cia-drug-smuggling

ONLY THE GODFATHER

CIA and Subsidiaries Exposed in Court Documents As Active Drug Smugglers Using Military Aircraft Washed Through Forest Service

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December, 1998 Investigations Latest in Legacy of CIA's Drug Operations and Corruption of Government

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Two Reagan Era Operators, Convicted in 1997, May Be Only The First To Hit The Graybar Hotel

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/forest_service_c130s.html

The Dark History - In 1976 Senator Frank Church submitted CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston to intense grilling over the Agency's questionable and illegal operation of proprietary air transport services. At that time, Houston admitted that the CIA had routinely used the United States Postal Service and the U.S. Forrest Service as covers for covert activities. Houston admitted that The Forest Service had been infiltrated by CIA and that CIA shared an address with the Forrest Service's Air Research and Development unit on Kent Street in Alexandria, VA.

Houston also admitted that the primary company, responsible for all of CIA covert air operations, was a holding company named Pacific Corp. There is an Oregon based corporation known as Pacificorp which has a multitude of sub entities with varying versions of the name including Pacific Power & Light, Pacificorp and Pacific Harbor Capital. In 1993 a Seattle paper ran a story connecting Pacificorp to CIA's Pacific Corp. Under oath, before the Senate in 1976, Houston admitted that Pacific Corp, owned and controlled such CIA notables as Air America, Southern Air Transport and Intermountain Air. In 1976 the CIA was ordered to sell Air America and divest itself of all its holdings.

Since 1973 the CIA had been anticipating this and had moved quickly to give all of its clandestinely owned aircraft to its alleged proprietary, Evergreen International based out of Marana Air Park near Tucson Arizona and McMinville Oregon, near Portland. Coincidentally, Medford Oregon is the home base of aircraft broker Roy Reagan. Reagan was convicted in 1997, along with another man on criminal charges stemming from a scheme to fraudulently take $80 million worth of airplanes from the U.S. government and place them in private hands. Reagan was also the broker for Evergreen according to a lawsuit filed by former CIA pilot Gary Eitel.

In the late 1970s and early 80s former military and CIA pilot Eitel, also an attorney, became aware that the CIA was planning to move a number of Australian C-130s under CIA control into the private sector and transfer them to Bogota Colombia. "They were to be used for drug smuggling," said Eitel. The attorney for the transfer was a man named John Ford who in later years represented Pacificorp, Pacific Harbor Capitol and who is currently said to be senior in-house attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco (no connection). Several of the Australian C-130's turned up in the drug trade and were moved through facilities in Arizona and Mena, Arkansas, among others, on their way into the cocaine trade.

Eitel has testified in Federal Court and confirmed to From The Wilderness that CIA was flying drugs into Mena Arkansas as far back as 1971-5. Eitel began his relations with CIA in 1968 as a helicopter pilot who was willing to fly risky combat missions in Vietnam. He has since broken with the Agency and has proven that by giving sworn testimony both in court and in Congress exposing illegal CIA operations.

Eitel, who has testified as an expert witness in several civil and criminal cases, is now representing the U.S. Government as a private citizen in a civil action charging the Forest Service and CIA with defrauding the American people of close to $80 million dollars in the illegal transfer of 35 C-130 aircraft to a number of private firms. These firms serve as contractors to the Forest Service. The aircraft transfer program, begun in 1987, was intended to give private contractors serviceable aircraft in exchange for worn out ones to help the Forest Service fight fires as converted air tankers. Instead they have turned up all over the world on covert operations. A few have been caught full of drugs as recently as 1996.

THE AIRPLANE

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules first entered the inventory of the U.S. Air Force in 1955. To this day it remains one of the most versatile cargo aircraft ever built. The Air Force includes various versions of the C-130 in its operational plans through the year 2015. It can fly at cruise speeds of up to 350 mph, is capable of taking off from short, unimproved runways and can haul loads of up to 50,000 pounds. It is capable of dropping those loads from a rear ramp while literally "on the fly". While new C-130s cost the government around $20-25 million, used aircraft are generally valued by the GAO at up to 3.5 million each. A GAO report lists the value of one propeller at $100,000 and one engine at $250,000. It is the perfect drug smuggling aircraft for long hauls.

Under United States law the C-130 is a military munitions aircraft which is tightly controlled. It is forbidden to export one to a foreign country without the prior approval of the State Department, the Department of Defense, the FAA and the CIA. The CIA is the only governmental agency with enough clout to secure permissions from all of the preceding entities.

When used in a fire fighting application as an aerial tanker it costs $3,300 per flight hour to operate a C-130 delivering 2,000 gallons of retardant as opposed to $1,600 per hour for the same amount of retardant delivered from a readily available DC 7.

The Scheme

Roy Reagan, no relation to Ronald, has a long and detailed history of connections to CIA and covert activities. In the 1980s he was linked both to Evergreen Air and a number of operations securing surplus helicopters and weapons for Contra support operations. Evergreen Air itself, during the contra era, has been documented as handling Contra military supplies, including weapons, which were loaded onto C-130s in Corpus Christi, Texas. One of Reagan's business partners, James Patrick Ross, who worked with Reagan in Reagan Enterprises out of their offices in Chico, California, was the same mechanic who signed off on a mechanical inspection of a C-123 named The Fat Lady which was later shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 while on a CIA mission. Only an ill-starred cargo handler named Eugene Hasenfus survived the shoot down. The Fat Lady's death and Hasenfus' survival triggered the Iran-Contra scandal. The Fat Lady had previously been the favorite personal airplane of Barry Seal.

Fred A. Fuchs (pronounced Fox) is a former career Forest Service employee who rose to the rank of Assistant Director. The Forest Service fired him in 1993 for his role in this scheme. He was subsequently re-hired and then allowed to retire in 1996. Fuchs lists his home as Las Lunas, NM which is, coincidentally, the site of the Mid Valley airport used by Albert Vincent Carone and his partner James Robert Strauss for CIA drug missions throughout the eighties and early nineties. Carone and Strauss have been previously documented in From The Wilderness as being the primary bag men for Oliver North and George Bush as well as providing liaison between the CIA and the Mafia for transfers of drugs and drug profits.

In 1987 Reagan and Fuchs came up with a plan to literally steal airplanes from the federal government which had a noble sounding stated purpose. According to documents filed in an Arizona federal criminal prosecution, which led to the conviction of the two for fraud and theft in Oct. 1997, they said they were going to save the nation's forests.

The scheme was simple. All around the country the U.S. Forest Service had relied for years on the services of private contractors who owned, operated and maintained air tankers used to drop water and retardant on forest fires. The problem was that by 1987 most of the Korean War and WW II vintage aircraft then in use were wearing out. They were not capable of carrying the loads necessary and spare parts were hard to find. If Reagan and Fuchs got their way, which they did, the Forest Service would obtain surplus C-130s, Navy P-3 Orion anti-sub planes and even jet powered A-10 Warthogs, used as tank killers during desert Storm, and "trade" them to private contractors on a one-for-one basis and place the aging aircraft in museums. The government would then hire the planes as needed to fight fires and the title to the aircraft would pass into private hands.

In reality, according to a lawsuit filed by whistleblower Gary Eitel under the False Claims Act, (a little known civil war era statute that allows citizens to file suit on behalf of the government), Evergreen Air, as a behind the scenes player, was using Reagan in a scheme to move as many as 50 C-130s into "private" hands for use in a variety of covert operations. These included drug smuggling and the direct enrichment of a number of private contractors including Reagan and at least five private companies in California, Arizona and Wyoming. Eitel has been quoted in news sources as saying that one purpose of the conspiracy was to defraud even the CIA, which would help obtain the aircraft. However, in an interview with From The Wilderness he acknowledged that Evergreen Air had card carrying CIA officers on the property and had admitted being a CIA contractor. "What happened also was that Reagan was going to put about one out of every three C-130s back in his own pocket for his own use."

The Law

From The Wilderness has obtained a copy of a Dec. 1989 memorandum to Forest Service Associate Chief George Leonard from Assistant General Counsel Kenneth Cohen, which seems to show that the Forest Service knew it was having problems with the scheme all along. Listing requirements from the Federal Property Management Regulations Cohen laid out three specific requirements which had to be met before the transfer could be deemed legal. First the transfer had to result in a greater return for the government. That could hardly be the case if a C-130 valued at $3.5 million were traded for a junk aircraft valued as low as $19,000 which was inoperable. Second, aircraft and airframe structural components were specifically prohibited from transfer. Third, the items to be exchanged could not have been acquired for the purpose of transfer and they had to have been used by the Forest Service for a period of one year before being transferred out of Forest Service inventory.

In spite of the fact that none of the above conditions were met the transfers continued under the control of Fuchs and Reagan through approximately 1989 when the last of the C-130's were placed in the hands of five private air contractors. Out of 35 aircraft transferred into private hands twenty-eight were actually re-titled. Some changed hands several times before turning up in the control of drug dealers in Panama and Mexico. Reagan and Fuchs tried to justify their actions by stating that the C-130s, obtained from Air Force storage facilities and active Air Reserve and National Guard units were historic planes themselves and obsolete. That is hard to justify since the Air Force currently has the C-130 slated for active duty until the year 2015.

Last year, in the Tucson criminal trial of Reagan and Fuchs, which was prompted by Eitel's 1994 lawsuit, three Air Force generals testified that when they approved of the transfer to the Forest Service they believed the titles would remain with the Forest Service as they approved the transfer out of military inventory."

Did the Forest Service know or suspect that the planes, under CIA control, might be used for drug dealing? In the same memorandum Kenneth Cohen states, "Apparently, DoD [Department of Defense] thinks that by having the Forest Service as the intermediary, if any future aircraft are used in drug smuggling, the Forest Service and not DoD will suffer the adverse publicity."

He was right.

The Good, The Bad and The Private Contractors

All of the C-130s were moved out into private hands passing through Evergreen facilities at Marana Airpark and through Davis-Montham Air Force base in Tucson right next door. The first of the C-130s reached private hands and titles were transferred in 1987. The five selected companies were Hemet Valley Flying Service in Riverside County, California (which received the first seven and showed Reagan as a signatory on one of its contracts); Hawkins and Powers of Greybull, Wyoming; TBM of Tulare, California; Aero-Union of Chico, California (which shared office space with one of Reagan's shell companies where Contra mechanic Ross worked) and T&G aviation of Chandler, Arizona. T&G got in on the act after hearing of the bonanza and complaining to Arizona Senators De Concini and McCain. T&G is owned by admitted former Air America and CIA pilot Woody Grantham.

According to Eitel, Aero-Union has been documented as a CIA contractor as far back as the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 when it served as a cover for B-26 pilots who were prevented from flying air support missions for the invasion. Also according to Eitel, the very first C-130 delivered into private hands was flown into Hemet Valley by James Patrick Ross, the CIA pilot-mechanic who had originally come to the U.S. as a part of the Australian C-130 transfer in the mid 1980s and who had serviced Barry Seal's C-123.

According to documents filed in the civil lawsuit by Eitel, Roy Reagan wasn't particularly happy with Grantham's T&G muscling in on the deal but he later approached Grantham with a sweetened offer that if he obtained extra C-130s for T&G, he would receive a cash kickback and arrange the financing through a client's company, Pacific Harbor Capital. Grantham agreed. "Reagan also told Grantham he would arrange several covert missions to be flown by T&G for Iran, Iraq and Kuwait as a part of the deal," said Eitel.

The paper trail is black hole dense but it is certain that T&G received at least three C-130s from Hemet Valley. Others it obtained directly from Reagan and other sources. After a series of court battles in California between Hemet Valley and financier Larry Wurth, three C-130s were transferred to Wurth and then to T&G. Remember that Roy Reagan showed up as a signing officer on one of Hemet Valley's contracts acknowledging receipt of the planes. Approximately one fourth of the 35 planes given over into private hands were eventually stripped for (free) parts.

The record of the next ten years is as littered with lawsuits and airplane transfers, sometimes between the various contractors, as the killing fields of Cambodia were littered with Pol Pot's murder victims. An entire book would be needed to document the suits between firms like James Venable of Hemet Valley and Wurth which saw planes held hostage and traded like helpless children in a brutal custody battle which further clouded the issue of ownership. The suits and custody battles may have been the actual intention of CIA when it suspected that the illegal transfers might be discovered, challenged and ordered corrected. It made it all the harder for the Forest Service to recover the planes when it got caught with it pants down. But in almost every case when planes changed hands they went back through Evergreen first.

Of a certainty, the 35 C-130s, which actually changed hands in the program, wound up doing many other things than fighting fires on behalf of the Forest Service. They have been documented on covert missions in France, Spain, Angola, South Africa, Central America, and even Kuwait during Desert Storm. In June 1991 one of Roy Reagan's C-130s crashed on a CIA mission in Angola killing the nephew of Rep Curt Weldon, R-Pa who later participated in hearings looking into the program.

"All of the contractors had unregulated air fields in remote places that were not usually subject to any kind of Customs inspections. All of the contractors were able to come and go virtually undetected so they could have been doing anything. It was an ideal cover both for drug smuggling and a variety of covert operations," Eitel observed.

In 1994, as he was investigating his lawsuit, Eitel was researching various aspects of the Forest Service transfer at the Department of Justice. He was allowed to view classified materials relevant to the investigation. "I saw a three ring folder full of State Department Export certificates for C-130 and P 3 aircraft allowing them to leave the U.S. for foreign destinations. I logged 36 of the certificates and noted that at least one was going to Panama for a company called Trans Latin Air and at least one was going to a company named Aero Postale de Mexico. Both aircraft were being sent from T&G.

"They were Forest Service aircraft", he added. "And what caught my attention was the fact that the certificates were signed by an attorney named John Ford. Ford was known to me as a CIA Australian attorney involved in the C-130s transferred to Bogota in the 70s and 80s and he was also connected to C-130s moved through Central America which came to the attention of U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, Louis Tambs during the Contra war. At the time State had protested the transfer because of possible drug connections."

[NOTE: Louis Tambs was the same U.S. Ambassador connected to the revelations arising from the La Penca bombing in Nicaragua and an alleged plot by the CIA to murder Tambs using the services of CIA/Oliver North asset John Hull and blame it on the Sandinistas.]

"I questioned DoJ about the drug links and was assured that the transfers were above board and not drug related," Eitel continued. "I accepted their explanation for a while but in 1996 I did a data base search on a major drug trafficker named Luis Carlos Herrera-Lizcano who was John Ford's partner way back to the original C-130 transfers out of Australia in 83-84. Herrera was the owner and CEO of Trans Latin Air and in 1994 he was indicted by the U.S. Attorney in Chicago for using C-130s to move billions of dollars of cocaine into the U.S."

Herrera entered into a plea agreement in 1996 and admitted to having trafficked in drugs since the early and mid eighties. According to both American and Mexican newspaper accounts, as well as records in federal court, Herrera's aircraft came from T&G and Woody Grantham.

The Trans Latin Air investigation led to an investigation of Aero Postale de Mexico. In April 1998 stories the Mexican paper La Reforma reported that the Mexican Attorney General had indicted three officials of the private freight hauling company Aero Postale de Mexico which routinely delivered mail and other goods throughout Latin and Central America on charges that they had provided aircraft to the drug cartel headed by the Arellano Felix brothers. That investigation had commenced in 1997 and Aero Postale planes were reportedly hauling multi-thousand kilo loads of cocaine during the period. One of the C-130s was impounded at the Mexico City airport. Purchase of the aircraft was financed by Mexican banker Carlos Cabal, who was assured repayment of the loans by the U.S. Import-Export Bank. It is impossible to believe CIA would not have noticed such a transaction. Woody Grantham and T&G sold the planes to Aero Postale in 1993 at the same time he sold planes to Trans Latin Air.

Riverside Press-Enterprise veteran reporter Dave Hendrix, who has written many stories on the Forest Service and the C-130s (and who contributed greatly to the research for this article) questioned Grantham about the relationship. Grantham denied any knowledge of wrongdoing and any knowledge of drugs. However, Gary Eitel in his role as a federal independent counsel for the civil suit against the contractors notes a discrepancy in Grantham's statements. "Grantham tried to hide the C-130s in 1993 when he learned that the Forest Service was going to be forced to take them back," Eitel said. "He filed bankruptcy, hid the planes and then tried to sell them to Herrera at Trans Latin Air. The planes had already been leased to Trans Latin since 1990. He states that he had no further contact or control over the planes after that. Yet Herrera admitted at his sentencing that he had been dealing drugs uninterrupted at Trans Latin from 1982 to 1994. Grantham's claims that he had checked this out with DEA don't bear close scrutiny at all.

"And Grantham used the same law firm, Lewis and Roca of Tucson and Phoenix, to file bankruptcy and transfer the planes to Herrera which had handled the entire transfer of Air America assets to Evergreen back in 1976." Asked how credible Grantham's denial of drug involvement was, Eitel replied, "It stinks."

Grantham's history is littered with CIA wreckage. According to Eitel, "When Grantham wanted to leave Arizona undetected he leased hangar space at an Indian reservation where Customs didn't operate. He frequently flew into Area 51 and on his trips back from Latin America he would land at El Toro Marine Air Station in California.

Death of a Hero - The Murder of Jim Sabow

Marine Col. Jim Sabow was murdered at his home on the El Toro Marine Air Station in January 1991. His death, ruled a suicide by the Navy and the Marine Corps, has left a brave family virtually destroyed. As opposed to the official military account that Sabow, despondent over pending disciplinary actions for minor offenses committed suicide, a lingering and persistent body of evidence persists which indicates that Jim Sabow was murdered because he caught the CIA flying drugs onto a base where he was Chief of Air Operations. Much of the

evidence indicates that the cocaine arrived on the same C-130s which had been given to the Forest Service.

In a 1993 segment of her news program Eye to Eye, Connie Chung covered the Sabow death in detail and showed evidence of the murder by introducing statements from Sabow's brother, a medical doctor, that Sabow had been unconscious and aspirating blood for minutes before a shotgun was rammed so far down his throat that it sheared off the uvula. In that same segment, veteran Air America and CIA pilot Tosh Plumley stated that he flew loads of cocaine as large as 2,000 kilos onto El Toro in the years and months prior to Sabow's death - for the CIA. Plumley stated clearly that he was flying C-130s operated by the Forest Service and their contractors. In later conversations with this writer Plumley admitted that he routinely flew loads as large as 2,500 kilos onto military installations in California and Arizona for the CIA.

Both Eitel and veteran investigator Gene Wheaton, who still works for the Sabow family which has a pending and oft delayed lawsuit pending in San Diego for next year, believe that the C-130s described in this story are the same ones which led to Jim Sabow's murder. Wheaton, a retired Warrant Officer from Army CID, has participated in and led investigations ranging from the Cristic Institute lawsuit of 1987 to the very suspicious crash in Gander, Newfoundland of an Arrow Air flight in 1985 which took the lives of more than 250 members of the 101st Airborne Division. Arrow Air was, according to Wheaton, "One of Ollie North's favorite airlines." He was also one of the first investigators to uncover CIA drug smuggling in Mena, AK and is today working with Sabow attorney Daniel Sheehan, formerly of the Cristic Institute, on the Sabow case. He has also conducted extensive investigations of the Forest Service C-130s and worked with Eitel on the case.

"The Marines were supposed to keep flight refueling records of all non-military flights in transit on through the base at El Toro," said Wheaton. "Those are government records and would have shown that the same Forest Service aircraft passed through the base at the same time that Jim started complaining to his superiors about the drugs. The base is closed now but the records should have been kept. They are government documents."

Wheaton added, "They have all been destroyed."

Frogmen, Russoniello and… Gary Webb?!

In his series of articles for The San Jose Mercury News entitled The Dark Alliance and in his brilliant book of the same name, author Gary Webb described the interference of the CIA in the infamous "Frogman" cocaine case of 1983. The U.S. attorney, a Reagan appointee, who handled the case and ultimately returned more than $36,000 in seized drug money to the CIA connected traffickers arrested in San Francisco, was Joseph Russoniello. As disclosed in Webb's book and documented in Volume I of the CIA Inspector General's report, the CIA had contacted Russoniello in an effort to contain any adverse publicity linking the arrested traffickers to the Agency. In the Agency's own cable traffic CIA stated that Russoniello was, "most deferential to our interests."

Russoniello left the Department of Justice in the late 1980s and entered private practice. In 1994 he became the attorney of record for several of the fourteen defendants in the civil suit filed by Gary Eitel - including Aero-Union of Chico California, Reagan's home base and T&G. For the record Stuart Gerson, former Acting Attorney General of Waco fame, represented Roy Reagan in the civil fraud case. According to Eitel, "After a series of articles in Oregon newspapers in 1997, Russoniello withdrew from the case because of the adverse publicity linking him to Webb's stories."

Joseph Russoniello is now a senior corporate attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco. He is at the same address and shares the same complex of offices as attorney John Ford.

Clanging Jail Bars and Dangling Press Releases

The Forest Service had been backed into a position by the Eitel lawsuit and the Arizona fraud trial of Reagan and Fuchs where it had to take action. In April 1998 U.S. District Court Judge William Browning sentenced Roy Reagan to 30 months and Fred Fuchs to 24 months in a federal penitentiary for their roles in defrauding the government. Eitel's civil suit, which has been joined by the Department of Justice, is still alive but in early 1997 Judge Browning issued a court order postponing the suit stating that the interests of National Security outweighed the defendants' right to a speedy trial.

As a result of public pressure the Forest Service had begun to retrieve some of the aircraft in 1995-6. Four of those had been totally stripped, their remaining airframes and components being auctioned out at a total of $725,000 by the Forest Service under the direction of Assistant Director Ron Hooper who had been involved with the program since its inception. Hooper has made no official objection of the fact that airplanes, worth $12 to 15 million, illegally taken from the government, had been stripped of $11 million in parts. The low bidder was co-conspirator Hawkins and Powers and the high bidders, which received the aircraft hulks, were the alleged co-conspirators TBM and Aero-Union.

On December 2, 1998 Hooper gave an interview to the Associated Press. Whereas Hooper had, in previous audits, declared the C-130s to be worth as little as $10,000 to $20,000 dollars apiece, he now acknowledged their value at $2-3 million each. The AP story indicated that Hooper and the Forest Service were moving swiftly to secure the immediate return of all 11 outstanding operable aircraft and that this "confiscation" would not impair the nation's fire fighting capabilities. This was true even though the Forest Service, according to Hooper, didn't need and couldn't operate the planes.

Apparently, Hooper hoped that no one would notice the fact that just a day earlier, on December 1, 1998, he had posted a press release on the Forest Service web site which stated, "To ensure that we have the air support necessary to aggressively manage wildfires, we have successfully completed negotiations on a new three-year National Airtanker Contract covering 1999 through 2001.

"The contract provides for continued operations as ownership is being resolved and we are confident that the issues surrounding the assertion of aircraft [ownership] can be worked out with the contractors successfully."

"What Hooper was saying", says Eitel, "is that he had just awarded paying contracts to the same contractors who had defrauded the government in the first place. His statements to AP make it look as though he was getting tough while he admits, the day before, that he is still intending to leave the planes in private hands and reward the wrongdoers."

Eitel filed complaints with the Justice Department on December 4 and he has told From The Wilderness that, as of December 14, both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense now have active investigations of Ron Hooper.

A spokesman for the Department of Defense would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation of Hooper. As of press time the Department Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility has not returned a call asking for verification. Forest Service spokesman Alan Polk told From The Wilderness, "AP screwed their story up. The contractors were always going to keep the planes while title remained in Forest Service hands. We are now making sure that we know where the planes are, what they are being used for and that they are not leaving the country while ownership questions are resolved." Polk added that he was unaware of any criminal investigations of Hooper.

A Tragic Footnote

In August 1994 14 firefighters burned to death in an out of control forest fire in Colorado. The Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration subsequently cited the Forest Service for "inadequate use of aviation resources." Where were all the tankers? According to Eitel they were all out of the country doing anything but fighting fires.

click image to enlarge

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SOURCES: The Riverside Press-Enterprise, AP, The Arizona Republic, La Reforma, The Dark Alliance by Gary Webb and the U.S. Forest Service

SPECIAL THANKS: To Dave Hendrix of the Riverside Press-Enterprise. You are a true bulldog and a reporter of courage and tenacity.

SUGGESTED READING: To understand how the CIA has for decades infiltrated various agencies of the United States Government, stolen property and subverted the will of Congress there is one book which is on my "must read" list. That book is The Secret Team - The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World by L. Fletcher Prouty (1973, 1992 & 1997). The book is extremely hard to find but worth every ounce of effort. You can download a copy at www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST.

The Crimes of Mena:

GRAY MONEY

by the Staff of the OZARK GAZETTE

(Originally Published, 1995 -- Reprinted with permission - Mark Swaney)

GRAY MONEY

Activists seeking documentation that would support claims that the state of Arkansas was involved with money laundering on a massive scale may have found the missing link in their three year search. Documents obtained by the Arkansas Committee show that the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority, a Bill Clinton signature project, was involved in a highly questionable, and possibly illegal, sixty-million dollar deal in which ADFA borrowed 5 million dollars from a Japanese bank in order to buy stock in a Barbados insurance company. The stock was not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The state of Arkansas was the lead investor in a deal which poured sixty million dollars through a Barbados company, Coral Reinsurance, which is currently under investigation by insurance regulators in New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware as well as by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, lead prosecutor in the BCCI scandal. Additionally, the Ozark Gazette has recently been told that as a result of the release of the Coral documents the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, is also investigating the deal.

Persons involved in the deal, which began in 1987 and ended in 1991, include Bob Nash, then president of ADFA and now Personnel Director of the White House, Robert Rubin, then president of Goldman Sachs investment bank and now Secretary of the Treasury, and Maurice Greenburg, president of American International Group, and a candidate in 1995 to be Director of Central Intelligence.

The American International Group is a 100-billion dollar, multi-national insurance company which founded Coral Reinsurance Company in 1987. The fact that AIG founded Coral was hidden from insurance regulators for at least 3 years and was only recently proven by the reluctant release by ADFA of the original stock placement memorandum. Maurice Greenburg as president of AIG is a very well connected businessman and a player in international politics. He serves as the chairman of the US-China Business Council and lobbied hard (and successfully) for the Clinton administration to sever the link between China's human rights record and renewal of China's most-favored-nation trade status. Members of the board of directors of AIG include Martin Feldstein, Harvard University economics professor and former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and Carla Hills, former U.S. trade representative. AIG's international advisory board is headed by Henry A. Kissinger.

The original deal was pitched to ADFA by Goldman-Sachs, a New York based securities firm which played an important role in the transaction. Goldman-Sachs had pledged to sell the stock for Coral and in addition pledged to buy the stock if for any reason the other investors could not hold it and were forced to sell. Goldman's president at the time was Robert Rubin, later appointed by the Clinton administration to succeed Lloyd Bentsen as the Secretary of the Treasury.

THE SEARCH BEGINS

Founded in 1990 as a student organization at the University of Arkansas, the Arkansas Committee's major focus was on Arkansas' involvement with the mysterious activities at the Mena airport during the 1980's. The Committee spent two years unsuccessfully trying to convince the state government to investigate links between major drug smuggler Barry Seal (also a government informant), who worked out of the Mena, Arkansas airport, and the U. S. Intelligence community.

Recently, two very respected investigative journalists, Roger Morris and Sally Denton, have published the most authoritative and highly documented account to date of events at the Mena airport between 1982 and 1986. Based on over 2,000 documents including the previously unpublished personal papers of Barry Seal, their article "The Crimes of Mena" in the July issue of Penthouse Magazine reveals the government's protection, and cover up of drug smuggling, gun running and money laundering.

Realizing that personal accounts were not sufficient to convince skeptics, in the summer of 1992 the Committee began what would become its most difficult journey - finding enough hard evidence to convince the media (the court of last resort, the government having rebuffed two years of pleas to do the job itself) to investigate and write about Mena. And so they began trying to locate the long buried paper trail, armed only with the Freedom of Information Act and determination.

But what sort of hard documentation could they reasonably hope to find? The Committee's sources had on more than one occasion indicated that up to ten million dollars a week in illegal cash was going through Arkansas at the height of the Mena operation. Therefore the most logical course seemed to be to the hoary old cliche, follow the money. For two important reasons, the Committee decided to look into the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). First, some admittedly circumstantial evidence linked ADFA to the Mena operations. Secondly, as a state agency, ADFA was subject to Arkansas's Freedom of Information Act, and so documents could be extracted from what was hoped would be an important source of information. Throughout 1992, the Arkansas Committee contacted numerous sources in their search for evidence that ADFA may have been involved in money laundering operations. Several people assured them that ADFA was indeed involved, knowingly or otherwise, with laundering many millions of dollars.

ADFA sells bonds as a state bonding agency, and it was alleged that many of the bonds were bought with drug money. But this meant that even if the bonds were purchased with black money, ADFA would still be in the clear, since ADFA could claim that they had no knowledge of the sources of the money used to purchase their bonds. Additionally, ADFA does not sell it's own bonds directly to the public, but instead uses a middleman - a bond underwriter - the perfect deniable link. Committee member Mark Swaney suspected that it was possible that ADFA had become involved in money laundering directly, so he began searching for other ways in which black money may have been moved with ADFA's involvement. In August of 1992, Swaney received what he felt was his first real break, when a source told him to look for ADFA's involvement with an insurance company.

COMMITTEE HITS PAY DIRT

Life not being like the movies, it took two years before the Committee was able to find any such link. In 1994, Swaney and the Arkansas Committee (in thus far their last official act as a group) sued ADFA for their auditor's working papers, after the documents were not forthcoming. The lack of interest on the part of the main stream press had not changed and the only attendees at the press conference announcing the suit were one reporter, and a camera crew from a public access television station. In a recent Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that has extended the power of the state's freedom of information act, Swaney and the Arkansas Committee were handed a unanimous victory when the court overturned the original decision by Judge Kim Smith. The new ruling places the burden of obtaining public documents held by private companies on the relevant state agency. The decision means that state agencies cannot circumvent the freedom of information act by insuring that they are not in possession of sensitive documents. (Oh, we don't have "physical possession" of that document - because we gave it to our lawyer to keep...)

The Committee reasoned that the public audits of ADFA were unlikely to provide any useful information, however the working papers of the auditors should yield a much more complete and detailed picture of ADFA's dealings. Because the Committee members were not financial experts they decided to locate someone well versed in accounting and/or auditing to review the papers when and if they could obtain them. To this end, Swaney teamed up with well-known independent financial analyst and ADFA critic, Roy Drew.

In a conversation about their collaboration, Drew told Swaney that he had found evidence of ADFA's involvement in a very strange deal with a certain Coral Reinsurance Company. Roy Drew had been reading the minutes of ADFA's board of directors meetings and found one paragraph (in thousands of pages) describing a deal where ADFA would borrow 5 million dollars from the Sanwa bank's Chicago branch to buy stock in Coral Reinsurance. Additionally, the minutes revealed that according to the terms of the loan ADFA did not have to repay the loan if it did not make as much money in dividends on the stock as it owed in interest on the loan. To the Committee, this seemed to be the long sought after link between ADFA and an insurance company, especially since there was no known connection to any other insurance business.

After finally obtaining an opportunity to examine the ADFA auditor's working papers, the Committee asked ADFA for copies of all documents relating to the Coral insurance deal. Derek Rose, PR man for ADFA, readily agreed to make the Coral documents available. On December 2, 1994 ADFA's auditors (Deloitte & Touche) allowed Swaney and Drew limited access to the working papers. On the same day Swaney visited ADFA and copied the entire Coral file that Rose had retrieved for him. While Swaney was copying the documents, Rose was apparently seeing the material for the first time. It quickly become obvious to Swaney that several documents contained in the file where very sensitive inter-office ADFA memos. One of the memos, apparently written in a panic by Bob Nash, indicated that he had been questioned about the Coral deal in 1992, and had been shaken by it. In addition, a letter written to ADFA by the Delaware Department of Insurance requested information concerning ADFA's involvement with Coral Reinsurance, and strongly suggested that they were investigating Coral Reinsurance.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

After returning to Fayetteville, Swaney and the Committee began to study the documents in detail. Several facts were especially interesting given the background of the search. First, Coral Reinsurance was incorporated in the tiny Caribbean island of Barbados - a notorious haven for money launderers due to it's very lax banking regulations, and tight corporate secrecy laws. If someone wanted to launder cash, this was a good place to do it. Second, the deal was structured in such a way as to prevent the reporting of the ownership of the stock to the IRS. Third, the stock certificate plainly stated that "these securities have not been registered under the Securities and Exchange Commission act of 1933". The deal had all the earmarks of a clandestine arrangement designed to conceal the true ownership of Coral Reinsurance.

Further information gleaned from the documents showed that ADFA's role in the deal was unique. There were several other investors, none of whom had any visible government connection. Also, ADFA's share of the stock was larger than any other investor, and ADFA had signed a "put agreement" with Goldman Sach's in which they obligated themselves to buy the stock of any other investor in the case that the investor found that they could no longer hold the stock, and Goldman could find no other qualified investor. Finally, in case ADFA couldn't hold the stock, Goldman Sachs would buy it. In no case was the Sanwa Bank ever to own the stock.

The total amount of stock in the deal was 1,000 shares at $60,000 per share for a total of 60 million dollars. ADFA's portion was 84 shares for a total of $5.04 million. Another very interesting fact was that the money apparently never left the Sanwa Bank. The whole transaction was conducted on paper. Sanwa loaned the $60 million to the investors, who used it to buy the stock in Coral, which then redeposited the money back in the Sanwa bank in the form of a certificate of deposit. Also mentioned in the documents was the American International Group, a huge insurance company with international business and political connections. The documents indicated that Coral was going to re-insure AIG as part of its business.

Taken together, these facts indicated that this deal was indeed very strange. ADFA took no risk, since the loan with Sanwa guaranteed it a profit, and was secured solely by the stock.

ADFA did nothing more than sign papers, in exchange for a profit of $58,000. At first glance, any intelligent person would question a deal that promised something for nothing (indeed, it was later revealed that one of ADFA's legal advisors - John Selig of the Mitchell firm - did ask the crucial questions, "what's in it for AIG? why pay us for nothing?"). Swaney and Drew could not help wondering whether or not ADFA's role was to provide the appearance of legitimacy and liquidity so that the other investors would not be fearful of getting involved.

Roy Drew and Mark Swaney wanted to learn all that they could about the Coral deal before releasing the documents to the media, so that further information could be obtained before media involvement stirred up the situation. Roy Drew contacted the Delaware Department of Insurance to find out what their original interest in Coral had been and to see if they were still interested in obtaining the ADFA documents.

The Delaware Department of Insurance was in fact very interested in the documents and a series of strange phone conversations took place between Drew and his contact at the DDI.

Drew was told that ADFA had never responded to the DDI's request for information, so that they had no documentation on the Coral-ADFA deal. Initially the DDI was very suspicious of Roy Drew, not being sure with whom they were dealing. They requested assurance from him that he was not a member of any official US government agency and that he was not working for ADFA or Coral.

Shortly after these initial exchanges Drew's original contact at the DDI was taken off the case and his superiors informed Drew that his contact had been instructed not to say anything more to anyone about case. Seeing no point in trying to get further information from Delaware about the case, Swaney and Drew decided to release the story to the media. A reporter for the business section of the New York Post, John Crudele, had been following the progress of the Committee's efforts and in early January, 1995, Swaney mailed him the Coral documents.

FURTHER REVELATIONS

Things began to get even stranger on January 6, 1995. That day John Crudele of the New York Post published a column which called attention to whole deal involving Coral, ADFA and AIG. The story was only on streets in New York for a few hours when Swaney received a call from a man who told Swaney he had been conducting his own investigation of Coral Insurance and AIG but had not realized until then that the connections led to people now in the White House. When Swaney asked him to identify himself, he declined to do so, for fear of retaliation.

We will call him Mr. Anonymous. It seems that Mr. Anonymous is an insurance man in New York City - a competitor of AIG - and at sometime in the last two years he became very suspicious of AIG because its affiliates were offering insurance at premiums way below market rates. Mr. Anonymous told Swaney that he could not believe that a legitimate insurance company could stay in business offering such low rates. Mr. Anonymous suspected that he was in competition with an illegal enterprise, and began poking around in the affairs of AIG. At some point after that, Mr. Anonymous became frightened, and dropped his investigation, because he believed that the repercussions were damaging his own business. Mr. Anonymous also told Swaney (and John Crudele of the New York Post) that AIG and it's relationship with Coral Reinsurance was under investigation by the insurance regulators of Pennsylvania and New York.

Mr. Anonymous had discovered that AIG was doing a lot of business through the island nation Bermuda. He then flew to Bermuda to examine the records of AIG's business dealings. In conversation with Swaney, Mr. Anonymous said that one of the companies that he believed to be underwriting policies issued by AIG had given a Fort Smith, Arkansas address. When Swaney asked for the name of the company, Mr. Anonymous told him it was Beverly Indemnity.

Intrigued by the new connections to Arkansas, Swaney requested, and received, copies of the documents that Mr. Anonymous had obtained in Bermuda. The documents for Beverly Indemnity of Bermuda contained the names of two of its officers, Robert Pommerville, and Ronald C. Kayne. Swaney suspected that Beverly Indemnity was controlled by the well-known Beverly Enterprises of Fort Smith, AR - a call to Beverly Enterprises revealed that Pommerville did indeed work for Beverly Enterprises. Pommerville was later identified as the General Counsel for Beverly Enterprises. At the time of the Coral Insurance deal, Beverly Enterprises was owned and controlled by Stephens, Inc.

In a telephone interview Mr. Pommerville stated that Beverly Enterprises has an ongoing relationship with one of AIG's affiliates. The National Union Fire and Home Insurance company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania insures the Beverly Enterprises nursing homes. In turn, Beverly Indemnity, Inc. reinsures National Union. Mr. Pommerville stated that the arrangement was a step toward Beverly Enterprises becoming self-insured. Beverly Enterprises has a current connection with ADFA though Bobby Stephens (no relation to Stephens Inc.) who is a member of the board of directors of both ADFA and Beverly Enterprises. The minutes of the board of directors meeting at which the board members voted to buy the Coral Reinsurance stock show that Bobby Stephens was absent.

Beverly Enterprises has an intriguing past association with ADFA. Those with long memories will recall that in the year after the Coral deal, a controversy erupted involving Beverly Enterprises, ADFA and former Arkansas Attorney General Steve Clark. At that time ADFA was considering a deal involving a bond issue which would have benefited Beverly Enterprises. Clark interrupted the public ADFA meeting involving the issuance of the bonds and claimed that the Stephens family, then the principal owners of Beverly Enterprises, had offered him a $100,000 campaign contribution (translated- bribe) if he would remain neutral on the deal involving ADFA and Beverly Enterprises. Other observers of state politics have claimed that Clark's later problems originated with his grandstand announcement "in front of God and everybody" at the ADFA meeting.

Soon after the columns by John Crudele appeared in the New York Post, other media began to be interested in the Coral Reinsurance deal. Business Insurance magazine reported on the Coral deal. An AIG spokesperson denied that AIG had organized Coral Reinsurance. Other industry sources told John Crudele that $450 million dollars had suddenly appeared in Coral's account in just the last two weeks of 1987. Investigators have been unable toidentify the source of the cash infusion.

Further columns on the story by John Crudele indicated that AIG was attempting to distance itself from Coral and would only say that Coral wrote reinsurance policies for AIG - investigators for insurance regulators wanted to know if AIG actually in fact owned Coral. This is the reason that the Delaware Department of Insurance originally contacted ADFA in 1992. The DDI wanted to see the stock placement memoranda because such memoranda usually include information on who is starting the company, what the nature of the business is, and with whom it intends to do business.

In mid December Swaney had written another FOIA request to ADFA, asking for copies of documents relating to the Coral deal which were not in the original file obtained on the second of December. Two of the documents requested were:

1) the confidential stock placement memoranda. 2) the written legal opinion promised by ADFA to Coral which was supposed to state that ADFA had legal authority to buy the stock in first place.

ADFA responded to the FOIA by stating that all of the Coral documents in ADFA's possession had already been copied by Swaney.

By the middle of February 1995 it was determined that ADFA's response, while technically true, was simply a dodge since the requested documents were in fact in the possession of one of ADFA's attorneys, Ann Ritchie-Parker of the Mitchell Firm, a prestigious Little Rock law firm.

When the long sought after memorandum was finally obtained' it revealed that indeed, AIG had founded Coral Reinsurance.

While all of these facts were in themselves very interesting, an event in the latter part of February, 1995 added yet another twist to this bizarre story. In an article in February 20 issue US News & World Report it was revealed that Maurice Greenburg was being promoted by Senator Arlen Specter as the successor to Woolsey as Director of Central Intelligence. Jack Wheeler, writing in the February 22 issue of Strategic Investment Newsletter, stated that the Clinton administration had sent up a "trial balloon" in January on the possibility of nominating Greenburg as the new Director of Central Intelligence. There was very little support for a Greenburg nomination. Did the newly published details of the Coral-ADFA deal deflate the balloon?

At about the same time Bob Nash, author of the "panic" memo, and former President of ADFA was made the director of White House personnel by Clinton. On February the fifth, Lloyd Bentsten, former Secretary of the Treasury was appointed to the board of directors of AIG.

Bentsten's successor at the treasury was Robert Rubin, the President of Goldman Sachs at the time of the Coral/ADFA deal.

By the middle of February the stories written by Crudele were attracting attention in the Arkansas press. Andrea Harter of the Democrat Gazette began a month long investigation into the Coral deal. The story appeared March 5, 1995 and revealed even more extensive connections between AIG/ADFA. In the year preceding the purchase of Coral stock by ADFA, an AIG affiliate had managed over one billion dollars worth of ADFA's bonds. Having been founded in 1985 and starting business in 1986, by early 1987 ADFA had only been in business a little over a year. AIG's involvement with that much of their bonds so early in ADFA's history indicates a very strong relationship. Once again, considering that the Arkansas Committee had been told that US Intelligence had indeed laundered money through ADFA, and that the sale of ADFA's bonds was one such vehicle for doing so, Maurice Greenburg's connections to international politics and intelligence was very interesting.

As a result of Andrea Harter's investigation it was determined that the written legal opinion referred to in the Coral/ADFA documents did not exist. Ms. Ann Parker-Ritchie claimed that "everyone agreed at the time that it was legal for ADFA to purchase the stock" so the opinion was never written down. Although this point was not challenged by Harter in the Democrat Gazette article, John Haman noted in the following weeks edition of the Arkansas Times that Article 12, Section 7 of the Arkansas State Constitution flatly prohibits the state of Arkansas from owning any stock. Thus it would appear that ADFA's purchase of the Coral stock was illegal. Mark Swaney comments "no wonder they didn't write the opinion down on paper!"

Aside from the cloak-and-dagger aspects of the Coral Reinsurance deal, the Arkansas Committee's investigation of ADFA reveals some interesting points concerning this center of financial power in Arkansas. First is the fact that ADFA's dealings do not have to have anything to do with helping the economy of Arkansas directly. Aside from a small profit of $58,000 on a 5 million dollar loan, who in Arkansas benefited from the Coral deal? Who in Arkansas benefits from the billions of dollars in bonds which ADFA sells? Certainly the bond daddies of Stephens and other underwriters. Roy Drew has studied the dealings of ADFA and calls the agency "an unregulated savings and loan". ADFA has claimed that they have oversight in the form of independent auditors. In fact, the legislation that created ADFA in 1985 specifically prohibited ADFA from using the Joint Legislative Auditing Agency - the state's public auditors. Was this an attempt to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act? Documents obtained by the Arkansas Committee from Deloitte & Touche (ADFA's auditors) show at least one example of the auditors covering up for ADFA and was reported in the February 17, 1995 issue of the Arkansas Times.

Auditing firms are noted for being more than willing to please their customers, as in the infamous Silverado Savings and Loan case.

The auditor's papers also showed that the board of directors of ADFA on four occasions approved loans in spite of their own staff's recommendations that the companies not receive the loans. Two of the loans have since defaulted. In three of the four cases, the companies were owned by people who were friends of the members of the board of directors. In one of the four cases, $400,000 was loaned to the husband of a long time ADFA employee, and former secretary to Bob Nash.

Considering that the board is entirely appointed by the governor, the possibilities for political corruption are obvious. Consider that the flow of billions of dollars is controlled essentially by one man. Consider the unaccountable power which flows to the person who can decide which underwriters get to slop at the trough.

Regardless of the outcome of the five separate investigations into AIG-Coral and ADFA, the results of the investigations of the Arkansas Committee have revealed a source of unaccountable power which is inconsistent with a democratic government.

For Committee members (such as Mark Swaney, Charlie Reed, Carol Conger, and John Benedict) it means that they may at last receive attention for what they have been trying to point out, and not how it might affect anyone's political fortunes.

For those who may only get their information from daily newspapers, here is a brief background of what became known as the Mena Connection. In 1982, the near legendary drug smuggler, turned DEA informant, Barry Seal relocated his operations from Louisiana to the small town of Mena, Arkansas. Shortly thereafter, locals began to notice strange occurrences at the airport.

Over the next two years, local law enforcement officials heard stories of drug smuggling, gun running, illegal aircraft modifications, money laundering, and paramilitary training in the surrounding hills. Police began an investigation, only to have it taken over by the federal government. After two more years, through 1986, local and federal investigators had what they believed to be solid evidence of these crimes, only to see the United States Attorney refuse to present their evidence to the eventual grand jury.

Later, these investigators, and members of the grand jury themselves, complained loudly to the press that the case had been mishandled. When in October of 1986, Barry Seal's airplane was shot down over Nicaragua (the opening chapter of the infamous Iran/Contra affair) it became obvious to some observers that there had in fact been a cover-up of the alleged activities at the Mena airport.

Reasoning that even if the federal government had covered up what had occurred at Mena, it was still possible for the state government to investigate the situation, the Arkansas Committee's early strategy was to press for state investigation of Mena. From 1990 through early 1992, the Committee wrote letters, organized demonstrations, visited the offices of state officials, collected evidence and held press conferences, all in an attempt to pressure officials into reopening the case at the state level.

Failing to persuade officials to act, the Committee could not help but wonder why. Soon, they were faced with a previously unthinkable conclusion - it was as much an inside job as anything else.

Suspecting that Governor Bill Clinton had reason to hide such state involvement, the Committee decided to go public. Up to this point the Committee had been treated fairly and on occasion, even praised by the local media. However, now that the Committee was pointing an accusing finger at the local hero, the media began to turn against the people who were asking for simple justice.

At every step of the way, it has been an uphill battle. They have been accused of being dupes of the Republicans, of being cat's-paws of dark political forces. Mark Swaney, the leader of the group, has vivid memories of being angrily accosted by the editor of a liberal newspaper, zealously defending Bill Clinton against these infidels. The veracity of the accusations, that Clinton may have had knowledge of CIA involvement with Mena was not the point, the editor insisted. If we don t have Clinton, who do we have?

They found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being praised by right-wingers, who had their own agendas, and vilified by liberals, who feared that any serious criticism of the shining hope of the Democratic party might mean four more years of George Bush. In few instances was the truth ever the issue, but merely how the facts might affect the political fortunes of Arkansas' favorite son.

Information the group supplied became the basis for articles in The Nation, The Washington Times and Village Voice, as well as providing groundwork for exposes on television programs such as "A Current Affair," and 'Now It Can Be Told."

However, in May 1992, the efforts to tell the truth about Mena slid off-track when Time magazine, attempting discredit the allegations, printed a major story purporting to tell the truth about the events in Arkansas, especially regarding connections to Bill Clinton, who was beginning his rapid ascent to the White House. The direction of the story was that it was much ado about nothing.

End

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/witness_list.html

A Witness List for House Hearings on Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report on CIA Drug Trafficking

Expect Closed Door Hearings in June or July, 1998

Can the Government Handle The Truth?

Is Your Name Here?

[This list of witnesses originally appeared in the February issue of From The Wilderness for subscribers only. It has caused quite a stir and, since the surprise (May, 25) closed door hearings on CIA drug trafficking in Los Angeles in the wake of our May cover story, it is a yardstick against which the coming cover up can be graded. Does the government even care to be credible any more?]

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Unlike a court of law, which relies on specific charges, Congress, whose only mandate is to serve the people, may take any issue and go forwards or backwards in time. It may go sideways and change directions. It may call any witnesses it chooses in its efforts to decide what laws to write for the benefit of those it serves, The People.

Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's report took Congress to the CIA's house. It showed the dead body of its admissions regarding drug trafficking lying bloody in the open doorway. If Congress serves the people it will now enter the house and look around. It will press charges and it will see that criminals are punished for their crimes. It will pass laws designed to make sure that these crimes never happen again.

Use these 143 names as a report card to see what Congress' will really is and who it really serves. Volume II is not closed until the House Intelligence Committee holds hearings. Your calls, letters and e-mails to make those hearings complete and well covered are having a serious impact. Let's see what you can do with this.

1-"Bo" Abbot - Former CIA/Air America pilot who has openly admitted to having flown drugs for the Agency on CIA aircraft. Now resides is Southwest U.S.

2-Elliot Abrams - Former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs. Oversaw Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office for Oliver North and delivered subsidies to firms like Setco and Frigorificos de Puntarenas which CIA Volume II admits were dealing drugs. Worked with Albert Carone who was North's, Casey's and Bush's paymaster and bagman with the Mafia.

3-Lt. Col. Albert Adame - Deputy Commander Mil(itary Advisory) Group El Salvador. Discussed CIA drug ops with DEA Agent Cele Castillo.

4-Richard Armitage - Assistant Secretary of Defense, East Asia (1981-83), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1983-1988). CIA operator dating back to Vietnam where he assisted in the drug trade under Ted Shackley. Oversaw key DoD Contra support operations during the Reagan Administration for CIA, Shackley and Bush. Labeled, "My white son" by Colin Powell in 1995.

5-Brad Ayers - Former CIA and DEA agent, found cocaine residue in military, CIA and Contra connected aircraft in Florida. Hounded into hiding and nearly killed for reporting same.

6-Randy Beasley - Former DEA agent. Made a futile attempt to arrest Barry Seal in 1983. The case was shut down by the government

7-Gary Betzner - Former drug pilot for Jorge Morales who began using Ilopnago and Ft. Lauderdale Executive airport for drug and gun runs after being approached by John Hull.

8-Oscar Danilo Blandon - The primary California dealer from the Gary Webb stories. Still operating as informant for US Gov't. to this day. Had documented CIA & government connections, some still classified. Ricky Ross' primary supplier.

9-Jack Blum - Former Chief investigator for the Kerry Subcommittee which examined the Contra drug connections in the 1980s. Testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) in late 1996 and stated, "We don't have to investigate. We already know."

10-William R. Bode - Special Assistant to Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance (Schneider), Science and Technology who allegedly used his office to recruit contractors (including Gene Wheaton) for air support and other operations on behalf of the CIA and NSC. These included air contractors who flew drugs. According to Bo Gritz had heavy Arkansas connections

11-Richard Brenneke - Portland arms dealer and CIA asset who worked with Israeli Mossad agents and Manuel Noriega to run a guns/drugs pipeline. Met with Geo. Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg.

12-Jose Bueso-Rosa - Honduran General and rabid contra supporter. A major drug trafficker on whose behalf Oliver North interceded to protect "National Security" information.

13-George Bush - As Vice President, was placed in control of all national security operations by Reagan National Security Decision Directives 2 & 3. Received special briefings from CIA on drug trafficking by Contra operators. Had staff members including Donald Gregg and Col. Douglas Menarchik turn up heavily in connection with drug investigations and trafficking by CIA assets and agents.

14-Randy Capister - CIA covert operations chief for Central America. Worked under Alan Fiers, Clair George and "Dewey" Clarridge.

15-Floyd Carlton - Panamanian drug trafficker who used CIA contractor DIACSA as a cover. Ran drugs while receiving State Department subsidies. Witness against Manuel Noriega.

16-Frank Carlucci - Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) 1978-1981. Deputy Secretary of Defense 1981-2. Reagan National Security Adviser 1987-1989.

17-Rafael Caro-Quintero - Cartel level trafficker in Guadalajara Mexico. Ran Contra training camp in Vera Cruz. Involved in the 1985 murder of DEA agent "Kiki" Camarena.

18- Carlos Cabezas - Drug dealer/money launderer mentioned by Gary Webb and Cele Castillo. Can deliver names dates, places of cash deliveries to Contras from Meneses organization. Operated as FBI informant while dealing drugs at least through 1991.

19- Celerino Castillo - Senior DEA field agent for El Salvador and Honduras. Documented CIA and NSC flights at Ilopango airfield in El Salvador and reported same directly to Ambassador Edwin Corr and Vice President George Bush. Was told by Corr, "Leave it alone. It's a White House operation."

20-CEO, Evergreen Air - the mother of all CIA proprietary airlines and air operations since the demise of Air America.

21-Duane "Dewey" Clarridge - Chief of CIA Contra support operations from 1982 to 1984. Met regularly with Noriega, Morales and other traffickers. Convicted of seven counts of perjury during Iran-Contra trials and later pardoned by George Bush.

22-Tom Clines - Retired CIA Deputy under former Laos and Saigon Station Chief Ted Shackley. Convicted during Iran-Contra of tax evasion in connection with various schemes involving Shackley, Richard Secord and Carl Jenkins. Part of Contra supply network linked to CIA drug trafficking as far back as 1965 and through the CIA/Panamanian Watchtower missions in 1975-7.

23-Hillary Rodham Clinton - Senior partner in Rose law firm which negotiated many secret CIA contracts at the Mena airport for various tenants including members of the Hubbell family.

24-Roger Clinton - Brother of William Jefferson Clinton. Recovering cocaine addict. Involved with sales of cocaine.

25- William Jefferson Clinton - Governor of Arkansas during heavy and admitted CIA covert ops during Contra war. Received numerous reports of drug trafficking at Mena airport and was allegedly involved.

26-Edwin Corr - Ambassador to El Salvador during the Contra war. Received many reports of CIA drug trafficking. Told Cele Castillo it was a White House operation. Reportedly now teaching at the University of Oklahoma.

27-Rene Corvo - Miami Cuban, CIA asset dating back to the Bay of Pigs. Involved in Contra weapons shipments, drugs bombings, assassinations and many other all-American activities.

28-Sam Dalton - New Orleans attorney who subpoenaed the CIA regarding Barry Seal.

29-Doc Delaughter - Investigator for Arkansas Organized Crime Drug Task Force aimed at Dan Lasater that was shut down when they started getting close to Governor Bill Clinton.

30-John Deutch - Former CIA Director who promised a full, complete and open investigation.

31-Bill Duncan - IRS investigator who was the first to start investigations of Mena airport. Uncovered links to Arkansas banking and financial executives including Dan Lasater, Bill Clinton and the CIA. Ruthlessly suppressed.

32-John Duffy - Former San Diego Co. Sheriff and Reagan supporter of the Contra war effort. Mentioned by several sources as protecting CIA criminal operations in San Diego County.

33-Gary Eitel - Vietnam Vet, former CIA pilot, attorney and whistleblower. Aware of CIA drug ops in Mena dating back to 1972 and massive CIA movement of military aircraft into the drug trade. Special Independent Counsel in CIA C-130 case still pending.

34-Janice Elmore - Political (CIA) Officer, U.S. Embassy El Salvador. Routinely met with Salvadoran military and political leaders and allegedly used sexual liaisons to gather intelligence and protect drug operations.

35-Joe Neville Evans - One of Barry Seal's boys operating out of Mena.

36-Jeffrey Feldman - Ass't. U.S. Attorney in South Florida. Allegedly helped quash investigations leading to George Bush, Rene Corvo and John Hull.

37-Dee Ferdinand - Daughter of Col. Albert Vincent Carone. CIA bagman and paymaster for Ollie North, George Bush, Bill Casey. Possesses bank records and hard documents including a tape recording leading to George Bush.

38-Joseph Fernandez - CIA station Chief in Costa Rica. Debriefed one trafficker, Moises Nunez and cabled headquarters that Nunez was working for North.

39-Alan Fiers - Head of CIA's Central American Task Force during the Reagan years.

40-Bob Fletcher - Had his private toy company stolen by North/Casey associates Gary Best, Heinie Aderholt and John Singlaub. Witness in Cristic suit. Turned investigator and has since unearthed major documents incriminating Oliver North and others.

41-John Ford III - Long time CIA attorney connected to covert and proprietary air operations. Heavy in court documents linking CIA to embezzled C-130 aircraft. Active during Contra years and allegedly 100 per cent knowledgeable about CIA drug operations. Now a senior attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco in the same building as former U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello. Also connected to large numbers of C-130s moved by the CIA into the drug trade referenced in U.S. vs. Roy Reagan (1998).

42-Vaughn Forrest - Aide to Congressman Bill McCollum, travelling companion to Oliver North aide Rob Owen, friend of Oliver North (mentioned in his diaries) and was present in John Hull's home the day of the La Penca bombing targeting Eden Pastora.

43-Daryl Francis Gates - Retired LAPD Chief. Knows of CIA connections to LAPD and other law enforcement agencies through various links including the Narcotics Intelligence Network. (Boy would I like to question this one!)

44-Robert Gates - CIA intelligence executive under Bill Casey. Later served as Director of Central Intelligence for President George Bush.

45-Clair George - CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) 1984-88,

46-J. Porter Goss - Republican Congressman from So. Florida. Chair of the House Intelligence committee (HPSCI) charged with conducting hearings on Volume II. Retired CIA case officer who worked in South Florida with Shackley, Clines and Wilson. (Can you say "Conflict of Interest?")

47-Lee Grasheim - CIA contract operative, part-time spook associate - military hardware salesman, alleged drug and weapons trafficker in El Salvador. Connected to Contra supply efforts by Judge Lawrence Walsh. Investigated by DEA, arrested and had his house raided. Connected to a plane crash involving drugs in Florida. Mentioned in Ollie North's diaries.

48-Donald P. Gregg - National Security Adviser to Vice President George Bush. Mentioned ubiquitously in every published work on Contra drug trafficking.

49-Lt. Col. James "Bo"Gritz - POW activist returned from Southeast Asia with a videotape of opium warlord Khun Sa implicating Shackley, Armitage, Clines and other CIA personnel in the drug trade.

50-Ramon Guillen-Davilla - Venezuelan General indicted just days after CIA Director John Deutch left Los Angeles in 1996 for smuggling 22 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Guillen is an acknowledged CIA asset/agent and was storing the cocaine in a CIA warehouse.

51-Woody Grantham - Longtime associate with CIA air contract and proprietary operations. Connected to last service of Barry Seal's C 123 Fat Lady, which was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986. Current owner of T&G airfreight (Arizona) which has received C-130s laundered by CIA through the Forest Service. One, leased/sold by Grantham caught with millions of dollars worth of coke on board in Mexico City in 1995.

52-Chico Guirola - DEA listed trafficker/smuggler connected to CIA and Contra operations by DEA agent Cele Castillo.

53-Mike Harrari - Israeli Mossad agent closely connected to CIA drug operations in Panama dating back to Watchtower in 1976. Security adviser to Manuel Noriega. Mentioned in Ollie North's diaries. Associate of North, Casey and Bush. Alleged to have died from heart attack in 1998 - not confirmed.

54-Frederick P. Hitz - CIA Inspector General who directed the investigations in Volumes I & II after the Gary Webb stories of 1996.

55-Ed Heath - Former DEA Supervisory Special Agent who monitored CIA drug related operations during the Contra years and later served as head of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) which handles all intelligence for drug related matters.

56-Martha Honey - Along with husband Tony Avirgan (wounded in the La Penca bombing) was an original plaintiff in the Cristic suit. Investigative reporter and now at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

57-Rick Horn - Senior DEA field agent. Now leading a class action suit against CIA for interference in recent drug investigations in Burma.

58-Web Hubbell - Lawyer, partner in Rose law firm, former Assistant Attorney General for President Clinton. Negotiated CIA contract for multiple tenants at Mena airport including the firm Park-On-Meter, directly tied to illegal weapons manufacturing for the Contras.

59-John Hull - One of the biggest CIA/NSC players during the Contra war. Indicted by Coast Rica for drug smuggling and Neutrality Act violations Hull escaped on a DEA plane. Close to North, Bush, Quayle and Rob Owen. Reportedly used his ranch in Nicaragua and surrounding areas for drug flights into the U.S.

60-Admiral Bobby Ray Inman - Retired head of National Security Agency. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence 1981-2. Member of the Board of Directors of the Fluor Corporation where "retired CIA Deputy Director Bill Nelson met with Ron Lister who was connected to the Blandon drug organization, the CIA and North.

61-Carl Jenkins - Retired CIA Deputy Director of Operations. Among other things attempted to recruit retired Army CID Agent Gene Wheaton to help set up dummy airlines which would later be used for drug and weapons smuggling.

62-Leon Kellner - U.S. Attorney for South Florida. Jeff Feldman's boss. Went out of his way, in concert with William Weld to crush investigations leading to North, Bush and the White House.

63-Joseph Kelso - Freelance investigator/informant who revealed DEA corruption in Costa Rica which connected to CIA. Gave a 3 volume deposition in Avirgan v. Hull in So. Florida. Yet also turns up connected to CIA laundering of C-130 aircraft through the Forest Service (see Dec. issue).

64-Senator John Kerry - Chaired Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1986-8 (The Kerry Committee), produced voluminous evidence of CIA complicity in drug trafficking.

65- Peter Kornbluh - Administrator, National Security Archives where many important documents, including Ollie's diaries, CIA & DEA reports are stored. Has written and conducted extensive research on Iran-Contra.

66-Dan Lasater - Arkansas crony of Bill Clinton who allegedly called the CIA coke "Lasater's thing." Junk bond king from Little Rock reported to have laundered millions in cocaine profits for the Clinton's and others.

67-Michael Ledeen - NSC staffer close to North and Bud McFarlane.

68-Carlos Lehder-Rivas - Co-founder of the Medellin cartel which gave money to the Contras and assisted North and Bush. Imprisoned in 1988 and recently released. One of the Chief witnesses against Manuel Noriega. Now residing in the Bahamas and reportedly back in business.

69-Mike Levine - Retired DEA. Former Country AttachŽ in Argentina. Witnessed CIA sponsored cocaine coup in Bolivia. Author, radio host, expert witness.

70-Ron Lister - Former Laguna Beach police officer who worked with Danillo Blandon and the Ricky Ross organization. Delivered guns to gangs and also met with retired CIA DDO Bill Nelson at the Fluor Corporation.

71-Eric von Marbod - Lifelong associate of Armitage, Shackley, Clines, et al. Vietnam hand connected to CIA/Laotian heroin. ProtŽgŽ of Henry Kissinger. Ran Defense Security Assistance Agency for the Pentagon in the Reagan years, which provided cover for a multitude of covert ops connected to the Contras and other activities. Linked by Bo Gritz to drug trafficking and abandonment of POWs.

72-Dave MacMichael- Retired CIA case officer. Founder of Association of National Security Alumni. Lecturer/writer. Outspoken critic of CIA covert operations.

73-John Mattes - Former Federal Public defender who represented Jesus Garcia on weapons charges connected to the Contras. Uncovered links to George Bush's aide Col. Douglas Menarchik.

Traveled to Central America on investigations and suffered repercussions. Later served as an attorney for the Kerry Committee.

74-Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros - Honduran cartel level trafficker connected to the Contras. Moved four tons of cocaine per month into the U.S. through CIA connected firms like Setco, which he owned. Imprisoned in 1989 as CIA shifted allegiances from the Medellin to the Cali cartel. Now in prison in Colorado.

75-Col. Douglas Menarchik - National Security aide to George Bush whose private phone number turned up in the possession of a Contra gun runner connected to drugs.

76-Norwin Meneses - Supplier of Danillo Blandon. Long time CIA asset. Major Nicaraguan political heavyweight who always escaped US prosecution and arrest. Now serving time in a resort country club prison in Central America where he still exerts great influence.

77-Jack McCavett - CIA station chief El Salvador.

78-Rep. Bill McCollum (FL) - Longtime CIA friend associated with Bill Casey. Connected to the recruitment of Gene Wheaton to set up dummy airlines for gun/drug smuggling. Also connected to the Knights of Malta, a secret order used to launder money during the era. McCollum's aide Vaughn Forrest was with John Hull in Costa Rica the day of the La Penca bombing.

79-Prof. Alfred W. McCoy (University of Wisconsin, Madison) - Author: The Politics of Heroin. World recognized expert, professor and author who has been researching CIA complicity in the global drug trade since the early 1970's.

80-John McMahon - Retired CIA Deputy Director bypassed by the likes of Dewey Clarridge and North. A so-called "moderate" who Bill Casey ignored in his conduct of illegal drug and guns operations during the era.

81-Robert "Bud" McFarlane - National Security Adviser to President Reagan. Oliver North's boss. Indicted over Iran-Contra issues not related to drugs.

82-Ralph McGehee - Retired CIA case officer, outspoken CIA critic and publisher of CIA-Base. Created a publicly available database of CIA dirty tricks including drug running.

83-Ed Meese - Reagan's second Attorney general who handled the Iran-Contra affair. Covered up evidence of CIA drug trafficking and other crimes.

84-Rick Messick - Former aide to Senator Richard Lugar who reportedly leaked sensitive documents from the Kerry Committee to Oliver North and other Reagan officials.

85-Ramon Milian-Rodriguez - Accountant for the Medellin cartel who testified to administering $10 million plus in "donations" for the Contras.

86-Jorge Morales - Convicted Colombian drug smuggler, Florida playboy connected to Geo. Bush who testified to shipping guns to Contras in exchange for drugs and protection from American law enforcement investigations.

87-Frank Moss - American pilot. Partner with Matta in Setco

88-Mario Murga - DEA and CIA informant for Celerino Castillo. Identified aircraft with black crosses on their tails as being CIA drug and weapons flights.

89-Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega - Long time CIA asset and colleague of George Bush before his ouster in Operation Just Cause in 1989. Former dictator of Panama, the money laundering capital for the drug trade and prime transshipment point for a variety of CIA cargoes. Allied with the Medellin cartel. Now serving a prison sentence.

90-Oliver North - There aren't enough words and I couldn't print them all anyway!

91-Rob Owen - Preppie aide to Ollie North and courier/messenger who traveled throughout Central and Latin America. Hand picked from the staff of Indiana Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana which is also the home state of John Hull.

92-Michael Palmer - Pilot and drug smuggling operator of CIA contractor Vortex, heavily referenced in Volume II.

93-Col. Nestor Pino - U.S. Army Special Warfare expert connected to Bo Gritz, William Bode, Richard Armitage and Erich Von Marbod. Involved in Contra supply drug operations reportedly connected to drugs.

94-Ross Perot - Texas billionaire and longtime POW activist known to have heavy intelligence and political contacts. Reportedly backed Richard Armitage into a corner over Armitage's alleged connections to drug trafficking, gambling and POW abandonment in 1986.

95-Adm. John Poindexter - National Security Adviser to President Reagan. Oliver North's boss when Iran-Contra broke.

96-Tom Posey - Founded Civilian Military Assistance, a cutout Contra support operation. Connected to Hull, Calero, Frank Chanes, North, Owen and the attempts to silence Jack Terrell and murder Eden Pastora.

97-Gen. Colin Powell - Senior Pentagon official who oversaw much of the weapons transfers to Iran and out of Pentagon into private hands. Calls Richard Armitage his "white son."

98-Rafael "Chi-Chi" Quintero - Cuban born assassin and long time CIA operative known to have worked for Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Ed Wilson. Heavily involved in Contra support operations including, according to Contra pilot Michael Tolliver, the coordination of drug flights. Known associate of Casey, Bush, North bagman and drug money launderer, Albert Carone.

99-CEO, The RAND Corporation - On acquisition and sharing of data from UCLA's NPI and other sources with the Central Intelligence Agency.

100-Roy Reagan - Aircraft broker, longtime CIA associate convicted in 1998 of defrauding the government in a scheme to steal C-130's from the Forest Service, move them through CIA proprietary Evergreen Air facilities and into the drug trade. Some C-130's moved through Mena, AK. Most turned up overseas doing anything but fighting fires.

101-Terry Reed - CIA contract pilot trained and handled by Barry Seal and Oliver North. Exposed direct CIA drug connections at Mena airport and connections between George Bush and Governor Bill Clinton. Framed for insurance fraud when he refused to go along with drug smuggling ops.

102-Oliver "Buck" Revell - Former Assistant Director of the FBI. Part of Terrorist Incident Working Groups (TIWGs) in the NSC under Bush. Very close to Ollie North. Responsible for harassment of Contra drug witnesses and the cover-up of criminal conduct leading into the White House.

103-Win Richardson - Former analyst and mid manager of E-Systems near Dallas. Documented cocaine flights on E Systems aircraft. E-Systems is a major defense contractor with former CIA Director William Raborn on the Board.

104-Mike Riconosciouto - CIA computer expert tied to various illegal CIA covert ops including reprogramming of PROMIS software and drug trafficking through Mena Arkansas.

105-Glenn Robinette - Security officer for North and Secord's Enterprise. DC Private investigator and retired CIA operative used by Oliver North to harass and intimidate key witnesses including Jack Terrell and the Cristic Institute.

106-Felix Rodriguez - (a.k.a. Max Gomez) Longtime CIA hand from the Bay of Pigs era. Connected to drug running and covert military operations. A major CIA player who ran operations at Ilopnago Hangars 4 & 5 where DEA agent Cele Castillo documented drug flights. Involved in 1998 delivery of U.S. helicopters to Mexico to "fight" the drug war.

107-Ricky Ross - Celebrated dealer of the Dark Alliance series. Labeled the king of crack cocaine by the L.A. Times. Started the crack cocaine epidemic receiving CIA protected shipments of cocaine. Now serving an undetermined sentence after life sentence overturned.

108-Don Richardson - Political Officer (CIA) U.S. Embassy El Salvador. Knew of drug operations sanctioned/protected by the Agency and ordered by the White House.

109-Jimmy Rothstein - Retired NYPD Detective. Knew Al Carone. Has openly detailed CIA drug involvement through NYPD for decades as well as the targeting of African Americans for CIA heroin shipped via the French Connection and the Prince of the City cases. Has hard documents linking CIA to rental of facilities for drug dealers connected to the Agency.

110-Mike Ruppert - former LAPD narcotics investigator from CIA connected family. Eyewitness to a CIA agent arranging drug shipments in 1976-7. Writer, lecturer and expert witness on the subject of CIA drug trafficking.

111-Joseph Russoniello - Former Assistant US Attorney in San Francisco, labeled by CIA as "most deferential" to their interests. Quashed the "Frogman" investigations connected to Norwin Meneses. Represented defendants in CIA's embezzlement of C-130 aircraft in U.S. v. Reagan. Now occupies offices in the same building as John Ford in the headquarters building of PG&E in San Francisco.

112-Dr. David Sabow, MD - Brother of Marine Col. Jim Sabow who was murdered after discovering C-130s with Forest Service markings flying cocaine onto El Toro Marine Air Station in 1991. Col. Sabow's death was ruled a suicide in spite of forensic evidence proving murder. Sabow, who was hounded by the Marines, can offer additional information relevant to CIA drug trafficking.

113-George Schultz - Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan

114-Peter Dale Scott - Professor, UC Berkeley, author of Cocaine Politics. Recognized expert on CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking.

115-Richard Secord - Retired AF General tied to CIA drug operations from the Vietnam era. Longtime associate of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Ed Wilson and Richard Armitage. Caught embezzling funds from government contracts through EATSCO. Heavily involved in Contra supply operations with Oliver North.

116-Ted Shackley - Retired Associate Deputy Director of Operations at CIA. Hired by CIA in 1951 and rose to power in anti-Castro efforts Mongoose and JM-WAVE in So. Florida in the early 1960s. Perhaps the strongest continuous thread in the history of CIA drug dealing. Former Station Chief in Laos and Saigon. ADDO under CIA Director George Bush in 1976 and heavily involved in Iran-Contra. Still active in the intelligence community.

117-Ronald Siegel, PhD - Pioneer researcher on crack cocaine at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI). Traveled to South America several times in late 70-early 80s. Expert on the addictiveness of the drug and UCLA connections to RAND and the CIA.

118-John Singlaub - Retired Army general and rabid anti-Communist. Heavily involved in illegal weapons supplies for the Contras, many of which were purchased with drug monies. An essential part of The Enterprise and front man for Contra support activities.

119-Stanley Sporkin - retired General Counsel for the CIA during the Casey years. Now a sitting United Stated District Court Judge in Washington, D.C. (The e-mails used to read "To Stanley from Ollie.")

120-Kenneth Starr - Former special assistant to Reagan Attorney General William French-Smith who knew about, and helped author the infamous memorandum removing CIA's responsibility for reporting drug trafficking by its agents and contract employees.

121-Col. James Steel - Commander Mil Group El Salvador. Principal liaison between the military and Felix Rodriguez and Oliver North for operations at Ilopango airfield and throughout El Salvador.

122-John H. Stein - CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) from July 1981 - June 1984.

123-James Robert Strauss - Bagman and laundry man for cocaine profits through organized crime to support a variety of missions including POW rescue efforts. Partner of Col. Albert Carone whose daughter, Dee Ferdinand, has a tape of Strauss acknowledging that the CIA operations known as Amadeus were run by George Bush. Travel records indicate heavy international travel to launder cocaine funds for the Agency, Bill Casey and the NSC.

124-Lewis Tambs - U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica. Planned victim of alleged assassination attempt by John Hull, CIA and Ollie North. Opposed transfer of C-130s from Australia to South America for use in the drug trade.

125-Dois G. "Chip" Tatum - CIA operative and pilot who participated in CIA covert operations, assassinations and drug missions. Claims direct connections and meeting with George Bush and Bill Clinton during the Contra era. Claims to possess hard documents, tape recordings and other evidence connecting to Israeli Mossad officials and CIA executives including Ted Shackley and William Casey. Whereabouts unknown.

126-George Tenet - Current Director of Central Intelligence who supervised the declassification of Volume II of Inspector General Fred Hitz's 1997 investigation.

127-Jack Terrell - Self-styled mercenary who became the chief witness in the Cristic lawsuit. Began working for Tom Posey's CMA and became exposed to drug operations at Ilopnago in El Salvador and John Hull's ranch in Costa Rica. Became an obsession of North, Hull, Robinette and Owen. Prosecuted and hounded on trumped up weapons charges.

128-Bill Tyree - Former U.S. Army Special Forces troop involved in CIA drug operations in Panama (Watchtower) dating back to 1976-7 under the Directorship of George Bush. Eyewitness and participant to drug exchanges involving CIA and Manuel Noriega. Wrongly framed and convicted for the murder of his own wife in 1979, Tyree is now plaintiff in a $63 million suit against the CIA, George Bush and Bill Clinton. An invaluable source.

129- Vang Pao - Southeast Asian Hmong opium warlord who commanded a CIA Army in Laos for Ted Shackley and the CIA. Heavily involved in the opium trade. Relocated to Montana after the Vietnam War where there are currently numerous allegations of CIA drug smuggling.

130-Director, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) - On relationships and connections with the RAND Corporation, CIA and research into addictive qualities of crack cocaine and other drugs.

131-Frederico Vaughan- Nicaraguan Sandinista official involved in alleged drug sting manufactured by Oliver North.

132-Lupita Vega - The only Salvadoran national working for the Mil Group with above Top Secret clearances in El Salvador. Handled coded traffic and communications regarding drug flights.

133-Judge Lawrence Walsh - Special Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra. Received voluminous information about drug trafficking and decided it was not within his mandate to do anything about it. As a private attorney in the early 80s obtained End User Certificates for Richard Secord's Eatsco airfreight company.

134-Gary Webb - The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author of Dark Alliance who got us into all this mess again. (Thank God!)

135-Judge William Webster - Former FBI Director. Appointed CIA Director after Bill Casey's death in 1987. Presided over the cover-up at CIA.

136-Scott Weekly - Annapolis classmate of Oliver North. Friend of Bo Gritz. Covert operations specialist and weapons expert. Described heavily in Gary Webb's Dark Alliance. Linked to drug and weapons trafficking in Southern California through Ron Lister.

137-Casper Weinberger - Reagan Secretary of Defense. Responsible when large numbers of military personnel, especially Green Beret's, were used on drug connected missions. Also oversaw diversion of military aircraft, personnel and resources into drug missions run by the CIA.

138-Russel Welch - Arkansas State Investigator who was one of the first to uncover CIA drug smuggling at the Mena airport and connections to Bill Clinton. Ruthlessly suppressed.

139-William Weld - Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division under Reagan. Stalled or aborted every criminal investigation into drug trafficking connected to the CIA and the NSC.

140-David Westrate - High ranking DEA official who handled sensitive intelligence liaison between CIA, DEA and Congress dating back to the mid-70s. Rose to become Assistant Administrator.

141-Gene Wheaton - Retired Army CID, Air Force OSI investigator. Arguably the deepest witness to ever come from inside covert operations and publicly oppose CIA drug trafficking. Investigator for the Cristic Institute, the Sabow family, one of the first at Mena and deeply involved in the C-130 investigations involving CIA and the Forest Service.

142-James Woolsey - First CIA Director under Bill Clinton prior to the appointment of John Deutch.

If you want to know MORE about this subject,

may we recommend the following:

- Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.

- The Carone Report

- The Tyree Papers

- The UCLA Oral History

A SUBSCRIPTION TO FROM THE WILDERNESS

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Congress; Perot and Senators Seem Headed for a Fight on P.O.W.'s-M.I.A.'s

By PATRICK E. TYLER,

Published: June 20, 1992

Ross Perot appears to be headed for a confrontation with the Senate over his refusal to testify this month at a hearing on American servicemen missing in Southeast Asia.

After a private meeting Thursday of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W.'s-M.I.A.'s, a committee spokeswoman said today, "The committee is unanimous in feeling that we do have to have his testimony."

The largest and most influential organization of families of missing American servicemen urged the Senate to compel Mr. Perot "to appear in open session and provide evidence to support previous statements that American P.O.W.'s-M.I.A.'s are alive in Southeast Asia."

Mr. Perot earlier this week canceled his appearance, saying in a letter to Senator John F. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the committee, that he did not want to submit to the "political circus" that the hearings "will tend to become." Mr. Perot also said he could not appear at any alternative date before the Presidential elections. Alternatives Are Considered

"It is not feasible to wait until after the election," the committee spokeswoman said today. Neither Mr. Kerry nor the committee's vice chairman, Senator Robert C. Smith, Republican of New Hampshire, was available for comment today on the status of negotiations with Mr. Perot. But Senate aides said the committee had discussed issuing a subpoena to compel Mr. Perot to appear or, perhaps, taking a formal deposition from him.

The conflict over Mr. Perot's appearance is significant because the hearings were looked upon by many of his supporters and his opponents as an opportunity to examine Mr. Perot's pointed assertions on issues about P.O.W.'s and -M.I.A.'s, including his belief that hundreds of American servicemen were left behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War.

The hearing was also expected to be a forum to examine Mr. Perot's confrontation with the Reagan Administration over policies on P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s.

In recent months, new details about that confrontation have come to light, among them that Mr. Perot carried on a private dialogue with senior Vietnamese officials between 1988 and 1991 even as a senior Presidential envoy was carrying on formal negotiations with Hanoi.

Mr. Perot, through his spokesman, has also conceded that he may have solicited private investigative material to attack the reputation of a senior Pentagon official, Richard Armitage, who helped supervise its policy on the matter. Political Worries Are Strong

Mr. Perot's dispute with the Reagan White House over P.O.W.-M.I.A. policy led to his estrangement from Mr. Reagan and from George Bush.

It seemed possible that committee members might be willing to forgo examining Mr. Perot's more controversial actions in order to secure his testimony on the central issue of missing Americans and his efforts to find them.

At the heart of these negotiations and Senate deliberations over using its subpoena authority are political worries about how to handle Mr. Perot. On one hand, members like Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war, express a strong desire to conclude a nonpolitical investigation into claims that Americans were left behind in Southeast Asia. Mr. Kerry has said that he has assured Mr. Perot that any hearing on missing Americans will not become a circus.

But at the same time, partisans who oppose Mr. Perot's expected independent candidacy for President see an appearance on Capitol Hill by the Texas billionaire as an opportunity to confront him with recent disclosures about his activities that could be politically embarrassing.

Senate leaders appeared to be ambivalent about pressing Mr. Perot to testify and concerned that the hearings could be poltically damaging to the Senate.

Mr. Perot has seized on this point in bolstering his argument to stay away, referring to the Senate Judiciary Committee's stormy confirmation hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. "In the current political climate," he wrote to Mr. Kerry on June 16, "it could become a rerun of the Judge Thomas-Anita Hill hearings."

An influential organization of the families of P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s is urging Senator Kerry and his colleagues to subpoena Mr. Perot.

"The league strongly objects to Mr. Perot's decision to renege on his commitment to testify before the select committee," said a statement issued by Sue Scott, the chairwoman of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

Photo: In 1969, Ross Perot, right, talked with Vu Tien, second from right, an official at the North Vietnamese embassy in Vientiane, Laos. Mr. Perot has refused to testify at a Senate hearing on American servicemen missing in Southeast Asia. (Associated Press)

Tặng Kim Âu

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