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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1 Num. 79
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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Ex-DEA Agent Levels
NEW CHARGES ON NORTH'S DRUG-RUNNING
by Edward Spannaus
[From *The New Federalist*, 8/15/94]
Washington, Aug. 8 (EIRNS) -- More evidence that narcotics-
trafficking was a central part of Oliver North's "Contra"
operation in Central America was presented here on Aug. 2 by a
former senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officer.
Celerino Castillo, addressing a press conference at the National
Press Club, said that massive amounts of drugs were being run out
of the air base in Ilopango, El Salvador, the center of North's
Contra supply program. "All of his pilots were drug traffickers,"
Castillo said. A majority had been arrested for drug-trafficking.
"He [North] knew what they were up to and refused to do anything
about it."
Castillo, the DEA's senior agent in El Salvador from 1985 to
1991, said he had two informants at Ilopango who had access to
all the flight plans and the pilots. The informants saw the drugs
and the money, and the pilots also talked freely about cocaine
they were taking to the United States and about the money. When
the DEA ran the names of the pilots through their computer,
"every single one of them was documented as a narcotics
trafficker in DEA files."
-+- In North's Own Notebooks -+-
Castillo, who was joined in the press conference by author Terry
Reed [*Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA*, by Terry Reed &
John Cummings. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1994. ISBN 1-56171-249-3],
also pointed to the 543 pages of Ollie North notebooks which make
reference to drugs and drug trafficking, as identified by the
Kerry Committee -- the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on
narcotics and terrorism. [CN -- A good book which covers how
branches of our government have been smuggling cocaine into the
United States is *Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in
Central America* by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. ISBN 0-520-07781-
4 (paperback).] "Robert Owens, his buddy, was warning him and
advising him that the Contras were heavily involved in narcotics
trafficking," Castillo charged.
"His operation ran a lot of narcotics into the United States,"
Castillo said. He noted that under the drug conspiracy laws, if
someone has knowledge that drugs are being trafficked, and
doesn't do anything about it, this is a violation of federal law.
One of the key traffickers operating out of Ilopango, William
Brasher, flaunted the fact that he was protected by North, by the
FBI, by the CIA, and by top U.S. Embassy officials in San
Salvador. Repeated efforts by Mr. Castillo and fellow DEA agents
to bust Mr. Brasher and the other narco-pilots were met with
interference from the White House, where Vice President Bush and
Oliver North were personally in charge of the secret Contra
program.
Castillo also reported that Ollie North is still under
investigation by the DEA, in a case involving weapons smuggling
into the Philippines, an operation which also involved known drug
traffickers. Castillo provided a case number, GFGD 91-39, which
he said he believes is still an active DEA investigation.
-+- Bush "In The Loop" -+-
Castillo's book, *Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug
War," co-authored with David Harmon, has just been released. In
the book, Castillo reports that from the moment he arrived in
Central America in October 1985 to take charge of DEA operations
in El Salvador and Honduras, he was inundated with evidence that
the Contra resupply base at Ilopango Air Field in El Salvador was
a hub of cocaine trafficking.
Ilopango was run by "former" CIA official Felix Rodriguez, a
close personal friend of then-Vice President George Bush. It is
well-documented that Rodriguez held a series of meetings at the
White House with Bush and his senior intelligence advisor, Donald
Gregg, during the time frame in which Castillo was gathering the
evidence of the dope smuggling.
At the same press conference here today, Terry Reed, co-author of
the book *Compromised*, said that George Bush was definitely "in
the loop" on the Contra drug operation. Reed says that the
Israeli agents he worked with in Mexico referred to Bush as "the
man in charge" on several occasions. "That didn't shock me," Reed
said. "Knowing Bush's background, he should be; he was probably
the most qualified to run the Iran-Contra affair."
In *Compromised*, Reed also identified Rodriguez, Bush, and North
as the key players running a guns-for-drugs operation through
Guadalajara, Mexico. Reed discovered a large shipment of pure
cocaine at a warehouse at Guadalajara Airport bound for the
United States in August 1987. When he attempted to expose the
operation, he was framed up by federal prosecutors in an
unsuccessful effort to shut him up.
In front of an audience of reporters that included Hollinger's
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard [CN -- Evans-Pritchard writes for the
London *Telegraph*], Reed declared that he is not out to unseat
Bill Clinton. [CN -- According to Reed and others, guns were
flown out of Mena, Arkansas to the Contras and the planes
returned with tons of cocaine. Reed and others claim that Clinton
was well-aware of what was going on.] The information he has "is
not only damaging to the current administration, but also to the
Reagan and Bush administrations as well. This is a bi-partisan
issue," Reed said.
"I'm out to defend my Constitutional rights," Reed asserted, as
he described his civil lawsuit now underway in Little Rock. "In
the course of doing that, if something spills off on Bill
[Clinton] or George Bush, so be it."
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9