  (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for conspire-post@firefly.prairienet.org); Mon, 12 Sep 1994 19:10:38 -0500
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 09


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 09
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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TERRY REED / JOHN CUMMINGS INTERVIEW
 
[...continued...]
 
 
TOM DONAHUE:
O.K. For those listeners just joining us, give us an overview of 
your involvement with Barry Seal and what you were doing in Mena, 
Arkansas.
 
 
TERRY REED:
O.K. I met... I was introduced to Barry Seal through Oliver 
North. I met him in late 1983, in Arkansas. Seal sought me out -- 
he'd been told that I had certain talents, primarily 
manufacturing or flight training, so that I could contribute to 
the CIA's efforts to bypass the Boland amendment -- to train a 
small group of pilots, Nicaraguan nationals, to basically 
liberate {1} their country, to help fly aerial sorties, you know, 
fly supplies into the guerrilla warfare action, to supply their 
own soldiers in the field.
 
In Arkansas, I was part of an operation that flew guns, 
manufactured guns, and trained Nicaraguan pilots. Certainly it's 
now the contention of many that that also included flying cocaine 
back into the United States. All *I* saw was cash being flown 
back in. {2}.
 
But Seal and I became very close, became friends, throughout the 
course of my 15 months of training there. Barry was a very 
intelligent... As John Cummings said, he was an excellent pilot, 
a very intelligent businessman. I saw him in a totally different 
light than he's been portrayed, and I hope the book, 
*Compromised*, is actually giving him, rewriting the epitaph, or 
giving him the *proper* epitaph that I felt he deserved all 
along.
 
 
DONAHUE:
But he helped manage the operation, in Arkansas. I mean, he was 
really the "project manager", if you will.
 
 
REED:
Yeah, Barry reported to [Oliver] North, from what he told me. 
North provided the oversight and Seal provided the mechanics of 
it.
 
Seal had gone to Mena in 1982, to actually move his aircraft 
operation up there. He got in business with a man named Fred 
Hampton, and built a new hangar at the Mena airport. The company 
was called Rich Mountain Aviation, and in this new hangar was 
where the majority of the maintenance was done on, not only 
Seal's aircraft (which were numerous), but also aircraft 
belonging to other federal agencies, i.e., DEA and U.S. Customs, 
that were being modified for -- covertly -- for sting operations 
into the Medellin cartel and into Central and South America.
 
So it became a clandestine hub. *Beyond* Seal's operation, there 
was a lot of other intelligence activity going on in this little 
town of 5,000 people, only a few miles from the Oklahoma state 
line, in western Arkansas. {3}.
 
 
DONAHUE:
The name that Oliver North used, the last name was "Cathey"?
 
 
REED:
Yeah. C-a-t-h-e-y. I was introduced to him...
 
 
DONAHUE:
John Cathey.
 
 
REED:
Yeah. I was introduced to him in 19... February of 1982, as CIA 
agent John Cathey, based out of Toronto, Canada, and working on 
the illegal flow of our defense technology that was being 
pilfered by a combination of Japanese and Hungarian firms and 
bootlegging it to the USSR. That's what got me involved, 
initially, in the civilian side of intelligence gathering was 
because of my Air Force background and, quite frankly, it was 
because I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I 
was approached [and asked] if I wouldn't help monitor those 
efforts. And I actually did travel behind the iron curtain, on 
one occasion, to actually spy on them; to come back with 
information about their manufacturing capability as it relates to 
computer memory which is a critical element in weapons designs -- 
primarily the cruise missile technology that we see on TV today. 
That memory technology in those guided missiles, that are 
unjammable, comes from the actual machine tool industry. And most 
people don't realize.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Hmm. What were the major undercover projects that you were 
involved in, involved through, over the years?
 
 
REED:
Well, in 1980 I moved to Oklahoma and ultimately became the vice- 
president of the trading company, a small firm that was trading 
in technology. We were involved in retooling America. The oil 
business -- in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas, 
primarily -- was growing rapidly and was retooling, was 
automating and modernizing. And my firm was signing trade 
agreements with Japanese and European firms and we were importing 
machine tools to... These were machine tools that run pretty much 
unmanned. The industry is referred to [as] computer and numerical 
control, or C&C. And the C&C machine tools had very sophisticated 
memory in that day. In 1980, it was referred to as "bubble 
memory". And bubble memory technology had actually been developed 
by the United States Navy. The U.S. Navy, working on a grant, had 
been putting together the bubble memory technology to work with 
torpedoes for... The torpedoes would actually turn corners.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Um-hmm [understands].
 
 
REED:
And, you know, not have to go straight line trajectory.
 
The U.S. Air Force wanted that same memory technology to put into 
cruise missile technology, which in 1980 was still a pretty young 
industry.
 
But the civilians had access, through this joint venture, the 
civilian machine tool builders had access to this memory 
technology. And I was sitting there in the middle of a field 
that, quite frankly, all I cared about in 1980 was making up for 
my lost time, monetarily, from my 8 years of the U.S. Air Force 
time.
 
 
DONAHUE:
Would you say your most infamous project (or famous, to some) 
would have been the Mena, Arkansas training... the *contra* 
pilots? And also, what you found to be *beyond* just a training 
ground for *contras*.
 
 
REED:
Well as far as total voluntary participation, yes.
 
I found the travelling behind the iron curtain to be the most 
*stimulating*, from an *exciting* point of view, thinking about 
the consequences of getting caught. I didn't feel anyone was 
gonna get caught at Mena. Certainly you had the Arkansas state 
police, and the FBI, were actually running cover for this 
operation! The U.S. attorney's office in western Arkansas became 
the "black hole" of data. All federal authorities were reporting 
their findings about what we were doing to a U.S. attorney that 
was not indicting anyone.
 
So the interesting part that I've witnessed is, how fragile our 
system is.
 
 
DONAHUE:
And surprisingly, the only person that tried to blow the lid on 
this was IRS undercover agent, or CID agent, Bill Duncan.
 
 
REED:
Well, there were more than him. But we certainly detailed a lot 
of his information, since a lot of it's public record and he 
cooperated with John [Cummings] and myself. But the local sheriff 
there, a man by the name of Al Hadaway... Al Hadaway and his 
deputy, Terry Capehart(sp?), were on this thing from the very 
outset, and were surveilling, you know, everyone coming and 
going, taking photographs and diligently giving their material to 
the FBI. What *they* didn't know was, the FBI was "in on it" and 
was taking their information and literally doing nothing with it 
other than cataloging it in Little Rock...
 
 
DONAHUE:
So the sheriff thought by cooperating and passing this 
information along to the feds, he had done his duty.
 
 
REED:
Yes! That's correct. We have secret, classified messages that I 
have been able to get through my court discovery {4} in which 
they're saying, you know, they've notified the sheriff not to 
seize certain aircraft; that the DEA does, in fact, have a vested 
interest in some of Seal's aircraft.
 
So you have the right hand of law enforcement fighting the left 
hand. {5}. It's a very interesting situation to see it all fall 
apart and not work as a result of the White House's wishes to 
circumvent Boland.
 
 
DONAHUE:
We want to talk about consequences to one's actions -- especially 
if you go public, like you have. And let's talk about what 
happened to you: your indictment, your court case.
 
We'll be back with that, and we'll also bring into the mix John 
Cummings, investigative reporter *extraordinaire*.
 
                    [...to be continued...]
 
--------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------
{1} "...to train a small group of pilots, Nicaraguan nationals, 
to basically liberate..." Depending on your point of view, this 
could also be read as "liberate", i.e., that there was nothing to 
liberate, that the Sandinistas were, in fact, the good guys.
 
{2} "All *I* saw was cash being flown back in." Here Reed means 
while he was in Arkansas. When he later went down to Mexico and 
saw that cocaine was being warehoused for shipment to the U.S., 
at that point he divorced himself from the operation.
 
{3} Mena, "...this little town of 5,000 people..." Future major 
tourist attraction? See where it all happened! Bring the kids!
 
{4} "...court discovery..." I think this means that, because Reed 
was under indictment at the time, because a defendant is entitled 
to any evidence that will help prove his innocence, then prior to 
trial Reed went through a "discovery process" during which he had 
access to information that could be used in his defense. (Note 
that Reed was later found "Not guilty".)
 
{5} "...the right hand of law enforcement fighting the left 
hand." Just like our "War on Drugs", where the CIA brings the 
drugs into the United States and the DEA tries to stop drugs 
from being brought into the United States.
 
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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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