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THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo
 
The following is an interview with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) 
veteran agent Celerino Castillo, first published in *The New 
Federalist*, October 24, 1994.
 
Before beginning, by way of a preface, let me state a few things.
 
Officer Jack McLamb (retired) of the Phoenix Police Department, 
in a speech given to his fellow police officers, had this to say:
 
  ...there's been much research, *much* research, and much 
  documentation to the fact -- and I say *fact*, fellow police 
  officers (We've got some female police officers here too. 
  Thank you for coming.), -- but I'm telling you, I want you to 
  hear this, I'm talking about *fact* that we can prove, we've 
  got the evidence -- an evidentiary foundation that would 
  stack as high as *I* am, the evidence, I've seen it -- that 
  the U.S. government, certain factions of the U.S. government, 
  have been involved in importing the majority of drugs in the 
  United States since the '60s. Since 1960....
 
  We have, folks, in the United States, a phony war on drugs.
 
 
Then there's former DEA agent Mike Levine, author of *Deep Cover* 
and *The Big White Lie*, speaking at Northern Illinois University 
in 1991:
 
  The drug war's a sham. I threw my life to the winds believing 
  in the war against drugs. If I died, I believed I was dying 
  for a just cause....
 
  I realized the reality of what I was doing never quite 
  matched what the public was seeing. DEA was designed to put 
  itself out of business but that doesn't happen. The opposite 
  happens. It's always, "We need more."
 
  ...It's all a show... The drug war is the laughing stock of 
  South America.
 
 
My guess is that there is a moment of truth that comes to our 
soldiers in the "War Against Drugs"; a moment when they realize 
it's all a crock. It seems that most choose to lay low and hang 
onto their jobs when that moment of decision arrives. A few, 
though, have got something that you could call "honor". When 
their moment of truth arrives, they are unable to rationalize 
themselves into a "go along to get along" lifestyle.
 
But this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world 
ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. A thousand little 
compromises, a thousand little rationalizations, and we have got 
a world of trouble. Thank God that not all of our soldiers in 
this "War Against Drugs" have turned out to have the souls of 
petty bourgeois shopkeepers. Thank God there have been some great 
souls among them.
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[September 27, 1994]
 
WEBSTER TARPLEY:
I'd like to go immediately to the very interesting book that 
you've put together [*Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug 
War*]. On page 132 of that book, you describe a kind of cameo 
appearance by Vice President George Bush. I believe this was in 
Guatemala City in January of 1986, and that would have been 
shortly after the inauguration of the new Guatemalan President 
Cerezo. I'd just like to acquaint our viewers with that 
conversation, the events that led up to it, that followed it, and 
revolved around it, because this seems to sum up the heart of the 
matter.
 
 
CELERINO CASTILLO:
Basically, what happened there, was that at that time, Jan. 14, 
1986, to be exact, George Bush was in Guatemala City. At the same 
time that George Bush was there, I also saw Calero, head of the 
Contras, and Oliver North. And I met George Bush at the cocktail 
party at the ambassador's residence, and basically, what he was 
doing, was walking around, shaking hands with everybody. And he 
came up to me, and asked me what my job description was as DEA 
agent. And I told him that I conducted international narcotics 
investigations on traffickers down in Central America. I also 
advised him that I was the agent in charge of reporting for El 
Salvador, and I forewarned him that there were some funny things 
going on at Ilopango Airport, with the Contras. He shook my hand, 
he smiled, and he just walked away from me, without saying 
another word. From that moment, I knew he knew something about 
the Contras.
 
 
TARPLEY:
That's what you write: "He simply smiled and walked away, seeking 
another hand to shake. After that exchange, I knew that he knew."
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct.
 
 
TARPLEY:
What did George Bush know, and when did he know it?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Before my arrival in Guatemala, we had received intelligence that 
the Contras were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. 
Basically, I was forewarned by the country attache' in Guatemala, 
Bob Stia, upon my arrival, that there was a covert operation 
being conducted by the White House, and run by Oliver North at 
Ilopango in El Salvador.
 
 
TARPLEY:
So this was your official superior in the DEA?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct.
 
 
TARPLEY:
And the first thing he did when you arrived in the country was to 
tell you: Look, this is now the scene of a covert operation with 
Oliver North, and they're running drugs. [CN -- See, kiddies? Run 
drugs, and you too can grow up to be a U.S. Senator.]
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct, and since we had obtained intelligence already 
about the Contras being heavily involved in narcotics 
trafficking, he advised me to stay away from it and not to get 
involved in the investigation, because that would mean that if I 
started reporting that information to Washington, I would be 
kicked out of El Salvador and Guatemala very quickly.
 
               -+- The Ilopango Connection -+-
 
TARPLEY:
Now, when you say the "Contras," does that mean *all* the 
Contras? Were there groups that were more into it, that were less 
into it? Was there Calero, were there others in that group? Was 
it a universal thing, that all the Contras were into drugs?
 
 
CASTILLO:
It was a universal thing. The DEA refused to accept that answer, 
but we had intelligence gathered from all parts of Central and 
South America in regard to the narcotics trafficking going on. We 
had cables from the country attache', Bobby Nieves in Costa Rica, 
advising us to look into Hangars 4 and 5 at Ilopango. And of 
course, Hangars 4 and 5 were bought and paid for by the U.S. 
government -- the CIA and the National Security Council.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Ilopango Airport: What is that? Is that a large commercial 
airport?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No. Ilopango Airport is the military airport with civilian small 
planes that arrive at Ilopango. And it's a military base, but 
most international pilots who fly small planes get to arrive at 
Ilopango.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Tell us what the atmosphere was at Ilopango in the middle of this 
Contra dirty war, 1985, '86, '87.
 
 
CASTILLO:
We had major narcotics trafficking going through Ilopango from 
Costa Rica, which is further south. We had obtained a lot of 
intelligence. We had an informant placed at Ilopango who actually 
did the flight plans for the Contra pilots, and everybody spoke 
freely about the loads that they carried, the monies that they 
took to the Bahamas and to Panama for laundering.
 
All this was reported to the U.S. Embassy, to the CIA, to 
Washington, DEA headquarters; and nobody wanted to do anything 
about it.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Tell me just briefly: what kinds of planes were these, where were 
they coming from, where were they going?
 
 
CASTILLO:
The cable that we received from Costa Rica in April of 1986 came 
in from the country attache', Bobby Nieves, like I stated before, 
and was for us to check Hangars 4 and 5, that they had very 
reliable information pertaining to the trafficking from around 
Central and South America into those two hangars.
 
It turned out that of those two hangars, one was run by the CIA, 
and the other one was run by Felix Rodriguez,
 
  [CN -- This man, Felix Rodriguez, also shows up in connection 
  with activities surrounding Terry Reed and the Mena Airport 
  operation. Rodriguez is also reportedly the man who killed 
  Che Guevara.]
 
who ran the Contra operation at Ilopango.
 
 
TARPLEY:
These, then, were not jets that you would see at an American 
airfield, but these were smaller planes?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes, smaller planes, like Caravans, Pipers, Cessnas. They were 
coming in without being inspected by the Customs officials, or 
anybody else.
 
As it turned out, the informant who did the flight plans actually 
gave us copies of all the flight plans of all these Contra 
pilots, and when we ran checks on the names of all these pilots, 
they were all documented in DEA files as narco-traffickers. Yet 
they were being hired by the CIA, Felix Rodriguez, and everybody 
else, who were trying to obtain U.S. visas for them to go to the 
U.S. -- even though they were documented traffickers.
 
 
TARPLEY:
So, these planes would then fly north. Could they make it all the 
way to Miami?
 
 
CASTILLO:
They would go to Miami, they would go to Texas. They were going 
to California; anywhere that they were able.
 
For example, a Contra pilot was arrested in late '85 in south 
Texas with five-and-a-half million dollars cash. It was Contra 
money. You know, you carry credentials from the President of El 
Salvador, from the Chief of Staffs in El Salvador, the Chief of 
the Air Force and so forth; they were all very well protected, 
and every single pilot talked about how they had permission to 
run narcotics, because they were working for the Oliver North 
Contra operation.
 
                -+- The Rodriguez Dossier -+-
 
TARPLEY:
Now, you've mentioned Felix Rodriguez, Max Gomez. I happen to 
have read his autobiography, and he's somebody who participated 
in the Bay of Pigs invasion back in the early 1960s, and it's 
speculated that George Bush was involved in that.
 
  [CN -- According to Brigadier General (retired) Russell S. 
  Bowen (*The Immaculate Deception*), "The truth is that Bush 
  has been a top CIA agent since before the 1961 invasion of 
  Cuba, working with Felix Rodriguez and other anti-Castro 
  Cubans."]
 
Certainly, Felix Rodriguez has been with George Bush for a very, 
very long time, and what you can see in that book is, he's got a 
signed photograph from George Bush telling him what a great 
patriot he is.
 
Would you agree with that judgement on Felix Rodriguez/Max Gomez?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No, sir. If you go back to the Vietnam War, we have intelligence 
where the CIA and those individuals were heavily involved in 
trafficking heroin into the U.S. in bodybags and so forth.
 
So, Felix Rodriguez was documented, in our DEA files, as a 
trafficker. He was a retired CIA agent, and they brought all 
these people who were heavily involved. If you go back, most of 
these Bay of Pigs operatives were all documented traffickers, who 
all served time for narcotics trafficking, for gun-running. They 
were all criminals; yet, they were being hired by the Oliver 
North Contra operation to run the illegal narcotics trafficking 
out of Ilopango [Airport].
 
 
TARPLEY:
Now, Felix Rodriguez has a DEA file.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct, sir. I myself documented him involved in 
trafficking with the Contras, and so forth.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Does Oliver North have a DEA file?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct, sir. As a matter of fact, there's a 1991 file on 
Oliver North for smuggling weapons from the U.S. into the 
Philippines with known narcotics traffickers, and I'm talking 
about a 1991 case. I'm not going back to the Contra issue.
 
 
TARPLEY:
This is *after* the television appearance, after the great 1987 
celebrity parade?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct, sir. Absolutely.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Can you make a Freedom of Information Act request, to get hold of 
Oliver North's DEA file?
 
 
CASTILLO:
I tried that already, and they cited the privacy act. I asked for 
my own files, that I wrote on the Contras and different 
individuals, and these requests were denied.
 
 
TARPLEY:
So, I can imagine that there would be a lot of voters around 
Virginia and elsewhere who would like to have a look at Oliver 
North's DEA file again, with an incident from 1991?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. One of the questions I've always been asked is, 
Why can't the White House get that?
 
Somebody else has to answer that. I don't know. It's there. They 
just need to get that. That file is out of the Washington office 
here in Washington, D.C.
 
 
TARPLEY:
That certainly makes you think twice.
 
Now, did you ever see Felix Rodriguez running around Ilopango?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes, sir. I saw him running around Ilopango. I used to see him 
around the U.S. Embassy, having lunch with the ambassador and 
others. Col. Steele from the U.S. Military Group [was] down 
there. I saw him everywhere.
 
                    -+- Coverup -+-
 
TARPLEY:
And how about Oliver North? Did you ever see him there?
 
 
CASTILLO:
I saw Oliver North in Guatemala, not in Salvador.
 
 
TARPLEY:
And what were the circumstances where you saw Oliver North?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Well, that's when I met George Bush, on Jan. 14, 1986...
 
 
TARPLEY:
Could you just give us an idea of what kinds of people were 
telling you about these activities, and what they were telling 
you?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Well, go back to Ilopango. We had an informant who had worked 
there, at Ilopango, for many years. He had given reliable 
information to the Consulate General there, Robert Chavez, at the 
U.S. Embassy, and some cocaine had been seized before. So, this 
guy was very reliable. He had been reporting all this activity on 
the Contras.
 
We had another informant who was also placed to work at Ilopango, 
Salvador, and Guatemala, who was a documented informer going back 
to 1981, who gave us a lot of the intelligence that we had on 
this Contra operation.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Let's now turn to what you did with the information that you got, 
and how you reported it. I understand from your book that one of 
the first people you tried to tell about this was the U.S. 
ambassador to Salvador, Edwin Corr.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. Once we obtained a lot of the intelligence and we 
started writing reports, we went to the U.S. ambassador, we went 
to the CIA Chief of Station, Jack McCavett, in Salvador, and Col. 
Steele, who was a U.S. Military Group commander.
 
There was an individual, an American, who lived in El Salvador, 
who was a civilian, and as it turns out, he was working for the 
Oliver North Contra operation. And when we received all this 
information, we reported it. I personally reported it to my boss, 
first of all, Bob Stia, who kept forewarning me about my 
reporting on the Contras because it was going to come back and 
hurt us in Guatemala.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Did he suggest it was going to be bad for your career?
 
 
CASTILLO:
It was going to be bad for my career and his career, and he had a 
couple of years left to retire, and not to make any waves. I told 
him that if I actually found any evidence, that I would continue 
to report the allegations that the Contras were involved in 
trafficking.
 
I went to the U.S. ambassador, Edwin Corr. He told me right off 
that it was a White House covert operation run by Col. Oliver 
North, and for me to stay away from it.
 
 
TARPLEY:
So that's now the second time you got official testimony and 
corroboration that Oliver North was running these activities, 
first from Mr. Stia, and then from Ambassador Corr. Two different 
agencies.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's right. Then I went to Jack McCavett and Jack McCavett's 
answer to me was the fact that they were being ordered to support 
the Oliver North Contra operation, to go above and beyond to 
support them; and also Col. Steele with the U.S. Military Group. 
He, of course, was the liaison officer from the U.S. embassy into 
the Salvadoran military.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Mr. Stia, your immediate superior: did he have the option of 
rejecting your reports, telling you to tear them up, or file 
them, or rewrite them? Or did he have to sign off on them and 
send them to Washington?
 
 
CASTILLO:
One of the things a lot of people don't understand is the fact 
that every time I wrote a report, or sent a cable off to 
Washington, it had to be approved by my supervisor (who was Bob 
Stia) *and* signed off by the ambassador of whatever country I 
was sending the cable out to. So, everything was approved. 
Whether DEA Washington did anything with it was a different 
story. And we had a place up there they called the "Black Hole"; 
all these reports went in there, and they were never distributed 
to the right people.
 
                -+- Laundering the Profits -+-
 
TARPLEY:
Can you remember the date of your first dispatch to Washington 
that basically stated these facts?
 
 
CASTILLO:
We go back to early 1986. The cable came in from Costa Rica in 
April, so we continued to follow up on the request to conduct an 
extensive investigation into Hangars 4 and 5, and cables started 
coming and going.
 
Costa Rica was giving us the information that narcotics were 
leaving from Aranchez airstrip in Costa Rica into Ilopango. Of 
course, our informant at Ilopango was being told, by the pilots 
when they were leaving, how much dope they were taking, how much 
money they were flying into the Bahamas or Panama.
 
At one point, he saw $4.5 million cash taken from Ilopango into 
Panama, to launder. These were incidents that were reported. We 
have a time and date for one of the pilots, Chica Guirola, 
departing El Salvador to the Bahamas where he was airdropping 
monies on the Contras -- the profits of narcotrafficking.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Do you get the impression that the narcotics ultimately came from 
people like the Medellin cartel, or the Cali cartel, or people 
like this?
 
 
CASTILLO:
I had a CIA agent in El Salvador who actually came up and asked 
me: How do you expect us to support the Contras when Congress cut 
aid to the Contras? How are they going to support themselves? 
Which means that we have to sleep with the cartels.
 
And basically, during the Kerry Committee [i.e., Senate Committee 
on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and 
International Operations] hearings we had a lot of informants, a 
lot of individuals who flew for the Contras, who gave testimony; 
but their credibility was not that good, because they were known 
traffickers, and so forth. But there was a lot of testimony, a 
lot of evidence to the fact that there was a lot of narcotics 
trafficking.
 
 
TARPLEY:
O.K. You've mentioned the Kerry Committee. I guess that's Sen. 
Kerry of Massachusetts, the Senate Investigating Committee '85, 
'86, '87?
 
You tried to tell part of your story to them. Am I right? You 
tried to inform them of what you knew?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No, not the Kerry Committee. As a matter of fact, on Oct. 22, in 
1987, I got a call from Washington requesting for me not to close 
the files on the Contras because the Kerry Committee wanted 
copies of my reports, and under the Freedom of Information Act, 
if it's a closed case they cannot have access to it.
 
During the Kerry Committee, we had Mark Richards, who is an 
assistant U.S. attorney... He was involved in a meeting with 25 
individuals from the DEA and the Department of Justice who 
*refused* to give this information to the Kerry Committee.
 
 
TARPLEY:
This was the committee that investigated this "frogman" 
operation?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes. We had the "Frogman Case" going back to 1985. A couple of 
Columbians and Nicaraguans were trafficking in large quantities 
of cocaine into San Francisco. It was called the "Frogman Case" 
because they were bringing ships into the San Francisco area, and 
a couple of frogmen would go out there and take the coke.
 
As it turns out, on their own testimony, testifying before the 
committee, they reported that the profits from those sales of 
narcotics were going to the Contras. So, we start there. In 
December of 1985, a CNN reporter broke the story on the Contras' 
involvement in narcotics trafficking.
 
So, the investigation into it started; but at no time did the 
Kerry Committee *ever* contact the agents down in El Salvador who 
actually conducted the investigation. I sat there and I waited 
for the phone to ring, and nobody ever called so that I could 
testify before that committee to advise them that large 
quantities of drugs were being trafficked by the Oliver North 
Contra operation.
 
 
TARPLEY:
You later also tried to get in touch with the special prosecutor, 
Lawrence Walsh, in order to look into this entire matter.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. Right before I left the agency in 1991, I 
secretly met with Mike Foster, the FBI agent assigned to the 
Iran-Contra committee, Walsh's committee, with my attorney 
present. He came, and he was just stunned when he saw copies of 
my reports, cables, etc.
 
His thing was the fact that he had asked the DEA, that Walsh's 
committee had asked and requested all this information from DEA, 
and DEA *denied* the fact that there were such reports. 
Basically, he was just stunned by what I showed him there. He 
said, "You know, if we can prove that the Contras and Oliver 
North were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking, it would be 
like a grand-slam home run."
 
We left it that I would try to get this girl named Sandrita from 
Salvador into the U.S. so that she could be debriefed by Walsh's 
committee with regard to her personal knowledge of narcotics use 
by some of the Contra pilots and some NSC individuals.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Well, it looks like you attempted, at one point or another, to 
bring your revelations, these charges, to the attention of the 
State Department, the Special Prosecutor, the FBI, the CIA. Did 
you ever talk to Customs?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes, I sure did.
 
One of the things is that the DEA has not acknowledged the fact 
that there are such reports. Yet, on the Kerry Committee and its 
report, we have the DEA assistant administrator, Dave West, in 
talking about the Nicaraguan war, saying that it is true that 
people on both sides of the equation in the Nicaraguan war were 
drug traffickers, and a couple of them were pretty significant.
 
Well if the DEA denies that, why is this man saying this?
 
We have the CIA chief of Latin American countries down there 
stating, in the Kerry Report: We suspected drug trafficking by 
the resistance forces. This is not a couple of people, it's a lot 
of people.
 
So, we have contradictory statements from both the State 
Department and the DEA, to the fact that the Contras were heavily 
involved in narcotics trafficking.
 
 
TARPLEY:
When you sent these reports into Washington, who in the DEA would 
get those on his desk?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Well, first of all, the chief of Latin American countries was 
John Marsh, who now, I understand, is the third-ranking DEA 
official.
 
 
TARPLEY:
He's moving up the ladder.
 
 
CASTILLO:
He's moving up the ladder. He is the individual who is 
responsible for the cover-up of the Contras involving narcotics 
trafficking. He gave me a letter of "reprimand", I guess you 
could say, when I refused to stop reporting on the Contras' 
involvement in narcotics trafficking. He actually wanted me to 
use the word "alleged". I explained to him: How can I use the 
word "alleged" when I'm seeing all this that's happening in 
Ilopango? We have reliable informants in there. And he went back, 
and he stated the same thing, that it would mean the end of my 
career in Latin America if I kept reporting this.
 
                -+- Assassination Threat -+-
 
TARPLEY:
And I understand that then the DEA actually investigated *you*, 
that is, they sent some people to check up on what you were 
doing?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. The pressure was on, "the hammer dropped", as 
they say. They came down gunning for me.
 
When Kiki Camarena got killed in 1985, the administrator for the 
DEA came out with a memo stating that no DEA agent is to travel 
by himself in a foreign country; yet, that did not apply to me, 
because I was one of two agents to cover four countries in Latin 
America, which were Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Two agents for four countries? That was called the "war on 
drugs"?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. That was called the "war on drugs in Central 
America", and I was being forced to travel by land, mind you, 
through guerrilla territory.
 
 
TARPLEY:
"By land" means in a car, on a country road, where guerrillas are 
operating?
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. It's a three to four hour drive.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Did you have an armed escort?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No, sir, I drove by myself, and most of the time my only back-up 
was my informant, who travelled with me. And of course, the DEA 
manual states that you cannot be with an informant by yourself; 
yet, DEA refused to give out any back-up agents. That's what 
happened to Kiki Camarena. Kiki had to work by himself. [CN -- 
Kiki Camarena was a DEA agent slain in the line of duty in Mexico 
in 1985.]
 
We had Victor Cortez meeting with an informant in a restaurant, 
he gets grabbed. Why? Because there was nobody to back him up. 
And while our lives were being put on the line out there, 
carelessly, by the DEA, the DEA refused to do anything about it.
 
 
TARPLEY:
So the resources are totally inadequate.
 
 
CASTILLO:
Totally inadequate, and unsafe.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Worse than that, though, it sounds like somebody was trying to 
get you bumped off, or would have been glad to see you bumped 
off.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That was at the very end of my career, where there was an OPR 
investigator, Tony Ricevuto. We have a Guatemalan colonel who 
puts a contract on me [i.e., offers to pay money in return for 
the murder of Castillo], who's going to assassinate me. We had 
tape recordings on him, on how he's going to assassinate me in El 
Salvador and blame it on the guerrillas. And Tony Ricevuto, a 
senior inspector, goes into Guatemala and speaks to the U.S. 
ambassador there, requesting a U.S. visa for this colonel so that 
he can testify before the BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce 
International] investigation in Miami.
 
In other words, telling them that it's o.k. that he's going to 
assassinate me, but they want him to testify in a trial in Miami! 
That's when I knew that I was going to get hurt sooner or later.
 
 
TARPLEY:
This would have fit into a kind of general liquidation of all 
sorts of people in 1986, 1987, 1988, who were very knowledgeable 
about different sides of Iran-Contra. You can think of Olof 
Palme, you can think of people in Germany...
 
 
CASTILLO:
There were people being taken out [i.e., murdered].
 
 
TARPLEY:
Eyewitnesses were disappearing, they were dropping left and right 
in those years. [CN -- They're "dropping left and right" in these 
years also, e.g. see "The Clinton Body Count" by Linda Thompson.]
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct, and I was one of them who was going to be taken 
out by the DEA, because they could not justify the fact that this 
individual was going to assassinate me. There was a case out of 
Houston, Texas, that was conducting the investigation; yet, my 
own people at DEA wanted to get him to the U.S. to testify. It 
was more important to them that he testify before the BCCI 
investigation, than my security.
 
Mind you, while I was down in Central America, during my career 
with the DEA, *I* *kept* *a* *daily* *journal* *of* *everything*. 
Case file numbers, individuals I talked to, people who called me 
to tell me to close the files, everything that the DEA had 
conducted illegally, condoning murders that the DEA knew about, 
down in Central America, killings and assassinations of Columbian 
traffickers; the massacre of them. I have passports to prove my 
allegations, and this was done with the knowledge of the DEA.
 
 
TARPLEY:
To the bottom line: The net result of everything you sent in to 
DEA headquarters in Washington, was what?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Was suppressed, I guess the word is... To this day, they continue 
to cover up the fact that there was a lot of intelligence 
involving the CIA, involving Oliver North's Contra operation.
 
I have pictures, I have photos, I have documents. I have 
everything that can justify what I'm saying. It's just that 
people refuse to acknowledge the fact that this was going on. 
There was a cover-up being conducted by the DEA on orders from 
the White House.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Now, if you had to formulate charges against Oliver North, what 
would you charge him with?
 
 
CASTILLO:
First of all, the violation of the Federal Narcotics Law, which 
states, in general, the fact that if you have knowledge that 
narcotics trafficking is being conducted, and you don't do 
anything about it, you can go to jail for that.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Now, Oliver North says he's "the most investigated man on the 
planet". He says, well, this is all done to death. We've been 
over this terrain a million times. Nothing has ever been found.
 
Do you think that the investigations up to now have been adequate 
on precisely this key topic?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No, sir, not at all. To start off with, it was inadequate 
investigation. "The most investigated man on the planet" -- they 
should have contacted the agents in Salvador, the people who 
actually conducted the investigation on the Contras...
 
 
TARPLEY:
Have you found, I guess you've mentioned this now in the course 
of our talk, but corroboration: have you found other people, 
other sources, who also can document what you saw?
 
 
CASTILLO:
I want to go back a little bit. In September of 1986, we had an 
individual who was an American, who was Oliver North's right-hand 
man down in El Salvador. He was a civilian. He worked out of 
Ilopango Hangars 4 and 5. He was a documented narcotics 
trafficker, all the way from Panama. We call him, in the book, 
"Brasher", and we hit his house. I built up a unit there, and 
they hit the house. At his residence, we found what was a Contra 
supply operation. We found U.S. military munitions, heavy guns, 
cases of explosives, C4.
 
 
TARPLEY:
In a private home of a friend of Ollie North?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes, in a private home. Cases of grenades, sniper rifles, 
uniforms, military equipment; and it was all U.S. military issue, 
brand new, some of it.
 
Before I hit his house, I went to the U.S. ambassador, who denied 
the fact that ["Brasher"] worked for the U.S. embassy; I went to 
the U.S. Military Group commander, who denied that ["Brasher"] 
worked for them. I went to the CIA, who denied. All three of 
those people told me that ["Brasher"] was working for the Oliver 
North Contra operation.
 
At the residence, all his vehicles had license plates for the 
U.S. embassy. We found radios belonging to the U.S. embassy. We 
found weapons belonging to the U.S. embassy. Yet, this individual 
was a documented narcotics trafficker working for the Oliver 
North Contra operation.
 
                -+- Planeloads of Cocaine -+-
 
TARPLEY:
If you had to go back and estimate, could you give some kind of a 
ballpark figure of how much drugs, I guess in this case it means 
cocaine pretty much, how much cocaine, crack cocaine and other 
kinds of cocaine, came into the United States as a result of 
these operations?
 
 
CASTILLO:
We had thousands of kilos that came in. We had surveillance set 
up up there. We saw the planes coming in. We had reports where 
they came in, they dropped it off at Hangars 4 and 5; yet, we 
were not allowed to touch it.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Could you just estimate, if at all possible, what percentage that 
might have been of the total drug-trafficking flow into the 
United States?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Maybe one percent -- and that's a lot. One percent is a lot.
 
Now, you're asking me about monies? Millions of dollars...
 
We have a guy who was an honorary ambassador to Panama, who flew 
four-and-a-half million dollars from Ilopango into Panama. This 
was reported to the DEA Washington...
 
 
TARPLEY:
Later on, toward the end of his term in office, George Bush came 
along and pardoned quite a number of the top figures in this, and 
I guess that had the effect of shutting down most of what was 
left of the official investigation.
 
What do you think of George Bush pardoning these people?
 
 
CASTILLO:
George Bush was trying to save himself, and pardoning these 
people who were known traffickers was a slap in the face to us, 
the DEA agents who were out there putting our lives on the line, 
going undercover in Third World countries.
 
 
TARPLEY:
And you've done undercover operations in Central America 
yourself.
 
 
CASTILLO:
That's correct. So the fact that we could have another branch of 
our government heavily involved in narcotics trafficking was just 
devastating to me. And a lot of people go into the government and 
spend twenty years and then retire; it didn't take me twenty 
years to figure out that my own government was heavily involved 
in narcotics trafficking, and putting our lives on the line.
 
Just a couple of weeks ago, we lost five agents in Peru. We 
cannot work with Third World countries that are heavily involved 
in narcotics trafficking.
 
We had documented reports on Third World countries. For example, 
Guatemala. Guatemala is heavily involved in narcotics 
trafficking. The Cerezo government was heavily involved, sleeping 
with the cartels. Yet, it was a democracy, and the U.S. 
government did not want to do anything about it.
 
I went undercover on a Congressman down there. He was going to 
sell me 200 kilos of cocaine. When they came down to arrest them, 
I was told by the U.S. embassy not to arrest him, because we were 
not there to embarrass the Guatemalan government, but we were 
there to help it.
 
The same thing happened in El Salvador. All the weapons that were 
being seized by the guerrillas were being sold to the cartels.
 
So, we spent $1.5 million *a* *day* in El Salvador for the past 
10 years, and they couldn't win the war.
 
 
TARPLEY:
Well, let's sum up now. We have a few minutes left. Do you think 
that Oliver North is qualified to be a United States Senator?
 
 
CASTILLO:
No. He is a convicted felon. He lied to Congress, he is a chronic 
liar. He lies to everybody. A lot of people feel that he can be 
forgiven for what he did, but what I don't think they realize is 
the fact that he cannot justify the narcotics trafficking that 
his organization conducted in the 1980s. And he cannot guarantee 
to me the fact that nobody, or none of those drugs that were 
being smuggled into the U.S., that people died of, was not Contra 
cocaine. So, he's got to take responsibility for what is 
happening on our streets today, the cocaine epidemic that we 
have.
 
We have more cocaine on the U.S. streets now than we did ten 
years ago; yet, we spend billions of dollars in Third World 
countries trying to combat this trafficking.
 
But Oliver North should be in jail, and not be running for the 
U.S. Senate...
 
 
TARPLEY:
Would you think that the Virginia voters ought to have the right 
to see Oliver North's DEA file?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Absolutely. It's there. Whether the DEA wants to continue the 
conspiracy to cover it up is a different story...
 
 
TARPLEY:
You tried to tell your story inside the federal agencies for 
quite a number of years, we've seen, with very limited results, 
and then you turned to your book, *Powderburns*.
 
What made you decide to get into writing books?
 
 
CASTILLO:
I was sick to my stomach when I saw Oliver North up there. 
Everybody looked up to him as a hero, "Oliver North for 
President", and so forth.
 
I had to tell my story...
 
I can live with myself now. North has to hide. What conscience 
does he or his family have, that they know that his organization 
is responsible for a lot of deaths in the U.S.? For the epidemic 
cocaine addiction that we have? What does his family think about 
it?
 
 
TARPLEY:
Well, I understand you're going out on the stump in Virginia now, 
in the closing days of the election campaign?
 
 
CASTILLO:
Yes, that's correct. I've always made the assumption that I'm 
going to go out there and try. I'll never quit. I'll go out 
there, tell them what I know. If people want to listen to me, I'm 
there. If they don't, it's their prerogative. It's a free 
country. If they want to elect an official who is a documented 
trafficker and a convicted felon, then that's their prerogative.


 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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