	id AA26888; Wed, 2 Nov 94 20:02:14 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 66


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 66
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo
 
[...continued...]
 
                -+- 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.
 
                   [...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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