  (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for conspire-post@firefly.prairienet.org); Mon, 5 Sep 1994 14:11:41 -0500
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 03


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 03
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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TERRY REED / JOHN CUMMINGS INTERVIEW
 
[...continued...]
 
 
JOHN CUMMINGS [continues]:
I was following Adler Berriman Seal, Barry Seal, whom Terry 
mentioned. Now I knew him basically as a drug trafficker. I 
believed him to be a drug trafficker who was a CIA asset, of 
which there are many -- they use smugglers for many reasons -- 
but it turned out that he was really a CIA asset whose *cover* 
was being a drug trafficker. And when I got to Arkansas -- and I 
followed him up to Arkansas -- I began to see telltale signs of 
an intelligence operation: an airfield out in the middle of the 
woods, that nobody knew anything about.
 
And the more I dug, the more convinced I became that, obviously, 
this was an intelligence operation. It was being protected, 
certainly, by the federal government. But when you operate in any 
area, you have to make sure that the state understands, and co- 
operates with you. And I was really curious about that. And to 
cut it short, I came across Terry [Reed], who at that time was 
under indictment in Wichita, Kansas. And I approached him and we 
began to talk. And I began to see, you know. *He* showed me the 
connection between Oliver North, Barry Seal, and the whole 
operation. At first, he did not talk to me about Bill Clinton; it 
was much later on. And then I came to realize -- I had seen both 
[political] parties "in bed with each other" in Florida, and 
here, once more, was yet another local official, or a Governor, 
who made a pact with the Devil.
 
Um, you mentioned before, the "virus" that bit Nixon. I call it a 
power trip. And once somebody gets on that track...
 
 
TOM DONAHUE:
An aphrodisiac. Yeah.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
...Yeah, yeah... they want power and they do what they have to to 
achieve it. And he made *his* Faustian deal with the CIA. Which 
he probably felt was good for his state.
 
 
DONAHUE:
George Bush was a former director of the CIA. And George Bush... 
I guess you never leave the CIA. You always have ties or 
connections in some way unless you really t'eed them off and 
you're running for your life.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Well, there's an old saying. There's an old saying, "When does a 
CIA asset cease to be a CIA asset?" And the answer is, "When he's 
arrested." {1}.
 
And uh, but Terry, when I met Terry, he was not like the other 
CIA, uh many of the CIA assets I had met. And it was very clear 
to me that there was much more to this story. And of course Terry 
eventually was acquitted of this charge, which was one of the 
reasons I came to believe him. Because when I first heard his 
story I greeted it with the same skepticism I would use with 
anyone. But Terry's story checked out and the things he told me 
were true. He *was* in the places he said he was. And I came to 
see him as a kind of a "Rosetta Stone" {2} for me, as someone 
who's been searching along this path for many years.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Hmm, I see. Now how... What are Bush's ties here? Is CIA 
background and the fact that he was vice-President at this 
time... How much "hands on" do you think Bush had with the Mena, 
Arkansas operation?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Lawrence Walsh says in his final report that George Bush was 
knowledgeable and involved...
 
 
DONAHUE:
In the loop.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
I'm sorry?
 
 
DONAHUE:
He was in the loop, right?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
He was not only in the loop. *I* think, from what I can see, he 
was in day-to-day charge of the operation.
 
 
DONAHUE:
That was my impression: the loop master.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Yeah! And certainly (and Terry will get to this in a few 
moments), at this meeting at this army base outside Little Rock, 
where Bill Clinton attended, there was a CIA man, sent from 
Washington, who turns out to be none other than William Barr, who 
became George Bush's attorney general! And here was the man, 
sittin' here, tellin' Bill Clinton the way things were gonna be!
 
Now Terry was a witness to that, and he can tell it much better 
than I can. But there you have it all, right there.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Amazing. Amazing.
 
But you feel both of, vice-President Bush (and later, President 
Bush), and Bill Clinton, were in on this? They were privy to what 
the operation was to accomplish?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Certainly. As was Ronald Reagan, in my opinion.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Ronald Reagan, if... I would believe he might have been out of 
the loop. I suspect he may have been.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Well, whether he had daily briefings or not I don't know. He 
certainly... If he was out of the loop it was because -- It's 
like I heard on a television show recently, in a drama, he said, 
the President was sitting there with the CIA director and he 
said, "There are times when there are certain things a President 
just doesn't want to know." And he said, "And this is one of 
them." And this could be one of those situations.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Well the *contra* effort, there was an obsession there with 
Reagan, and he was still wanting to fight communism. And so if he 
was told this was an operation that would benefit him, I'm sure 
he would have given total acceptance and approval.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Well Reagan was obsessed with this policy and he was determined 
to see it succeed. I mean, he wore a t-shirt that says, "I am a 
*contra*." I mean, the message was pretty clear.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Why was Barry Seal selected? Why was he put in charge of the 
operation?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Well, I can give you my answer. (I think Terry probably knows much 
better.) He was a businessman, an expert with airplanes -- there 
probably wasn't a better pilot around. And he had been recruited 
way back in the early '70s, early on, by the agency. And he's a 
man who had worked his way into the confidence of the very top 
level of the Medellin cartel. I mean, he was an ideal man. Plus 
he was, from the way *I* learned of Barry Seal, from what Terry 
tells me, he was just a natural born leader and a very 
intelligent man.
 
 
DONAHUE:
What about the Bush brothers? Bush's sons. Didn't they have 
connections to the Medellin cartel?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Well, Barry Seal alludes to that in our book. We... Terry didn't 
go into that in great detail. I can tell you that when... Before 
Seal died, he made some audio tapes of some meetings...
 
 
DONAHUE:
How did he die?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
He was assassinated, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1926 [sic] by 
the, uh the assassins were Columbians...
 
 
DONAHUE:
You said "'26". Uh, you meant 19-what?
 
 
CUMMINGS:
Did I say "'26"?
 
 
DONAHUE:
Yeah.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
1986.
 
 
DONAHUE:
1986. O.K.
 
 
CUMMINGS:
I beg your pardon. And he was assassinated. And I think he was 
assassinated because he became a major liability for both George 
Bush and Bill Clinton -- just as Terry became. And one of the 
reasons that Terry, as he mentioned, did this book, was to get 
this story out so that he didn't end up in an alley like Barry 
Seal.
 
 
DONAHUE:
This book is his "insurance policy".
 
 
CUMMINGS:
In a way. That's one of the arguments I used with Terry: to tell 
him that he would be safer with this story out than keeping it to 
himself.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Um-hmm [understands].
 
We're gonna take our break. We'll come back. We're gonna continue 
our discussion, our interview. Both gentlemen will be with us the 
rest of this hour and next on many of these fine stations. Listen 
up. And we'll be right back.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} "When does a CIA asset cease to be a CIA asset? When he's 
arrested." From the old TV series, *Mission: Impossible*, "As 
always, if you are caught or captured, the secretary will disavow 
any knowledge of your actions."
 
{2} "Rosetta Stone" -- A key that unlocks a mystery. The original 
"Rosetta Stone" was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's army. For 
ages, a way to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs had been sought, 
without success. The Rosetta stone had chiselled into it a 
message written both in ancient Greek *and* in the Egyptian 
hieroglyphs. This was the key that unlocked the hieroglyphs.
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 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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