G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
The Reagan-Bush Drug Legacy in Central America
By Robert Parry
Created Mar 7 2007 - 8:44am
Two grisly mass executions in Guatemala - one involving three Salvadoran
legislators and the second the four policemen who confessed to killing
them - suggest that the Reagan era's ideological tolerance of right-wing
drug traffickers remains a corrupting legacy in the region.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush saw Central America as a
Cold War battleground and thus downplayed evidence that right-wing
paramilitary operatives in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and
the Nicaraguan contra movement were deeply implicated in cocaine
trafficking.
That political protection enabled cash-rich South American cocaine cartels
to penetrate Central American security forces and turn the region into a way
station for smuggling cocaine north to the United States. Over the past two
decades, that criminality has hardened into business as usual for many
police officials and military officers.
That ugly reality broke into the headlines on Feb. 19 when three Salvadoran
congressmen were waylaid while driving along a road in Guatemala. The
politicians included Eduardo Jose D'Aubuisson, the son of the late Roberto
D'Aubuisson,
who led El Salvador's feared "death squads" in the 1980s and established the
powerful right-wing Arena Party.
Guatemalan prosecutors said one of the abductors was Luis Arturo Herrera,
who was head of the Guatemalan National Police's organized crime unit.
Herrera and three other policemen took the captives to a remote area,
searched their vehicle, beat the victims and later executed them, the
prosecutors said.
The four policemen were quickly identified because their unmarked police car
had a tracking beacon that placed them at the scene. The officers confessed,
claiming they believed that the three Salvadorans were drug dealers, a
suspicion shared by many Central American journalists and other experts.
The policemen were confined at a Guatemalan maximum security prison, but on
Feb. 25, a group of masked gunmen in military clothing entered the prison,
passed through seven locked doors and executed the four policemen, according
to inmates and prison visitors.
The slayings had the look of one drug-connected group eliminating another
and then a third band of killers silencing the detained policemen for fear
they might finger higher-ups in a cocaine-and-corruption scandal. For their
part, Guatemalan authorities claimed the four policemen died in a prison
riot.
Without doubt, however, drug corruption is deeply rooted in Central America.
At least two-thirds of the cocaine reaching U.S. cities now passes through
Guatemala en route from Colombia and Bolivia, according to American
officials, and several former Guatemalan military officers have been accused
of trafficking. [NYT, March 5, 2007]
El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica also have been favorite transshipment
points for smuggling cocaine, often hidden among legitimate cargo, for
delivery to drug-distribution points in Florida, California and Texas.
Dark Days
Last month's killings in Guatemala also recalled the dark days of the 1980s
when "death squads" were widely tolerated, excused and sometimes aided by
the Reagan-Bush administration as part of bloody counterinsurgency campaigns
against leftist rebels.
At the start of that decade, Roberto D'Aubuisson, a cashiered major in the
Salvadoran military, organized right-wing "death squad" operations, first
from a safe haven in Guatemala and then more openly inside El Salvador. In
both countries, the "death squads" became laws onto themselves, murdering
thousands of political opponents.
The Reagan-Bush administration's relationship with D'Aubuisson was
complicated. Initially, the administration downplayed his role in the "death
squad" slaughters. In 1982, when I attended a party at the home of the U.S.
ambassador to El Salvador, D'Aubuisson arrived with great fanfare and was
treated as a guest of honor.
Later, however, as evidence of D'Aubuisson's brutality and criminality grew
undeniable, the Reagan-Bush administration distanced itself from the
right-wing firebrand. (D'Aubuisson died of throat cancer in 1992.)
During the 1980s, many of the region's security forces also became notorious
for assisting shipments of cocaine to the United States.
Yet, whenever press or government investigations began digging into these
corrupt relationships, the Reagan-Bush administration and right-wing media
outlets, such as Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, played aggressive
defense to keep the American public from learning too much.
But the evidence is now clear - in part because of CIA and Justice
Department investigations in the late 1990s - that drug profits helped
augment the region's right-wing paramilitary operations, most notably the
Nicaraguan contras who were organized by the CIA to battle Nicaragua's
leftist Sandinista government from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica. The
contras got cooperation from the region's right-wing military and
intelligence services, which controlled airports and port facilities.
Some contras, including key leaders, exploited that situation to facilitate
drug shipments to the United States, while benefiting from political
protection since President Ronald Reagan had hailed the contras as the
"moral equals of the Founding Fathers."
Given their place in Reagan's pantheon, the contras could count on powerful
U.S. politicians and national security officials looking the other way.
In a 1998 report, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz found that a chief
reason for the CIA's protective handling of contra-drug evidence was
Langley's "one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government ...
[CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they
encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra
program."
According to Hitz's report, one CIA field officer explained, "The focus was
to get the job done, get the support and win the war" in Nicaragua.
Hitz's report concluded that scores of contras and contra units were
implicated in the cocaine trade and that the CIA, on occasion, intervened to
block criminal and congressional investigations. [For details, see Robert
Parry's Lost History [1].]
Blocking the DEA
A separate report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich
discovered other examples of how the Reagan-Bush administration shut down or
discouraged contra-drug investigations that threatened to implicate U.S.
allies in Central America.
For instance, on March 20, 1986, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Costa
Rica office was told by a source that contra pilot Carlos Amador was
planning a cocaine flight from Costa Rica through El Salvador to Miami. The
source said Amador possibly was picking up the cocaine in Hangar No. 4 at
Ilopango Airport in El Salvador.
The DEA cable requested that the DEA's Guatemala office, which covered El
Salvador, should "ask Salvadoran police to investigate Amador, and any
person(s) and/or companies associated with Hangar No. 4."
The problem for the CIA, however, was that it controlled Hangar No. 4 - and
had allocated space there to White House aide Oliver North's contra resupply
operation, which then was circumventing a congressional ban on military aid
to the contras.
Reacting to the DEA cable, the CIA station in Costa Rica sent another cable
to the CIA station in El Salvador on April 23, 1986, asking about Amador and
the drug-trafficking allegations. Two days later, the CIA's station in El
Salvador urged that the DEA halt any inquiries about Hangar No. 4.
The CIA cable stated that Amador had stopped flying for the contras in early
1985, though he continued working for the FDN, the chief contra army, in
Honduras. According to the cable, the CIA shared the suspicions about
Amador's drug trafficking, but asserted that Amador only transported
military supplies to Hangar No. 4.
"Based on that information, [El Salvador] Station would appreciate [Costa
Rica] Station advising [DEA] not to make any inquiries to anyone re: hangar
no. 4 at Ilopango since only legitimate [CIA] supported operations were
conducted from this facility. FYI," the cable continued. "Station air
operations moved from hangar no. 4 into hangar no. 5 which Station still
occupies."
The CIA's request apparently did disrupt the DEA investigation for several
months. But on June 10, 1986, the CIA's El Salvador station cabled the CIA's
Costa Rica station with news that a U.S. embassy officer in San Salvador had
requested more information about Amador.
"The embassy officer said that if Amador is connected to [the CIA], [the
DEA] will leave him alone, but if not they [the DEA] intend to go after
him," the cable read. A week later, CIA headquarters denied any
"association" with Amador. But the DEA's pursuit of drug-trafficking in El
Salvador would not prove easy.
Celerino Castillo was the DEA officer responsible for El Salvador. On June
23, 1986, Castillo reported debriefing an informant known as "STG6," who
knew Amador and other alleged traffickers.
STG6 said Amador used Salvadoran military credentials to land at Ilopango
without the normal Customs search. STG6 added that Amador smuggled arms to
the contras and cocaine from El Salvador to Miami. By fall 1986, Castillo
also learned that the CIA had "obtained a U.S. visa" for Amador -- despite
the earlier claim that the CIA had no "association" with him.
Keeping the Lid On
While the DEA slowly pieced together the contra-drug puzzle, the Reagan-Bush
administration kept the lid on the new evidence in Washington.
In December 1985, my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger and I had
written the first news story describing the contra-cocaine connection. But
the article was greeted in Official Washington mostly with silence or
disdain.
The Reagan-Bush administration wanted to focus most of the "war on drugs"
attention on ideological enemies, such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas even
though there was scant evidence that Sandinistas played any significant role
in cocaine shipments to the United States.
Only one U.S. senator, John Kerry, was willing to put his political career
on the line to follow up on the AP report regarding drug trafficking by
Reagan's beloved contras.
But Kerry soon found his investigation under criticism not only from Moon's
Washington Times but from mainstream news outlets, such as the New York
Times which treated the contra-drug allegations as a bogus tale.
Meanwhile, back in Central America, DEA agent Castillo began looking into
the mysterious activities of a former U.S. military official, named Walter
Grasheim, who operated out of San Salvador. Informant STG6 had identified
Grasheim as "head of smuggling operations" at Ilopango.
"Grasheim owns and operates Hangar #4," alleged the informant who worked at
the airport. "Said hangar is utilized by international cocaine and arms
traffickers. Hangar #4 is also utilized by the Contra Movement in El
Salvador."
On Oct. 27, 1986, Castillo opened a file on Grasheim, as part of a larger
drug-trafficking investigation at hangars four and five. Castillo's
investigative report identified 13 other "documented narcotics traffickers"
who used the hangars.
On Oct. 30, Castillo briefed U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Edwin Corr, who
knew Grasheim when he worked with the embassy's Military Group. Officially,
Corr "welcomed any investigation on Grasheim but ... asked ... that the
investigation be conducted in a very discreet manner," Castillo reported.
Unknown to Castillo, however, Corr went behind the agent's back. The
ambassador sent a "back-channel" cable to the State Department asking DEA
headquarters to review Castillo's investigation. DEA headquarters responded
by judging the evidence inadequate and closing down the Grasheim file only
days after the inquiry had started.
Suddenly, Castillo was under the embassy's watchful eye. In an interview
with Bromwich's investigators, Corr said Castillo resisted the orders to
drop the case and continued "to snoop around the airport and make
allegations." Corr warned Castillo that unless he had more evidence, he
should stop this "witch hunt."
Bad News
The fall of 1986 brought more bad news for the contra operations. The
Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open, after one of North's supply planes was
shot down inside Nicaragua and a Beirut magazine disclosed secret U.S. arms
sales to Iran, a project which generated profits that North diverted into
contra accounts.
However, the major Iran-Contra investigations still steered clear of any
comprehensive examination of contra-drug trafficking.
According to an internal CIA memo, the agency's Central American Task Force
chief Alan Fiers told congressional intelligence committees that the CIA
would brief the DEA on what the CIA knew about contra-drug trafficking. But
that meeting apparently never happened.
Bromwich's report in 1998 stated that "neither the DEA nor the CIA [Office
of the Inspector General] could locate any record of any such discussions."
Sen. Kerry's investigation confronted similar stonewalls.
In 1989, the DEA got wind of more alleged contra-cocaine shipments. In an
interview with Bromwich's investigators, DEA supervisor Thomas deTriquet
recalled that a reliable informant had passed on information about drug
dealers using contra pilots to transport cocaine through Hangar No. 5, the
one controlled by the CIA.
When Castillo and deTriquet went to Ilopango to investigate, a CIA officer
turned them away, the report said. The DEA agents then went to the U.S.
embassy where the CIA chief of station assured them that there was no drug
activity at Hangar No. 5.
Robert Stia, DEA country attache in Guatemala, complained to headquarters
that "DEA cannot develop the most important information, that relating to
those allegations and intelligence in regards to Ilopango Air Force Base."
Stia also reported that in March 1989 a confidential source relayed
information from a Salvadoran Air Force officer that the Salvadoran
government and the CIA were running large shipments of cocaine through air
bases at La Union and San Miguel in El Salvador. The goal again was to raise
money for the contras, the source claimed.
Stia noted, too, that the U.S. Embassy objected to Castillo's involvement
because of his reputation for always "digging up things." Stia said the
deputy ambassador had put "stringent controls" on handling Castillo's
"country clearance" for entering El Salvador. Castillo was soon pushed out
of the DEA.
Summing up this recurring contra-drug defensiveness, Bromwich grasped the
obvious: "We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not
anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport. The DEA's
[first] investigation of drug trafficking activities at Ilopango was closed
in 1986, perhaps with the intervention of the U.S. Embassy.
"Moreover, as reflected in the CIA's cables in the Amador case, the CIA
requested that the DEA not investigate its operations at Ilopango, and the
CIA vouched that they were legitimate CIA-supported operations. It is also
clear that there was intelligence, although not hard evidence, that some
contra resupply pilots were trafficking in drugs."
Kerry Report
Though Kerry's investigation in the late 1980s was hampered by a lack of
cooperation from the Reagan-Bush administration and by hostility from most
of the U.S. news media, he still managed to expose the broad outlines of the
contra-cocaine network.
On April 13, 1989, Kerry's report concluded: "On the basis of the evidence,
it is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were
involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by
drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves
knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.
In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information
regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately
thereafter."
The report added that drug traffickers gave the contras "cash, weapons,
planes, pilots, air supply services and other materials." Moreover, the U.S.
State Department paid some drug traffickers as part of a program to fly
non-lethal assistance to the contras. Some payments occurred "after the
traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug
charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by
these same agencies."
Although Kerry's findings represented the first time a congressional report
explicitly accused federal agencies of willful collaboration with drug
traffickers, the major news organizations chose to bury the startling
findings.
Instead of front-page treatment, the New York Times, the Washington Post and
the Los Angeles Times all wrote brief accounts and stuck them deep inside
their papers. The New York Times article, only 850 words long, landed on
Page 8. The Post placed its story on A20. The Los Angeles Times found space
on Page 11.
For his hard work, Kerry was ridiculed as a "randy conspiracy buff" by
Newsweek. One of the best-read political reference books, the Almanac of
American Politics, gave this account of Kerry's investigation in its 1992
edition: "In search of right-wing villains and complicit Americans, [Kerry]
tried to link Nicaraguan contras to the drug trade, without turning up much
credible evidence."
Given the hostility to the contra-cocaine investigation in Washington, there
was little follow-up on Kerry's 1989 findings. Amid the neglect, officially
sanctioned drug trafficking in Central America grew into a regional cancer.
When the contra-cocaine issue resurfaced in 1996 with a three-part series by
reporter Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury-News, Reagan-Bush defenders
joined with the major U.S. newspapers - the New York Times, the Washington
Post and the Los Angeles Times - to destroy Webb.
Though Webb's series sparked the official investigations at the CIA and the
Justice Department, Webb was hounded out of his job at the Mercury-News -
and received no vindication when the inspectors general's reports
corroborated many of his allegations and went even further.
Indeed, in 1998, when those critical findings were released, the major U.S.
news media focused on elements of the government press releases that
disparaged Webb rather than on the stunning admissions in the reports.
Shunned by the journalism profession and unable to find a decent-paying job,
Webb committed suicide on Dec. 9, 2004. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Gary
Webb's
Death: American Tragedy [2]."]
Meanwhile, Central American cocaine-trafficking, which took root in the
region's security services in the 1980s, has continued to spread, compounded
by economic stagnation and widespread government corruption.
The strange case of the two February massacres in Guatemala offers another
chance to finally force the dark history of the Reagan-Bush cocaine
complicity into the open. But prospects for such a correction of the record
are not great.
--
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Robert Parry
Created Mar 7 2007 - 8:44am
Two grisly mass executions in Guatemala - one involving three Salvadoran
legislators and the second the four policemen who confessed to killing
them - suggest that the Reagan era's ideological tolerance of right-wing
drug traffickers remains a corrupting legacy in the region.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush saw Central America as a
Cold War battleground and thus downplayed evidence that right-wing
paramilitary operatives in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and
the Nicaraguan contra movement were deeply implicated in cocaine
trafficking.
That political protection enabled cash-rich South American cocaine cartels
to penetrate Central American security forces and turn the region into a way
station for smuggling cocaine north to the United States. Over the past two
decades, that criminality has hardened into business as usual for many
police officials and military officers.
That ugly reality broke into the headlines on Feb. 19 when three Salvadoran
congressmen were waylaid while driving along a road in Guatemala. The
politicians included Eduardo Jose D'Aubuisson, the son of the late Roberto
D'Aubuisson,
who led El Salvador's feared "death squads" in the 1980s and established the
powerful right-wing Arena Party.
Guatemalan prosecutors said one of the abductors was Luis Arturo Herrera,
who was head of the Guatemalan National Police's organized crime unit.
Herrera and three other policemen took the captives to a remote area,
searched their vehicle, beat the victims and later executed them, the
prosecutors said.
The four policemen were quickly identified because their unmarked police car
had a tracking beacon that placed them at the scene. The officers confessed,
claiming they believed that the three Salvadorans were drug dealers, a
suspicion shared by many Central American journalists and other experts.
The policemen were confined at a Guatemalan maximum security prison, but on
Feb. 25, a group of masked gunmen in military clothing entered the prison,
passed through seven locked doors and executed the four policemen, according
to inmates and prison visitors.
The slayings had the look of one drug-connected group eliminating another
and then a third band of killers silencing the detained policemen for fear
they might finger higher-ups in a cocaine-and-corruption scandal. For their
part, Guatemalan authorities claimed the four policemen died in a prison
riot.
Without doubt, however, drug corruption is deeply rooted in Central America.
At least two-thirds of the cocaine reaching U.S. cities now passes through
Guatemala en route from Colombia and Bolivia, according to American
officials, and several former Guatemalan military officers have been accused
of trafficking. [NYT, March 5, 2007]
El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica also have been favorite transshipment
points for smuggling cocaine, often hidden among legitimate cargo, for
delivery to drug-distribution points in Florida, California and Texas.
Dark Days
Last month's killings in Guatemala also recalled the dark days of the 1980s
when "death squads" were widely tolerated, excused and sometimes aided by
the Reagan-Bush administration as part of bloody counterinsurgency campaigns
against leftist rebels.
At the start of that decade, Roberto D'Aubuisson, a cashiered major in the
Salvadoran military, organized right-wing "death squad" operations, first
from a safe haven in Guatemala and then more openly inside El Salvador. In
both countries, the "death squads" became laws onto themselves, murdering
thousands of political opponents.
The Reagan-Bush administration's relationship with D'Aubuisson was
complicated. Initially, the administration downplayed his role in the "death
squad" slaughters. In 1982, when I attended a party at the home of the U.S.
ambassador to El Salvador, D'Aubuisson arrived with great fanfare and was
treated as a guest of honor.
Later, however, as evidence of D'Aubuisson's brutality and criminality grew
undeniable, the Reagan-Bush administration distanced itself from the
right-wing firebrand. (D'Aubuisson died of throat cancer in 1992.)
During the 1980s, many of the region's security forces also became notorious
for assisting shipments of cocaine to the United States.
Yet, whenever press or government investigations began digging into these
corrupt relationships, the Reagan-Bush administration and right-wing media
outlets, such as Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, played aggressive
defense to keep the American public from learning too much.
But the evidence is now clear - in part because of CIA and Justice
Department investigations in the late 1990s - that drug profits helped
augment the region's right-wing paramilitary operations, most notably the
Nicaraguan contras who were organized by the CIA to battle Nicaragua's
leftist Sandinista government from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica. The
contras got cooperation from the region's right-wing military and
intelligence services, which controlled airports and port facilities.
Some contras, including key leaders, exploited that situation to facilitate
drug shipments to the United States, while benefiting from political
protection since President Ronald Reagan had hailed the contras as the
"moral equals of the Founding Fathers."
Given their place in Reagan's pantheon, the contras could count on powerful
U.S. politicians and national security officials looking the other way.
In a 1998 report, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz found that a chief
reason for the CIA's protective handling of contra-drug evidence was
Langley's "one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government ...
[CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they
encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra
program."
According to Hitz's report, one CIA field officer explained, "The focus was
to get the job done, get the support and win the war" in Nicaragua.
Hitz's report concluded that scores of contras and contra units were
implicated in the cocaine trade and that the CIA, on occasion, intervened to
block criminal and congressional investigations. [For details, see Robert
Parry's Lost History [1].]
Blocking the DEA
A separate report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich
discovered other examples of how the Reagan-Bush administration shut down or
discouraged contra-drug investigations that threatened to implicate U.S.
allies in Central America.
For instance, on March 20, 1986, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Costa
Rica office was told by a source that contra pilot Carlos Amador was
planning a cocaine flight from Costa Rica through El Salvador to Miami. The
source said Amador possibly was picking up the cocaine in Hangar No. 4 at
Ilopango Airport in El Salvador.
The DEA cable requested that the DEA's Guatemala office, which covered El
Salvador, should "ask Salvadoran police to investigate Amador, and any
person(s) and/or companies associated with Hangar No. 4."
The problem for the CIA, however, was that it controlled Hangar No. 4 - and
had allocated space there to White House aide Oliver North's contra resupply
operation, which then was circumventing a congressional ban on military aid
to the contras.
Reacting to the DEA cable, the CIA station in Costa Rica sent another cable
to the CIA station in El Salvador on April 23, 1986, asking about Amador and
the drug-trafficking allegations. Two days later, the CIA's station in El
Salvador urged that the DEA halt any inquiries about Hangar No. 4.
The CIA cable stated that Amador had stopped flying for the contras in early
1985, though he continued working for the FDN, the chief contra army, in
Honduras. According to the cable, the CIA shared the suspicions about
Amador's drug trafficking, but asserted that Amador only transported
military supplies to Hangar No. 4.
"Based on that information, [El Salvador] Station would appreciate [Costa
Rica] Station advising [DEA] not to make any inquiries to anyone re: hangar
no. 4 at Ilopango since only legitimate [CIA] supported operations were
conducted from this facility. FYI," the cable continued. "Station air
operations moved from hangar no. 4 into hangar no. 5 which Station still
occupies."
The CIA's request apparently did disrupt the DEA investigation for several
months. But on June 10, 1986, the CIA's El Salvador station cabled the CIA's
Costa Rica station with news that a U.S. embassy officer in San Salvador had
requested more information about Amador.
"The embassy officer said that if Amador is connected to [the CIA], [the
DEA] will leave him alone, but if not they [the DEA] intend to go after
him," the cable read. A week later, CIA headquarters denied any
"association" with Amador. But the DEA's pursuit of drug-trafficking in El
Salvador would not prove easy.
Celerino Castillo was the DEA officer responsible for El Salvador. On June
23, 1986, Castillo reported debriefing an informant known as "STG6," who
knew Amador and other alleged traffickers.
STG6 said Amador used Salvadoran military credentials to land at Ilopango
without the normal Customs search. STG6 added that Amador smuggled arms to
the contras and cocaine from El Salvador to Miami. By fall 1986, Castillo
also learned that the CIA had "obtained a U.S. visa" for Amador -- despite
the earlier claim that the CIA had no "association" with him.
Keeping the Lid On
While the DEA slowly pieced together the contra-drug puzzle, the Reagan-Bush
administration kept the lid on the new evidence in Washington.
In December 1985, my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger and I had
written the first news story describing the contra-cocaine connection. But
the article was greeted in Official Washington mostly with silence or
disdain.
The Reagan-Bush administration wanted to focus most of the "war on drugs"
attention on ideological enemies, such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas even
though there was scant evidence that Sandinistas played any significant role
in cocaine shipments to the United States.
Only one U.S. senator, John Kerry, was willing to put his political career
on the line to follow up on the AP report regarding drug trafficking by
Reagan's beloved contras.
But Kerry soon found his investigation under criticism not only from Moon's
Washington Times but from mainstream news outlets, such as the New York
Times which treated the contra-drug allegations as a bogus tale.
Meanwhile, back in Central America, DEA agent Castillo began looking into
the mysterious activities of a former U.S. military official, named Walter
Grasheim, who operated out of San Salvador. Informant STG6 had identified
Grasheim as "head of smuggling operations" at Ilopango.
"Grasheim owns and operates Hangar #4," alleged the informant who worked at
the airport. "Said hangar is utilized by international cocaine and arms
traffickers. Hangar #4 is also utilized by the Contra Movement in El
Salvador."
On Oct. 27, 1986, Castillo opened a file on Grasheim, as part of a larger
drug-trafficking investigation at hangars four and five. Castillo's
investigative report identified 13 other "documented narcotics traffickers"
who used the hangars.
On Oct. 30, Castillo briefed U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Edwin Corr, who
knew Grasheim when he worked with the embassy's Military Group. Officially,
Corr "welcomed any investigation on Grasheim but ... asked ... that the
investigation be conducted in a very discreet manner," Castillo reported.
Unknown to Castillo, however, Corr went behind the agent's back. The
ambassador sent a "back-channel" cable to the State Department asking DEA
headquarters to review Castillo's investigation. DEA headquarters responded
by judging the evidence inadequate and closing down the Grasheim file only
days after the inquiry had started.
Suddenly, Castillo was under the embassy's watchful eye. In an interview
with Bromwich's investigators, Corr said Castillo resisted the orders to
drop the case and continued "to snoop around the airport and make
allegations." Corr warned Castillo that unless he had more evidence, he
should stop this "witch hunt."
Bad News
The fall of 1986 brought more bad news for the contra operations. The
Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open, after one of North's supply planes was
shot down inside Nicaragua and a Beirut magazine disclosed secret U.S. arms
sales to Iran, a project which generated profits that North diverted into
contra accounts.
However, the major Iran-Contra investigations still steered clear of any
comprehensive examination of contra-drug trafficking.
According to an internal CIA memo, the agency's Central American Task Force
chief Alan Fiers told congressional intelligence committees that the CIA
would brief the DEA on what the CIA knew about contra-drug trafficking. But
that meeting apparently never happened.
Bromwich's report in 1998 stated that "neither the DEA nor the CIA [Office
of the Inspector General] could locate any record of any such discussions."
Sen. Kerry's investigation confronted similar stonewalls.
In 1989, the DEA got wind of more alleged contra-cocaine shipments. In an
interview with Bromwich's investigators, DEA supervisor Thomas deTriquet
recalled that a reliable informant had passed on information about drug
dealers using contra pilots to transport cocaine through Hangar No. 5, the
one controlled by the CIA.
When Castillo and deTriquet went to Ilopango to investigate, a CIA officer
turned them away, the report said. The DEA agents then went to the U.S.
embassy where the CIA chief of station assured them that there was no drug
activity at Hangar No. 5.
Robert Stia, DEA country attache in Guatemala, complained to headquarters
that "DEA cannot develop the most important information, that relating to
those allegations and intelligence in regards to Ilopango Air Force Base."
Stia also reported that in March 1989 a confidential source relayed
information from a Salvadoran Air Force officer that the Salvadoran
government and the CIA were running large shipments of cocaine through air
bases at La Union and San Miguel in El Salvador. The goal again was to raise
money for the contras, the source claimed.
Stia noted, too, that the U.S. Embassy objected to Castillo's involvement
because of his reputation for always "digging up things." Stia said the
deputy ambassador had put "stringent controls" on handling Castillo's
"country clearance" for entering El Salvador. Castillo was soon pushed out
of the DEA.
Summing up this recurring contra-drug defensiveness, Bromwich grasped the
obvious: "We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not
anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport. The DEA's
[first] investigation of drug trafficking activities at Ilopango was closed
in 1986, perhaps with the intervention of the U.S. Embassy.
"Moreover, as reflected in the CIA's cables in the Amador case, the CIA
requested that the DEA not investigate its operations at Ilopango, and the
CIA vouched that they were legitimate CIA-supported operations. It is also
clear that there was intelligence, although not hard evidence, that some
contra resupply pilots were trafficking in drugs."
Kerry Report
Though Kerry's investigation in the late 1980s was hampered by a lack of
cooperation from the Reagan-Bush administration and by hostility from most
of the U.S. news media, he still managed to expose the broad outlines of the
contra-cocaine network.
On April 13, 1989, Kerry's report concluded: "On the basis of the evidence,
it is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were
involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by
drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves
knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.
In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information
regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately
thereafter."
The report added that drug traffickers gave the contras "cash, weapons,
planes, pilots, air supply services and other materials." Moreover, the U.S.
State Department paid some drug traffickers as part of a program to fly
non-lethal assistance to the contras. Some payments occurred "after the
traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug
charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by
these same agencies."
Although Kerry's findings represented the first time a congressional report
explicitly accused federal agencies of willful collaboration with drug
traffickers, the major news organizations chose to bury the startling
findings.
Instead of front-page treatment, the New York Times, the Washington Post and
the Los Angeles Times all wrote brief accounts and stuck them deep inside
their papers. The New York Times article, only 850 words long, landed on
Page 8. The Post placed its story on A20. The Los Angeles Times found space
on Page 11.
For his hard work, Kerry was ridiculed as a "randy conspiracy buff" by
Newsweek. One of the best-read political reference books, the Almanac of
American Politics, gave this account of Kerry's investigation in its 1992
edition: "In search of right-wing villains and complicit Americans, [Kerry]
tried to link Nicaraguan contras to the drug trade, without turning up much
credible evidence."
Given the hostility to the contra-cocaine investigation in Washington, there
was little follow-up on Kerry's 1989 findings. Amid the neglect, officially
sanctioned drug trafficking in Central America grew into a regional cancer.
When the contra-cocaine issue resurfaced in 1996 with a three-part series by
reporter Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury-News, Reagan-Bush defenders
joined with the major U.S. newspapers - the New York Times, the Washington
Post and the Los Angeles Times - to destroy Webb.
Though Webb's series sparked the official investigations at the CIA and the
Justice Department, Webb was hounded out of his job at the Mercury-News -
and received no vindication when the inspectors general's reports
corroborated many of his allegations and went even further.
Indeed, in 1998, when those critical findings were released, the major U.S.
news media focused on elements of the government press releases that
disparaged Webb rather than on the stunning admissions in the reports.
Shunned by the journalism profession and unable to find a decent-paying job,
Webb committed suicide on Dec. 9, 2004. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Gary
Webb's
Death: American Tragedy [2]."]
Meanwhile, Central American cocaine-trafficking, which took root in the
region's security services in the 1980s, has continued to spread, compounded
by economic stagnation and widespread government corruption.
The strange case of the two February massacres in Guatemala offers another
chance to finally force the dark history of the Reagan-Bush cocaine
complicity into the open. But prospects for such a correction of the record
are not great.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
