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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1 Num. 97
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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TERRY REED / JOHN CUMMINGS INTERVIEW
[...continued...]
TERRY REED [continues]:
But yeah, I was in intelligence, in support of Air America's
operations over in Thailand. And that's where I met several of
the key players that would later surface in the Iran-Contra
scandal, you know, years later, in 1986.
But after becoming disillusioned with peacetime military, I got
out, honorably, and went into a field, a very technical field,
which just by accident... I mean, I chose it, I was attracted to
it, then found out once I was in it that it was full of KGB and
all kinds of espionage activity. So I was "resurrected" and
recruited to work undercover for both the FBI and CIA, monitoring
the pilfering of defense department secrets to Moscow by both
Hungarian firms as well as the Japanese.
And in the course of doing that, I met an undercover agent who
was using the code name John Cathey, in Oklahoma in 1982.
DONAHUE:
Let me stop you right there. We've gotta take our break. When we
come back, we want the rest of the story.
Terry Reed. John Cummings. The book is *Compromised*.
[...commercial break...]
DONAHUE:
We're back. Tom Donahue, "America's Town Forum", patriotism in
action.
In order to have a better phone sounding quality, we're gonna
have Terry out of the mix for just a few minutes here, and we're
gonna stay with... Uh, actually, we're gonna stay with Terry
[Reed] and come back to John Cummings in just a minute or two.
Um, Terry, let's talk about this [John] Cathey figure. Who was
that?
REED:
Well I was up to 1982. And through the result of working for a
little over a year and a half with the FBI in Oklahoma City, this
operation I was working on expanded overseas. And they had to
bring in the CIA and I was introduced to this guy, John Cathey,
who subsequently becomes Oliver North, the man reporting to the
National Security Council on the famous Toshiba case, the case in
which Toshiba Machine Tool was stealing American propeller
technologies. The Soviets wanted quiet-running propellers for
their nuclear submarines. And we had invented that and they were
using this Japanese machine-tool company to gain access to that
technology. That's how I came into play with Oliver North in
1982.
DONAHUE:
How long-standing was your relationship with Oliver North?
REED:
Well, for quite a while. It went on through, I must say, mid-to-
late '85, when I moved to Mexico. I was sort of handed off into
another operation that had found its genesis in western Arkansas.
But North and I, being veterans, hit it right off. And
philosophically we agree. I think if you read the book you know
(as I believe you have) right in the beginning, we start off with
an Oliver North conversation and our mutual disdain for...
DONAHUE:
...Nixon and Kissinger.
REED:
Nixon and Kissinger. Yeah.
DONAHUE:
Um-hmm [understands].
REED:
But our attraction came primarily not only through our
philosophical alignment but our shared war stories and what not.
But it put me in a perfect position in 1983, late 1983, to be
introduced to a man by the name of Barry Seal, Adler Berriman
Seal, who was also a CIA operative working out of a little town
called Mena, Arkansas, in western Arkansas. So that's where the
story sort of launches off into I think what is probably the most
explosive element of the book.
DONAHUE:
Absolutely. And we have Oliver North running for the United
States senate.
REED:
Um-hmm [understands].
DONAHUE:
Many feel he was set up and betrayed in the Iran-Contra affair.
But so many don't know his role in this {1}... And I'll let you
spell it out. What *was* Oliver North's role in Mena, Arkansas?
REED:
Well I consider this, him, the oversight agent. Certainly
reporting directly either to CIA director Casey or to someone
very close to him. The support that we received and the materiel
we had access to was just *phenomenal*. This was *not* a real low
key operation, even though it was in a very remote region of
western Arkansas.
But the Oliver North that *I* knew was sort of a very loose,
business manager type that didn't micro-manage anything but let
[Barry] Seal pretty much run the operation. And I was just, of
course, subordinate to Seal. And primarily my job, initially --
I'm a 3,000-hour plus flight instructor -- my job was to train
Nicaraguan nationals to fly aerial delivery aircraft, the very
same type of aircraft that was shot down, that exposed, the whole
Iran-Contra affair. That C-123 aircraft was the type of aircraft
that, ultimately, my students would be upgraded to down in
Nicaragua -- down in Honduras, actually -- once they graduated
from the basic program we had set up in Arkansas.
DONAHUE:
And was Mena, Arkansas, chosen for its topography and also
Governor Clinton, and they felt he would cooperate in
paramilitary operations?
REED:
The way I answer that, Tom, is I grew up in southwest Missouri.
And there was a *phenomenal* difference between the economy of
Missouri and Arkansas [when] I was a child. In fact, I've lived
along the border of Mexico and the U.S., and it was almost the
same radical difference when you crossed that state line back
when I was a younger man. You were in beautiful country, but very
impoverished. *Something* was holding the state back
economically. I, as a young man, didn't know what that was. But I
later came to understand its archaic banking laws, and a thing
called the Arkansas Usury Law that prevented banks in the state
from lending out money that exceeded 10 percent interest, and a
law that prevented their banks from having linkage to banks
outside the state, pretty much kept a ruling elite in power in
Little Rock and elsewhere. And kept the majority of the populace
impoverished.
DONAHUE:
You call it a Banana Republic.
REED:
We make a term that, certainly the political environment that
existed in Arkansas, even in the '80s, the early '80s, was very
comparable to a third world government environment in that you
had a very small, ruling elite.
DONAHUE:
L.J. Davis says the same...
REED:
Yeah.
DONAHUE:
...after his investigation.
REED:
I think he stole that from our book. But...
DONAHUE:
O.K. But he gave a lot of credit and attribution to both of you
during his interview with us.
REED:
O.K. That's good. I would sure have liked to have had honorable
mention in his article, since he did, in fact, use our book as
one of his research guides. But I guess that's journalism, if
John Cummings agrees with me.
DONAHUE:
Well, at least he's giving you credit throughout interviews he's
doing...
REED:
Great.
DONAHUE:
...coast to coast. So I feel very much... Well, we'll talk more
about that when we come back.
Our special guests, John Cummings and Terry Reed.
[...to be continued...]
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{1} "But so many don't know his [Oliver North's] role in this..."
But after all, every damn fart in the O.J. Simpson trial is just