	id AA19339; Sat, 22 Oct 94 12:50:33 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 53


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 53
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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OLLIE NORTH AND DRUGS
By Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine
>From *The Texas Observer*
 
This article is posted to the internet by permission of the 
authors. NOTE: Permission is NOT given for distribution *beyond* 
the internet; for such permission, contact the authors.
 
CN -- This info was sent to me by a reader of Conspiracy Nation. 
This reader has also, in the past, sent me an excellent article 
regarding the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 which (though it's on my 
list of things to do) I have yet to cover in Conspiracy Nation.
 
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If Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had wanted to know the 
extent of former Colonel Oliver North's involvement in the 
smuggling of drugs from Central America to the United States, 
Walsh might have made at least one phone call to Celerino 'Cele' 
Castillo in San Antonio.
 
Between 1985 to 1991, Castillo was the Drug Enforcement 
Administration's main agent in El Salvador, where, he says, he 
uncovered "and reported" a huge drug and gun smuggling operation 
that was run out of the Ilopango military airport by the 'North 
Network' and the CIA.
 
North, now the Republican nominee for the U. S. Senate in 
Virginia, prevailed at the nominating convention last weekend by 
positioning himself far to the right of his rival, former Reagan 
budget director James Miller III, promising that if elected he 
will work to "clean up the mess" in Washington, and cultivating 
the support of the same fundamentalist Christian Republicans who 
responded to the direct-mail campaign to finance the North 
defense committee.
 
But Castillo, the first government official with first-hand 
knowledge of North's drug dealing to speak publicly about it, 
says North belongs in prison, not in the U.S. Senate. "We saw 
several packages of narcotics, we saw several boxes of U.S. 
currency, going from Ilopango to Panama," Castillo said.
 
According to Castillo, the entire program was run out of 
Ilopango's Hangars 4 and 5. "Hangar 4 was owned and operated by 
the CIA and the other hangar was run by Felix Rodriguez, or 'Max 
Gomez,' of the Contra operation [directed by North]. Basically 
they were running cocaine from South America to the U.S. via 
Salvador. That was how the Contras were able to get financial 
help. By going to sleep with the enemy down there. North's people 
and the CIA were at the two hangars overseeing the operations at 
all times," Castillo said.
 
CIA spokesman David French said Castillo's allegations are "not 
something that we would comment on."
 
Cele Castillo joined the DEA in 1979, after a tour with the First 
Cavalry in Vietnam, where he earned a bronze star, and a six-year 
stint as a police officer in Edinburg. His first DEA assignment 
was in New York, working undercover investigating organized 
crime. After that, because of his Vietnam experience, he was 
transferred to Lima, Peru, where he conducted air strikes against 
jungle cocaine labs and clandestine airstrips. In 1985, he was 
transferred to Guatemala, where he oversaw DEA operations in 
Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. Castillo posed as a member of 
one of the drug cartels, he said, and almost immediately became 
aware of the drug smuggling operations at Ilopango's hangars 4 
and 5. "We took several surveillance pictures...and they were 
running narcotics and weapons out of Ilopango, with the knowledge 
of the U.S. embassy."
 
Though Castillo had been reporting his findings all along, to no 
avail, a December 1988 report prepared by the Congressional 
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations 
(the Kerry Committee) confirmed Castillo's allegations and 
concluded: "There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling 
through the war zones on the part of the individual Contras, 
Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and the 
Contra supporters throughout the region."
 
The committee, chaired by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, also 
found that on March 16, 1987, a plane owned by known drug 
smugglers was seized by U.S. customs officers after dumping what 
appeared to be a load of drugs off the Florida coast: "Law 
enforcement personnel also found an address book aboard the 
plane, containing among other references the telephone numbers of 
some Contra officials and the Virginia telephone number of Robert 
Owen, Oliver North's courier," the committee reported. And on 
July 28, 1988, DEA agents testifying before Kerry's committee 
said it was North's idea in 1985 to give the Contras $1.5 million 
in drug money being used by DEA informant Barry Seal in a sting 
operation aimed at the drug cartels.
 
If that wasn't enough to compel investigators to pursue North 
himself as a drug dealer, Castillo provided them with what should 
have been the clincher. In a February 14, 1989, memo to Robert 
Stia, the country attache in Guatemala, Castillo laid out in 
minute detail the structure of the Ilopango operation and 
identified more than two dozen known drug smugglers who 
frequented Hangars 4 and 5.
 
Huge quantities of drugs and guns were being smuggled through 
Ilopango by mercenary pilots hired by North, Castillo wrote. 
"Now, all these contract pilots were documented [in DEA files] 
traffickers, Class I cocaine violators that were being hired by 
the CIA and the Contras," the memo stated. "And the U.S. embassy 
in El Salvador was giving visas to these people even though they 
were documented in our computers as being narcotics traffickers."
 
Among those Castillo identified was Carlos Alberto Amador, "a 
Nicaraguan pilot mentioned in six (6) DEA files....The DEA was 
advised by a source at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador that 
personnel from the CIA had allegedly obtained a U.S. visa for 
Amador."  Amador, Castillo discovered, kept four planes at 
Ilopango, and a frequent companion of his was was Jorge Zarcovick 
who "is mentioned in twelve (12) DEA files," and "was arrested in 
the U.S. for smuggling large quantities of cocaine."
 
Walter 'Wally' Grasheim was another smuggler tagged by Castillo. 
"He is mentioned in seven (7) DEA files," Castillo wrote. "He is 
documented as a cocaine and arms smuggler from South America to 
the U.S. via Ilopango airport. He utilized hangars 4 and 5. 
Grasheim is also known to carry DEA, FBI, and CIA credentials to 
smuggle cocaine." "Wally Grasheim," Castillo said, "was an 
American working hand-in-hand with Colonel Oliver North." 
Grasheim lost his life while accompanying CIA contract arms 
smuggler Eugene Hasenfus, whose plane was shot down during a 
clandestine flight over Nicaragua in 1986.
 
When the DEA raided Grasheim's house in El Salvador, agents found 
explosives, weapons, radio equipment and license plates, Castillo 
said, adding that much of the weaponry and other material was 
traced back to the U.S. embassy in El Salvador. Castillo said 
that when he tried to gather more information on the munitions, 
he was told by the Pentagon to drop the investigation.
 
It would not be the last time Castillo was told to back off. Nor 
was it the last time he ignored such an order and kept on digging.
 
Much of Castillo's information came from a DEA informant who had 
worked at the Ilopango airport, doing flight plans and keeping 
flight logs. The informant, who used the pseudonym 'Hugo 
Martinez,' was in an ideal position to witness and document 
North's drug deals. Martinez passed the information he gathered 
on to Castillo. In an interview, Martinez confirmed Castillo's 
story about widespread drug and arms dealing by the CIA and the 
North network at Hangars 4 and 5.
 
Castillo said additional information obtained after he was 
transferred from El Salvador to San Francisco confirmed what he 
had learned in El Salvador. While tracking drug smuggling into 
Miami, Texas and San Francisco in 1991, Castillo arrested the 
wife of Carlos Cabezas.  In an attempt to make a deal for his 
wife, who had attempted sell Castillo five kilos of cocaine, 
Cabezas, a Nicaraguan, told Castillo that he was one of the 
pilots who had worked for North, smuggling vast quantities of 
cocaine into the United States from Ilopango. Cabezas described 
in detail the operations at Ilopango and identified many of the 
traffickers who worked there. The information he provided matched 
Castillo's own findings.
 
Beginning in 1986, Castillo tried to report what he had 
discovered, launch a full-scale investigation, and shut down the 
smuggling operation. On several occasions, he met with Edwin 
Corr, the then-U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, to tell him about 
the operation. "His words to me were that it was a covert White 
House operation run by Colonel Oliver North and for us to stay 
away from the operation. My feeling was the fact that Corr did 
not agree with what was going on at Ilopango but his hands were 
tied. He was only following orders from the White House to give 
all the assistance he could to Oliver North and his covert 
operation." Corr, now a professor at the University of Oklahoma, 
would only say, "I deny Cele's allegations that I told him to 
back off *on the basis of White House pressure.*"
 
Castillo even managed to give the information he had gathered 
directly to George Bush. On January 14, 1986, Castillo met the 
then-Vice-President at a cocktail party at the ambassador's house 
in Guatemala City. After describing his job to Bush, Castillo 
detailed North's operation. Without missing a beat, Castillo 
said, Bush "shook my hand and he walked away." [CN -- "This 
scourge must stop!"]
 
Even though Castillo couldn't get anyone to act on his Ilopango 
information, in July 1987, attache Robert Stia recommended him 
for a bonus and a promotion. "Castillo is an extremely talented 
agent," Stia wrote, "...a tireless worker, exceeding all 
requirements of overtime and work hours. His administration of 
cases is outstanding."
 
Nevertheless, as Castillo continued to pursue the North 
investigation, he fell from favor with his superiors, who 
suspended him for three days in 1990, and then in 1991 
transferred him to San Francisco, where he worked undercover, 
investigating Hells Angels in Oakland. In June 1992, after 
further conflicts, Castillo resigned from the DEA.
 
Before resigning, though, in 1991, he tried to give the 
government one last chance to use the information he had gathered 
on North. He secretly met with FBI agent Mike Foster, who was 
assigned to Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. "Foster said it 
would be a great story, like a grand slam, if they could put it 
together. He asked the DEA for the reports, who told him there 
were no such reports. Yet when I showed him the copies of the 
reports that I had, he was shocked. I never heard from him again."
 
On May 4, 1989, North was convicted on the relatively minor 
offenses of illegally accepting gratuities (his famous security 
fence), interfering with a Congressional investigation and 
obstruction of justice. But even those convictions were 
overturned when an appeals court ruled that they were based on 
testimony North gave under a grant of Congressional immunity.
 
Although they talked about drugs, neither Walsh nor the Iran- 
Contra committee ever seriously investigated the drug-dealing 
charges. North, who did not return phone calls made to his 
campaign headquarters in Virginia, has consistently denied having 
been involved in drug smuggling.
 
Another former DEA agent, Michael Levine, said he has pored over 
North's diaries and found "hundreds" of references to drugs that 
"have never been investigated." For example, Levine said, on July 
9, 1984, North wrote: "RDEA, Miami. Pilot went, talked to 
[Federico] Vaughn, wanted aircraft to go to Bolivia to pick up 
paste, want aircraft to pick up 1500 kilos."
 
"My god," said Levine, author of The Big White Lie, "when I was 
serving as a DEA agent, you gave me a page from someone in the 
Pentagon with notes like that, I would've been on his back 
investigating everything he did from the minute his eyes opened, 
every diary notebook, every phone would have been tapped, every 
trip he made."
 
But both Levine and Castillo said the investigation never 
happened. (DEA officials have not returned repeated phone calls.) 
In an interview, the FBI's Foster said, "Of course I can't 
confirm or deny that [his interview with Castillo]. I am aware of 
Mr. Castillo and his position on Central America," Foster said. 
"In the course of the Iran-Contra investigation, it's no secret 
that I was involved in that and was the FBI investigator in that, 
but I am prohibited from commenting." Foster said he is very 
skeptical about the drug claims generally. "There are individuals 
that have a loose relationship with the government and those 
people are not all choirboys and they have been doing all kinds 
of weird things. But I think you would be hard pressed to show a 
concerted government backing or involvement in [drug 
trafficking]."
 
It is just that kind of attitude, Castillo said, that led 
officials to ignore North's operation, allowed him to evade 
prosecution for drug dealing, and now has him poised to move into 
the United States Senate.
 
"There was nothing covert going on in El Salvador regarding the 
Ollie North operation and narcotics trafficking," Castillo said. 
"What we're talking about is very large quantities of cocaine and 
millions of dollars."
 
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The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas 78701. For a 
free sample hardcopy of this article call 512-477-0746. [CN -- 
I'm not sure of the exact title of the article; I received it 
under the *subject* heading, "Ollie North and Drugs".]
 
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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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