I already told him about Seal
and North and just tell him to get statements from Hippie (Betzner) and Jairo if
they fuck me over on this Senate shit. I really don’t trust them any more Tony, but
Maggie (wife) wants me do what they want. Maybe we should reach out to Martha
(Honey) and those Christic people. Do you think we should get (Lawyer John)
Mattes involved as a witness about Garcia and the machine gun (used to murder
Seal)? What do you think? Shelly (Lawyer Sheldon Yavitz) thinks I should play
dumb about that. Should I tell the Senate the story, or just suggest they talk with
(Jesus) Garcia, or not even mention it at all?. Fuck Tony, they really have me by
the balls, and if Rodriguez and (Don) Gregg play the bad memory card, it’s game
over for me.”

– George Morales, Contra smuggler in a one hour conversation with the author in MCC Law Library
(Before his closed door testimony before Senator John Kerry. (See affidavit of his pilot Gary Betzner)

"...officials in the Justice Department sought to undermine attempts by Senator

Kerry to have hearings held on the allegations."
-Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee

“We live in a dirty and dangerous world ... There are some things the general
public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when
the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press
can decide whether to print what it knows.”
--1988 speech by Washington Post owner Katharine Graham at CIA Headquarters

Listen Tony, if you drag my cousin (Juan David Morgan) or my wife (Teresita
Tapia) into this shit, I promise you that your daughter will disappear from the face
of this Earth and you’ll spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair!”
- Ed Chism, CEO of American Financial Group threatening the author in 1996 regarding the SEC and FBI
investigations and the author’s law suit. (See Chapters 24 and 25)

"We were complicit as a country, in narcotics traffic at the same time as we're
spending countless dollars in this country as we try to get rid of this problem. It's
mind-boggling. I don't know if we got the worst intelligence system in the world, i
don't know if we have the best and they knew it all, and just overlooked it. But no
matter how you look at it, something's wrong. Something is really wrong out
there."
-- Senator John Kerry, Iran Contra Hearings, 1987

"it is common knowledge here in Miami that this whole Contra operation was paid
for with cocaine... I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together under one
roof, weapons that I helped ship to Costa Rica."
--Oliver North employee Jesus Garcia December, 1986

"I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years with less
evidence for conspiracy than is available against Ollie North and CIA people...I
personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug
world in three countries. The CIA killed it."
Former DEA Agent Michael Levine - CNBC-TV, October 8, 1996

“It’s embarrassing but we got more honest information from you than the FBI
about Nelson. I will type up my report and forward it to Superintendent Soave”
– RCMP Peter Besson, Chief of RCMP Organized Crime Task Force in conversation with the author after
extensive debriefing in 2001

“My Canadian intelligence sources gave me documents that confirm your AFG
and Panama bank accounts story but if can’t go public with a statement from you
and your wife, my editor won’t run the story. Maybe we should just start with the
book seizure thing and see what happens? I’m not sure my editors will let me
publish the intel reports.”
- Paul McKay, investigative reporter from Ottawa Citizen in a secret 2003 meeting with the author at his
father’s Toronto home.(See his letter dated May/2003 to the author).

“I’m sorry Mr. Gorcyca, as much as Yves and I want act on your information, we
can’t. In fact, Ottawa says we have to cut off communications with you.” – RCMP
Robert Ring, Beijing, China (2016)

"When this whole business of drug trafficking came out in the open in the
Contras, the CIA gave a document to Cesar, Popo Chamorro and Marcos Aguado,
too...""..They said this is a document holding them harmless, without any
responsibility, for having worked in U.S. security..."
--Eden Pastora, Former ARDE Contra leader - November 26, 1996, speaking before the Senate Select
Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s

"I believe that elements working for the CIA were involved in bringing drugs into
the country," "I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning
some of the pilots, in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of
these drugs in government air bases. And I know so because I was told by some
of these pilots that in fact they had done that."
– Retired DEA agent Hector Berrellez on PBS Frontline. Berrellez was a supervisory agent on the
Enrique Camarena murder investigation

“Anthony, you really need to be on your toes. Erling (Ingvaldsen) is convinced

that (Terry) Nelson and Big Steve (Finta) want you dead or locked away forever.
With (Greg) Coleman being assigned to your case, I also worry for your safety.
These guys have arranged at least a dozen murders that I know of and they even
poisoned Erling (Ingvaldsen) and Ted (Gunderson). (Kurt) Emmer says it was
(Colonel George) Griggs who gave him cancer and I’m sure he also did the hit on
your pal Pierre (Gonyou), but his wife is too afraid to talk about it. Can you please
persuade Melonie to talk with me?
- Retired Navy Pilot and author Rodney Stitch circa 2004-2005 in a telephone conversation with the
author.
.
"I do think it a terrible mistake to say that 'We're going to allow drug trafficking to
destroy American citizens as a consequence of believing that the contra effort
was a higher priority."
- Senator Robert Kerrey (D-NE)

A Sept. 26, 1984, Miami police intelligence report noted that money supporting
contras being illegally trained in Florida "comes from narcotics transactions."
Every page of the report is stamped: "Record furnished to George Kosinsky,
FBI." Is Mr. Kosinsky's number missing from (Janet) Reno's rolodex?

– Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein, 1996. Janet Reno was at that time (1984),
the Florida State prosecutor.----on Sept. 13, 1996, the nation's highest law
enforcement official, Attorney General Janet Reno, stated flatly that there's "no
evidence" at this time to support the charges. And a week earlier, on Sept. 7,
director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, stated his belief that there's "no
substance" to allegations of CIA involvement.

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's
Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug
dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been
documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine
consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian
cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-
supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... other groups and/or
individuals like Manual Noriega."
-- Michael Levine, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic

"To my great regret, the bureau (FBI) has told me that some of the people I
identified as being involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the
Central Intelligence Agency."

--Wanda Palacio’s 1987 sworn testimony before U.S. Sen. John Kerry's Senate Subcommittee on
Narcotics and International Terrorism.
“I sat gape-mouthed as I heard the CIA Inspector General, testify that there has
existed a secret agreement between CIA and the Justice Department, wherein
"during the years 1982 to 1995, CIA did not have to report the drug trafficking its
assets did to the Justice Department. To a trained DEA agent this literally means
that the CIA had been granted a license to obstruct justice in our so-called war on
drugs; a license that lasted - so CIA claims -from 1982 to 1995, a time during
which Americans paid almost $150 billion in taxes to "fight" drugs. God, with
friends like these, who needs enemies?”
- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, March 23, 1998.

CIA ADMITS TO DEAL WITH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.

“The CIA finally admitted, yesterday, in the New York Times no less, that they, in
fact, did "work with" the Nicaraguan Contras while they had information that they
were involved in cocaine trafficking to the United States. An action known to us
court qualified experts and federal agents as Conspiracy to Import and Distribute
Cocaine—a federal felony punishable by up to life in prison. To illustrate how us
regular walking around, non CIA types are treated when we violate this law, while
I was serving as a DEA supervisor in New York City, I put two New York City
police officers in a federal prison for Conspiracy to distribute Cocaine when they
looked the other way at their friend's drug dealing. We could not prove they
earned a nickel nor that they helped their friend in any way, they merely did not
do their duty by reporting him. They were sentenced to 10 and 12 years
respectively, and one of them, I was recently told, had committed suicide.”
- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, September, 1998 from the article “IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO
GARY WEBB?”

“After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—
a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra resupply operation—had
been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S." under the direction of
the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail
and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the
drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug
dealers and helping them escape…. The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar
Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—
including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra
committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . .that could adversely affect our
relations."
-Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, September, 1998 from the article “I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North”

"Drug trafficking has permeated all political structures and has corrupted federal,
state, and local officials. It has deformed the economy. It is a cancer that has
generated financial and political dependence, which instead of producing goods,
has created serious problems ultimately affecting honest businessmen. The
Attorney General's office is unable to eradicate drug trafficking because
government structures at all levels are corrupted."
-- Eduardo Valle, former adviser, Attorney General in Mexico

60 MINUTES- Head of DEA Robert Bonner Says CIA Smuggled Drugs

https://www.scribd.com/doc/131231070/60-MINUTES-Head-of-DEA-Robert-Bonner-Says-CIA-Smuggled-
Drugs
Dennis Dayle, former head of DEA's Centac, was asked the following question:
"Enormously powerful criminal organizations are controlling many countries, and
to a certain degree controlling the world, and controlling our lives. Your own U.S.
government to some extent supports them, and is concealing this fact from you."
Dennis Dayle's answer:

"I know that to be true. That is not conjecture. Experience, over the better part of
my adult life, tells me that that is so. And there is a great deal of persuasive
evidence.”

"He (Former Congressman Bill Alexander - D. Ark.) made me privy to the

depositions he took from three of the most credible witnesses in that project,
which left absolutely no doubt in my mind that the government of the United
States was an active participant in one of the largest dope operations in the
world.."
-- Former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson

“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by
the cargo planeloads”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on
Feb. 11, 1987

“… he was making millions, 'cos he had his own source of,… avenue for his
own,.. heroin. I’m sure we all knew it, but we tried to monitor it, because we
controlled most of the pilots you see. We're giving him freedom of navigation into
Thailand, into the bases, and we don't want him to get involved in moving, you
know, this illicit traffic--O.K., silver bars and gold, O.K., but not heroin. What they
would do is, they weren't going into Thailand, they were flying it in a big wet wing
airplane that could fly for thirteen hours, a DC-3, and all the wings were filled with
gas. They fly down to Pakse, then they fly over to Da Nang, and then the number
two guy to President Thieu would receive it.”
–CIA Officer Anthony (“Tony Poe”) Poshepny May 17, 1988 PBS Frontline episode “Guns, Drugs, and the
CIA”

(Poshepny was a legendary covert operations officer who had supervised the CIA’s secret war in
Northern Laos during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the interview, Poshepny stated that the CIA had
supplied air transport for the heroin shipments of their local ally, General Vang Pao, the only such on-the-
record confirmation by a former CIA officer concerning agency involvement in the narcotics trade.)

“There is secret communication between CIA and members of the Congressional

staff - one must keep in mind that Porter Goss, the chairman, is an ex CIA official-
indicating that the whole hearing is just a smoke and mirror show so that the
American people - particularly the Black community - can "blow off some steam
“without doing any damage to CIA. The CIA has been assured that nothing real
will be done, other than some embarrassing questions being asked.”
- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, March 23, 1998. CIA ADMITS TO DEAL WITH JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.

"If you ask: In the process of fighting a war against the Sandinistas, did people connected with
the US government open channels which allowed drug traffickers to move drugs to the United
States, did they know the drug traffickers were doing it, and did they protect them from law
enforcement? The answer to all those questions is yes." "We don't need to investigate. We
already know. The evidence is there."

--Jack Blum, former Chief Counsel to John Kerry's Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism in 1996
Senate Hearings

“Several informed sources have told me that an appendix to this Report was
removed at the instruction of the Department of Justice at the last minute. This
appendix is reported to have information about a CIA officer, not agent or asset,
but officer, based in the Los Angeles Station, who was in charge of Contra related
activities. According to these sources, this individual was associated with
running drugs to South Central Los Angeles, around 1988. Let me repeat that
amazing omission. The recently released CIA Report Volume II contained an
appendix, which was pulled by the Department of Justice that reported a CIA
officer in the LA Station was hooked into drug running in South Central Los
Angeles.”
--U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters – October 13. 1998, speaking on the floor of the US House of
Representatives. “My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in Uzbekistan. I …
watched the Jeeps … bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the
tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the
Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to
protect.”
-Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray,2007

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html

This war with China … really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the
greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot anything
be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men’s minds to the dreadful guilt we
are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with
such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far
less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling
consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of
China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce
by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our
supposed superiority.
— Thomas Arnold to W. W. Hull, March 18, 1840
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/opiumwars1.html

"We also became aware of deep connections between the law-enforcement

community and the intelligence community. I, personally, repeatedly heard from
prosecutors and people in the law-enforcement world that CIA agents were
required to sit in on the debriefing of various people who were being questioned
about the drug trade. They were required to be present when witnesses were
being prepped for certain drug trials. At various times the intelligence community
inserted itself in that legal process. I believe that that was an impropriety; that
that should not have occurred."

--Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA
drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter.

"The CIA wants to know about drug trafficking, but only for their own purposes,
and not necessarily for the use of law enforcement agencies. Torres told DEA
Confidential Informant 1 that CIA representatives are aware of his drug-related
activities, and that they don't mind. He said they had gone so far as to encourage
cocaine trafficking by members of the contras, because they know it's a good
source of income. Some of this money has gone into numbered accounts in
Europe and Panama, as does the money that goes to Managua from cocaine
trafficking. Torres told the informant about receiving counterintelligence training
from the CIA, and had avowed that the CIA looks the other way and in essence
allows them to engage in narcotics trafficking."

--1987 DEA REPORT

"US ATTORNEY WILLIAM) Weld claims he followed up with an investigation. But

there is, however, no record that while Weld was the chief prosecutor for the U.S.,
that so much as one Contra-related narcotics trafficker was brought to justice."
--John Mattes, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism
and narcotics.

(When the FBI was notified) "in fact they didn't want to look at the contras. They
wanted to look at us and try to deter us from our investigation. We were
threatened on countless occasions by FBI agents who told us that we'd gone too
far in our investigation of the contras."
--John Mattes, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism
and narcotics.

"There would appear to be substance to the allegations," "potential official

involvement in...Gunrunning and narcotics trafficking between Florida and
Central and South America. that the Justice Department either attempted to slow
down or abort one of the ongoing criminal investigations."
---House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime chairman William Hughes (D-N.J.) 1987 press conference

"Cabezas claimed that the contra cocaine operated with the knowledge of, and
under the supervision of, the CIA. Cabezas claimed that this drug enterprise was
run with the knowledge of CIA agent Ivan Gómez."
--1987 DEA REPORT QUOTING A 1985 CIA REPORT

"what we investigated, which is on the record as part of the Kerry committee

report, is evidence that narcotics traffickers associated with the Contra leaders
were allowed to smuggle over a ton of cocaine into the United States. Those
same Contra leaders admitted under oath their association and affiliation with the
CIA."

--John Mattes, attorney, former federal public defender, counsel to John Kerry's senate committee

"We knew everybody around Pastora was involved in cocaine... His staff and
friends... were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling."
--CIA Officer Alan Fiers

(At Ilopango) "the CIA owned one hangar, and the National Security Council ran
the other." "There is no doubt that they were running large quantities of cocaine
into the U.S. to support the Contras," "We saw the cocaine and we saw boxes full
of money. We're talking about very large quantities of cocaine and millions of
dollars." "My reports contain not only the names of traffickers, but their
destinations, flight paths, tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight."

--DEA Agent Celerino Castillo III said he detailed Contra drug activities in Official DEA reports, each
signed by DEA Country attaché Bob Stia.

an eight-page June 25, 1986, staff memorandum clearly stated that "a number of
individuals who supported the Contras and who participated in Contra activity in
Texas, Louisiana, California and Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua and
Costa Rica, have suggested that cocaine is being smuggled in the U.S. through
the same infrastructure which is procuring, storing and transporting weapons,
explosives, ammunition and military equipment for the Contras from the United
States."

---March 31, 1987 Newsday article

"What we investigated and uncovered, was the very infrastructure of the network
that had the veil of national security protecting it, so that people could load
cannons in broad daylight, in public airports, on flights going to Ilopango Airport,
where in fact the very same people were bringing narcotics back into the U.S.,
unimpeded."
--John Mattes, attorney, former federal public defender, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

"Imagine this, here you have Oliver North, a high-level official in the National
Security Council running a covert action in collaboration with a drug cartel,"

"That's what I call treason we'll never know how many kids died because these
so-called patriots were so hot to support the contras that they risked several
generations of our young people to do it."
--MICHEAL LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)

"As a key member of the joint committees, he (HENRY HYDE) certainly played a major role in
keeping the American people blindfolded about this story," Levine said. "There was plenty of hard
evidence. … The totality of the whole picture is very compelling. This is very damning evidence.

--MICHEAL LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)

(FBI Agent Mike Foster) "Foster said it (CONTRA DRUG TRAFFICKING) would be
a great story, like a grand slam, if they could put it together. He asked the DEA for
the reports, who told him there were no such reports. Yet when I showed him the
copies of the reports that I had, he was shocked. I never heard from him again."

---Celerino Castillo III describes his meeting with FBI agent Mike Foster, who was assigned to Special
Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

"My god," "when I was serving as a DEA agent, you gave me a page from
someone in the Pentagon with notes like that, I would've been on his back
investigating everything he did from the minute his eyes opened, every diary
notebook, every phone would have been tapped, every trip he made."

--Michael Levine (DEA retired)

"In my book, Big White Lie, I explained that the CIA stopped us from indicting the
Bolivian government at the same time contra assets were going down there to
pick up drugs. When you put it all together, you have much more evidence to
convict Ollie North, Dewey Clarridge and all the way up the line, than they had in
any John Gotti case."
-MIKE LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)
"With respect to the Resistance Forces...it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of
people."

-CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan Fiers, Testimony at Iran Contra hearings

"The government made a secret decision to sacrifice a part of the American

population for the contra effort,"

-- Washington attorney Jack Blum before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1996. Blum had been
special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

(Reagan administration officials were) "quietly undercutting law enforcement and

human-rights agencies that might have caused them difficulty," "Policy makers
absolutely closed their eyes to the criminal behavior of the contras."
- Washington attorney Jack Blum before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1996.

"For some reason, Webb's piece came up, and I asked the guys (Undercover
narcs), 'So, what do you think? Is what Webb wrote about the CIA true?'" "And
they all turned to me and said," Of course it is.'

--Writer Charles Bowden describes the reaction of drug agents during an interview, September, 1998

"Here's my problem. I think that if people in the government of the United States
make a secret decision to sacrifice some portion of the American population in
the form of ... deliberately exposing them to drugs, that is a terrible decision that
should never be made in secret."

--Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA
drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter.

"The other thing that John found out over time -- and the seeds of that were so
very early -- was the drug traffickers were moving dope to the United States under
cover of the Contra war, and that the Contra movement, the infrastructure
supporting the Contras, was infested by drug traffickers.

In fact, later on, we found one of the drug traffickers who Oliver North and the
NSC was working with to provide support to the Contras -- and we even got
money ultimately from the State Department to support the Contras -- was
moving marijuana by the ton into the state of Massachusetts, into New Bedford. It
wasn't the only place he was moving dope. But it was one of the places.

So the disorder caused by the war was bringing dope into this country. Now, 10
years later, the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general investigated all of
this, and found that the particular allegations and things that Kerry had looked at
-- there was substantial evidence for every one of them. There was a huge amount
of drugs relating to that Contra infrastructure. …"

-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant
secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html

I remember Dick Cheney attacking John Kerry in 1986 for things John Kerry was
saying about the Contras and the NSC and Oliver North. Every single thing John
Kerry said was true. The attacks were aggressive, and were based on hopes,
wishes, and politics -- partisan politics, not reality. John Kerry's reality was
proven -- and it was proven -- when the plane went down in Nicaragua, and it
turned out that that was tied to the National Security Council, and money out of
Saudi Arabia, and money from the Iranians, and ultimately, as we showed, related
in part to narcotics money, at least in other elements of the Contra infrastructure.

There were a lot of people who were mad at John Kerry for having been right. The
Reagan administration was, of course, furious. They didn't want him anywhere
near the Iran-Contra investigation, because he knew too much and he was too
effective. That's what I believe it was about.
-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant
secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html

"What we didn't know was, the time that John Kerry made the decision not to go
after Oliver North and to go after the other violations of law that we saw, that
Oliver North was going after John Kerry. If you look at Oliver North's diaries,
North had people calling him up, and giving him detailed information on every
aspect of our investigation. Week after week, month after month, in 1986, Oliver
North's diaries have references to John Kerry. North understood that the Kerry
investigation was a real risk to his ability to continue to engage in the illegal
activity he was engaging in."
-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant
secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html

“It was I who directed the investigation into the death of Camarena” “During this
investigation, we discovered that some members of a U.S. intelligence agency,
who had infiltrated the DFS (the Mexican Federal Security Directorate), also
participated in the kidnapping of Camarena. Two witnesses identified Felix Ismael
Rodriguez. They (witnesses) were with the DFS and they told us that, in addition,
he (Rodriguez) had identified himself s “U.S. intelligence.”
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. Berrellez lead the murder investigation
"Operation Leyenda"" into the death of DEA agent ENRIQUE "KIKI" CAMARENA

“Caro Quintero had billions of dollars stashed in secret bank accounts in

Luxembourg and in Switzerland,” “The one in Luxembourg had $4 billion and the
other one had even more. To my knowledge they were never confiscated,”
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ, Forbes Magazine December 5, 2013

“In interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities, that CIA operatives
were in there. Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.”

--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

"The CIA was the source. They gave them to us," "Obviously, they were there. Or
at least some of their contract workers were there."

-EX-DEA Agent Hector Berrellez (COPIES of the audio taped torture session were provided to DEA within
a week)

“The CIA ordered the kidnapping and torture of ‘Kiki’ Camarena, and when they
killed him, they made us believe it was Caro Quintero in order to cover up all the
illegal things they were doing (with drug trafficking) in Mexico” “The DEA is the
only (federal agency) with the authority to authorize drug trafficking into the
United States as part of an undercover operation”.

“The business with El Bufalo (RAFAEL CARO QUINTERO's RANCH) was nothing
compared with the money from the cocaine that was being sold to buy weapons
for the CIA”.

--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

"I know and from what I have been told by a former head of the Mexican federal
police, Comandante (Guillermo Gonzales) Calderoni, the CIA was involved in the
movement of drugs from South America to Mexico and to the U.S.,"

--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

He (Mexican Judicial Police Officer Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni) told me:

‘Hector, get out of this business because they’re going to fuck you over. The CIA
is involved in that business about ‘Kiki’. It’s very dangerous for you to be in this.’
He gave me names, among them that of Felix, and details and everything, but
when my bosses found out, they took me out of the investigation and sent me to
Washington. "He told me, 'Your government did it,' "
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. Calderoni was killed in in McAllen Texas in
2003. His murder remains unsolved.

"Back in the middle 1980's, the DFS, their main role was to protect the drug
lords," "Upon arrival we were confronted by over 50 DFS agents pointing
machine guns and shotguns at us--the DEA. They told us we were not going to
take Caro Quintero," "Well, Caro Quintero came up to the plane door waved a
bottle of champagne at the DEA agents and said, 'My children, next time, bring
more guns.' And laughed at us."

--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. (Caro Quintero allegedly carried DFS
credentials during the escape flight piloted by a CIA Contractor.)

"Our intelligence agencies were working under the cover of DFS. And as I said it
before, unfortunately, DFS agents at that time were also in charge of protecting
the drug lords and their monies, After the murder of Camarena, (Mexico's)
investigation pointed that the DFS had been complicit along with American
intelligence in the kidnap and torture of Kiki. That's when they decided to disband
the DFS."

--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013

"I know what these men are saying is true, that the Contras were trafficking in
drugs while the CIA looked the other way, because I served in the trenches of
Latin America for six years when this was going on,"

--EX DEA agent Celerino Castillo III, October, 2013.

“I don’t know of any DEA administrator that I worked for who would have
sanctioned cocaine smuggling into the United States in the name of national
security, when we are out there risking our lives,”

--Phil Jordan

“Kiki said, ‘That’s horseshit. You’re lining your pockets,’ He could not believe that
the U.S. government could be running drugs into the United States.”

-Phil Jordan

"The use of a drug dealer’s property by the CIA for the purpose of helping the
Contras didn’t sit well with the DEA agents. That’s the way we’re brought up, so
to speak,” he said. “When we see someone running drugs, we want to bust them,
not work with them.”

--Phil Jordan

“We were directed to fly some of our cocaine loads right into Homestead Air
Force Base in Florida, some times more than 3 tons, and Air Force personnel
were assigned to help us unload the aircraft.“ At one time an Air Force C-130 with
more than 10 tons of coke was on the tarmac being unloaded into military
trucks.”
- Pilot Gary Betzner (Interview at MCC Miami with this author in 1986)
The Contras were running drugs from Central America and the Contras were
providing drugs to street gangs in Los Angeles. That’s your connection.”

-Hector Berrellez

“I was personally congratulated by Vice-President Bush and was assured that he “had
our backs” if there was ever a problem. After our arrest however, he denied even
knowing me. Felix Rodriguez of the CIA visited me here at MCC Miami and assured me I
would walk free “in less than a year” in exchange for my silence”
- George Morales (Key Smuggler and murder victim after testifying in a 4 hour closed-door session of
Congress before Senator Kerry) From his interview with author at MCC Miami in 1987.

"We've been attacked for this, and our credibility has been questioned, by people
who were not involved in the investigation and had no first-hand knowledge of
what took place then or what is happening now."
-Phil Jordan

“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the
“consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that
included drug trafficking” contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the
national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity
that leads to the murder of one our agents,”
--Phil Jordan

"We have people in the U.S. witness protection program who say they are willing
to give additional statements under oath to a federal agent or federal prosecutor
concerning these details," ....I am not an active federal agent, so I can't take the
allegations into an indictment process, but interested agents and prosecutors
can do this. We're waiting." -Hector Berrellez

--From "The Pariah" by Charles Bowden, Esquire Magazine, September, 1998

"When the Big Dog gets off the porch, watch out." "The CIA's mission is to break
laws and be ruthless. And they are dangerous."

--EX DEA Agent Mike Holm, September, 1998, Esquire Magazine article "The Pariah" by Charles Bowden

"stand down because of national security."

--DEA agent Mike Holm (Holm's superiors at DEA's reaction to reports that Southern Air Transport, a CIA-
contracted airline, was landing planeloads of cocaine at Homestead Air Force)

"There ain't no fucking drug war," he says now. "I was even called un-American.
Nobody cares about this shit. "As I read (about Gary Webb), I thought, This shit is
true,"

--Hector Berrellez checked into a blank schedule for one year after being transferred to Washington DC
desk job. He had ordered a criminal investigation of the CIA and drug trafficking. His informants were
"reporting strange fortified bases scattered around Mexico, and, his informants told him, the planes were
shipping drugs." Berrellez went to Mexico City to meet with his DEA superiors and American-embassy
staff, mentioned the reports and was told, Stay away from those bases; they're our training camps,
special operations"

"Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired
DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration,"

“Mike Ruppert and I spent over 200 hours in interviews with 5 DEA agents who all
claimed President George Bush and his son Jeb were, and still are, the ones
pulling the strings. After their front man Oliver North was exposed, he was simply
replaced with senior FBI agent Terry Nelson. Your own observations about the
Canadian operations are right on target.”
- Senior FBI Supervisor Ted Gunderson in 2001 interview with the author.

“What your boy Bruce told us about the arrest of Nelson and Huxtable in
Saskatchewan and the links to Bush check out to be true and accurate.
Unfortunately I can’t help him because of all the political baggage”
- RCMP Superintendent Ben Soave in a 2001 telephone conversation with Solicitor Marshal Drukarsh, an
Immigration lawyer representing the author.

“After almost 15 years of working for them in Panama and Canada, Nelson and
Bush sold me out. They tried to poison me in Panama after I tried to retire and get
my final payment. Thank God I lived within walking distance from the hospital and
they saved my life. When I left, they were bringing in $10 million per month which
had a street value of at least $50 - $80 million. Somehow they gave our pilot Curt
cancer and he’s now withering away at the Veteran’s hospital.”
-Insider of Nelson/Bush smuggling ring Erling Ingvaldsen in 2001 interview with author after testifying at
his fake extradition hearing. His testimony was stopped as soon as he mentioned Jeb Bush and Terry
Nelson.

Draw your own conclusions friends.

While pursuing this book project for 10 plus years, my research included interviews,
conversations, or other communications directly with the following people;

HONEST LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS:

FBI Maury Berthon

FBI Ben Grogan
FBI Jerry Dove
FBI Tom Doktor
FBI Supervisor Ted Gunderson
FBI OPR (Internal Affairs) Chief John O’Neil
FBI Division 5 Agent Vo “Ben” Tran
DEA Jurgen Schmidt
DEA Rick (Last name withheld by request)
DEA Bill (Last name withheld by request)
FDLE Ernie Neal
RCMP Superintendent Ben Soave
RCMP Peter Besson
RCMP Yves Goupil
RCMP Robert Ring
SEC John Wheeler
SEC Joe Senatore
IRS Harold Wenig
Canadian Immigration William Willoughby

DISHONEST LAW ENFORCEMENT:

RCMP Latchford aka: RCMP Holford

RCMP Pierre Jeanette
FBI Greg Coleman
FBI Jim Cronin
FBI Terry Nelson
AUSA Jack Goldberg
Toronto PD Detective Robert Bonefant

HONEST LAWYERS & INVESTIGATORS:

Atty. Vincent Flynn

Atty. Marshal Drukarsh
Atty. Greg Lafontaine
Atty. Enzo Rondinelli
Atty. David Wolkenstein
Atty. Joseph Marks
Atty. George Vila
Private Investigator Ed Reiken
Private Investigator Gary McDaniels
Congressional Investigator Ralph Maestri
Journalist Johnathan Kwitny
Journalist Paul McKay
SMUGGLERS:
George Morales
FBI Terry Nelson
Eduardo Garray
Rene Benitez
Ben Kramer
Ruy Martinez
Don Whittington
Paul Doyon
Pete Wagner
Roger Boone

PILOTS:

Gary Betzner (Iran Contra pilot)

Mike Tolliver (Iran Contra pilot)
Anibal Aizprua (Noriega’s pilot)
Greg Sitzman (Nelson/Bush pilot)
Curt Emmer (Nelson/Bush pilot)
Bill “The Silver Ghost”

BANKERS/MONEY LAUNDERERS:

Ray Corona
Alberto Duque (Jeb’s Colombian partner)
Rueben Duque
Edward Chism Sr.
Juan David Morgan
Dennis Levine
David H. Siegel

MISCELLANEOUS WITNESSES:

Mike Mansfield
Ty West
Ralph Maestri
Jonathan Kwitny
Susan Candiotti
BOP Officer Browning
USCG Commander Frank Ballou
Marilyn Medina
Miriam Rodriguez
Rodney Stitch
MP Omar Alghabra
MP Paul Szabo
Karlheinz Schreiber
Thomas Coury Sr.
 REFERENCE READING:

Creating a Crime: How the CIA

Commandeered the DEA
by DOUGLAS VALENTINE

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The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the
turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with
American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government
had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation
in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.

Civic institutions, like public education, were required to sanctify this policy,
while “security” bureaucracies were established to ensure the citizenry
conformed to the state ideology. Secret services, both public and private,
were likewise established to promote the expansion of private American
economic interests overseas.

It takes a book to explain the economic foundations of the war on drugs, and
the reasons behind the regulation of the medical, pharmaceutical and drug
manufacturers industries. Suffice it to say that by 1943, the nations of the
“free world” were relying on America for their opium derivatives, under the
guardianship of Harry Anslinger, the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics (FBN).

Narcotic drugs are a strategic resource, and when Anslinger learned that
Peru had built a cocaine factory, he and the Board of Economic Warfare
confiscated its product before it could be sold to Germany or Japan. In
another instance, Anslinger and his counterpart at the State Department
prevented a drug manufacturer in Argentina from selling drugs to Germany.
At the same time, according to Douglas Clark Kinder and William O. Walker
III in their article, “Stable Force In a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and United
States Narcotic Policy, 1930-1962,” Anslinger permitted “an American
company to ship drugs to Southeast Asia despite receiving intelligence
reports that French authorities were permitting opiate smuggling into China
and collaborating with Japanese drug traffickers.”

Federal drug law enforcement’s relationship with the espionage

establishment matured with the creation of CIA’s predecessor organization,
the Office of Strategic Services. Prior to the Second World War, the FBN
was the government agency most adept at conducting covert operations at
home and abroad. As a result, OSS chief William Donovan asked Anslinger
to provide seasoned FBN agents to help organize the OSS and train its
agents to work undercover, avoid security forces in hostile nations, manage
agent networks, and engage in sabotage and subversion.

The relationship expanded during the war, when FBN executives and agents
worked with OSS scientists in domestic “truth drug” experiments involving
marijuana. The “extra-legal” nature of the relationship continued after the
war: when the CIA decided to test LSD on unsuspecting American citizens,
FBN agents were chosen to operate the safehouses where the experiments
were conducted.

The relationship was formalized overseas in 1951, when Agent Charlie

Siragusa opened an office in Rome and began to develop the FBN’s foreign
operations. In the 1950s, FBN agents posted overseas spent half their time
doing “favors” for the CIA, such as investigating diversions of strategic
materials behind the Iron Curtain. A handful of FBN agents were actually
recruited into the CIA while maintaining their FBN credentials as cover.

Officially, FBN agents set limits. Siragusa, for example, claimed to object
when the CIA asked him to mount a “controlled delivery” into the U.S. as a
way of identifying the American members of a smuggling ring with
Communist affiliations.

As Siragusa said, “The FBN could never knowingly allow two pounds of
heroin to be delivered into the United States and be pushed to Mafia
customers in the New York City area, even if in the long run we could seize
a bigger haul.” [For citations to this and other quotations/interviews, as well
as documents, please refer to the author’s books, The Strength of the Wolf:
The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs (Verso 2004) and The
Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics, and Espionage Intrigues
that Shaped the DEA (TrineDay 2009). See
also www.douglasvalentine.com]
And in 1960, when the CIA asked him to recruit assassins from his stable of
underworld contacts, Siragusa again claimed to have refused. But drug
traffickers, including, most prominently, Santo Trafficante Jr, were soon
participating in CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

As the dominant partner in the relationship, the CIA exploited its affinity with
the FBN. “Like the CIA,” FBN Agent Robert DeFauw explained, “narcotic
agents mount covert operations. We pose as members of the narcotics
trade. The big difference is that we were in foreign countries legally, and
through our police and intelligence sources, we could check out just about
anyone or anything. Not only that, we were operational. So the CIA jumped
in our stirrups.”

Jumping in the FBN’s stirrups afforded the CIA deniability, which is turn
affords it impunity. To ensure that the CIA’s criminal activities are not
revealed, narcotic agents are organized militarily within an inviolable chain of
command. Highly indoctrinated, they blindly obey based on a “need to
know.” This institutionalized ignorance sustains the illusion of righteousness,
in the name of national security, upon which their motivation depends.

As FBN Agent Martin Pera explained, “Most FBN agents were corrupted by
the lure of the underworld. They thought they could check their morality at
the door – go out and lie, cheat, and steal – then come back and retrieve it.
But you can’t. In fact, if you’re successful because you can lie, cheat, and
steal, those things become tools you use in the bureaucracy.”

Institutionalized corruption began at headquarters, where FBN executives

provided cover for CIA assets engaged in drug trafficking. In 1966, Agent
John Evans was assigned as an assistant to enforcement chief John
Enright.
“And that’s when I got to see what the CIA was doing,” Evans said. “I saw a
report on the Kuomintang saying they were the biggest drug dealers in the
world, and that the CIA was underwriting them. Air America was transporting
tons of Kuomintang opium.” Evans bristled. “I took the report to Enright. He
said, ‘Leave it here. Forget about it.’

“Other things came to my attention,” Evans added, “that proved that the CIA
contributed to drug use in America. We were in constant conflict with the CIA
because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were
smuggling drugs into the US. We weren’t allowed to tell, and that fostered
corruption in the Bureau.”

Heroin smuggled by “CIA people” into the U.S. was channeled by Mafia
distributors primarily to African-American communities. Local narcotic agents
then targeted disenfranchised blacks as an easy way of preserving the white
ruling class’s privileges.

“We didn’t need a search warrant,” explains New Orleans narcotics officer
Clarence Giarusso. “It allowed us to meet our quota. And it was on-going. If I
find dope on a black man, I can put him in jail for a few days. He’s got no
money for a lawyer and the courts are ready to convict. There’s no
expectation on the jury’s part that we have to make a case.

“So rather than go cold turkey, the addict becomes an informant, which
means I can make more cases in the neighborhood, which is all we’re
interested in. We don’t care about Carlos Marcello or the Mafia. City cops
have no interest in who brings dope in. That’s the job of the federal agents.”

The Establishment’s race and class privileges have always been equated
with national security, and FBN executives dutifully preserved the social
order. Not until 1968, when Civil Rights reforms were imposed upon
government bureaucracies, were black FBN agents allowed to become
supervisors and manage white agents.

The war on drugs is largely a projection of two things: the racism that has
defined America since its inception, and the government policy of allowing
political allies to traffic in narcotics. These unstated but official policies
reinforce the belief among CIA and drug law enforcement officials that the
Bill of Rights is an obstacle to national security.

Blanket immunity from prosecution for turning these policies into practice
engenders a belief among bureaucrats that they are above the law, which
fosters corruption in other forms. FBN agents, for example, routinely
“created a crime” by breaking and entering, planting evidence, using illegal
wiretaps, and falsifying reports. They tampered with heroin, transferred it to
informants for sale, and even murdered other agents who threatened to
expose them.

All of this was secretly known at the highest level of government, and in
1965 the Treasury Department launched a corruption investigation of the
FBN. Headed by Andrew Tartaglino, the investigation ended in 1968 with the
resignation of 32 agents and the indictment of five. That same year the FBN
was reconstructed in the Department of Justice as the Bureau of Narcotics
and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD).

But, as Tartaglino said dejectedly, “The job was only half done.”

First Infestation
Richard Nixon was elected president based on a vow to restore “law and
order” to America. To prove that it intended to keep that promise, the White
House in 1969 launched Operation Intercept along the Mexican border. This
massive “stop and search” operation so badly damaged relations with
Mexico, however, that National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger formed the
Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics (the Heroin Committee), to coordinate drug
policy and prevent further diplomatic disasters.

The Heroin Committee was composed of cabinet members represented by

their deputies. James Ludlum represented CIA Director Richard Helms. A
member of the CIA’s Counter-Intelligence staff, Ludlum had been the CIA’s
liaison officer to the FBN since 1962.

“When Kissinger set up the Heroin Committee,” Ludlum recalled, “the CIA
certainly didn’t take it seriously, because drug control wasn’t part of their
mission.”
Indeed, as John Evans noted above, and as the government was aware, the
CIA for years had sanctioned the heroin traffic from the Golden Triangle
region of Burma, Thailand and Laos into South Vietnam as a way of
rewarding top foreign officials for advancing U.S. policies. This reality
presented the Nixon White House with a dilemma, given that addiction
among U.S. troops in Vietnam was soaring, and that massive amounts of
Southeast Asian heroin were being smuggled into the U.S., for use by
middle-class white kids on the verge of revolution.

Nixon’s response was to make drug law enforcement part of the CIA’s
mission. Although reluctant to betray the CIA’s clients in South Vietnam,
Helms told Ludlum: “We’re going to break their rice bowls.”

This betrayal occurred incrementally. Fred Dick, the BNDD agent assigned
to Saigon, passed the names of the complicit military officers and politicians
to the White House. But, as Dick recalled, “Ambassador [Ellsworth] Bunker
called a meeting in Saigon at which CIA Station Chief Ted Shackley
appeared and explained that there was ‘a delicate balance.’ What he said, in
effect, was that no one was willing to do anything.”

Meanwhile, to protect its global network of drug trafficking assets, the CIA
began infiltrating the BNDD and commandeering its internal security,
intelligence, and foreign operations branches. This massive reorganization
required the placement of CIA officers in influential positions in every federal
agency concerned with drug law enforcement.

CIA Officer Paul Van Marx, for example, was assigned as the U.S.
Ambassador to France’s assistant on narcotics. From this vantage point,
Van Marx ensured that BNDD conspiracy cases against European traffickers
did not compromise CIA operations and assets. Van Marx also vetted
potential BNDD assets to make sure they were not enemy spies.

The FBN never had more than 16 agents stationed overseas, but Nixon
dramatically increased funding for the BNDD and hundreds of agents were
posted abroad. The success of these overseas agents soon came to depend
on CIA intelligence, as BNDD Director John Ingersoll understood.
BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA’s involvement in drug
law enforcement operations within the United States. Operation Eagle was
the flashpoint. Launched in 1970, Eagle targeted anti-Castro Cubans
smuggling cocaine from Latin America to the Trafficante organization in
Florida. Of the dozens of traffickers arrested in June, many were found to be
members of Operation 40, a CIA terror organization active in the U.S., the
Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico.

The revelation that CIA drug smuggling assets were operating within the
U.S. led to the assignment of CIA officers as counterparts to mid-level
BNDD enforcement officials, including Latin American division chief Jerry
Strickler. Like Van Marks in France, these CIA officers served to protect CIA
assets from exposure, while facilitating their recruitment as informants for
the BNDD.

Many Cuban exiles arrested in Operation Eagle were indeed hired by the
BNDD and sent throughout Latin America. They got “fantastic intelligence,”
Strickler noted. But many were secretly serving the CIA and playing a
double game.

Nixon with CIA director Richard Helms.

Second Infestation
By 1970, BNDD Director Ingersoll’s inspections staff had gathered enough
evidence to warrant the investigation of dozens of corrupt FBN agents who
had risen to management positions in the BNDD. But Ingersoll could not
investigate his top managers while simultaneously investigating drug
traffickers. So he asked CIA Director Helms for help building a “counter-
intelligence” capacity within the BNDD.

The result was Operation Twofold, in which 19 CIA officers were infiltrated
into the BNDD, ostensibly to spy on corrupt BNDD officials. According to the
BNDD’s Chief Inspector Patrick Fuller, “A corporation engaged in law
enforcement hired three CIA officers posing as private businessmen to do
the contact and interview work.”

CIA recruiter Jerry Soul, a former Operation 40 case officer, primarily

selected officers whose careers had stalled due to the gradual reduction of
forces in Southeast Asia. Those hired were put through the BNDD’s training
course and assigned to spy on a particular regional director. No records
were kept and some participants have never been identified.

Charles Gutensohn was a typical Twofold “torpedo.” Prior to his recruitment

into the BNDD, Gutensohn had spent two years at the CIA’s base in Pakse,
a major heroin transit point between Laos and South Vietnam. “Fuller said
that when we communicated, I was to be known as Leo Adams for Los
Angeles,” Gutensohn said. “He was to be Walter DeCarlo, for Washington,
DC.”

Gutensohn’s cover, however, was blown before he got to Los Angeles.

“Someone at headquarters was talking and everyone knew,” he recalled.
“About a month after I arrived, one of the agents said to me, ‘I hear that Pat
Fuller signed your credentials’.”

Twofold, which existed at least until 1974, was deemed by the Rockefeller
Commission to have “violated the 1947 Act which prohibits the CIA’s
participation in law enforcement activities.” It also, as shall be discussed
later, served as a cover for clandestine CIA operations.

Third Infestation
The Nixon White House blamed the BNDD’s failure to stop international drug
trafficking on its underdeveloped intelligence capabilities, a situation that
opened the door to further CIA infiltration. In late 1970, CIA Director Helms
arranged for his recently retired chief of continuing intelligence, E. Drexel
Godfrey, to review BNDD intelligence procedures. Among other things,
Godfrey recommended that the BNDD create regional intelligence units
(RIUs) and an office of strategic intelligence (SI0).

The RIUs were up and running by 1971 with CIA officers often assigned as
analysts, prompting BNDD agents to view the RIUs with suspicion, as
repositories for Twofold torpedoes.

The SIO was harder to implement, given its arcane function as a tool to help
top managers formulate plans and strategies “in the political sphere.” As SIO
Director John Warner explained, “We needed to understand the political
climate in Thailand in order to address the problem. We needed to know
what kind of protection the Thai police were affording traffickers. We were
looking for an intelligence office that could deal with those sorts of issues, on
the ground, overseas.”

Organizing the SIO fell to CIA officers Adrian Swain and Tom Tripodi, both
of whom were recruited into the BNDD. In April 1971 they accompanied
Ingersoll to Saigon, where Station Chief Shackley briefed them. Through his
CIA contacts, Swain obtained maps of drug-smuggling routes in Southeast
Asia.

Upon their return to the U.S., Swain and Tripodi expressed frustration that
the CIA had access to people capable of providing the BNDD with
intelligence, but these people “were involved in narcotics trafficking and the
CIA did not want to identify them.”

Seeking a way to circumvent the CIA, they recommended the creation of a

“special operations or strategic operations staff” that would function as the
BNDD’s own CIA “using a backdoor approach to gather intelligence in
support of operations.” Those operations would rely on “longer range, deep
penetration, clandestine assets, who remain undercover, do not appear
during the course of any trial and are recruited and directed by the Special
Operations agents on a covert basis.”

The White House approved the plan and in May 1971, Kissinger presented a
$120 million drug control proposal, of which $50 million was earmarked for
special operations. Three weeks later Nixon declared “war on drugs,” at
which point Congress responded with funding for the SIO and authorization
for the extra-legal operations Swain and Tripodi envisioned.

SIO Director Warner was given a seat on the U.S. Intelligence Board so the
SIO could obtain raw intelligence from the CIA. But, in return, the SIO was
compelled to adopt CIA security procedures. A CIA officer established the
SIO’s file room and computer system; safes and steel doors were installed;
and witting agents had to obtain CIA clearances.

Active-duty CIA officers were assigned to the SIO as desk officers for
Europe and the Middle East, the Far East, and Latin America. Tripodi was
assigned as chief of operations. Tripodi had spent the previous six years in
the CIA’s Security Research Services, where his duties included the
penetration of peace groups, as well as setting up firms to conduct black bag
jobs. Notably, White House “Plumber” E. Howard Hunt inherited Tripodi’s
Special Operations unit, which included several of the Watergate burglars.

Tripodi liaised with the CIA on matters of mutual interest and the covert
collection of narcotics intelligence outside of routine BNDD channels. As part
of his operational plan, code-named Medusa, Tripodi proposed that SIO
agents hire foreign nationals to blow up contrabandista planes while they
were refueling at clandestine air strips. Another proposal called for
ambushing traffickers in America, and taking their drugs and money.

Enter Lucien Conein

The creation of the SIO coincided with the assignment of CIA officer Lucien
Conein to the BNDD. As a member of the OSS, Conein had parachuted into
France to form resistance cells that included Corsican gangsters. As a CIA
officer, Conein in 1954 was assigned to Vietnam to organize anti-communist
forces, and in 1963 achieved infamy as the intermediary between the
Kennedy White House and the cabal of generals that murdered President
Diem.

Historian Alfred McCoy has alleged that, in 1965, Conein arranged a truce
between the CIA and drug trafficking Corsicans in Saigon. The truce,
according to McCoy, allowed the Corsicans to traffic, as long as they served
as contact men for the CIA. The truce also endowed the Corsicans with “free
passage” at a time when Marseilles’ heroin labs were turning from Turkish to
Southeast Asian morphine base.

Conein denied McCoy’s allegation and insisted that his meeting with the
Corsicans was solely to resolve a problem caused by Daniel Ellsberg’s
“peccadilloes with the mistress of a Corsican.”

It is impossible to know who is telling the truth. What is known is that in July
1971, on Howard Hunt’s recommendation, the White House hired Conein as
an expert on Corsican drug traffickers in Southeast Asia. Conein was
assigned as a consultant to the SIO’s Far East Asia desk. His activities will
soon be discussed in greater detail.
The Parallel Mechanism
In September 1971, the Heroin Committee was reorganized as the Cabinet
Committee for International Narcotics Control (CCINC) under Secretary of
State William Rogers. CCINC’s mandate was to “set policies which relate
international considerations to domestic considerations.” By 1975, its budget
amounted to $875 million, and the war on drugs had become a most
profitable industry.

Concurrently, the CIA formed a unilateral drug unit in its operations division
under Seymour Bolten. Known as the Special Assistant to the Director for
the Coordination of Narcotics, Bolten directed CIA division and station chiefs
in unilateral drug control operations. In doing this, Bolten worked closely with
Ted Shackley, who in 1972 was appointed head of the CIA’s Western
Hemisphere Division. Bolten and Shackley had worked together in post-war
Germany, as well as in anti-Castro Cubans operations in the early 1960s.
Their collaboration would grease federal drug law enforcement’s skid into
oblivion.

“Bolten screwed us,” BNDD’s Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler
said emphatically. “And so did Shackley.”

Bolten “screwed” the BNDD, and the American judicial system, by setting up
a “parallel mechanism” based on a computerized register of international
drug traffickers and a CIA-staffed communications crew that intercepted
calls from drug traffickers inside the U.S. to their accomplices around the
world. The International Narcotics Information Network (INIS) was modeled
on a computerized management information system Shackley had used to
terrorize the underground resistance in South Vietnam.

Bolten’s staff also “re-tooled” dozens of CIA officers and slipped them into
the BNDD. Several went to Lou Conein at the SIO for clandestine, highly
illegal operations.

Factions within the CIA and military were opposed to Bolten’s parallel
mechanism, but CIA Executive Director William Colby supported Bolten’s
plan to preempt the BNDD and use its agents and informants for unilateral
CIA purposes. The White House also supported the plan for political
purposes related to Watergate. Top BNDD officials who resisted were
expunged; those who cooperated were rewarded.

Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network

In September 1972, DCI Helms (then immersed in Watergate intrigues), told
BNDD Director Ingersoll that the CIA had prepared files on specific drug
traffickers in Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean. Helms said the
CIA would provide Ingersoll with assets to pursue the traffickers and develop
information on targets of opportunity. The CIA would also provide
operational, technical, and financial support.

The result was the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network

(BUNCIN) whose methodology reflected Tripodi’s Medusa Plan and included
“provocations, inducement to desertion, creating confusion and
apprehension.”

Some BUNCIN intelligence activities were directed against “senior foreign

government officials” and were “blamed on other government agencies or
even on the intelligence services of other nations.” Other BUNCIN activities
were directed against American civic and political groups.

BNDD officials managed BUNCIN’s legal activities, while Conein at the SIO
managed its political and CIA aspects. According to Conein’s administrative
deputy, Rich Kobakoff, “BUNCIN was an experiment in how to finesse the
law. The end product was intelligence, not seizures or arrests.”

CIA officers Robert Medell and William Logay were selected to manage
BUNCIN.

A Bay of Pigs veteran born in Cuba, Medell was initially assigned to the
Twofold program. Medell was BUNCIN’s “covert” agent and recruited its
principal agents. All of his assets had previously worked for the CIA, and all
believed they were working for it again.

Medell started running agents in March 1973 with the stated goal of
penetrating the Trafficante organization. To this end the BNDD’s
Enforcement Chief, Andy Tartaglino, introduced Medell to Sal Caneba, a
retired Mafioso who had been in business with Trafficante in the 1950s.
Caneba in one day identified the head of the Cuban side of the Trafficante
family, as well as its organizational structure.

But the CIA refused to allow the BNDD to pursue the investigation, because
it had employed Trafficante in its assassination attempts against Fidel
Castro, and because Trafficante’s Operation 40 associates were performing
similar functions for the CIA around the world.

Medell’s Principal Agent was Bay of Pigs veteran Guillermo Tabraue, whom
the CIA paid $1,400 a week. While receiving this princely sum, Tabraue
participated in the “Alvarez-Cruz” drug smuggling ring.

Medell also recruited agents from Manuel Artime’s anti-Castro Cuban

organization. Former CIA officer and White House “Plumber” Howard Hunt,
notably, had been Artime’s case officer for years, and many members of
Artime’s organization had worked for Ted Shackley while Shackley was the
CIA’s station chief in Miami.

Bill Logay was the “overt” agent assigned to the BUNCIN office in Miami.
Logay had been Shackley’s bodyguard in Saigon in 1969. From 1970-1971,
Logay had served as a special police liaison and drug coordinator in
Saigon’s Precinct 5. Logay was also asked to join Twofold, but claims to
have refused.

Medell and Logay’s reports were hand delivered to BNDD headquarters via
the Defense Department’s classified courier service. The Defense
Department was in charge of emergency planning and provided BUNCIN
agents with special communications equipment. The CIA supplied
BUNCIN’s assets with forged IDs that enabled them to work for foreign
governments, including Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica.

Like Twofold, BUNCIN had two agendas. One, according to Chief Inspector
Fuller, “was told” and had a narcotics mission. The other provided cover for
the Plumbers. Orders for the domestic political facet emanated from the
White House and passed through Conein to “Plumber” Gordon Liddy and his
“Operation Gemstone” squad of exile Cuban terrorists from the Artime
organization.
Enforcement chief Tartaglino was unhappy with the arrangement and gave
Agent Ralph Frias the job of screening anti-Castro Cubans sent by the White
House to the BNDD. Frias was assigned to International Affairs chief George
Belk. When Nixon’s White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman sent
over three Cubans, Frias interviewed them and realized they were “plants.”
Those three were not hired, but, Frias lamented, many others were
successfully infiltrated inside the BNDD and other federal agencies.

Under BUNCIN cover, CIA anti-Castro assets reportedly kidnapped and

assassinated people in Colombia and Mexico. BUNCIN’s White House
sponsors also sent CIA anti-Castro Cuban assets to gather dirt on
Democratic politicians in Key West. With BUNCIN, federal drug law
enforcement sank to new lows of political repression and corruption.

Novo Yardley
The Nixon White House introduced the “operations by committee”
management method to ensure control over its illegal drug operations. But
as agencies involved in drug law enforcement pooled resources, the
BNDD’s mission was diluted and diminished.

And, as the preeminent agency in the federal government, the CIA not only
separated itself from the BNDD as part of Bolten’s parallel mechanism, it
rode off into the sunset on the BNDD’s horse. For example, at their
introductory meeting in Mexico City in 1972, Ted Shackley told Latin
American division chief Strickler to hand over all BNDD files, informant lists,
and cable traffic.

According to Strickler, “Bad things happened.” The worst abuse was that the
CIA allowed drug shipments into the U.S. without telling the BNDD.

“Individual stations allowed this,” SIO Director John Warner confirmed.

In so far as evidence acquired by CIA electronic surveillance is inadmissible

in court, the CIA was able to protect its controlled deliveries into the U.S.
merely by monitoring them. Numerous investigations had to be terminated
as a result. Likewise, dozens of prosecutions were dismissed on national
security grounds due to the participation of CIA assets operating around the
world.
Strickler knew which CIA people were guilty of sabotaging cases in Latin
America, and wanted to indict them. And so, at Bolten’s insistence, Strickler
was reassigned. Meanwhile, CIA assets from Bolten’s unilateral drug unit
were kidnapping and assassinating traffickers as part of Operation Twofold.

BNDD Director Ingersoll confirmed the existence of this covert facet of

Twofold. Its purpose, he said, was to put people in deep cover in the U.S. to
develop intelligence on drug trafficking, particularly from South America. The
regional directors weren’t aware of it. Ingersoll said he got approval from
Attorney General John Mitchell and passed the operation on to John Bartels,
the first administrator of the DEA. He said the unit did not operate inside the
U.S., which is why he thought it was legal.

Ingersoll added that he was surprised that no one from the Rockefeller
Commission asked him about it.

Joseph DiGennaro’s entry into the covert facet of Operation Twofold began
when a family friend, who knew CIA officer Jim Ludlum, suggested that he
apply for a job with the BNDD. Then working as a stockbroker in New York,
DiGennaro met Fuller in August 1971 in Washington. Fuller gave DiGennaro
the code name Novo Yardley, based on his posting in New York, and as a
play on the name of the famous codebreaker.

After DiGennaro obtained the required clearances, he was told that he and
several other recruits were being “spun-off” from Twofold into the CIA’s
“operational” unit. The background check took 14 months, during which time
he received intensive combat and trade-craft training.

In October 1972 he was sent to New York City and assigned to an

enforcement group as a cover. His paychecks came from BNDD funds, but
the program was reimbursed by the CIA through the Bureau of Mines. The
program was authorized by the “appropriate” Congressional committee.

DiGennaro’s unit was managed by the CIA’s Special Operations Division in

conjunction with the military, which provided assets within foreign military
services to keep ex-filtration routes (air corridors and roads) open. The
military cleared air space when captured suspects were brought into the
U.S. DiGennaro spent most of his time in South America, but the unit
operated worldwide. The CIA unit numbered about 40 men, including
experts in printing, forgery, maritime operations, and telecommunications.

DiGennaro would check with Fuller and take sick time or annual leave to go
on missions. There were lots of missions. As his BNDD group supervisor in
New York said, “Joey was never in the office.”

The job was tracking down, kidnapping, and, if they resisted, killing drug
traffickers. Kidnapped targets were incapacitated by drugs and dumped in
the U.S. As DEA Agent Gerry Carey recalled, “We’d get a call that there was
‘a present’ waiting for us on the corner of 116th Street and Sixth Avenue.
We’d go there and find some guy, who’d been indicted in the Eastern District
of New York, handcuffed to a telephone pole. We’d take him to a safe house
for questioning and, if possible, turn him into an informer. Sometimes we’d
have him in custody for months. But what did he know?”

If you’re a Corsican drug dealer in Argentina, and men with police

credentials arrest you, how do you know it’s a CIA operation? DiGennaro’s
last operation in 1977 involved the recovery of a satellite that had fallen into
a drug dealer’s hands. Such was the extent of the CIA’s “parallel
mechanism.”

The Dirty Dozen

With the formation of the Drug Enforcement Administration in July 1973,
BUNCIN was renamed the DEA Clandestine Operations Network (DEACON
1). A number of additional DEACONs were developed through Special Field
Intelligence Programs (SFIP). As an extension of BUNCIN, DEACON 1
developed intelligence on traffickers in Costa Rica, Ohio and New Jersey;
politicians in Florida; terrorists and gun runners; the sale of boats and
helicopters to Cuba; and the Trafficante organization.

Under DEA chief John Bartels, administrative control fell under Enforcement
Chief George Belk and his Special Projects assistant Philip Smith. Through
Belk and Smith, the Office of Special Projects had become a major facet of
Bolten’s parallel mechanism. It housed the DEA’s air wing (staffed largely by
CIA officers), conducted “research programs” with the CIA, provided
technical aids and documentation to agents, and handled fugitive searches.
As part of DEACON 1, Smith sent covert agent Bob Medell “to Caracas or
Bogota to develop a network of agents.” As Smith noted in a memorandum,
reimbursement for Medell “is being made in backchannel fashion to CIA
under payments to other agencies and is not counted as a position against
us.”

Thoroughly suborned by Bolten and the CIA, DEA Administrator Bartels

established a priority on foreign clandestine narcotics collection. And when
Belk proposed a special operations group in intelligence, Bartels
immediately approved it. In March 1974, Belk assigned the group to Lou
Conein.

As chief of the Intelligence Group/Operations (IGO), Conein administered

the DEA Special Operations Group (DEASOG), SFIP and National
Intelligence Officers (NIO) programs. The chain of command, however, was
“unclear” and while Medell reported administratively to Smith, Conein
managed operations through a separate chain of command reaching to
William Colby, who had risen to the rank of CIA Director concurrent with the
formation of the DEA.

Conein had worked for Colby for many years in Vietnam, for through Colby
he hired a “dirty dozen” CIA officers to staff DEASOG. As NIOs (not regular
gun-toting DEA agents), the DEASOG officers did not buy narcotics or
appear in court, but instead used standard CIA operating procedures to
recruit assets and set up agent networks for the long-range collection of
intelligence on trafficking groups. They had no connection to the DEA and
were housed in a safe house outside headquarters in downtown
Washington, DC.

The first DEASOG recruits were CIA officers Elias P. Chavez and Nicholas
Zapata. Both had paramilitary and drug control experience in Laos. Colby’s
personnel assistant Jack Mathews had been Chavez’s case officer at the
Long Thien base, where General Vang Pao ran his secret drug-smuggling
army under Ted Shackley’s auspices from 1966-1968.

A group of eight CIA officers followed: Wesley Dyckman, a Chinese linguist

with service in Vietnam, was assigned to San Francisco. Louis J. Davis, a
veteran of Vietnam and Laos, was assigned to the Chicago Regional
Intelligence Unit. Christopher Thompson from the CIA’s Phoenix Program in
Vietnam went to San Antonio. Hugh E. Murray, veteran of Pakse and Bolivia
(where he participated in the capture of Che Guevara), was sent to Tucson.
Thomas D. McPhaul had worked with Conein in Vietnam, and was sent to
Dallas. Thomas L. Briggs, a veteran of Laos and a friend of Shackley’s, went
to Mexico. Vernon J. Goertz, a Shackley friend who had participated in the
Allende coup, went to Venezuela. David A. Scherman, a Conein friend and
former manager of the CIA’s interrogation center in Da Nang, was sent to
sunny San Diego.

Gary Mattocks, who ran CIA counter-terror teams in Vietnam’s Delta, and
interrogator Robert Simon were the eleventh and twelfth members. Terry
Baldwin, Barry Carew and Joseph Lagattuta joined later.

According to Davis, Conein created DEASOG specifically to do Phoenix

program-style jobs overseas: the type where a paramilitary officer breaks
into a trafficker’s house, takes his drugs, and slits his throat. The NIOs were
to operate overseas where they would target traffickers the police couldn’t
reach, like a prime minister’s son or the police chief in Acapulco if he was
the local drug boss. If they couldn’t assassinate the target, they would bomb
his labs or use psychological warfare to make him look like he was a DEA
informant, so his own people would kill him.

The DEASOG people “would be breaking the law,” Davis observed, “but
they didn’t have arrest powers overseas anyway.”

Conein envisioned 50 NIOs operating worldwide by 1977. But a slew of

Watergate-related scandals forced the DEA to curtail its NIO program and
reorganize its covert operations staff and functions in ways that have
corrupted federal drug law enforcement beyond repair.

Assassination Scandals
The first scandal focused on DEACON 3, which targeted the Aviles-Perez
organization in Mexico. Eli Chavez, Nick Zapata and Barry Carew were the
NIOs assigned.

A veteran CIA officer who spoke Spanish, Carew had served as a special
police adviser in Saigon before joining the BNDD. Carew was assigned as
Conein’s Latin American desk officer and managed Chavez and Zapata (aka
“the Mexican Assassin”) in Mexico. According to Chavez, a White House
Task Force under Howard Hunt had started the DEACON 3 case. The Task
force provided photographs of the Aviles Perez compound in Mexico, from
whence truckloads of marijuana were shipped to the U.S.

Funds were allotted in February 1974, at which point Chavez and Zapata
traveled to Mexico City as representatives of the North American Alarm and
Fire Systems Company. In Mazatlán, they met with Carew, who stayed at a
fancy hotel and played tennis every day, while Chavez and Zapata, whom
Conein referred to as “pepper-bellies,” fumed in a flea-bag motel.

An informant arranged for Chavez, posing as a buyer, to meet Perez. A deal

was struck, but DEA chief John Bartels made the mistake of instructing
Chavez to brief the DEA’s regional director in Mexico City before making
“the buy.”

At this meeting, the DEACON 3 agents presented their operational plan. But
when the subject of “neutralizing” Perez came up, analyst Joan Banister
took this to mean assassination. Bannister reported her suspicions to DEA
headquarters, where the anti-CIA faction leaked her report to Washington
Post columnist Jack Anderson.

Anderson’s allegation that the DEA was providing cover for a CIA
assassination unit included revelations that the Senate had investigated IGO
chief Conein for shopping around for assassination devices, like exploding
ashtrays and telephones. Conein managed to keep his job, but the trail led
to his comrade from the OSS, Mitch Werbell.

A deniable asset Conein used for parallel operations, Werbell had tried to
sell several thousand silenced machine pistols to DEACON 1 target Robert
Vesco, then living in Costa Rica surrounded by drug trafficking Cuban exiles
in the Trafficante organization. Trafficante was also, at the time, living in
Costa Rica as a guest of President Figueres whose son had purchased
weapons from Werbell and used them to arm a death squad he formed with
DEACON 1 asset Carlos Rumbault, a notorious anti-Castro Cuban terrorist
and fugitive drug smuggler.
Meanwhile, in February 1974, DEA Agent Anthony Triponi, a former Green
Beret and member of Operation Twofold, was admitted to St. Luke’s
Hospital in New York “suffering from hypertension.” DEA inspectors found
Triponi in the psychiatric ward, distraught because he had broken his “cover”
and now his “special code” would have to be changed.

Thinking he was insane, the DEA inspectors called former chief inspector
Patrick Fuller in California, just to be sure. As it turned out, everything
Triponi had said about Twofold was true! The incredulous DEA inspectors
called the CIA and were stunned when they were told: “If you release the
story, we will destroy you.”

By 1975, Congress and the Justice Department were investigating the

DEA’s relations with the CIA. In the process they stumbled on, among other
things, plots to assassinate Torrijos and Noriega in Panama, as well as
Tripodi’s Medusa Program.

In a draft report, one DEA inspector described Medusa as follows: “Topics

considered as options included psychological terror tactics, substitution of
placebos to discredit traffickers, use of incendiaries to destroy conversion
laboratories, and disinformation to cause internal warfare between drug
trafficking organizations; other methods under consideration involved
blackmail, use of psychopharmacological techniques, bribery and even
terminal sanctions.”

The Cover-Up
Despite the flurry of investigations, Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford,
reconfirmed the CIA’s narcotic intelligence collection arrangement with DEA,
and the CIA continued to have its way. Much of its success is attributed to
Seymour Bolten, whose staff handled “all requests for files from the Church
Committee,” which concluded that allegations of drug smuggling by CIA
assets and proprietaries “lacked substance.”

The Rockefeller Commission likewise gave the CIA a clean bill of health,
falsely stating that the Twofold inspections project was terminated in 1973.
The Commission completely covered-up the existence of the operation unit
hidden within the inspections program.
Ford did task the Justice Department to investigate “allegations of fraud,
irregularity, and misconduct” in the DEA. The so-called DeFeo investigation
lasted through July 1975, and included allegations that DEA officials had
discussed killing Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega. In March 1976, Deputy
Attorney General Richard Thornburgh announced there were no findings to
warrant criminal prosecutions.

In 1976, Congresswoman Bella Abzug submitted questions to new Director

of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush, about the CIA’s central role in
international drug trafficking. Bush’s response was to cite a 1954 agreement
with the Justice Department gave the CIA the right to block prosecution or
keep its crimes secret in the name of national security.

In its report, the Abzug Committee said: “It was ironic that the CIA should be
given responsibility of narcotic intelligence, particularly since they are
supporting the prime movers.”

The Mansfield Amendment of 1976 sought to curtail the DEA’s extra-legal

activities abroad by prohibiting agents from kidnapping or conducting
unilateral actions without the consent of the host government. The CIA, of
course, was exempt and continued to sabotage DEA cases against its
movers, while further tightening its stranglehold on the DEA’s enforcement
and intelligence capabilities.

In 1977, the DEA’s Assistant Administrator for Enforcement sent a memo,

co-signed by the six enforcement division chiefs, to DEA chief Peter
Bensinger. As the memo stated, “All were unanimous in their belief that
present CIA programs were likely to cause serious future problems for DEA,
both foreign and domestic.”

They specifically cited controlled deliveries enabled by CIA electronic

surveillance and the fact that the CIA “will not respond positively to any
discovery motion.” They complained that “Many of the subjects who appear
in these CIA- promoted or controlled surveillances regularly travel to the
United States in furtherance of their trafficking activities.” The “de facto
immunity” from prosecution enabled the CIA assets to “operate much more
openly and effectively.”
But then DEA chief Peter Bensinger suffered the CIA at the expense of
America’s citizens and the DEA’s integrity. Under Bensinger the DEA
created its CENTAC program to target drug trafficking organization
worldwide through the early 1980s. But the CIA subverted the CENTAC: as
its director Dennis Dayle famously said, “The major targets of my
investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.”

Murder and Mayhem

DEACON 1 inherited BUNCIN’s anti-Castro Cuban assets from Brigade
2506, which the CIA organized to invade Cuba in 1960. Controlled by
Nixon’s secret political police, these CIA assets, operating under DEA cover,
had parallel assignments involving “extremist groups and terrorism, and
information of a political nature.”

Noriega and Moises Torrijos in Panama were targets, as was fugitive

financier and Nixon campaign contributor Robert Vesco in Costa Rica, who
was suspected of being a middle man in drug and money-laundering
operations of value to the CIA.

DEACON 1’s problems began when overt agent Bill Logay charged that
covert agent Bob Medell’s anti-Castro Cuban assets had penetrated the
DEA on behalf of the Trafficante organization. DEACON 1 secretary Cecelia
Plicet fanned the flames by claiming that Conein and Medell were using
Principal Agent Tabraue to circumvent the DEA.

In what amounted to an endless succession of controlled deliveries, Tabraue

was financing loads of cocaine and using DEACON 1’s Cuban assets to
smuggle them into the U.S. Plicet said that Medell and Conein worked for
“the other side” and wanted the DEA to fail. These accusations prompted an
investigation, after which Logay was reassigned to inspections and Medell
was reassigned and replaced by Gary Mattocks, an NIO member of the Dirty
Dozen.

According to Mattocks, Shackley helped Colby set up DEASOG and brought

in “his” people, including Tom Clines, whom Shackley placed in charge of
the CIA’s Caribbean operations. Clines, like Shackley and Bolten, knew all
the exile Cuban terrorists and traffickers on the DEASOG payroll. CIA officer
Vernon Goertz worked for Clines in Caracas as part of the CIA’s parallel
mechanism under DEASOG cover.

As cover for his DEACON 1 activities, Mattocks set up a front company

designed to improve relations between Cuban and American businessmen.
Meanwhile, through the CIA, he recruited members of the Artime
organization including Watergate burglars Rolando Martinez and Bernard
Barker, as well as Che Guevara’s murderer, Felix Rodriguez. These anti-
Castro terrorists were allegedly part of an Operation 40 assassination squad
that Shackley and Clines employed for private as well as professional
purposes.

In late 1974, DEACON 1 crashed and burned when interrogator Robert

Simon’s daughter was murdered in a drive-by shooting by crazed anti-
Castro Cubans. Simon at the time was managing the CIA’s drug data base
and had linked the exile Cuban drug traffickers with “a foreign terrorist
organization.” As Mattocks explained, “It got bad after the Brigaders found
out Simon was after them.”

None of the CIA’s terrorists, however, were ever arrested. Instead, Conein
issued a directive prohibiting DEACON 1 assets from reporting on domestic
political affairs or terrorist activities and the tragedy was swept under the
carpet for reasons of national security.

DEACON 1 unceremoniously ended in 1975 after Agent Fred Dick was

assigned to head the DEA’s Caribbean Basin Group. In that capacity Dick
visited the DEACON 1 safe house and found, in his words, “a clandestine
CIA unit using miscreants from Bay of Pigs, guys who were blowing up
planes.” Dick hit the ceiling and in August 1975 DEACON I was terminated.

No new DEACONs were initiated and the others quietly ran their course.
Undeterred, the CIA redeployed its anti-Castro Cuban miscreant assets,
some of whom established the terror organization CORU in 1977. Others
would go to work for Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a key National Security
Council aide under President Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra drug and
terror network.
Conein’s IGO was disbanded in 1976 after a grand jury sought DEACON I
intelligence regarding several drug busts. But CIA acquired intelligence
cannot be used in prosecutions, and the CIA refused to identify its assets in
court, with the result that 27 prosecutions were dismissed on national
security grounds.

Gary Mattocks was thereafter unwelcomed in the DEA. But his patron Ted
Shackley had become DCI George Bush’s assistant deputy director for
operations and Shackley kindly rehired Mattocks into the CIA and assigned
him to the CIA’s narcotics unit in Peru.

At the time, Santiago Ocampo was purchasing cocaine in Peru and his
partner Matta Ballesteros was flying it to the usual Cuban miscreants in
Miami. One of the receivers, Francisco Chanes, an erstwhile DEACON
asset, owned two seafood companies that would soon allegedly come to
serve as fronts in Oliver North’s Contra supply network, receiving and
distributing tons of Contra cocaine.

Mattocks himself soon joined the Contra support operation as Eden

Pastrora’s case officer. In that capacity Mattocks was present in 1984 when
CIA officers handed pilot Barry Seal a camera and told him to take
photographs of Sandinista official Federico Vaughn loading bags of cocaine
onto Seal’s plane. A DEA “special employee,” Seal was running drugs for
Jorge Ochoa Vasquez and purportedly using Nicaragua as a transit point for
his deliveries.

North asked DEA officials to instruct Seal, who was returning to Ochoa with
$1.5 million, to deliver the cash to the Contras. When the DEA officials
refused, North leaked a blurry photo, purportedly of Vaughn, to the right-
wing Washington Times. For partisan political purposes, on behalf of the
Reagan administration, Oliver North blew the DEA’s biggest case at the
time, and the DEA did nothing about it, even though DEA Administrator Jack
Lawn said in 1988, in testimony before the Subcommittee on Crime of the
Committee on the Judiciary, that leaking the photo “severely jeopardized the
lives” of agents.

The circle was squared in 1989 when the CIA instructed Gary Mattocks to
testify as a defense witness at the trial of DEACON 1 Principal Agent Gabriel
Tabraue. Although Tabraue had earned $75 million from drug trafficking,
while working as a CIA and DEA asset, the judge declared a mistrial based
on Mattocks’s testimony. Tabraue was released. Some people inferred that
President George H.W. Bush had personally ordered Mattocks to dynamite
the case.

The CIA’s use of the DEA to employ terrorists would continue apace. For
example, in 1981, DEA Agent Dick Salmi recruited Roberto Cabrillo, a drug
smuggling member of CORU, an organization of murderous Cuban exiles
formed by drug smuggler Frank Castro and Luis Posada while George Bush
was DCI.

The DEA arrested Castro in 1981, but the CIA engineered his release and
hired him to establish a Contra training camp in the Florida Everglades.
Posada reportedly managed resupply and drug shipments for the Contras in
El Salvador, in cahoots with Felix Rodriguez. Charged in Venezuela with
blowing up a Cuban airliner and killing 73 people in 1976, Posada was
shielded from extradition by George W. Bush in the mid-2000s.

Having been politically castrated by the CIA, DEA officials merely warned its
CORU assets to stop bombing people in the U.S. It could maim and kill
people anywhere else, just not here in the sacred homeland. By then, Salmi
noted, the Justice Department had a special “grey-mail section” to fix cases
involving CIA terrorists and drug dealers.

The Hoax
DCI William Webster formed the CIA’s Counter-Narcotics Center in 1988.
Staffed by over 100 agents, it ostensibly became the springboard for the
covert penetration of, and paramilitary operations against, top traffickers
protected by high-tech security firms, lawyers and well-armed private
armies.

The CNC brought together, under CIA control, every federal agency involved
in the drug wars. Former CIA officer and erstwhile Twofold member, Terry
Burke, then serving as the DEA’s Deputy for Operations, was allowed to
send one liaison officer to the CNC.
The CNC quickly showed its true colors. In the late 1990, Customs agents in
Miami seized a ton of pure cocaine from Venezuela. To their surprise, a
Venezuelan undercover agent said the CIA had approved the delivery. DEA
Administrator Robert Bonner ordered an investigation and discovered that
the CIA had, in fact, shipped the load from its warehouse in Venezuela.

The “controlled deliveries” were managed by CIA officer Mark McFarlin, a

veteran of Reagan’s terror campaign in El Salvador. Bonner wanted to indict
McFarlin, but was prevented from doing so because Venezuela was in the
process of fighting off a rebellion led by leftist Hugo Chavez. This same
scenario has been playing out in Afghanistan for the last 15 years, largely
through the DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD), which provides cover
for CIA operations worldwide.

The ultimate and inevitable result of American imperialism, the SOD job is
not simply to “create a crime,” as freewheeling FBN agents did in the old
days, but to “recreate a crime” so it is prosecutable, despite whatever extra-
legal methods were employed to obtain the evidence before it is passed
along to law enforcement agencies so they can make arrests without
revealing what prompted their suspicions.

Reuters reported in 2013, “The unit of the DEA that distributes the
information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen
partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal
Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created
in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several
dozen employees to several hundred.”
The utilization of information from the SOD, which operates out of a secret
location in Virginia, “cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative
function,” according to an internal document cited by Reuters, which added
that agents are specifically directed “to omit the SOD’s involvement from
investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom
testimony.”

Agents are told to use “parallel construction” to build their cases without
reference to SOD’s tips which may come from sensitive “intelligence
 intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone
records,” Reuters reported.

Citing a former federal agent, Reuters reported that SOD operators would
tell law enforcement officials in the U.S. to be at a certain place at a certain
time and to look for a certain vehicle which would then be stopped and
searched on some pretext. “After an arrest was made, agents then
pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the
SOD tip, the former agent said,” Reuters reported.

An anonymous senior DEA official told Reuters that this “parallel

construction” approach is “decades old, a bedrock concept” for law
enforcement. The SOD’s approach follows Twofold techniques and Bolten’s
parallel mechanism from the early 1970s.

To put it simply, lying to frame defendants, which has always been unstated
policy, is now official policy: no longer considered corruption, it is how your
government manages the judicial system on behalf of the rich political elite.

As outlined in this article, the process tracks back to Nixon, the formation of
the BNDD, and the creation of a secret political police force out of the White
House. As Agent Bowman Taylor caustically observed, “I used to think we
were fighting the drug business, but after they formed the BNDD, I realized
we were feeding it.”

The corruption was first “collateral” – as a function of national security

performed by the CIA in secret – but has now become “integral,’ the
essence of empire run amok.

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More articles by: DOUGLAS VALENTINE

Douglas Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret
History of America’s War on Drugs, and The Strength of the Pack: The
Personalities, Politics, and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA.