	id AA03494; Tue, 1 Nov 94 13:44:01 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 64


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 64
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo
 
[...continued...]
 
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.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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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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