Iran-Contra

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History

October Surprise

Main article: October Surprise

Backing the Contras

Arms sales to Iran

Cocaine smuggling operation

Discovery and scandal

Congressional investigation

Indictments and aftermath

[1]

Conspirators

Controversies

Drug trafficking coverup

Related article: Drug trafficking

Money laundering

Related articles: BCCI, Savings and loan crisis

See also

References

  1. ↑ New York Times, "Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Aborting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails 'Cover-Up'", 1992/12/25

External links

  • Lawrence E. Walsh, "FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS: Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions", 1993/08/04
  • Baltimore Sun, "Alleged Iran-contra players no strangers to spy affairs", 1986/12/21: "Those who saw action in Southeast Asia and whose names have cropped up in the current controversy include:"
    • "Richard V. Secord: [...] Mr. Secord is said by a variety of sources to have played Mr. Outside to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North's Mr. Inside in the Iran-contra affair. Mr. Secord, sources say, used his old military and intelligence contacts to set up the supply line that provided logistical support and possibly weapons to the contras after Congress by the 1984 version of the Boland Amendment forbade the government from doing so. [...]"
    • "John K. Singlaub: [...] Until September, Mr. Singlaub was chairman of the World Anti-Communist League, and remains on the organization's board. [...] With the passage of the 1984 version of the Boland Amendment, which cut off military aid to the contras, Mr. Singlaub was reportedly recruited by the NSC's Colonel North to assist in raising funds to help continue aid to the contras while the congressional cutoff was in effect. [...] In Vietnam from 1966 to 1986, Mr. Singlaub headed the super-secret MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group. [...]"
    • "Harry C. (Heine) Aderholt: [...] Mr. Aderholt heads the Air Commando Association, based in the town of Fort Walton Beach on the Florida panhandle and comprising veterans of the Air Force's elite covert operations force, similar to the Army's Green Berets. [...] From 1966 to 1968 Mr. Aderholt served as Mr. Singlaub's deputy in Vietnam at MACV-SOG, the clandestine unit that ran secret raids in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. [...] In 1974, Professor Leary said, Mr. Aderholt set up the airlift to resupply the besieged Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, using C-130 cargo planes flying under the corporate name of Bird Air. The assistant chief pilot for Bird Air, Mr. Leary said, was Wallace B. Sawyer Jr., one of the three men killed Oct. 5 when the C-123K cargo plane carrying Eugene Hasenfus went down in Nicaragua. [...]"
    • "Theodore G. Shackley: [...] According to the Times, Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant, and several Iranian clerics on arms-purchasing missions, met with the old intelligence officials in a Hamburg, West Germany hotel room and laid out the offer. Sources told the Times that Mr. Shackley wrote up a detailed report including telephone numbers in Europe for Mr. Ghorbanifar and passed it on to the administration, but sources disagreed on whether it went to a Cabinet officer or a member of the National Security Council staff. [...]"
    • "Donald P. Gregg: Mr. Gregg, Vice President George Bush's national security adviser, is a retired CIA officer who has acknowledged meeting with an old agency friend, Felix Rodriguez, about a dozen times since November 1983. After his capture, Mr. Hasenfus said that Mr. Rodriguez, whom he knew as Max Gomez, was one of two men who ran the contra resupply operation from the Ilopango air base in El Salvador. [...]"
  • The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg KY), "Contra planes linked to USAF museum" by Anthony Kimery, 1987/01/28: "Government records show at least two planes linked to the contras came indirectly from the inventory of the U.S. Air Force Museum, directed by Ret. Air Force Colonel Richard L. Uppstrom. Uppstrom was involved in clandestine operations in Vietnam linked to Ret. Major General Richard Secord and Ret. General John Singlaub, both of whom have been identified as having run the secret contra supply network set up under the National Security Council. Uppstrom, a highly decorated Vietnam combat pilot, has directed the museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, since 1976. In 1985 he retired from the Air Force, but remained director as a civilian. [...] One source very familiar with the inner workings of the Air Force Museum says that about three years ago control of the museum abruptly shifted from mid-level to very high level Air Force officials in Washington. Such a shift was "unusual," the source said. This was the same time when Richard Secord retired from the Air Force and reportedly set about constructing the covert contra supply network. This raises a question as to whether Uppstrom's transactions on behalf of the museum were guided from Washington with contra needs in mind."
  • Silent Repression: The CIA's Covert Operations
  • Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, "IRAN CONTRA AT 25: REAGAN AND BUSH 'CRIMINAL LIABILITY' EVALUATIONS", 2011/11/25

Exposure and investigation

  • Eugene Hasenfus plane crash in October 1986
  • ...

Iranian weapons sales

  • Brokers of Death arms deal
    • Chicago Tribune, "TAPES IMPLICATE ISRAEL IN ARMS DEAL", 1986/08/03: "The middleman in a scheme to smuggle $2 billion worth of American-made weapons to Iran claimed Israeli defense officials had approved the plan, according to conversations tape-recorded by federal authorities. On one tape, the international lawyer who set up the deal said he met in Israel with Defense Ministry officials who pledged ''full and complete cooperation.'' The lawyer, Samuel Evans, an American living in London, said he expected to discuss the transaction with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin on his next trip and that word of the deal had been passed right through to Peres, an apparent reference to Prime Minister Shimon Peres. [...] Four Israelis were among those charged, including a retired general and war hero who said his first telephone call from jail was to the military attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The general, Abraham Bar-Am, told reporters after his arrest that Israeli officials knew of the deal, but his lawyer now says Bar-Am never took the information to the government. [...] Since the war with neighboring Iraq began in 1980, Iran`s arsenal has been depleted and many of its U.S. planes and tanks were idled by a lack of spare parts. Experts say Iran`s representatives scour the international black market in search of weapons and parts and that money is no object. Rabin, the Israeli defense minister, has acknowledged that it is in Israel`s interest to prolong the Iraq-Iran war because both countries are hostile to Israel and the war uses resources that could otherwise be turned against Israel. Israel provided Iran with $12 million worth of weapons from its surplus U.S. stock in 1980 and 1981, but stopped officially when the U.S. protested. [...] For 15 years, Evans has been an adviser to Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian weapons dealer and businessman considered by many as the richest man in the world. Khashoggi has been investigated in weapons deals but never was charged. [...] The jets were to be flown from Israel to Turkey, where Iranian pilots would take control and fly them on to Tehran. The remaining goods were to be shipped from the Israeli port of Haifa to Iran by Nico Minardos, a Greek-born American citizen and Hollywood bit actor who also has worked for Khashoggi, according to the tapes. An estimated $343 million worth of weapons were to be supplied by Bar-Am, 55, the retired brigadier general and licensed weapons dealer, and William Northrop, 41, an American based in Tel Aviv, according to the indictment. Three other Israelis with arms licenses, Rafael Eisenberg, 60, his son, Guriel, 35, and an associate, Isaac Hebroni, were to supply $800 million in U.S.-made weapons from Israel, the indictment said."
    • UPI, "White House officials brokered weapons sales", 1988/05/15: "Another participant in the operation, William Northop -- an Oklahoma City resident with ties to the Israeli spy agency -- told investigators he was also brought into the operation by Mossad agents with whom he had worked for a number of years. Congressional investigators said phone logs from the late CIA Director William Casey showed Northrop was in frequent contact with the spymaster during this time."
    • William Northrop background
      • Arizona Republic, "Fancy gumshoe digs up the dirt for court cases", 1980/01/16 (pages D1, D2): "Will Northrop took a final slurp of black coffee and grabbed his note pad. It was 9:01 a.m. and time to roll. "I've got a preliminary hearing at the courthouse," he says curtly. "Being a criminal investigator is serious business. When my man goes into court on a murder one case, I better have him prepared." Criminal investigator. That's a 50-cent term for a private investigator who works for lawyers. Northrop is one of those fancy gumshoes. [...] Northrop takes a long drag on an ever-present cigarette and talks about his 35 years. He says he worked in the intelligence community for the federal government and spent a lot of time overseas. "People can figure it out from there," he says coyly. [...] Several years ago he began tape recording all his client interviews after his notes were called into court. "But they were written in Hebrew, thank goodness, and they couldn't read them," he smiles. [...] He says he graduated from The Citadel where he "majored in warfare" on his way to Vietnam. He doesn't like to talk about the war."
      • UPI, "A private investigator who three years ago helped clear...", 1981/07/19: "A private investigator who three years ago helped clear a man sentenced to death for murder is now trying to help Wayne B. Williams, a black free-lance photographer accused of killing two blacks in Atlanta. Will Northrop, of Phoenix, said he visited Williams in the Fulton County, Ga., jail Friday and is convinced the man is innocent of the slayings. He said he has been hired to help in Williams' defense. Williams, 23, is accused of the asphyxiation murders of Nathaniel Cater, 27, and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21. They are two of the 28 black people slain in Atlanta in the past 1 years. [...] Northrop was instrumental in clearing Jonathan Treadaway Jr., now 27, of the 1974 charges of sodomy and murder of Brett Jordon, 6. Treadaway, now 27, was accused of the sodomy and murder of Brett Jordan, 6, who was found dead in bed at his Phoenix home Aug. 30, 1974. Treadaway was convicted and sentenced to death in February 1975, but two years later the Arizona Supreme Court overturned the conviction on grounds of judicial error. Treadaway was acquitted at a second trial in October 1978 in which he was represented by noted defense attorney, the late John J. Flynn."
      • New York Times, "AROUND THE NATION; 2 Private Investigators To Aid Atlanta Suspect", 1981/07/21: "Attorneys for Wayne B. Williams, charged with killing two of Atlanta's 28 young black murder victims, have hired two private investigators in their attempt to discredit the police case. ''We are trying to prove the police wrong and that they haven't been doing their job,'' said Mary Welcome, one of the attorneys. One of the investigators is Will Northrop of Phoenix, Ariz., who, the attorney said, has had experience investigating mass murder cases. She said that Mr. Northrop ''feels'' that Mr. Williams ''does not fit the mold of a person who would kill.''"
      • Penthouse, "WAYNE WILLIAMS IS INNOCENT" by William Warren Northrop, 1984/04 (pages 94, 95)
      • See the Oklahoma City bombing page for info on Northrop (as a Mossad agent) monitoring a terror plot right before the bombing and afterwards promoting the idea that Islamic terrorists were responsible

Support to the Contras

  • Operation Black Eagle - conceived of by CIA director Bill Casey, and run out of vice president George Bush Sr.'s office by Donald Gregg and Felix Rodriguez; TODO: add sources
  • Arms Supermarket - TODO: add sources
  • Humanitarian aid cover
    • Los Angeles Times, "Use of Humanitarian Aid Flights to Arm Contras Told", 1987/05/19 (pages 1, 2): "Oliver L. North an d other Reagan Administration aides deliberately used a 1986 program of "humanitarian aid" for Nicaraguan rebels to help support the secret effort to deliver military aid to the contras , U.S. officials said Monday. [...] "The humanitarian aid program saved (North's network) hundreds of thousands of dollars," said an official who has reviewed records of the State Department effort. "It was a piggyback operation . . . . North and the CIA used the program wherever they could get away with it." [...] The aid was administered by the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office, but officials said that all significant decisions were made by a "Restricted Inter-Agency Group," consisting of North, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and Alan D. Fiers, chief of the CIA's Central America Task Force."
    • New York Times, "Abrams Denies Wrongdoing In Shipping Arms to Contras", 1987/08/17: "Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams has defended his role in authorizing the shipment of weapons on a humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan rebels, saying the operation was strictly by the book. Mr. Abrams spoke at a news conference Saturday in response to statements by Robert Duemling, former head of the State Department's Nicaraguan humanitarian assistance office, who said he had twice ordered planes to shuttle weapons for the contras on aid planes at Mr. Abrams's direction in early 1986."
  • Civilian Materiel Assistance / Civilian Military Assistance (CMA) - run by Tom Posey and financed by Roger Moore
    • New York Times, "PRIVATE AID TO LATIN REBELS AT ISSUE", 1984/12/13
    • Chicago Tribune, "U.S. ACCUSED OF ENFORCING NEUTRALITY LAWS SELECTIVELY", 1985/01/14
    • Associated Press, "FBI Reportedly Probes Contras on Drugs, Guns", 1986/04/10: "Jack Terrell, who was a leader of the American paramilitary group, Civilian-Military Assistance, CMA, said FBI agents and prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami have met with him several times with at least two of those sessions becoming full-day meetings. Terrell said the investigators asked him about alleged weapons shipments from the United States to Contra base camps in Central America, Contra involvement in drug smuggling, and a reported conspiracy to assassinate the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs. Federal investigators, insisting on anonymity, confirmed that they have interviewed Terrell and other persons in connection with the Contra probe but they refused to discuss details. [...] Following the deaths of two Americans shot down in a helicopter inside northern Nicaraguan in September 1984, the FBI investigated reports that U.S. military supplies, including weapons, were diverted to the rebels from two Alabama National Guard armories, in Huntsville and Decatur, but no charges were brought. The Americans belonged to CMA, a Decatur, Ala.-based paramilitary organization which has trained and fought alongside the Contra rebels. Several of their founders, including Dana Parker, who died in the crash, were members of the 20th Special Forces Group, attached to the Alabama National Guard, according to CMA leader Tom Posey. [...] Terrell, who quit CMA in mid-1985, said he attended a Miami meeting early that year with the Cuban and an American farmer living in northern Costa Rica. Terrell said cocaine shipments were discussed and the Cuban offered the Contras the proceeds from the sale of lobsters that had been used to conceal a cocaine shipment." - likely that the American farmer is John Floyd Hull
    • Associated Press, "Contra Aid Defendants Briefed FBI, Military Intelligence", 1988/10/28: "Members of a private aid network for the Nicaraguan rebels regularly briefed the FBI and military intelligence about their activities while allegedly violating the U.S. Neutrality Act, government reports show. Seven of the men were indicted by a Fort Lauderdale grand jury in June for violating the Neutrality Act by supplying mercenaries and guns to the rebel Contras in 1984 and 1985. But they have challenged the federal indictment, saying they were working closely with the Reagan administration. FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency documents submitted by the defense confirm that at least two of the indicted network members - Thomas Posey, head of the Contra-supporting group called Civilian Materiel Assistance, and his Miami coordinator, Jose Coutin - were regularly reporting to government officials at various levels, including the National Security Council. ″The documents show the FBI knew, the FBI was sharing the information with Oliver North″ at the National Security Council, said attorney John Mattes, who represents co-defendant Jack Terrell. [...] A declassified report from military intelligence agent Franklin Camper showed his agency not only knew of the activities in April 1984, but outlined for Posey and a Contra official a plan for raids into Nicaragua by U.S. volunteers and Nicaraguan rebels. [...] The documents also show Miami police informed the bureau in September 1984 of the network’s existence, and that drug-trafficking money was being used to finance the Contra cause. [...] The other defendants are Mario Calero, brother of Contra leader Adolfo Calero; Maco Stewart and Alex Martinez."
    • See also (on the Dixie Mafia page) mercenary school operator Frank Camper
  • Bill Holmes (Fayetteville AR gun maker) involvement
    • See the Mena section of Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America by Roger Morris (1996)
    • From p.??? of Warmonger: How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the US Trajectory from Bush II to Biden by Jeremy Kuzmarov (2023): "Bill Holmes, a gun shop owner in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said that in May 1984 two CIA agents, Edward Malone and James Terrell, whose description matched that of CIA agent Jack Terrell, showed him a Mena address when they bought 250 machine guns from him at a price of $100,000, paying $10,000 in advance. The agents said that they had met Seal, who was known as "fat man," and that the guns were for a special operation run out of the Mena airport that had the approval of the White House and Vice President (George H.W. Bush) who was running it. When Eugene Hasenfus' plane was shot down, Malone told Holmes he had to shut down his operation. Holmes never got paid."
    • ATF case against Holmes throughout the 80s and 90s
      • ...
      • Agents involved in the Holmes case
        • Bill Hobbs
          • Whitwell Memorial Funeral Home obituary for William Carl Hobbs (July 27, 1941 ~ February 3, 2016): "William “Bill” Carl Hobbs passed away at the age of 74 of a heart attack at his residence on Tims Ford Lake on February 3, 2016. He is preceded in death by his parents Jeff and Margie of Whitwell, TN. [...] A graduate of Whitwell High School, class of 1959, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Middle Tennessee State University. He was an outstanding fullback on the MTSU football team, having played in the 1961 Tangerine Bowl. He had a distinguished career in law enforcement as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) with assignments in Georgia, Illinois, and Arkansas. After nearly 30 years with ATF, he retired and settled on Tims Ford Lake, where he had vacationed for many years on his return visits home from ATF duty."
        • Todd McKeehan - later involved in the Branch Davidian raid, where he was one of four agents murdered (at least three of whom, likely including McKeehan, had worked security for Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign)
        • David Sullivan - later involved in the Branch Davidian raid, then died in a car accident on 1994/03/31 (a month after the Davidian trial ended)
        • Milton Bonaventure - later involved in the Branch Davidian raid
        • David Shanks - based in Shreveport LA, and previously involved in investigating illegal weapons traffic with law enforcement complicity in Red River Parish LA (home of serial killer Robert Charles Browne, who was allegedly protected by local law enforcement)
    • Background of Holmes
      • Bill Holmes, "Silencers from the Home Workshop", 1980 (from p.219-234 of The Poor Man's James Bond Vol. 3 by Kurt Saxon) - published by Paladin Press; at the end, Holmes identifies himself as being from Fayetteville AR
      • American Handgunner, "Holmes MP-83 Assault Pistol", 1986/03-04 - manufacturer is Holmes Firearms of Wheeler AR; distributor is D. B. Distributing of Fayetteville AR
      • Master Gunmaker's Guide to Building Bolt-Action Rifles by Bill Holmes (2003) - published by Paladin Press
      • Legacy Remembers obituary for William Holmes (Dec. 4, 2008): "William Wendall Holmes, 79 of Fayetteville, died Wednesday, December 4, 2008. He was born September 26, 1929 in Benton County, Arkansas to the late Ferrell and Lucille Baker Holmes. He is preceded in death by his two sons; Jeff and James Holmes. Survivors include one daughter, Leslie Bracy of Stillwater, OK and two grandchildren; Adam and Samantha Bracy of Stillwater, OK. Interment will be held at the Fayetteville National Cemetery."
      • Trapshooters Forum thread from 2012 with a Holmes obituary by Paladin Press: "William “Bill” Holmes, author of the Paladin Home Workshop Weaponry series of books and videos, died on December 4, 2008.

        Many people call themselves gunmakers, but few have actually made a gun. Instead most buy parts from various manufacturers and assemble them. Bill Holmes made countless rifles, handguns, and shotguns from scratch—ranging in caliber from .17 to .50—for almost 60 years. As a result he became an acknowledged expert on most firearms, as well as the laws governing their manufacture, modification, and possession. Once he stopped building precision-crafted firearms for others, he concentrated on writing about how to make guns safely and legally so that others could make their own weapons. He wrote his first Paladin book in 1977, Home Workshop Guns for Defense and Resistance, Volume I: The Submachine Gun. Through his seven books (The .50-Caliber Rifle Construction Manual; Home Workshop Guns for Defense and Resistance, Volumes I–V; Home Workshop Prototype Firearms; and A Master Gunmaker’s Guide to Building Bolt-Action Rifles) and two videos (The Home Workshop .50-Caliber Sniper Rifle and Home Workshop Weaponry) for Paladin, Bill attracted a legion of followers who anxiously awaited each new project from the master gunmaker. He also published a scathing indictment of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in Entrapment: The BATF in Action, recounting the agency’s fruitless efforts to hang an illegal weapons charge on him.

        Bill kept a fully equipped machine shop in an outbuilding next to his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but in later years was forced to sell off his lathes, drill press, and other equipment to pay legal and medical bills. For a brief period he turned his hand to knifemaking. (The knife shown in the photo was a gift to Paladin staff.) He will be missed by many."

CIA involvement

  • New York Times, "WILLIAM CASEY, EX-C.I.A. HEAD, IS DEAD AT 74", 1987/05/07: "Mr. Casey died less than 24 hours after the first witness in Congressional hearings on the affair named him as having assisted in providing arms to Nicaraguan rebels after Congress forbade such support. [...] Mr. Casey suffered two seizures and was hospitalized in Washington last Dec. 15, the day before he was to testify to a Senate panel about the Central Intelligence Agency's role in the sale of American arms to Iran. [...] At the Congressional hearing Tuesday the leadoff witness, Richard V. Secord, said that in addition to Mr. Casey, officials of the C.I.A. and the State Department aided in efforts to provide weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels. [...] He reported that, under Mr. Casey, high-ranking C.I.A. agents in Honduras and Costa Rica had provided him with intelligence data or other assistance."
  • Ch.16 of the Walsh report: "Robert M. Gates"

Drug smuggling

  • Kerry Committee investigation (officially titled "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", prepared by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the 100th Congress)
  • Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall (1991, 1998)
  • Baltimore Sun, "The CIA-drug connection is still covered up Contra's role in drug smuggling was known as early as 1987" by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight, 1996/09/29: "Back in 1987 and 1988 the Senate subcommittee on narcotics and international terrorism produced reams of documents and days of testimony on the CIA drug connections. "Our covert agencies have converted themselves to channels for drugs," said Sen. John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, at the time. [...] We wrote about this memorandum in a March 31, 1987, Newsday article, later widely syndicated. [...] The Reagan administration, in an effort allegedly spearheaded by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, secretly shared intelligence, transportation and military facilities with Central American drug dealers who provided the missing funds through profits from their sanctioned smuggling. [...] A Sept. 26, 1984, Miami police intelligence report noted that money supporting contras being illegally trained in Florida "comes from narcotics transactions." [...] Reno and Deutch might want to get on the horn to Celerino "Cele" Castillo, the DEA's main agent in El Salvador and Guatemala from 1985 to 1991. In a February 1989 report we obtained, Castillo meticulously describes a half-dozen known traffickers who used hangars controlled by North and the CIA at Ilopango airport."
  • Shortened version of the "Your Government Dealing Drugs" chapter from American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell (2010)
    • "After his administration tried to mine the Nicaraguan harbors and got a hand slap from Congress, it turned to secretly selling missiles to Iran and using the payments—along with profits from running drugs—to keep right on funding the Contras. Fifty thousand lost lives later, the World Court would order the U.S. to "cease and to refrain" from unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and pay reparations. (We refused to comply.)"
    • "The fact is, with most of the cocaine that flooded the country in the 80s, almost every major drug network was using the Contra operation in some fashion. Colombia's Medellin cartel began quietly collaborating with the Contras soon after Reagan took office."
    • "Then, in 1982, CIA Director Casey negotiated a little Memorandum of Understanding with the attorney general, William French Smith. Basically what this did was give the CIA legal clearance to work with known drug traffickers without being required to report it, so long as they weren't official employees but only "assets." This didn't come out until 1998, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz issued a report that implicated more than 50 Contra and related entities in the drug trade. And the CIA knew all about it. The trafficking and money laundering tracked right into the National Security Council, where Oliver North was overseeing the Contras' war."
    • "Here's what was going on behind the scenes: In the mid-1980s, North got together with four companies that were owned and operated by drug dealers, and arranged payments from the State Department for shipping supplies to the Contras. Michael Levine, an undercover agent for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), later said that "running a covert operation in collaboration with a drug cartel . . . [is] what I call treason." The top DEA agent in El Salvador, Celerino Castillo III, said he saw "very large quantities of cocaine and millions of dollars" being run out of hangars at Ilopango air base, which was controlled by North and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez (he'd been placed in El Salvador by Vice President Bush's office, as a direct overseer of North's operations). The cocaine was being transshipped from Costa Rica through El Salvador and on into the U.S. But when Castillo tried to raise this with his superiors, he ran into nothing but obstacles."
    • "Also in 1986, an FBI informant inside the Medellin cartel, Wanda Palacio, testified that she'd seen the organization run by Jorge Ochoa loading cocaine onto aircraft that belonged to Southern Air Transport, a company that used to be owned by the CIA and was flying supplies to the Contras. There was strong corroboration for her story, but somehow the Justice Department rejected it as inconclusive. Senator John Kerry started looking into all this and said at one closed-door committee meeting: "It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras...We can produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security.""
  • Contra leadership involvement
  • Southern Air Transport drug flights
    • Atlanta Journal, "Counsel gets report of Colombian, Southern Air connection", 1987/01/20: "Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh has received a report, allegedly given short shrift at the Justice Department last fall, of a connection between a Colombian cocaine kingpin and Southern Air Transport, the former CIA airline involved in the Iran-contra affair. According to informed sources, a witness told the FBI last summer of having seen a cargo plane with Southern Air markings being used for a guns-for-drugs transfer at an airfield in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1983. Jorge Ochoa, reputed leader of the Colombian cocaine smuggling ring known as "the Medellin cartel," was directly in charge of the operation, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the individual's statements."
    • ciadrugs.homestead.com article titled "The Forgotten Case of DEA agent Bradley Ayers"
  • SETCO involvement in supplying the Contras - an airline owned by Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros (himself an associate of Barry Seal), that was by one account actually "set up by the CIA" specifically for the Contra operation
    • US Customs report dated 1983/05/18 regarding an investigation into a Latin American drug trafficking network using plane N90201 - on p.2-3, the pilot Frank Versame Moss is described as being employed by Honda Carib Inc. (a subsidiary of Atlas Aviation), which recently purchased N90201 in Honduras, and planning to go into business with Setco Aviation of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; on p.7, it is mentioned how an informant revealed in September 1982 that N90201 was going to be used to drop narcotics at a farm in East Baton Rouge owned by Adler B. Seal and Wendell K. Seal; pn p.8, it is discussed that SETCO is "headed by Juan Ramon Mata Ballesteros a class I DEA violator"
  • Barry Seal and his activities at Mena AR
    • Barry and 'the Boys' by Daniel Hopsicker (2001)
    • Preston Peet, "INSIDE THE OCTOPUS: The Barry Seal Story", 2002/05/06
    • Spartacus Educational page on Barry Seal
    • Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, "Air Cocaine: the Wild, True Story of Drug-Running, Arms Smuggling and Contras at a Backwoods Airstrip in the Clintons’ Arkansas", 2016/11/04
    • WBRZ 2, "Uncle Sam Wants You" by John Camp, 1984/11 (Louisiana State Archives copy) (YouTube copy)
    • WBRZ 2, "Barry Seal: Murder of a Witness", 1986
    • Oakland Tribune, "An army of smugglers", 1986/11/13: "One of the contras' Miami-based weapons smugglers [Jose Coutin] supplied a weapon linked to the assassination of the U.S. government's chief witness against Ochoa, Barry Seal. Seal, indicted in 1972 on a heroin-for-guns deal for anti-Castro exiles in Mexico, in recent years ran weapons to the contras and drugs into the United States before becoming an unlucky informant."
    • Burlington Free Press, "Mercenary's Death Not First Of Contra-Drug Connection" by Greg Guma (letter to the editor), 1987/01/05: "This information and much more was recently released in a report, "Crime and the Contras," produced by former Salvadoran Ambassador Robert White's International Center for Development Policy. According to the report, "Seal's death leaves many unanswered questions. As journalist Joel Millman points out, 'There were many people — Contras, drug lords, even White House officials — who might have suffered from his testimony, and who have certainly profited from his demise.' The stories Barry Seal might have told — about the truth behind the Managua connection, about administration tactics against the Sandinistas and on behalf of the Contras — were buried with his body.""
    • Wall Street Journal, "Dope Story: Doubts Rise on Report Reagan Cited in Tying Sandinistas to Cocaine" by Jonathan Kwitny, 1987/04/22 (text copy; Palm Beach Post, "Nicaragua-cocaine link evidence questioned", 1987/04/28: pages 1, 5): "Four drug pilots in prison in Florida say they knew Mr. Seal as part of a network that delivered weapons to airfields in Central America for the American-backed Contras and then sometimes flew back to the U.S. with cocaine. [...] The imprisoned drug pilots say Mr. Seal was involved in flights that brought weapons to Central American airfields for the Contras and sometimes returned to the U.S. with drugs. The pilots claim that their Contra weapons deliveries were directed by the CIA. The people they say they worked with are known to have been supervised or monitored by the CIA and by Lt. Col. Oliver North, the National Security Council staffer fired for his role in the program to sell arms to Iran and fund the Contras. [...] Mr. Seal once was a pilot with Trans World Airlines, but he lost the job in 1972 after being charged with smuggling explosives to Mexico. The explosives, he later testified in federal court in Las Vegas, were for CIA-trained personnel trying to overthrow Cuba's Fidel Castro. [...] Fred Hampton, whose Mena, Ark., firm does a global business repairing aircraft, says Mr. Seal used to talk in 1982 and 1983 about working for the CIA. [...] Jack Terrell, a former Contra mercenary who now opposes U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, says that "we knew he [Mr. Seal] was flying for the Contras" at Aguacote, a Honduran supply base. And a jailed drug pilot named Gary Betzner says he once ran into Mr. Seal at Illopango air base in El Salvador, where much of the Contra weaponry was transshipped. Another imprisoned drug pilot, Michael Tolliver, says he was recruited into the Contra supply network by Mr. Seal, whom he had known since they were both airplane enthusiasts in Louisiana. He says Mr. Seal called him in the spring of 1985 [...]"
    • Penthouse, "Snowbound" by John Cummings and Ernest Volkman, 1989/07 (ISGP copy) - while it does not specifically cite its sources, it states as fact that Seal began working for the CIA (with the cover of an international aviation consultant) right after the 1972 explosives smuggling case, and that he recruited drug pilots for Bill Casey's early 80s Contra arms smuggling operations (Black Eagle and Supermarket); mentions Louisiana State Police narcotics investigators Butch Milan and Jack Crittenden being aware of rumors that Seal had "high-level connections"
    • 1991 joint investigation by the Arkansas Attorney General's Office and US Congress
      • Deposition of Richard J. Brenneke on 1991/06/21 (excerpts on WhatReallyHappened)
      • Deposition of William C. Duncan on 1991/06/21 - on p.4-5, he names his targets as Freddie Lee Hampton, Joe Evans, and Rudy Dale Furr (all employees of Seal or associates of his at the Mena airport), as well as Union Bank of Mena vice president Gary Gardner; on p.21 he references the role of Hot Springs FBI agent Tom Ross in the Mena investigation; on p.25-27, he mentions personally interviewing Seal, during which Seal claimed that he told his employees to be prepared to plead guilty to money laundering; on p.30, he references how one of his informants brought up unknown Latin American men being present on the airplanes that landed at Rich Mountain Aviation, during which time everyone was forced to stay in their offices; on p.30-31, he describes there being numerous reports indicating paramilitary activity at the Nella airport, including automatic weapons fire, people in camouflage at night, and large amounts of ammunition in shacks near the airport
      • Deposition of Russell Franklin Welch on 1991/06/21 (parts 1, 2) - on p.6, he mentions Rich Mountain Aviation business manager Rudy Furr beginning to call him in late 1984 complaining about harassment by Polk County Sheriff Al Hadaway; on p.7-8, he talks about being directed by state police director Tommy Goodwin to start the Mena investigation shortly after the plane crash death of Emile Camp; on p.8, says that Freddie Hampton and Rudy Furr had claimed to be involved in CIA and Defense Department activity while denying any drug smuggling; on p.11-12, he discusses his suspicion that cocaine was brought into the Mena area, possibly picked up by helicopters that were present at Rich Mountain Aviation; on p.14-15, he confirms what Duncan testified to about reports of paramilitary activity near the Nella airport, linking it to the broader context of the militia activity at the time (and naming Gordon Kahl, who he states lived in Mena for a year under an alias); on p.15-16, he tells the story of a woman delivering RVs in western Arkansas, who saw long gun shipments near Nella and reported it to the ASP because she suspected it was linked to the recent murder of state trooper Louis Bryant (ed. note: by CSA member Richard Wayne Snell); on p.17, says he knew Barry Seal flew C-123 and 707 planes but was unsure if he flew any C-130 planes; on p.17-18, he mentions how he and FBI agent Tom Ross were (circa 1985) joking about camouflaged C-130s (ed. note: did he mean C-123s?) sitting at the Mena airport, which a prosecutor overheard and asked for information on, because he didn't want that activity in Mena; on p.25-26, he describes an odd occurrence of US Attorney Mike Fitzhugh having a private meeting with him (Welch) where he (Fitzhugh) was trying to bargain with Welch about indicting Seal's people on just a few minor charges; on p.28, he quotes one unnamed US Customs Service agent as telling him "look, we've been told not to touch anything that has Barry Seal's name on it, just to let it go"; on p.30, he mentions a friend of his at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission being chased away from the Nella airport by camouflaged individuals; on p.35-36, he brings up a new Australian business called Southern Cross and C-130s appearing at the Mena airport in 1987, after which Hot Springs FBI agents Tom Ross and Floyd Hayes told him that a CIA source of theirs, involved with Southern Air Transport in Miami, wanted to ensure Arkansas investigators didn't screw up SAT's current operation at Mena like they'd done for the last one
    • CBS News story by Bill Plante in early 1994 about Mena
    • Sunday Telegraph, "Smugglers linked to Contra arms deals" by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 1994/10/09: "It is clear that Welch had stumbled on a complex operation in which narcotics trafficking and government covert operations had somehow got mixed up. On June 4, 1985, his diary says that an agent from the DEA "informed me in the strictest confidence that it was believed, within his department, that Barry Seal is flying weapons to Central and South America. In return he is allowed to smuggle what he wanted back into the United States"."
    • Sunday Telegraph, "Airport scandal set to crash into White House" by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 1995/03/26: "But the Sunday Telegraph has learned that Seal was working for the Defence Intelligence Agency all along, answering to a top secret outfit in Fort Meade, Maryland, known as the US Army Operations Group. His recruitment was put into the Pentagon computer system through the highly classified RODCA Channel, a "source management system" used to prevent the exposure of secret assets. The last two numbers of his 10-digit "source code identifier" were 82, showing that he was recruited as an outside operative in 1982."
    • Terry Reed, The Mena Connection, 1995 - at the beginning, before getting into Reed's own narrative (which is controversial even among believers of the Mena conspiracy), it has full copies of several local news episodes about Seal done by Theresa Dickie in 1987
    • Sally Denton and Roger Morris, "The Crimes of Mena", 1995/07 - killed Washington Post article on Mena drug smuggling
      • The Atlantic, "Clinton Scandals, Inc.", 1996/10 corroborates the killing of the story, though it subsequently turns into a defense of the Clintons; also mentions former US Attorney Jay Stephens of Henry Vinson / Craig J. Spence fame exonerating the Clintons in Whitewater
        • "IN January of 1995 the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post was about to publish a very long article by Roger Morris and Sally Denton, based on research Morris had been doing in Arkansas for his new book, Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America (Holt, 526 pages, $27.50). At the very last minute, after eleven weeks with the article, the paper, which had delayed publication three times, began to dither again. Morris and Denton angrily withdrew the piece, and the Washington rumor mill buzzed for a few days. Clinton-haters speculated that the article was all about the use of the Intermountain Regional Airport, in Mena, Arkansas, as the base of operations for secret arms going out to the Nicaraguan contras and cocaine being smuggled back in, with Governor Bill Clinton's connivance, and that this damaging material had been censored by the Post's liberal editors. Clinton supporters said that the article was thin stuff, anonymously sourced, and not up to the rigorous standards of the Post; it had therefore quite properly been spiked. There were jests that Roger Morris -- a principled chap who, with Tony Lake, had resigned from the National Security Council in protest over the 1970 invasion of Cambodia -- had spent too long in Arkansas.

          In fact the article was sourced with documents and affidavits, and included intriguing new material. But it was all about Oliver North and George Bush and the contras, and contained very little about Clinton. The Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie, had approved the piece for publication, and after long wranglings the lawyers pronounced themselves satisfied. Printing was then postponed not because of Democratic loyalties but because Robert Kaiser, the managing editor, was struck, he said, by the fact that "our own reporters had looked at this material and found zero grounds to justify the inferences drawn."" - is Robert G. Kaiser, who killed the Mena article, the "high-flyer at the Post" accused by Henry Vinson of using his escort service who had "the juice to seriously malign the Washington Times reportage to the Post’s editorial staff"? interesting to note that Kaiser had substantial access to the office of Barney Frank, another participant in this ring, during the crafting of the Dodd-Frank bill in 2008 and 2009
    • Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America by Roger Morris (1996)
    • Wall Street Journal, "Mysterious Mena: CIA Discloses, Leach Disposes" by Micah Morrison, 1997/01/29
    • The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (1997) - parts 1, 2, 3
    • Daniel Hopsicker, "In Search of the American Drug Lords", 1997 - Hopsicker's documentary on Barry Seal
    • Daniel Hopsicker, "Secret Heartbeat of America", 1997 - Hopsicker's documentary on Iran-Contra and Mena drug smuggling
    • From the Wilderness, "Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal's Airplane?", 1999/10
    • 225 Magazine, "Smuggler's blues", 2009/04/30: "Chicago television station WMAQ reported on a confidential FBI document in which a Mena businessman admitted his company was maintaining one of Seal’s airplanes, a camouflaged military C-123, dubbed “The Fat Lady” for the CIA."
    • Daniel Hopsicker, "How to become an American “non-person”", 2012/05/24
    • Ed Opperman interview with Daniel Hopsicker about Barry and 'the Boys' (old Youtube link)
    • DEA records on Barry Seal (Scribd copy)
    • FAIR, "American Made: A Largely True Story With Some Not-So-Fun Lies", 2017/10/10
    • Ron Dane, "American Re-Made - The Real Story of Barry Seal", 2019/12/02 - questions the credibility of FBI agent Del Hahn, who investigated Seal and later wrote a 2016 book on him (Smuggler's End) that dismisses any CIA connection; details how Ramon Milian Rodriguez was recruited into a CIA-backed Cuban exile group in the 1970s; shows New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato as one of the key people involved in the hearings working to expose CIA connections to drug running (ed. note: he was one of two New York senators later targeted in a planned hit by members of the mosque led by CIA asset and 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspirator Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman)
    • Early life of Seal
    • 1972 arrest for smuggling C-4 to anti-Castro Cubans
      • 225 Magazine, "Smuggler's blues", 2009/04/30: "Just a week or two after his arrest, Seal had coffee with his ex-wife, Barbara, and her mother. He told them not to worry about the arrest. He wasn’t going to end up in prison, he said. “This was an operation I did for the government,” Barbara recalls Seal telling her and her mother. The explosives were part of a plan “to overthrow Fidel Castro,” Seal explained. In a recent interview with 225, Barbara described how Barry was essentially disavowed by his own government after his 1972 arrest, something that cost him his job as an airline captain. “That was a government operation,” she insists."
    • Disinformation efforts
      • Bill Bottoms - former brother-in-law of Seal and a major pilot in his organization, who turned DEA informant in the mid 80s and devoted himself during the 90s to debunking what he called the "Mena myth"
        • Washington Weekly, "THE MENA SERIES: BARRY SEAL ASSOCIATE SPEAKS OUT", 1996/10-11
          • (In part 3, published 1996/11/11) "Barry Seal associate William Bottoms claimed in [the above] interview.... that "Nothing of any real significance happened at Mena Airport," and that "Nella was never used for any clandestine activity by Barry or myself." Documents reveal, however, that there were activities that Bottoms appears to have been unaware of.

            Mena investigator Russell Welch of the Arkansas State Police has a secret FBI telex dated August 1987 that informs him that "a CIA or DEA operation is taking place at Mena airport." Welch further states that "There was a covert operation here at Mena. It did use the strip at Nella for a period of time. The operation that I'm referring to didn't start until around late 1986 or 1987. Although it took place at Nella there was no other connection to Barry's name, until Terry Reed came along." Barry Seal was killed in 1986."
        • 1997/03/12 email response by Russell Welch to Bottoms' newsgroup post "The Mena Myth Unravelled"
          • "I was the second criminal investigator assigned to Mena. The first investigator was placed at Mena in 1977 primarily to monitor drug traffic at the Mena Airport. Barry Seal wasn't the first show to come to the Mena Airport and he wasn't the last. I took over investigations at Mena in 1981. At that time, my supervisors kept pressure on me to develop cases at the Mena Airport. By 1990, I was being ordered to stay away from apparent drug activity at the airport."
          • "Before I was ordered away from drug activity, high ranking officers in the Arkansas State Police were allowing suspects to look at my files. The suspects didn't even have to ask for access to my files. The information was furnished to them without solicitation. One such person is now the assistant director of the Arkansas State Police. To say that there is corruption in the Arkansas State Police would be an understatement. While I was working on the Barry Seal case, uniformed state police officers came to the Mena Airport and met with known smugglers. I was never told why these meetings took place."
          • "A few days ago I met Billy Bottoms. I had become familiar with Bottoms while investigating Barry Seal's activity in Arkansas. Billy was always in danger of being indicted while I was doing that investigation; but, I was never able to get a good handle on him. Seal was visible and out going but Bottoms kept a low profile."
          • "Many of you have probably formed a negative opinion of Billy Bottoms and I don't blame you. He tells you that things didn't happen at Mena and you know that they did. I find it a little aggravating, too."
          • (To Bottoms) "Why parts of Seal's organization were never prosecuted in Arkansas is a nagging question. You stated that the cases were weak. That's not true. I'll show you in a later response that I developed a very good conspiracy case and Seal even told Hampton and Evans to plead guilty to the currency transactions violations. I'll show you part of a deposition from a deputy foreman of the grand jury who complained that the grand jury wanted to indict but the United States Attorney wouldn't let them."
          • (To Bottoms) "I know you will say that Barry never took dope into Arkansas; but, later, I will show you evidence that he did; and, you, yourself, told me that Barry told you that he took cocaine into Arkansas, during the later part of '83 and earlier part of '84. You told me that you didn't believe him. After we talked at my house, you kind of changed your attitude and conceded that he may have."
        • 1997/03/16 email response by Russell Welch to Bottoms, stating "Mena is not a myth"
          • (From Welch's 1997/03/15 email to Bottoms, forming part 2e of his response to "The Mena Myth Unravelled") "Billy, you're right that Gene Wheaton had a lot to do with Mena coming into the spot light. But, he wasn't the first to come up with some of this. When I came back to Mena, in 1979, there was a poster on the bulletin board at the Mena Police Department. It had a picture of Roland Varnado. This poster had been sent to Mena by the BATF in Louisiana. It said he was a gun runner, who just got out of federal prison on a weapons conviction. It said that the conviction was small, but he was into bigger stuff than they were able to make a case for. It said that he was living in the Nella community, north of Mena. That didn't help the Nella communities image much. Then the neighbors at Nella said that he was caretaker at the strip. One of the neighbors said he was a friend of yours. I meant to ask you about that."
          • (From Welch's 1997/03/15 email to Bottoms, forming part 2e of his response to "The Mena Myth Unravelled") "I like Gene Wheaton but I'm not going to let that get in the way of my objectivity. Some of the things he talked about were way out in left field for me. But, he was right about a lot of things. Most of the stuff that he talked about, took place after Barry was dead. Things started picking up around here in 1987. It was hard for some people to realize that Barry had been gone a long time by then.

            Not long after Wheaton showed up, Duncan and I met Jack Blum at local restaurant. He and an assistant were working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the time. They told us that Panamanian assassins were being trained at Nella. Duncan told me that he's changed his mind since then. I don't know."
          • (From Welch's 1997/03/15 email to Bottoms, forming part 2e of his response to "The Mena Myth Unravelled") "On June 4, 1985, a DEA agent told me that he had information from the Mobile, Ala. DEA office that it was assumed that Barry was flying guns to Central America and flying his own dope back."
          • (From Welch's 1997/03/15 email to Bottoms, forming part 2e of his response to "The Mena Myth Unravelled") "And don't forget the name, Simon Frazier. He was a major smuggler, out of the Mena Airport, before Barry. Simon is the biggest reason that a state investigator was placed in Mena. He operated with three DC-3's. His front was a fish business in downtown Mena. For a year or so, Mena had the freshest fish in the country. He got busted in Florida, rolled over, made some cases for them, and then got killed in a couple of different airplane crashes, in 1981. He's still seen around her almost as much as Elvis. Terry Capehart went to New Mexico with him one time and Frazier took him into a warehouse full of guns that were going to Central America."
          • (From Welch's 1997/03/15 email to Bottoms, forming part 2a of his response to "The Mena Myth Unravelled") "(The following is from a report by Sgt. Richard Branch, of the Arkansas State Police, dated April 20, 1983)
            It's reported that Evans and Hampton became associated with Seal in October or November 1982. Seal started bringing aircraft into the Mena Airport sometime around this time. It's reported that the planes are flown by Evans and two other pilots. One is unknown and the other pilot is a white male named Red Hall out of Columbus, Ohio. The CI advises that when loads are expected, that they use several different planes and flights to avoid the detection of the true plane in flight.

            The CI knows of two loads, one on March 24, 1983 and the other on April 15 & 16, 1983. The CI states that the planes are usually gone for 12 to 14 hours after leaving the Mena Airport.

            The CI believes that they go into Colombia, South America, and are returning with cocaine. One of the off loading vehicles is reported to be a truck that is used to haul damaged aircraft and has an Arkansas vehicle LPN B117579. Other vehicle license at hanger in Mena are Oklahoma LPN XE1535, Arkansas LPN JHY717, and Arkansas LPN JPT128.

            The suspected aircraft used in the operation are as follows: Three Piper Navajos, bearing N numbers N7409L which is issued to Charles Medina of Florida, suspected of U.S. Customs service smuggling cocaine, N62856 which is reported by Customs Service at one time as being owned by Air America. It's further reported that Air America is a front for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Agent Lacewell advises that he had made contact through his supervisors concerning the aircraft and its use, and was advised that the CIA no longer owned the aircraft, but they were not able to furnish the name of the person or persons whom the aircraft was sold to. N7100L, there was no registration available. Also used, are two Piper Seneca's bearing N80492 and N80482. These two planes are used for decoys. The 9 in 80492 is made to look like an 8 when being used as a decoy."
        • 1997/04/23 email by Russell Welch regarding his investigation and the questions about whether Seal brought drugs into Arkansas
          • "As far as Barry Seal bringing cocaine to Mena.... There were a couple of good informant statements that Barry brought cocaine into Mena a couple of different times."
          • "There was plenty of reason to believe that Seal was making some of his drops close to Mena, because the helicopters were here for several months, and a fictitious business was developed around them, and the smuggling planes were making regular trips. The helicopters are short range. The fictitious business was taking a fuel truck to other airports and buying aviation fuel, under false pretenses, to fuel Seal's helicopters."
          • "[After Seal officially became a DEA informant, he and members of his organization] would secretly tell friends and associates at the airport that they were working on secret stuff for the government."
          • "The initial larger aircraft that Seal used for the DEA were at the Mena Airport in the Fall of 1983. He was going to use them for his own operation, but once he got the go ahead in Washington, he used them on the DEA sting." - important, as it shows that the C-123s (with CIA connections in their ownership histories) were obtained for Seal's smuggling enterprise, not just the DEA operation in 1984
          • "My investigation established a conspiratorial period, chronologically, with a first "overt act" and a last "overt act." The first overt act was April 12, 1982. The last overt act was the late night of Dec. 13, 1983 or early morning of Dec. 14, 1983. I have actually used those two dates interchangeably over the years, because the surveillance actually started on Dec. 13, even thought Seal didn't fly in until after midnight. Seal was still fair game up until March 24, 1984. Seal told the judge that he was actually taking part in illegal activity up to that date. Bottoms says he wasn't, but Seal said he was. There's evidence to indicate that he was."
          • "After Seal started snitchin' and using the larger airplanes, the smaller planes kept doing the same thing, but that particular activity didn't show up in the Federal investigative reports that I eventually got to look at, in Miami. Bottoms says it ain't so. But it is."
          • "While I was in the DEA office in Miami (1989 or 1990?), Ken Kennedy, head of the Miami group at the time (also one of the people who sent Seal to Miami from Washington DC) got in my face (very rudely) and said something to the effect of, "I don't like you here. What happened at Mena? Nothing happened at Mena. I've looked at our computer files (DEA) and there's only four insignificant references to Mena." That doesn't speak very highly of the DEA's resources."
          • "Although the State Police let Barry Seal's people look at my investigative file on them, while I was still investigating them, Col. Tommy Goodwin never told me to stop investigating."
          • "When Jim Guy Tucker became governor, Goodwin was relieved of command and replaced by John Bailey. Charles Boles, a burned out alcoholic, who had been a critic of my airport investigation for years, became the head of the Criminal Investigation Division. When this happened, I was no longer being discouraged from investigating smugglers, I was being told, directly, that I would not be investigating smugglers."
          • "The local mayor had been lobbying the Cali Cartel to bring their business to Mena. He and a representative of Rich Mountain Aviation had tried to get me transferred, to keep me away from the airport. With John Bailey and Charles Boles in place, they were all about to get what they wanted. That's when I quit. I had sent evidence taken from executive jets (that were used for smuggling) to the State Crime Lab to be tested for trace analysis of drugs. The evidence was returned to me, by one of my supervisors, untested. I was told to leave it alone. That supervisor is still a sergeant in the State Police."
          • "One Arkansas based CIA agent (operative?) named Doak Boring had substantial influence in the state police. I started to investigate him, before I knew who he was (not that it would have made any difference) I was ordered off of it."
          • "After that, my career was never the same. Two times the Feds blew my cover on major drug operations, putting me in extreme danger. I was poisoned. The FBI tried to arrest me for an illegal wire tap. Fortunately I was in the hospital dieing from the poisoning at the time that the alleged wire tapping was taking place."
        • 1997/09-10 newsgroup discussion in alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater about the history of the C-123 used by Seal
          • (From a 1997/10/01 comment sharing an FBI memo found in the appendix of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s book Boy Clinton) "Why did a drug smuggler, Red Hall, do electronics work on Seal's plane for the Nicaraguan sting operation?

            Also note how the FBI was not sure whether Hall worked for the DEA or Seal.

            Though Sheriff Hadaway, the FBI and Sgt. Richard Branch,of the Arkansas State Police described Red Hall as a drug smuggler, Bear Bottoms disagrees:"
          • (From a 1997/10/01 comment sharing an FBI memo found in the appendix of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s book Boy Clinton) "The following testimony from two DEA investigators are not consistent as to what was done to Seal's C-123. Did the CIA install the cameras in Columbus, according to Caffrey, or in Miami, according to Jacobsen. Was the work at Columbus done by the CIA or the Pentagon? Where did Red Hall do the electronics modifications referred to by the FBI?

            BTW, DEA investigator Ernst Jacobsen was the handler for both Barry Seal and Bear Bottoms."
          • (From a 1997/10/03 comment by Bottoms replying to the above remarks about Red Hall) "Because Hall's role was periphery and his conspiracy knowledge of our operations were unknown to them at the time. There was never enough evidence to bring Mr. Hall to trial for his role as electonics expert for our operation. He did lose his job with Electrosonics."
          • (From a 1997/10/03 comment by Bottoms replying to the above remarks about Red Hall) "I have no knowledge if Hall ever smuggled drugs. He did not within our operation. Knowing him very well, I would be surprised to find out that he had any other connections with drugs other than his role as our electronics expert."
          • (From a 1997/10/03 comment by Bottoms replying to the above remarks about Red Hall) "It takes at least 30 hours for one of our trips." - interesting given the Arkansas State Police informant who said that Seal's trips were about 12 hours, raising the question of whether he was going somewhere closer than Colombia, such as John Hull's ranch in Costa Rica
        • 1997/10 discussion between Sam Smith (of the Progressive Review) and Bottoms
        • 1998/09 newsgroup discussion in alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater about Sally Denton and Roger Morris's article, in which Bottoms participated and shared old 1996 emails with Denton and Morris
          • (From a 1996/12/04 email by Bottoms) "My name is William "Bear" Bottoms aka "Billy Bob". I was Barry Seal's brother-in-law and chief pilot from the time he got out of jail in Honduras in 1980 until his death in Feb. 1986."
          • (Quote of Bottoms in a Penthouse article by Sharon Churcher that Bottoms includes in a 1996/12/08 email) """I laughed at first when these conspiracy theorists said Barry was running around the woods in Arkansas and training Contras. I was the one who bought 110 acres in the mountains near Mena, not Barry, and the land was for recreation. The only time I know of guns being fired there is one day me and my daddy and a friend went there to do some target shooting."" - referring to the Nella airstrip allegedly used for paramilitary training
          • (Excerpt from a Penthouse article by Sharon Churcher that Bottoms includes in a 1996/12/08 email) "Though the cartel now knew that Seal was a turncoat--and ultimately would take their revenge with his murder--they didn't have an inkling that their other old buddy, Bottoms, was now in the D.E.A.'s service. And so Bottoms became the pilot on numerous sting operations, one of which snared Norman Saunders, chief minister of the Turks and Caicos islands, a cartel refueling post on the long haul from Colombia to the U.S. Both Bottoms and Seal testified against Saunders and cartel members at several trials."
          • (Bottoms response to Denton pointing out that Bottoms had claimed a link between Seal's operation and the mob was preposterous) "Yes. 1972 Carlos Marcello hired Seal to fly a DC6 from NY to Louisiana that was loaded with explosives destined for Cuban Resistance. There is no other connection. This is an obvious attempt the blur the truth with unconnected events."
          • (From a 1996/10/09 email by Russell F. Welch that Bottoms shared on 1998/09/06) "I have never speculated into Seal's activity with the CIA. There was a covert operation here at Mena. It did use the strip at Nella for a period of time. But there was no other apparent connection between Seal and the CIA."
          • (From a 1996/10/09 email by Russell F. Welch that Bottoms shared on 1998/09/06) "If you are Billy Bottoms, you remember taking the money to Nella in 1982 to pay for the little strip. Thinks were just starting. Barry was buying some Senecas and Navajos. Those people at Nella still have you're name and address on their kitchen wall."
          • (From a 1996/10/09 email by Russell F. Welch that Bottoms shared on 1998/09/06) "I spoke to a Customs agent in Shreveport about the load of explosives in 1974. He, also, said that it was Carlos Marcello's deal. He said that charges were dropped because they couldn't go to court without burning their snitch."
          • (Post by Bottoms on 1998/09/06) "LOL, the Contras didn't use M-16's. Gen Singlaub refuted this by saying the weapon of choice for the guerrillas was the AK-47... the M-16's sound was too distinctive and would easily give away the position of the guerrillas. Show me a picture of a contra carrying an M-16." - note that this is discussed and refuted in The Secret Life of Bill Clinton
          • (From a writeup by Bottoms titled "THE OLLIE NORTH AND BARRY SEAL STORY") "Barry told the Cartel that he would go to the States, get a larger plane and would return to Nicaragua to get the cocaine. Barry was flown back to the States in an aircraft owned by Pablo Escobar. He briefed Joura and Jacobsen. Nicaragua! They couldn't believe it. It was not a known fact, prior to this event, that Nicaragua was involved with the Medellin Cartel. Barry purchased a C-123 from Harry Doan. Joura and Jacobsen started working on the details in Washington for clearances, and finally they were ready to go to Nicaragua." - interesting how Bottoms suggests that Seal only bought the C-123 in the course of working on a DEA sting of the Medellin Cartel: Seal's DEA involvement began in March 1984, yet Welch indicates (see above) that Seal had the large planes used for the DEA sting in fall of 1983 and Evans-Pritchard found that Seal got his second C-123 "No Problema" in 1983
        • 1998/09/20 newsgroup post in alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater by Bottoms titled "Mena Myths Unravelled"
          • "[After a February 1997 meeting with Daniel Hopsicker] I told him that I would participate with a face to face encounter with Russell Welch and Bill Duncan who are the only credible investigators concerning Mena, Arkansas."
          • "[In a meeting with Bottoms and Hopsicker at the Mena airport, Fred Hampton] states, as he has maintained over the years, that the money paid to him in cash by Barry Seal was not laundered, and was deposited in a legal manner by his conversion of the cash into checks in Seal’s name. The money laundering laws of the time were not broken by the techniques he used to deposit the cash money paid to him by Seal. He said Bill Duncan tried very hard to present a case against him, but could not put one strong enough together to win a conviction against him, Ruddy Furr, or Barry Seal." - note that this is contradicted by Seal having outright told his co-conspirators that they should be prepared to plead guilty to money laundering, as well as the fact that the US Attorneys (Asa Hutchinson and Mike Fitzhugh) never even tried to get an indictment
          • "Welch admits that Sheriff Al Hadaway was involved in dubious activities and could not be trusted."
        • 2000/03/27 email discussion between Daniel Hopsicker and Richmond Odom about Bill Bottoms - has Hopsicker state his belief that, given more resources, he could have proved Bottoms was released from the Navy in 1980 as part of a CIA intervention to allow him to start working for Seal; has Odom tell Hopsicker that "our friend Del Hahn was ready to get on the band wagon until he talked to [Bottoms]"
      • Del Hahn - Louisiana FBI agent in charge of the Seal investigation
        • 2016/12/15 review by R. Welch of Hahn's book Smuggler's End (Wikispooks copy)
          • "In this book, Del Hahn states that nothing happened at Mena or there was not a enough evidence for an indictment. That is wrong."
          • "I met Billy Bottoms. He was at my house. He was intelligent, had charisma, good looks, and the build of an athlete. He told me the same thing that he told Hahn. I offered to show him the case that I had developed. He wanted no part of it. It seemed to me that he had his story and wasn’t going to change it because of any facts that I might show him."
          • "In Hahn’s book, Bill Bottoms insisted that Seal’s planes, and other stuff, were at Mena strictly for storage. That is not correct. The planes were at the Mena airport for “concealment.” There’s a big difference. Nobody was allowed inside the hanger where Seal's aircraft were kept. The instrument panels were covered to hide the sophisticated avionics. Concealing Seal’s smuggling airplanes involved several “overt acts.” "Overt acts" are the building blocks that define a conspiracy to smuggle cocaine. In addition to simply hiding Seal's stuff in a locked and off-limits hanger, there were the acts of preparing the planes for smuggling trips, including using tape to temporarily change tail numbers, going to other airports in Arkansas and Oklahoma to surreptitiously gather aviation fuel for the pre-flights, in the guise of a fictitious business, "H & L Exploration Company;" then, the overt acts of re-concealing the plane after the cocaine had been dropped during the return flight, including removal of the tape used to create the fictitious tail number. This is not storage. This is concealment."
          • "When Hahn told me that he was going to write a book, I assumed that it was going to be about a great man and his great career in the FBI. I still feel that way about him. I liked and respected the man when I met him in New Orleans. We discussed the Arkansas cases and the strange behavior of the USA in Fort Smith. He said that he suspected something was wrong in Arkansas because he didn't get a response to his requests for interviews sent to the Arkansas FBI. The Arkansas FBI agent who would have been the recipient of those interview requests was standing in the doorway of the motel room, listening. He didn’t say a word. The writer of this book does not seem like the same man that I met in New Orleans. He's made enough wrong assumptions and misleading errors about my investigation that I have to wonder about some of the other stuff in his book, which I don't have any personal knowledge of."
    • Personnel belonging to or involved with Seal's organization
      • Bill Bottoms background - full name William Larry Bottoms (born 1947/11/16); aka Billy Bottoms and Bear Bottoms
        • Gene "Chip" Tatum, "WHO THE HELL IS ELLIS MCKENZIE?" (also excerpted on Daniel Hopsicker, "Have You Seen This Secret Agent?: Dois Gene "Chip" Tatum")
          • "[In 1988] The tasking came in to go to La Ceiba, Honduras, and debrief a drug informant. As I looked at the tasking, my heart jumped. The name of the informant I was to debrief was Ellis McKenzie."
          • "McKenzie was recruited into the informant side of the drug smuggling operation by Seal's ex-brother-in-law, William Bottoms. This Bottoms/McKenzie alliance provided a useful tool for continued drug smuggling. Bottoms and McKenzie assured their contacts in Colombia that shipments would remain safe, while assuring their various U.S. law enforcement contacts that they (Bottoms/McKenzie) had and would provide information that would devastate the drug smuggling trade. McKenzie and Bottoms continued smuggling cocaine and heroin into the United States under the protection of U.S. Customs agents. In return, the traffickers would sacrifice shipments and competing drug smugglers in order to appease their government contacts. It was with this data, fresh on hand, that I, as Gene Duncan, a US Army Intel Officer attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency, met with Ellis McKenzie to receive his information."
          • "I quickly found that the cartels had no problem over-flying Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, but over-flights of Honduras provided a problem. The cartel's efforts to buy Colonel Cabus had failed. Bottoms and McKenzie saw an opening which, if successful, would provide an invaluable service to the cartels. They would, through their association with U.S. law enforcement agencies, concoct a story which discredited the good Colonel and Captain, in effect neutralize them, thinking that their replacements may be more amiable toward a relationship with the cartels, especially in light of the recent misfortune of their predecessors. McKenzie also implicated a number of Honduran businessmen involved in drug activities. Those names were: Arturo Alverado Wood, Abraham Dip, Alan Hyde, and Albert Jackson. But I will save the allegations against these men for another report."
      • Ellis McKenzie background
      • Red Hall background
        • Find A Grave memorial for Homer J. “Red” Hall: "Homer J. "Red" Hall, age 83, of Pickerington, Ohio, passed away peacefully Sunday, December 22, 2013. He was born in Portland, Oregon on August 23, 1930, son of the late Harry and Mabel (Schaid) Hall. Also preceded in death by sister, Betty Juban. Red served in the United Ststes Navy during the Korean War. He was a test pilot and later served as Vice President and Chief Pilot for ElectroSonics, a division of Air Radio Corp. He is survived by his loving wife of 30 years, Helen Hall; children, Joan Hall, Linda (C.L.) Allen of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Tom (Rose), Atlanta, Georgia, Clayton (Chris) Strohmeyer. Shakopee, Minnesota, and David Strohmeyer; nine grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and brother, Harry (Georgia) Hall."
    • Aircraft owned by or used by Seal's organization
      • See above discussions between Russell Welch and Billy "Bear" Bottoms for excerpts of Arkansas State Police reports cited by Welch, that detail several of the planes used in Seal's smuggling operation
      • Piper Navajo N7409L - owned by Charles Medina of Coral Gables FL, who was suspected by US Customs of being a cocaine smuggler
      • Piper Navajo N62856 - at one time owned by CIA front Air America
      • C-123 used in Seal's 1984 Nicaragua sting, which later became infamous as the "Fat Lady" - serial number 54-679
        • Associated Press, "Plane Downed In Nicaragua Had Colorful Past", 1986/10/09: "The government has announced no formal charges against the lone survivor, but presidential spokesman Manuel Espinoza said 45-year-old Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette, Wis., will be put on trial. Until six months ago, the C-123 aircraft was owned by a colorful Daytona Beach businessman named Harry Doan, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. But the plane was purchased by a California company, according to Robert Willman, a longtime friend of Doan’s. [...] Another source, who spoke to The News-Journal on the condition that he not be identified, said the buyer was Four Aces Inc. of Palmdale, Calif., and that the company had a long history of involvement with military and government missions. [...] The source said he had heard the California company then leased the plane to Southern Air Transport of Miami, a firm formerly owned by the CIA. [...] In the summer of 1984, Doan swapped a C-123 to Adler ″Barry″ Seal, a Baton Rouge pilot and drug smuggler who became an undercover informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, The Herald learned from Kent Sherman, a consultant on the deal. [...] Seal flew the plane to Rickenbacker Air Force Base in Ohio, where it was outfitted with hidden cameras by the CIA, the Herald reported. Then Seal flew the plane to Nicaragua, where Federico Vaughan, then an employee in the Nicaraguan Interior Ministry, was filmed as he helped load 1,472 pounds of cocaine into the plane. Vaughan was indicted, but was never been taken into custody by U.S. officials" - note that Rickenbacker AFB later became the Rickenbacker Airport where Les Wexner (mentor of Jeffrey Epstein) and Paul Mifsud (Chief of Staff to Ohio Governor George Voinovich) were trying to move Southern Air Transport to in the 1990s
        • The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg KY), "Contra planes linked to USAF museum" by Anthony Kimery, 1987/01/28: "According to FAA records, Uppstrom traded that C-123K to Roy L. Stafford of Jacksonville, Fla., for a similar, but less powerful C-123 on June 17, 1983. A month later, Stafford sold the C-123K to Harry Doan, the owner of a Daytona Beach, Fla., helicopter company with ties to Air America, which is a former wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA."
        • From Chapter 20 ("Barry Seal, Air Contra, and Mena Airport") of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton:

              [Joe Cadiz] had a special affection for C- 123Ks. He had been a maintenance chief for the Fairchild transports in Vietnam, which was why he was drawn into the Air Contra operation. In the fall of 1983 a CIA contractor called Harry Doan asked him to do some maintenance work on a C-123K that he had bought that August. It was the other C-123, the "Fat Lady" (serial 54-679). The paper trail shows that the "Fat Lady" was brought out of storage by the director of the aerospace museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Colonel Richard L. Uppstrom USAF. He sold it to a Roy L. Stafford to June 17, 1983, [29] who promptly resold it to Harry Doan, of Doan Helicopter on August 18, 1983. [30]
              The "Fat Lady" was clearly being activated a year before the DEA sting in Nicaragua. Cadiz recalls that Seal came to view the plane in November 1983, although he says the chronology is hazy a decade later. In January 1984, just after the New Year holiday, Cadiz was invited to a dinner with Seal at Harry Doan's house. "Seal wanted to know everything about the aircraft: how much it would carry, how far it would go .... He said it was a clandestine operation and that he was working for the "State Department," but I figured that was just code for the CIA. I'd already heard things on the grapevine. Harry filled me in on the details afterwards."
           
      • Other C-123s used by the Enterprise (which could be used while the future "Fat Lady" stayed at Mena airport as a diversion)
        • Document (last updated 2023/07/17) on the identification numbers and history of various Fairchild planes - includes 54-663, 54-674, and 54-679
        • Aeroplane Magazine, "Aeroplane Database: Fairchild C-123 Provider" by Simon D. Beck, 2022/01/16: "Two other C-123Ks were involved. N62781 (54-663) was parked in Costa Rica when the operation was exposed and was abandoned there. The airframe was acquired years later by a local hotel owner, who turned the fuselage into a bar outside the city of Quepos. There it remains a popular tourist attraction to this day. N674KJ (54-674) was in the process of being readied in Miami when the scandal broke and was quietly exported to Honduras."
        • Seal's second C-123 "No Problema" - serial number 54-674; also known as "No Problemas"
          • Chapter 20 ("Barry Seal, Air Contra, and Mena Airport") of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton covers this plane, which had serial number 54-674 (while the "Fat Lady" had the very similar serial number 54-679), was known to be at the Mena airport no later than 1983/12/26, and was later registered to Corporate Air Service (the company that doomed Contra pilot William J. Cooper claimed to work for, whose Miami address was that of Southern Air Transport) no later than 1986/07/08
        • C-123 that was abandoned in Costa Rica and later converted into a restaurant - serial number 54-663
          • El Avión restaurant website (archived 2003/07/11)
          • Jack Schulz, "Of bellies and underbellies", 2014/07/18: "The CIA bought two C-123’s and built a runway on private land in Costa Rica to secretly ferry the cargo across the border. In October 1986 one of the planes was shot down with Mr. Hasenfus parashooting into the jungle and the waiting arms of the Sandanistas. [...] The other plane was abandoned in San Jose and eventually bought by these restaurant owners and transported to Manuel Antonio. Eugene’s butt may have actually been in the seat of this very airplane without tail numbers."
      • C-131 that Seal also received by way of Richard Uppstrom
        • The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg KY), "Contra planes linked to USAF museum" by Anthony Kimery, 1987/01/28: "FAA records also show that in February of 1983 Uppstrom traded a C-131 transport plane to Fred Patterson III of Anchorage, Alsaka, who sold it to Barry Seal the following October. Seal is a former drug smuggler who worked undercover for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and who in 1984 participated in a joint DEA-CIA sting operation aimed at proving Nicaragua's' Sandinistas were trafficking in drugs. In that operation, Seal piloted the C-123K later shot down by the Sandinistas with Hasenfus aboard. [...] Sources report that both the C-131 and C-123K were used together in operations by Seal. The DEA has not acknowledged that the C-131 was used on its sting operation involving Seal."
        • Fred Patterson III background
    • Assassination of Barry Seal
      • Miami News, "Prosecutor claims Coutin lied to Grand Jury", 1987/02/25: "Former gun dealer José Coutin perjured himself in secret testimony last year before a Louisiana grand jury probing the assassination of drug informant Alder "Barry" Seal, a federal prosecutor alleged in open court in Miami. Coutin and the Louisiana prosecutor adamantly deny he has lied and confirm Coutin is to be called as a key prosecution witness when the high-profile case goes to trial in April."
      • New York Times, "KILLING OF INFORMANT IS LAID TO COCAINE CARTEL AS TRIAL OPENS", 1987/04/28: "But Richard Sharpstein, who represents the defendant Miguel Velez, said in his opening statement that Mr. Seal, while working for the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, also was working for the Central Intelligence Agency and running guns to the rebels in Nicaragua. Mr. Velez, Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz and Bernardo Antonio Vasquez could face Louisiana's electric chair if convicted of first-degree murder."
      • UPI, "Defense to present case in Seal murder trial", 1987/05/12: "In testimony Monday, a Miami gun dealer who loaned an Uzi pistol on the pretext it would lead to the sale of a dozen of them said he never saw the weapon again until police in Louisiana showed it to him as evidence in the Seal case. Jose Coutin of Miami, who ran a boutique and gun shop, said the Uzi semiautomatic pistol found in the car used to kill Seal came from his business. Coutin testified he loaned it to Jose Renteria-Campo for two days on the pretext that a purchase of 12 Uzis was forthcoming -- but then never saw the gun again. [...] Coutin has been granted immunity from prosecution in the Seal murder. His testimony for the state will be relayed to a federal judge in Florida this week when Coutin is sentenced on a drug conspiracy charge."
      • New York Times, "JURY GETS CASE AGAINST 3 IN DRUG INFORMER'S KILLING", 1987/05/13: "In his closing argument a defense attorney, Richard Sharpstein, suggested that many people wanted Mr. Seal dead, from other drug dealers angered by the informer to Nicaraguan rebels who feared that Mr. Seal might expose their supply network."
      • Daniel Hopsicker, "CIA Linked To Seal's Assassination", 1997/08/18 (original link, now 404s)
      • Daniel Hopsicker, ""Crystalnacht in Baton Rouge"", 1998
    • Terry Reed story
      • In These Times, "Terry Reed: Covert Operator" by David Fallis, 1991/02/06-12
      • Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed (1994) - parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
      • Terry Reed, The Mena Connection, 1995
      • Brodix involvement
        • ...
        • 1986 drug trafficking case in Georgia where Brodix surfaced in the suspects' phone records
          • Macon Telegraph, "9 from Dublin arrested; kilo of cocaine seized", 1987/04/16 (pages 1B, 2B): "A drug investigation that began in August resulted in the arrests Tuesday of nine Dublin residents and the confiscation of just under two pounds of cocaine. Among those arrested was a Fort Myers, Fla., native who officers say was the leader of the drug ring. Bibb County drug squad agents arrested Otis Mobley Jr., 36, of 511A Cypress Drive Tuesday afternoon at a body shop on Georgia 247 after Laurens County officers told them he was there. Bibb County Sheriff's Capt. Warren F. "Scotty" Shepherd said Laurens County officers contacted him Monday and asked if they would serve a search warrant at Mobley's business — Top Gun, a shop on Mercer University Drive selling equipment for high-performance cars — as they believed he was involved in trafficking cocaine. Bibb County officers searched his business about 11 a.m. and confiscated $10,000 and a stolen revolver. No drugs were found there. Bibb deputies began looking for Mobley after they searched the business. Mobley had no drugs when arrested, but lawmen confiscated $6,000 in cash from him, Shepherd said. [...] Mobley's wife, Eunice Simmons Mobley, 38, and son Ronald Mobley, 18, were among the eight arrested in Dublin from about 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Also arrested were Varnell Smith, 33, and Grady Clemmie Smith, 33, both of 619 Rowe St.; Terry Lee "T.J." Johnson, 33, of 511A Cypress Drive; Anenelias Ashley, 35, and Gloria "Triple T" Bostic, 38, both of 621 Rowe St.; and Barbara Beasley, 36, of 705 Stewart Ave. The Mobleys and Johnson came to Dublin last summer from Fort Myers, said Dublin Chief Assistant District Attorney Bill McBroom. More arrests are expected, said Laurens County Sheriff Ronnie Rogers. All have been charged with violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, said Glynn Meeks, special agent in charge of the Dublin GBI office. [...] Two others were arrested during the raid Tuesday but have not been charged with drug violations. Robert Charles Outler, 38, of Chimney Hill subdivision in Laurens County was charged with possession of an illegal weapon and driving without a license. Carl T. Howard, 34, was arrested for violation of his probation on earlier drug charges, McBroom said. Authorities had two addresses for Howard: 612 S. Jefferson St. and Apt. N6, Brookington Apartments."
          • Background of Otis Mobley Jr.
            • Fort Myers News-Press, "DRUG ARRESTS", 1993/08/06: "Task force members seized about 20 large rocks of cocaines and numerous rock pipes, the report stated. Those arrested: Brandee K. Lebrum, 18; Patricia A. Grant, 33; Diane L. Smith, 34; Stephen Midgley, 35, and Otis Mobley Jr., 42."
            • Fort Myers News-Press, "Cop escapes injury during traffic stop", 1994/11/11: "Otis Mobley Jr., 43, of 2610 Providence Circle, in Fort Myers, was charged with possession of cocaine, possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence and resisting arrest without violence, reports state. Troopers were working with the Lee County drug task force and got a tip Mobley was carrying drugs, reports state. Twelve pieces of crack cocaine were found in Mobley's car, according to the report."
          • Background of Gloria Bostic
            • Macon Telegraph, "17 Arrested for Drugs in Dublin", 1975/05/29: "Seventeen persons, labeled as "drug merchants" by Sheriff W. R. Bussell, were arrested in Dublin Tuesday on various drug-related charges. [...] ARRESTED WERE: Robert Daniel Mincey, 33; Robert Holliman Jr., 27; Gloria Bostic, 27; Larry C. Hubbard, 24; Jimmy L. Bell, 18; Walter Thomas, 20; Dorine Coney, 26; Zachary Ross Ellington, 20; Jimmy Garrett, 21; Teresa Wright, 24; Jimmy Lewis Underwood, 26; Ronald Swint, 22; Michael Lowell Bostic, 18; Johnnie Anderson, 22; David A. Woodruff, 24; Claxton Godfrey, 22; Michael Stanley, 18, and Ned Dixon, 43. All the arrested are from Dublin."
      • Reed v. Young lawsuit
      • Reed v. Behar lawsuit - TODO: fill in
    • Nella airstrip built by Seal's organization - appears to have been used for paramilitary training, though Seal's former pilot Billy Bottoms (one of the people who established the land in the first place) denies it
      • Arkansas Democrat, "Longstanding questions surround remote airstrip" by Lyle McBride and Patrick Rice, 1988/03/20 (pages 1A, 11A) - quotes Roland Varnado (ed. note: who had a history of gun law violations in Louisiana, related to machine guns) as being a "caretaker" of the land for Rich Mountain Aviation owner Fred Hampton
    • Mafia drug distribution networks
    • Arkansas financial institutions used for money laundering
      • Ozark Gazette, "GRAY MONEY" by Mark Swaney, 1995: "The state of Arkansas was the lead investor in a deal which poured sixty million dollars through a Barbados company, Coral Reinsurance, which is currently under investigation [...] Persons involved in the deal, which began in 1987 and ended in 1991, include Bob Nash, then president of ADFA and now Personnel Director of the White House, Robert Rubin, then president of Goldman Sachs investment bank and now Secretary of the Treasury, and Maurice Greenburg, president of American International Group, and a candidate in 1995 to be Director of Central Intelligence. The American International Group is a 100-billion dollar, multi-national insurance company which founded Coral Reinsurance Company in 1987. The fact that AIG founded Coral was hidden from insurance regulators for at least 3 years and was only recently proven by the reluctant release by ADFA of the original stock placement memorandum. [...] For two important reasons, the Committee decided to look into the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). First, some admittedly circumstantial evidence linked ADFA to the Mena operations. [...] Throughout 1992, the Arkansas Committee contacted numerous sources in their search for evidence that ADFA may have been involved in money laundering operations. Several people assured them that ADFA was indeed involved, knowingly or otherwise, with laundering many millions of dollars."
      • Mark Swaney, "THE MYSTERY OF THE "LOST" MENA REPORT", 2001/08/03: "[...] soon there was an announcement by James Leach that his committee would investigate Mena, and “let the chips fall where they may”. [...] The Arkansas Committee was skeptical, but willing to go along. [...] We wanted to believe them, we really did. [...] In the spring of 1995, I got a call from Steve Ganis, who had been assigned to be the chief Mena investigator for the Leach committee. [...] Over the course of the next year (1996), I sent to Steve Ganis all the documentation that I had collected and that he wanted, including the AIG/Coral documents from ADFA. In one conversation I remember having with Ganis early on, I told him that I believed that the Stephens group was getting rich by laundering money for the US intelligence services. [...] One day in late 1996, he called me to ask about a certain person from Saudi Arabia. I never heard of the guy, and I told Steve that I didn’t know who it was. Ganis didn’t tell me anything about the Saudi, but he was obviously excited about his new lead. [...] [Ganis] said that at first he didn’t think much about the Coral/ADFA/AIG deal. Then he said “later I found out something about AIG that I hadn’t know before” but he wouldn’t tell me what is was. [...] I started to worry when Jean Duffey told me that the word on the street in Washington was that Leach was going to bury the report since the evidence uncovered was all against George Bush and not Bill Clinton. [...] in December of 1997, a very ominous sign occurred. In the middle of the Clinton-Starr battles over Whitewater, the HBC held a press conference in which they said that their investigation had not yielded any information on Bill Clinton. [...] The investigation had been billed as an effort to get to the bottom of the Mena allegations, not to get Bill Clinton. [...] in the summer of 1999, a year and a half after the investigation and the report by Steve Ganis was completed, I sent a futile “Freedom of Information” request to the HBC only to be informed that Congress had exempted itself from the FOI law. [...] [To Bill Duncan and Russell Welch] Ganis had told both the former lawmen that he had been personally frightened during his investigation. That he felt that his investigation had been interfered with by unknown persons, and that he thought people were trying to intimidate him. [...] Ganis’s main results (to the extent that he told me his main results) are revealing to say the least. Ganis told me that he proved that Barry Seal had been flying cash money to the Contras. [...] Some of the money he thought might have come from a source in Saudi Arabia. [...] Ganis told me that his results suggest that Barry Seal was part of a covert action group reporting to the Vice President, George Bush Sr., and was using the status of “turned DEA asset” as a cover. Ganis found that Barry Seal was involved in a covert action to infiltrate Fredirico Vaughn into the Sandinista government. The report also includes additional information linking the Carver ranch in Belize to the Contra army. The Carver ranch was also linked to Dan Lassater and Barry Seal. [...] There is evidence in the report linking Barry Seal to the Contra support movement in Miami Florida, and also that Barry Seal was recruiting pilots for the “Enterprise” of Secord, and North, et. al. [...] Ganis said that though he didn’t know why, Leach had insisted on putting the AIG/Coral reinsurance information in the Mena report."
      • Mike Ruppert, "HOSTAGES: A Multi-Part FTW Special Investigation", 2001 (parts 1, 2) - about Coral Marie Talavera Baca Lehder, the professed wife of Carlos Lehder and a manager for AIG in San Francisco up until June 22, 2001
      • Mark H. Gaffney, "Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side (Part 3): AIG and the Linkage to the Drug Trade", 2011/05/25
      • Coral Reinsurance background and finances
      • Dan Lasater involvement - TODO
      • Stephens Inc. / Jackson T. Stephens involvement - TODO
      • Charles Hayes allegations
    • Australian companies that set up at Mena airport after Seal's murder
      • The Age (Melbourne, Australia), "The shadowy fate of an RAAF Hercules", 1991/07/01 (pages 1, 10): "In December 1988, a former Royal Australian Air Force Hercules took off from Mena airfield in Polk County, Arkansas, for somewhere in Africa. It got no further than Florida, where it was seized by US Customs officials, accused of violating regulations on trafficking in arms, and impounded. [...] Its destination remains unclear. The export papers say it was to go to Liberia; the registered owners also raised the prospect of flying it to Angola, and information given to one investigator maintains that it was on its way to South Africa. In an affidavit filed with the US District Court, Florida, it is alleged that African Cargo Inc., the registered owner of the aircraft, "is not the actual owner, and that several attempts have been made to conceal the identity of the true owner". African Cargo and the company from which it bought the aircraft, African Air Trans (AAT) Inc., operate from the same registered Florida address. The affidavit says that the real owner was an unnamed Israeli living in Panama [ed. note: Mike Harari?] who set up a fake American corporation and a mortgage on the aircraft to "cover his ass". [...] The case of the US Government versus C-130 Hercules N4469P is scheduled for trial in September. Before its trip to Florida, the old RAAF Hercules, known as A97-215 during its Australian service life, spent eight months in Mena. There, long after its 1977 retirement from the RAAF, the aging C-130 transport was maintained and sometimes crewed by Australians. The crew chief supervising its maintenance was a former RAAF air-frame fitter, Mr Bob Maddern, who recently gave evidence to a grand jury in Fort Myers, Florida, set up to investigate the aircraft. Mr Maddern told the grand jury he believed the aircraft was going to Angola, which would violate US restrictions. He says he became suspicious of the companies and individuals involved with the aircraft he still refers to as 215, its RAAF designation, but that at the time he "chose to ignore a lot of it". [...] In 1989, a Chicago television team investigating Mena looked at the arrival of the former RAAF Hercules. The program noted that "curiously, at the same time, a group of Australians arrived to work at the airport". A reporter asked an Arkansas state investigator, Mr Russell Welch, whether Australians working at Mena had claimed to be working for intelligence interests, particularly the CIA. Mr Welch responded that "it didn't seem to be too much of a secret". [...] The identified Australian presence at the airfield came in 1988, with the arrival of Mr Maddern and two businesses with Australian directors. They were not in Mena in Seal's days, but have had to put up with the rumors about the illicit activity. One is a branch of an aircraft-ferrying business, Southern Cross Aviation Inc. Its president is Mr Peter Dickens, a California-based former RAAF pilot well regarded in the aircraft industry. Mr Dickens, contacted last week, was surprised to hear of the comments made in the Chicago TV investigation. He found the claims amusing, but said they were silly and unfounded. He said that in his occasional visits to Mena he had never seen any suspicious activity. Mr Dickens was also an executive of the second Australian-linked business in Mena, an aircraft-interiors business known as Multi-Trade, which he said had recently closed. The principal of the company was Mr Glen Conrad, a former Melbourne pilot, also ex-RAAF, who gained local fame when in August 1978 he had to ditch into Bass Strait in an aircraft he had bought just days before. According to documents filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, Mr Conrad had a $75,000 stake in the old RAAF Hercules during the time it sat at Mena in 1988. In May of that year, he made an arrangement with African Air Trans Inc., with the Hercules as security, in which AAT agreed to pay him the $75,000 plus interest. Mr Maddern recalls that when he arrived in Mena in 1988 "I got accused of working for the CIA". He dismisses many allegations about the airfield as speculation but says some of them are warranted."
      • 1995/06/29 affidavit of Gary R. Eitel - mentions having a confidential source in Mena named Charles Hendricks, whose son had died on a C-130 that crashed in Angola
      • 14-page writeup of notes that covers suspicious C-130s connected with the CIA, including N4469P - links the ownership of the N4469P (through San Francisco CA company Ford & Vlahos, run by attorney John J. Ford III) to T&G Aviation of Chandler AZ, which was part of the questionable C-130 swap program involving the US Forest Service (see that section on the Drug trafficking page for more info)
    • Drug networks in the Little Rock area - reportedly associated with the Mena operation, and involves some of the same players (e.g. narcotics investigator Jay Campbell of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office being friends with Dan Lasater); linked to the "Arkansas train deaths" case / "boys on the tracks" murder of Don Henry and Kevin Ives on August 23, 1987
      • Don Henry and Kevin Ives murder - in 1987 in Alexander AR
        • Wall Street Journal, "The Lonely Crusade of Linda Ives" by Micah Morrison, 1996/04/18
        • Daniel Hopsicker, "Secret Heartbeat of America", 1997
        • The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother's Crusade to Bring Her Son's Killers to Justice by Mara Leveritt (1999)
        • ID Files (Ives-Duffey Files) website
        • Similar and possibly related cases
          • Billy Don Hainline and Dennis Decker murder - in 1984 in Le Flore County OK; TODO fill out
        • Corrupt death rulings by state medical examiner Fahmy Malak
          • Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "Examiners put Crime Lab under microscope", 1992/06/13 (pages 1B, 5B)
          • Jimmy Seigrist death (1985)
            • Arkansas Democrat, obituary for Jimmy Seigrist, 1985/06/14, p.22A: "Jimmy Wayne Seigrist, 29, of Route 6, North Little Rock, a self-employed roofer, died Sunday. Seigrist as a Baptist. [...] Survivors are his wife, Mrs. Evelyn Miller Seigrist; a daughter, Miss Gwen Seigrist of North Little Rock; his father, Floyd Seigrist of Joplin, Mo.; his mother, Mrs. Jacksie Elrena Redding of North Little Rock; three brothers, Charles Seigrist and Johnny Redding, both of Waco, Texas, and Joey Redding of North Little Rock, and three sisters, Mrs. Sheila Coleman and Mrs. Diann Graham, both of North Little Rock, and Mrs. Charlotte Banks of Jacksonville."
            • Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "Examiners put Crime Lab under microscope", 1992/06/13 (pages 1B, 5B): "• The 1985 drowning death of Jimmie Seigrist of North Little Rock. Malak ruled the death accidental. The family contends Malak overlooked a bullet in Seigrist's head."
            • Family background - TODO: see if there is a connection to Phillip Seigrist, one of the perpetrators of the Amy Childree murder who lived in nearby Lonoke County AR
              • Robert Brooks Casey entry in SHELTON FAMILY HISTORY 4-301 for Floyd Rolland Seigrist (3.5.4.1) - born 1922/06/24 to George Willard Seigrist and Nellie Mae (Foster) Seigrist; married Jacksie Elrena Graham and had eight children: Floyd Rolland Seigrist, Jr. (born 1944/08), Ginger Seigrist, Shelia Sharon Seigrist, Charles B. Seigrist, Sandy Seigrist, Shirley Diane Seigrist, Jimmy Wayne Seigrist, and Charlotte Seigrist; later married a woman named Marlene and had three children: Matthew Seigrist, Luke Seigrist, John Seigrist; troubling note that "Floyd Seigrist was accidentally electrocuted in May of 1974, Ginger Seigrist died of pneumonia in 1946, Sandy Seigrist drowned in 1968 and Jimmy Wayne Seigrist drowned in June, 1985"
              • Austin American-Statesman, obituary for Nellie Seigrist, 1987/01/15
              • Waco Tribune-Herald, "Man indicted in officer shooting", 1990/01/11 (pages 1B, 12B): "Others indicted Wednesday were: • Bobby Christopher Brem, 24, 1601 Mitchell St., burglary of a habitation. [...] • Johnny Redding, 41, Route 2, Box 240, West, theft of more than $750."
      • Saline County AR drug network - involved public officials such as Dan Harmon, Richard Garrett, and James Steed
    • Alleged surveillance of the Mena operation by CSA member Richard Wayne Snell
      • Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry for Richard Wayne Snell (1930–1995): "At one point, Snell was involved in a project in which he filmed planes that landed at the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport in Mena (Polk County). Snell apparently believed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was using the airport to smuggle drugs and thought that the local and state political forces were involved in covering up the operation. (In fairness, Mena attracted a great deal of national and international attention in the 1980s and 1990s due to its role in an immense drug-smuggling operation and the Iran-Contra Scandal, with the airport at the center of these activities.) On another occasion, he claimed that an Arkansas state trooper, a member of the governor’s security detail, had beaten Snell’s wife, Mary Jo, in an attempt to get her to reveal where Snell was keeping the film footage that he had compiled. (Snell and his wife had three children.)"
      • Baxter Bulletin, "Recent events put CSA in public spotlight, says Noble", 1984/08/13: "[Kerry Noble] said Snell had not been a resident of the CSA community nor had he ever been a CSA member. Noble said he does not condone Snell or what he is accused of doing. However, Noble also attacked the character Bryant himself. Noble called the dead trooper a "black racist" whom he said allegedly had harassed white women, had been involved with drugs and was generally a troublemaker. Asked to name the source of his information, Noble could not. He said he had read the information in a magazine article he had intended to bring to the press conference, but had forgotten. Noble also did not recall the name of the magazine."
      • CONTACT (The Phoenix Project) Vol. 7 No. 8, "Help Free Richard Wayne Snell", 1994/12/20 - cites a letter from an unnamed friend of Snell's, which says "I have a long time friend who lived in Mena, Arkansas, and found out some of what was going on and began to try to do something about it, somewhere around 1980 or 1981 or thereabouts, as I recall. The Feds and "authorities" targeted and ambushed him. He shot back and killed an Arkansas State Trooper. He was then wounded and captured. His name is Richard Wayne Snell. I lost contact with him, and eventually discovered what had happened to him and tracked him down. He is now on "death row" in Arkansas, scheduled for assassination/execution in January, 1995. This past summer the news media told of Arkansas executing three men on the same day. Those men were Richard's next door neighbors and Richard is next in line. [...] Richard is considered to be a forgotten nobody "cop-killer" and a pain to the warden and guards. Many of the guards and officials at the prison are involved in activities that they would prefer to be kept in the dark (remember Mena)."
      • CONTACT (The Phoenix Project) Vol. 7 No. 9, "RICHARD WAYNE SNELL", 1994/12/27
      • CONTACT (The Phoenix Project) Vol. 7 No. 10, "Keep THE LIGHT Focused On Richard Wayne Snell", 1995/01/03 - cites a letter from Snell's wife, which says "The state of Arkansas is shrouded with corruption in all levels of government; thanks in no small part to Bill Clinton's tenure of several terms as governor. Mr. Snell was aware of this corruption and tried to expose it at every opportunity. Richard Snell was charged of killing a black highway patrolman near DeQueen Arkansas; he was tried with the state asking for the Death Penalty. He was convicted and sentenced to Life Without Parole. The black patrolman had bragged about his harassment of white women that he stopped during his day's work. Mr. Snell reprimanded him to think more highly of his own race than to continue such audacious behavior. His reply was that someday they would meet on a lonely road and things would be different. Thus, presenting a self-defense situation later. (This testimony was not allowed at the trial.) Richard told him not to stop him. Regrettably, a day came when the red lights of that office's vehicle came on behind Mr. Snell on a lonely river-bottom near DeQueen, Arkansas. The rest is recorded in the trial transcript at DeQueen, Arkansas, where he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. Vengeful state officials promised they "would get him". True to their word on the very day that Mr. Snell was sentenced, he was charged with the death of a Texarkana pawn shop broker and former policeman, Bill Stump. In the trial that has seldom been matched for the number of irregularities in this state, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death."
      • CONTACT (The Phoenix Project) Vol. 8 No. 11, letter of 1995/03/27 from Michael Maholy, 1995/04/07
      • CONTACT (The Phoenix Project) Vol. 8 No. 12, "In The Lion's Den! CONTACT To Little Rock For Richard Snell's Clemency Hearing", 1995/04/18
      • Early life of Snell
        • Jonesboro Sun, "3 Sentenced For Assaults On Campus", 1972/10/04 (pages 1, 2): "Richard Wayne Snell, of Jonesboro, was fined $100 and court costs and given a year in jail with all but 30 days suspended, in Municipal Court this morning, in connection with a disturbance on the night of Sept. 14 when three mobile homes in Southeast Jonesboro and a rural home north of Jonesboro were damaged by gunfire."
        • Abilene Reporter-News, "Burglary Investigation Inept, Victim Claims", 1979/08/30, p.1-E: "A Stephenville man whose rental storage unit was broken into Aug. 10 alleged Wednesday that local police have not handled the investigation competently. Wayne Snell said the serial numbers of seven guns taken in the burglary had not been entered in the law enforcment national crime computer when he last checked Monday. Entering the numbers in the crime computer lets state and national law enforcement officers assist in returning the guns. Numbers are usually entered within a couple of days. Investigator Donny Hensley said Wednesday if the numbers were not in the computer "it was a clerical error." He said he reentered the serial numbers Monday at Snell's request. [...] "How he knows if the numbers are entered or not, I don't know," Hensley said. That information is not available to the public, he said. Snell said the guns are worth about $1,000, just a minority of what he says was stolen. He says about $24,000 in jewelry was taken from the CCI Storage in Stephenville. Thirteen other units were broken into. Snell is in the wholesale gem and mineral business, and makes jewelry parts and some whole settings, he said. Gold, semi-precious and precious stones, and Indian jewelry were taken in the burglary, he said."
        • Longview Morning Journal (from UPI), "'They're melting down memories' in heirloom sales", 1980/03/16, p.10-G: "Wayne Snell, a traveling buyer who works Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, said, "Inflation is killing people. They're bringing their savings out of the closet. We're getting people who are saying, 'We gotta sell to pay our utility bills this month.'""
        • Galveston Daily News (from UPI), "'They're melting own bad memories': Americans are selling their heirlooms to cash in on gold and silver fever", 1980/03/16, p.4-D
        • Tyler Courier-Times (from UPI), "Melting Memories Results In High Profits", 1980/03/30, p.6-6
        • The Oklahoman, "Lawmen Arrest Burglary Suspects Near Big Cedar", 1982/10/30: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation conducted the burglary investigation in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma before arresting the three suspects on an 80-acre tract of land seven miles northwest of Big Cedar in southern LeFlore County, said OSBI spokesman Paul Renfrow. John Thomas Hollmen, 33, of Texarkana, Texas; Mary Jo Snell, 52, of Muse, and her husband Richard Wayne Snell, 52, of Muse were arrested by federal and state officials on charges alleging they knowingly concealed stolen property. [...] Explosives, guns, household goods, coin collections and a large amount of silver were found buried in the area and in a cabin on the property, officials said. [...] LeFlore County Sheriff Ray Kirkland said the suspects were arrested on private land bordering the heavily wooded Ouachita National Forest in southeastern Oklahoma. The arrest occurred just before noon Friday with six deputy sheriffs from LeFlore County and Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers assisting the state and federal law enforcement agents, Kirkland said. [...] Other charges against the suspects are expected in at least one other Oklahoma county and Texas, Kirkland said. FBI spokesman Gene Pogue said he does not expect any federal charges from the arrests. "The indication is that it's all going to be handled as a local matter," Pogue said. Most of the property is thought to have been stolen from Antlers, a small community about 65 miles southwest of Big Cedar, Pogue said. Federal agents were at the arrest to determine if some of the property had been stolen from out of state, he said. Initial allegations also indicated that perhaps machine guns stolen from military headquarters might be at the site, Pogue said. FBI agents reported Friday that none of the property appeared to be taken from outside of Oklahoma, Pogue said."
    • Other curiosities
  • Michael Tolliver involvement
    • 1995 radio appearance of Gene Wheaton on the Tom Valentine show "GENE WHEATON: [...] That particular incident that your caller was talking about was a DC-6 load of 27,000 pounds of marijuana that was vectored in with the, by the covert operators, getting the, getting the squawk signals on the radio to land at Homestead Air Force Base, in Florida. The pilot of that plane was a guy by the name of Michael Tolliver(sp?). Mike Tolliver later flew a twin-engine plane up with a load of narcotics and wrecked the plane when he ran out of fuel just off of one of the islands in the Caribbean. He was put in prison, but later was called into federal court in Wichita, Kansas, under Judge Kelley's court, because of the lawsuit between the owners of the plane and the insurance company's claiming it was being used for criminal activities. Tolliver claimed that the plane he wrecked -- not the one at Homestead, but the one he wrecked in the Caribbean -- was furnished to him by the U.S. government and he was hauling narcotics into the United States for *them*. Now Judge Kelley(sp?) called him up from prison and put him in front of his court in Kansas, with the opposition of the U.S. Attorney's office and the Marshalls. And Tolliver made a sworn statement to the judge, to that effect. The U.S. government continued to deny any involvement, but a year or two later, the U.S. government *quietly* paid for that airplane."
  • Manuel Noriega and Medellin cartel money laundering
    • Washington Post, "DRUG FIGURE SAYS CARTEL GAVE FUNDS TO CONTRAS", 1987/06/30: "A money launderer for the major Colombia cocaine cartel has told Congress in secret testimony that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through former CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, congressional sources disclosed. Testifying behind closed doors before the Senate narcotics and terrorism subcommittee Thursday and Friday, Ramon Milian-Rodriguez, who is serving a 35-year federal sentence for racketeering and related charges in connection with narcotics money laundering, said that the cartel believed it was currying favor with the Central Intelligence Agency when it directed him to give the cash, a panel source said."
    • New York Times, "Accountant Says Noriega Helped Launder Billions", 1988/02/12: "An accountant testified under oath to Congress today that he laundered billions of dollars in illegal drug profits through Panama's banking system with the help of Gen. Antonio Manuel Noriega, commander of the country's army and police and de facto leader. [...] In hundreds of trips to Panama, Mr. [Ramon Milian] Rodriguez said, he moved about $11 billion in drug profits from secret safehouses around the United States run by the Medellin cartel from Colombia, through Miami to Panama. [...] All the time, Mr. Rodriguez said, he ran what people thought was a respectable legal accounting practice in Miami and served on the board of several Miami banks and companies. [...] Mr. Rodriguez said he laundered money not only through Panama, but also through Curacao, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Bahamas. Mr. Rodriguez said General Noriega first agreed to the money-laundering deal in 1979 when he was a colonel heading the country's military intelligence. [...] Mr. Rodriguez, who called himself a supporter of the anti-Sandinista rebels known as contras, also said he channeled laundered drug money to them through a shrimp processing warehouse that he set up as a front company to aid the transfers. ''Narcotics proceeds were used to shore up contra efforts,'' he said. ''I have laundered money for that network. I made it possible to transfer funds.'' [...] On Tuesday, however, the subcommittee heard sworn testimony from Jose I. Blandon, a former close aide to General Noriega, who identified a former leader of a contra group as a drug trafficker who now lives in Panama."
    • Chicago Tribune, "NORIEGA $10 MILLION-A-MONTH PAYOFF TOLD", 1988/02/13: "The middleman, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a Cuban-born accountant serving a 43-year prison term in the U.S. for money-laundering, also said Thursday he helped channel some drug profits to the contras in Nicaragua and handled money for the CIA. [...] Testifying under oath before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Milian, 37, said he personally handled Colombian drug payoffs to Noriega that totaled $320 million to $350 million from 1979 until 1983, when Milian was arrested in Miami. Noriega was the head of Panama`s intelligence service during those years, and congressional investigators have said he received payments during that time from the CIA for supposedly cooperating with the U.S. [...] Milian said some drug money was secretly used to help support the contras, and that one of his front companies in Panama handled $250,000 from the State Department for humanitarian aid to the contras."
    • PBS Frontline, "Guns, Drugs, and the CIA" by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, 1988/05/17
    • LA Weekly, "COCAINE AND THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION", 1988/09/30-10/06
    • TIME, "Panama Noriega's Money Machine", 19??/??/??: "The Senators were particularly interested in Blandon's disclosures concerning the relationship Noriega has had with U.S. intelligence officials. Blandon alleged, for instance, that the CIA had supplied Noriega with classified information on his chief Senate critics, including Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. In Kennedy's case, the reports included the Senator's "personal problems," Blandon claimed. A CIA spokesman said the agency "categorically denies" Blandon's accusation. But Senator Alfonse D'Amato of New York, one of Noriega's bluntest antagonists, said he found Blandon's charges eminently credible. "The fact is," he said, "that Noriega -- this thug and racketeer -- has been on the payroll of the CIA for many years and remained there, I understand, until rather recently." Blandon dropped another bombshell when he alleged that just before the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, Noriega received a telephone call from Vice President George Bush, who asked him to warn Cuban Leader Fidel Castro not to interfere with the operation. [...] In 1985, he said, Noriega met twice in Panama City with Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, a principal figure in the Iran-contra affair. North asked Noriega, Blandon said, to train contra rebels in Panama at a time when the U.S. was forbidden by law to do so."

Business fronts

  • Gary Best involvement and background - purchased the Atlanta-area toy company of Bob Fletcher, and used it as a front for arms deals as well as Southeast Asia missions to find Vietnam War POWs (ed. note: connection to Bo Gritz and/or Ross Perot?); later was the president of MEGA Oil (with Harry Aderholt as vice chairman and Richard Secord as another associate), a company used to obtain oil rights in Azerbaijan following privatization
  • Richard Brenneke involvement and background - was connected to arms dealers in the Brokers of Death case
    • Tri-City Herald, "Brenneke a reliable source, says investigator", 1986/12/01: "A West Linn man who says Iranian officials chose him as an intermediary to the U.S. government has been a reliable source for the Oregon State Police, according to a state police investigator. Lt. LeRon Howland of the state police criminal division in Portland also says Richard Brenneke asked him to pass a letter to George Bush in January 1986, when the vice president was in Portland, The Oregonian newspaper reported Sunday. Howland said Saturday that he gave the letter to the U.S. Secret Service, and that he did not know whether it had reached Bush. The letter dealt with Iran's relations with the United States, Howland said. "It addressed the issue of Iran and was information intended for the vice president's office," Howland told The Oregonian. "I passed it to the Portland Secret Service, and the next thing I know it was involved in this whole Iran thing." Howland's name was one of four personal references in a letter that Brenneke sent to Bush. Another reference was Jay W. Wann, a Lake Oswego policeman. Wann could not be located for comment Saturday. Brenneke, 45, president of a Lake Oswego property management company, was not at his West Linn home and did not return telephone calls Saturday. Brenncke's name surfaced in relation to the Iranian affair as part of a criminal case in New York in which 17 defendants are charged with selling arms to Iran. Brenneke is not one of the defendants, but copies of his memorandums to Bush and other government officials were made public with other documents filed in the case. One of Brenneke's memorandums from January 1986 identified John Delaroque — one of the 17 defendants in New York — as his "partner." On Friday, Brenneke said he had met Delaroque while in Europe but had never done business with Delaroque. William M. Kunstler, attorney for one of the New York defendants, said in a telephone interview Saturday that Brenneke's correspondence showed an intimate knowledge of specific details related to the arms sales, details such as bank account numbers and the location and times of meetings in Europe. "There's no doubt he was working with Delaroque," Kunstler said. Meanwhile, Howland said he had known Brenneke since 1983 and that Brenneke "on several occasions" had provided information to the Oregon State Police. He said the information was regarding "conventional criminal activity in the state," but he said he could not disclose further details. "Mr. Brenneke has given me information of a confidential sort on several occasions pertaining to things that we have been interested in that have proven to be accurate," Howland said in a telephone interview. Howland said that in January, Brenneke came to him with a letter addressed to Bush, hoping that Howland would help him get the letter to Bush. He said, however, that he could not recall the exact contents of the letter. On Friday, Brenneke showed reporters a copy of a letter he said he sent to Bush in January 1986. "Iran has offered to meet with representatives of the United States to discuss normalization of relations with the United States and methods of achieving peace in the Middle East," the letter said. "They are willing to also provide ongoing intelligence information, especially with regard to terrorist activities." Brenneke said he was contacted last year by Iranian officials offering intelligence data and anti-terrorism assistance to the United States. He refused to explain why he was the person they contacted and denied any involvement in arms sales, intelligence or military work. Brenneke refused to confirm or deny a report in The New York Times that said he told an aide to Bush by telephone earlier this year of what were apparently U.S. government plans to use profits from the arms sales to Iran to provide weapons for Nicaraguan rebels. Brenneke's lawyer, Richard H. Muller of Portland, Saturday said he had "no idea" why Iranian officials would contact Brenneke."
    • Note that LeRon Howland, Brenneke's informant contact at the Oregon State Police, provided derogatory (and quite possibly dubious) information to the Henry Lee Lucas defense team regarding the Texas Rangers task force

Financing

Tower Commission

Christic Institute lawsuit

  • UPI, "Court lets stand $1 million award against Christic Institute", 1992/01/13: "The Supreme Court Monday let stand an order that the Christic Institute pay $1 million in attorneys' fees for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit against those it claimed were responsible for the 1984 assassination attempt of a Nicaraguan rebel leader. The court, without comment, let stand the ruling upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against the non-profit Christic Institute, its chief counsel, and two journalists. The assassination attempt involved a bomb blast at a news conference by Eden Pastora in La Penca, Nicaragua, killing nine people. A federal district court in Florida in 1989 ruled, and the 11th Circuit agreed, that two years of court action by the liberal public interest law group was without merit and that the Christic Institute, its chief counsel, Daniel Sheehan, and journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, were liable for more than $1 million."
  • Possible relation to the VANPAC (VANce PACkage bomb or VANce Political Assassination Conspiracy) bombing against 11th Circuit judge Robert Vance
    • Lanny Sinkin, "Murder in the Eleventh Circuit": "On December 16, 1989, while the appeal was in process, a pipe bomb in the mail killed Judge Robert S. Vance of the Eleventh Circuit. Personnel in the Eleventh Circuit Clerk’s office found another bomb, which was defused. A third bomb killed a civil rights attorney. While the case was still on appeal, I flew to Portland, Oregon, to help Marlene Smith move to Washington, D.C., to go to work for the Institute. As we drove out of Portland, National Public Radio broadcast a story that there had been an attempted assassination of Judge J.L. Edmundson, also of the Eleventh Circuit. The story said that a shot had been fired at the limousine carrying Judge Edmundson and that the judge had not been hit. At the time, the judge was traveling under the guard of United States Marshals because the death of Judge Vance had not been solved.

      When we heard the story, I contacted the office of Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez and asked what information they had on the attempted assassination. An aide to the congressman pulled up their wire service and told me that there was a massive manhunt underway and that helicopters were circling an apartment building where they believed the assassin was trapped.

      [...]

      When I reached Washington, I called the Eleventh Circuit to check on the status of the appeal. The clerk asked what case. When I said “Avirgan v. Hull,” she said “Oh, Lord!” I asked “Oh, Lord?” She said “Avirgan v. Hull means duck and run for cover.” Clearly in the minds of court personnel the death of Judge Vance and the attempt on Judge Edmundson were associated with the Christic appeal. [...]

      However, the Eleventh Circuit panel unanimously upheld the decisions of Judge King and ruled our entire appeal frivolous. I have always believed that the court ruled under duress."
    • Roger Shuler, "Siegelman Case Has Roots in the Iran-Contra Scandal and the Assassination of a U.S. Judge in the 1980s", 2012/08/14: "The Vance murder probably was tied to Avirgan v. Hull, a lawsuit that grew from the 1984 bombing at a contra press conference in La Penca, Costa Rica, killing one American journalist (Linda Frazier) and injuring another (Tony Avirgan). The Miami-based Christic Institute brought the case under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), alleging that a North American farmer named John Hull was behind the bombing. [...] The lawsuit was filed six months before the Iran-Contra story broke in the press. A federal judge in Miami dismissed the lawsuit, but a number of reports have stated that Vance was considered a strong bet to reinstate the case on appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. The appeal was pending when a mail bomb exploded at Vance's Mountain Brook home on December 12, 1989, killing him instantly."
    • Roger Shuler, "Did Judge on Siegelman Appellate Panel Act Out of Fear From a Failed Attempt on his Life?", 2012/09/11: "Law-enforcement officials initially believed that U.S. Circuit Judge J.L. Edmondson was the target of a gunman when a limousine window shattered in April 1990, with the jurist inside. This came just weeks after Robert S. Vance Sr., Edmondson's colleague on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, was killed when he opened a mail bomb at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama. Both events came as the Eleventh Circuit was about to hear an appeal in Avirgan v. Hull, a lawsuit alleging operatives connected to the Reagan and Bush I administrations were responsible for a bomb that killed one journalist and injured another in Costa Rica. [...] Authorities had reason for deep concern when a loud pop was heard and a window shattered on a vehicle carrying Judge Edmondson. Press reports quickly went out that an attempt had been made on the judge's life. Nerves were calmed when the FBI issued a statement saying the window broke because of an accident. [...] Edmondson now is on senior status at the Eleventh Circuit, and he just happened to wind up on the three-judge panel for the Siegelman case--and on the panel for my appeal."
    • Actual perpetrators in the VANPAC case
      • Daniel Pride, "Louis Freeh and the VanPac Case... Murder at the highest level !" (Indymedia copy titled "Louis Freeh and the Murder Of Judge Robert Vance" posted 2004/04/12)
      • Times of Israel, "Kavanaugh Sabotaged Vince Foster Probe" by Dov Ivry, 2018/10/03: "The same bombs killed Vance and then an NCAAP lawyer. Freeh charged a screwball named Walter LeRoy Moody of Atlanta in federal court. You could say anything about him and everyone would nod, could be. But Freeh’s patsy did not possess the skills needed for making bombs, such as welding. Ted Banks, who at one time had been convicted of counterfeiting, used to do Moody’s welding and other mechanical work. Banks became the star witness. The FBI strong-armed him into admitting that he did the welding for the bombs. Then at the appeal he had a twinge of conscience. At one point Banks glared directly at Freeh from the stand and shouted out, “I lied and he (Freeh) told me to lie. I never welded no bombs for Moody.” That outburst cost Banks a perjury conviction and years in prison. Next much of the evidence started to crumble."
      • Zodiac Killer Mystery forum discussion on the VANPAC case - lists the addresses of the bombing targets
      • John Caylor, "The Dixie Mafia’s Contract On America", 2007/12/17: "It was almost six years since I had last attempted to communicate with The Chief as he lay on his death-bed. The last time was when his new wife Alma Lois a former “Road-House” queen whose husband had been murdered by The Chief, my father, enabling her to collect seven life insurance policies cursed and banned me from their Enterprise home in July 1990 after I discovered an old manual typewriter hidden in living room furniture. The Chief had purchased the typewriter from Wayne O’Ferrel a white headed Aryan looking self-ordained Baptist minister and military surplus dealer. He bought it after I refused to sell him mine in late July 1989 at a time when my Father was talking garbage to me about how he and his friends were going to write federal judges and straighten out the legal system in our nation.

        It was the same typewriter, which later became the subject of an intense nation-wide hunt by federal law enforcement agencies in 1990. The FBI had offered a one-half, Million-Dollar reward to anyone who was brave enough to deliver it.

        My Father was a powerful man and I didn’t like the implications in his voice. Luckily I had made the right decision because in late August an informant told me about “Declaration of War” letters mailed from various parts of the nation to the 11th Circuit Court of appeals in Atlanta and media in 11 U.S. cities.

        The FBI confiscated those letters from the newspapers and TV stations which had received them thwarting all publicity about a threatened terrorist gas attack. I was able to obtain the following copy from WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, because in late 1970 I had worked for the Jackson Daily News and Clarion Ledger. I used that edge to get a copy, which had been postmarked in Los Angeles, CA. the same day other copies were mailed from various parts of the nation. The FBI was keeping those facts a dead secret because they didn’t want anyone to know there were many co-conspirators and it was an inside job one in which certain top agents of the FBI were complicit in. The FBI has gone to great lengths to silence any information about VANPAC and the Oklahoma City bombing, because many inside the FBI have worked as domestic terrorists staging those events."
      • United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Robert Wayne O'FERRELL and Mary Ann Martin, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, Defendant, findings of fact and conclusions of law, 1998/11/24
        • "This suit arises out of the FBI investigation into the mail bombing assassination of United States Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and attorney Robert E. Robinson in December of 1989. In January, 1990, an intensive investigation of the Plaintiffs was conducted by a large number of government agents in Enterprise, Alabama. It was accompanied by wide-spread local, national, and international publicity identifying Mr. O'Ferrell as a suspect. Walter Leroy Moody was later arrested for the murders and the Plaintiffs were advised that they were no longer targets of the investigation. Moody was tried and convicted. The Plaintiffs contend that they were damaged by the nature of the investigation."
        • "On December 16, 1989, Judge Robert S. Vance of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit was killed and his wife, Helen Rainey Vance, was seriously injured by a mail bomb delivered to their home in Mountain Brook, Alabama. On December 18, 1989, attorney Robert E. Robinson was killed after receiving a mail bomb in Savannah, Georgia. On that same day, a mail *1299 bomb was delivered to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia. On December 19, 1989, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Regional Office in Jacksonville, Florida received a mail bomb. Government agents disarmed the latter two mail bombs."
        • "Several death threat letters to various Eleventh Circuit judges and others, as well as a letter claiming responsibility for the mail bombings, were subsequently mailed. The death threat letters mailed to the judges stated:

          > Judge: Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System shall assassinate you because of the federal courts' calloused disregard for the administration of justice. 010187."
        • "Special Agent Bodziak concluded that the O'Ferrell documents and the bomber documents had been typed on the same typewriter. The primary basis for Mr. Bodziak's conclusion was the unique numeral one, though he noted other similarities in his Lab Report. He communicated his findings to the duty officer at the Strategic Investigation Operations Center (SIOC), which was set up at the FBI headquarters. SIOC served as the coordination center for the VANPAC investigation. Special Agent Bodziak also participated in a meeting held in a conference room at SIOC around 2:00 a.m. on January 20, 1990."
        • "The typewriter which was the source for the bomber and O'Ferrell documents was never found."
        • "The Plaintiffs base their assertion of a false statement on Special Agent Bodziak's belief in January 1990 that the unusual numeral one in the two sets of documents was a replacement character. Because Mr. Bodziak subsequently discovered that the unusual numeral one had been original equipment on a limited number of typewriters, the Plaintiffs claim that he was mistaken in determining that there was a match between the two sets of documents. At numerous points in his testimony, however, Mr. Bodziak maintained that he still believes the bomber documents and the O'Ferrell documents came from the same typewriter. Thus, the court has heard evidence from a certified documents examiner that the documents in question matched, based on reasons detailed in his testimony.

          *1302 As reasons for maintaining the validity of the match, Mr. Bodziak mentioned the limited number of typewriters manufactured with the unusual numeral one; the significant time lapse between 1962 when the manufacturer ceased making these typewriters and the late 1980's when the O'Ferrell documents and the bomber documents were typed; the poor quality of that vintage typewriter and the lessened likelihood that those typewriters could survive for such a time period; the fact that FBI agents screened tens of thousands of documents from various parts of the country and never located other Brother style typewritten documents which contained the unusual numeral one; and other similarities between the documents pertaining to the letters A, J, P, R, and S, and the numerals three and four."
        • "The Plaintiffs produced no credible affirmative evidence refuting Mr. Bodziak's conclusions.[2] Plaintiffs were given complete access to the questioned documents for the purpose of having them examined by experts. They have produced no one who disagreed with the opinion of the FBI's certified document examiner that there was a match. The court finds from the evidence that there was, in fact, a match, that the O'Ferrell documents and the bomber documents were typed on the same typewriter. Accordingly, this court finds that the Plaintiffs have not established that the statements in the Brannan affidavit were false."
        • "The court further finds, however, that the same typewriter used by the Plaintiffs to type certain documents in their appeal in the case of O'Ferrell v. Gulf Life Insurance Company was used by someone else 16 months later to type the labels on packages containing the bombs and to type letters threatening to assassinate judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Once the FBI's document examiner made that determination, the FBI would have been derelict in its duties to the public not to question the O'Ferrells and obtain search warrants to try to locate the typewriter. Even with Walter Leroy Moody already being viewed by some as a strong suspect as the actual bomber, the threat letters suggested the possibility of involvement by more than one person and also the possibility of more assassination attempts."
      • Contemporaneous news articles on the VANPAC case (including several on the website of Daniel C. Pride)
        • Toronto Star, "Drug link investigated in U.S. judge's killing", 1989/12/18: "Robert Vance, an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, was killed instantly when the package exploded about 3 p.m. Saturday in the kitchen of his luxurious Birmingham-area home, authorities said. His wife, Helen, was injured and remains in hospital in serious condition. Vance, 58, a progressive force in Alabama during 11 years as state chairman of the Democratic party, was the third U.S. federal judge to be assassinated in this century. Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Tom Moore said there are "specific leads," but declined to elaborate, saying only that numerous possibilities are being pursued. Some Alabama political figures suggested the bombing is linked to the Colombian drug cartel, which has targeted judges in that country."
        • USA Today, "Threat wrapped in brown paper; FBI ties bombs to NAACP attack", 1989/12/19: "Hinshaw said the FBI also warned the NAACP that the attacks appear to be related to the Aug. 22 tear-gas mail Bomb at NAACP's Atlanta offices. Eight people were injured. FBI agents earlier Monday said they saw strong similarities to mail bombings that killed U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Vance in Birmingham Saturday and panicked an Atlanta courthouse Monday. Postal Inspector John Paul confirmed that the Postal Service is investigating the Robinson slaying as well as Vance's because Robinson was killed by a Bomb that was in a package mailed to his office. [...] In Atlanta Monday, a 10-inch-long parcel wrapped in brown paper and containing a pipe Bomb was discovered during X-ray screening of all mail to the court. Police disarmed it. Speculation on motives for the mail bombings also has focused on drugs."
        • The Independent, "US Bomb 'linked' to Colombia", 1989/12/19: "The possibility that the Colombian cartels may be operating in the US was driven home yesterday, when a X-ray machine in Atlanta's courthouse detected a pipe-Bomb in time for it to be defused. On Saturday one of the most senior judges in the US, Robert Vance, 58, was killed by a similar device sent through the post to his home in Alabama. FBI agents were exploring the possiblity that Colombian drug traffickers were responsible, but added that this was pure speculation. A drug connection to the murder is probable, because 60 per cent of the cases Judge Vance's heard were drug-related."
        • The Independent, "FBI find race clue in Bomb attacks", 1989/12/20: "Early speculation, by the FBI and Georgia Senator Howell Heflin, had focused on the possibility that Colombian drug cartels might be behind the attacks. But the murder of Robert Robinson, a black lawyer and city councilman, and the attempt on the Jacksonville, Florida, office of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) seemed to detract from that theory. Mr Robinson was representing the NAACP in a long running school desegregation case. Mr Robinson, a 42 year-old lawyer from Savannah, Georgia, was the second person in three days to die from a pipe Bomb blast. He was opening a package while alone in his office on Monday night when it blew up, causing massive injuries to his chest, arms and legs. He died on the operating table three hours later. Another bomb, detected before being opened at NAACP's Jacksonville headquarters yesterday was similar to the one which killed Mr Robinson."
        • Financial Times, "US racist group claims responsibility for bombings", 1989/12/30: "A PREVIOUSLY unknown US white racist group has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the South which included the killing of a Federal judge and a prominent black civil rights leader. The FBI said it is treating seriously the claim which appeared in a letter signed 'Americans for a Competent Federal Judiciary' which was read out in part on a television news station in Atlanta. In the letter, the group also threatened to kill two unnamed leading members of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the black civil rights group, in reprisal for the rape and murder of a white exercise class teacher in Atlanta in 1988. [...] The FBI also disclosed that the same group sent out letters last week after this month's pipe Bomb attacks, two of which were defused and two of which exploded, killing Judge Robert Vance in his Birmingham, Alabama home and Mr Robert Robinson, an attorney in Savannah, Georgia."
        • The Independent, "Alleged IRA gunrunner linked to US 'race killings'", 1990/02/10: "Last month, more than 100 FBI agents descended on the Alabama town of Enterprise (pop 18,000), hoping to find leads in the postal bombings. Since then, the bombing investigation has focused on Robert Wayne O'Ferrell, a junk dealer from Enterprise. An FBI agent noticed similarities between typed letters claiming responsibility for the bombings and typed documents Mr O'Ferrell had filed with the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, while appealing on a ruling against him in a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal against an insurance company. It is alleged that Mr O'Ferrell's letters to the court were written on the same manual typewriter that the mail bomber used for follow-up letters. [...] In mid January, another Enterprise man, Brian Joseph Fleming, and a Californian, Charles Chuck Malone, were charged in Montgomery, Alabama, with conspiring illegally to export between 50 and 100 M-16 machine guns, Armalite rifles and night vision goggles. The weapons were to be sent to Ireland using trans-shipment points in Panama and Africa. [...] Mr O'Ferrell and Mr Fleming are known to each other."
        • Atlanta Journal and Constitution, "Bomber's odd testimony spurs appeal His lawyer calls for another trial", 1992/08/13: "Defense lawyer Edward D. Tolley of Athens based his appeal chiefly on the contention that U.S. District Judge Edward Devitt, who heard the case in St. Paul on a change of venue, should have refused to allow Moody to testify in his own defense. [...] "We may not have had the best case in the world," Mr. Tolley said, "but he undid it in the first hour on the witness stand. His testimony was so bad," Mr. Tolley said, that the courtroom was laughing about it. On the witness stand, Moody rambled for hours about odd scientific experiments, including an attempt to achieve cold fusion. When the prosecutor challenged this, Moody insisted that he was a genuine scientist, confiding that, "When I was in college, I tried to clone a rabbit.""
        • Atlanta Journal and Constitution, "Witness says he lied at mail Bomb trial", 1995/03/29: "Against his attorney's advice, a Florida boatmaker Tuesday testified that he lied repeatedly as a government witness during the 1991 trial in which Walter Leroy Moody was convicted of mailing pipe bombs that killed a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer. Ted Banks, of Titusville, Fla., said he was coerced and threatened by federal agents and prosecutors into making false statements during the trial. [...] In 1991, Banks testified that he welded three six-inch pipes for Moody, that he had a friend buy some gunpowder for Moody and that he suspected the pipes were for bombs. But Banks testified Tuesday that none of this was true. "Anything pertaining to the pipes I made Roy and the bombs. . . . I never talked to him about it," Banks said."
        • CNN, "Judge may force agency to uncloak FBI lab report", 1997/03/07: "Pressure is increasing on the Justice Department to release a report said to be sharply critical of the FBI's crime laboratory. [...] Attorneys for crime lab whistleblower Frederick Whitehurst and members of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers requested the court to intervene. [...] Grassley said leaked information from the report raises questions about the lab's handling of a letter-bombing case that Freeh successfully prosecuted: the 1991 conviction of Walter Leroy Moody for the murders of U.S. Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and Georgia civil rights lawyer Robert E. Robinson. [...] In February 1994, Freeh assigned two FBI lawyers in General Counsel Howard Shapiro's office to investigate Whitehurst's allegations of problems in the crime lab. Shapiro had helped Freeh prosecute Moody in what was code-named the VANPAC case. "What is amazing to me is that neither Mr. Freeh nor Mr. Shapiro recused himself from the decision-making role with respect to the review," Grassley said. "After all, they had prosecuted one of the cases -- the VANPAC case -- in which Dr. Whitehurst alleged misconduct has occurred.""
        • Christian Science Monitor, "Study Finds FBI Crime Lab Sullied Evidence in Cases", 1997/04/16: "An FBI explosives expert working in one of the most important criminal investigations in US history - the Oklahoma City bombing - improperly tailored his conclusions to help build an incriminating case against the defendants. The same expert took similar actions during the World Trade Center bombing case, according to a new report by the Justice Department's Inspector General. The report is the result of an 18-month investigation of allegations of sloppy work and bias among officials assigned to the FBI's crime laboratory. The allegations were made by a lab scientist, Frederic Whitehurst, who first complained about questionable work in 1994. [...] In addition to Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center bombing cases, the investigation tracked lab work in cases including the O.J. Simpson case, the mail-Bomb assassination in 1989 of US Circuit Judge Robert Vance, and the 1989 bombing of an Avianca Airlines flight near Bogota, Colombia."
        • New York Times, "Dismal Science", 1998/09/27: "In "Tainting Evidence," John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne continue the assault, showing how the lab's ineptitude played out in a series of high-profile cases like the bombings at the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Federal Building and the mail Bomb assassination of Robert Vance, a Federal appeals court judge."
        • Atlanta Journal and Constitution, "Mail Bomb probe suit rejected", 1998/11/25: "A federal judge in Birmingham ruled Tuesday that the FBI owes nothing to a junk dealer whose $ 50 million lawsuit claimed a misdirected mail Bomb investigation in 1990 ruined his health, reputation and livelihood. U.S. District Judge Harold Albritton said the government is shielded from such damage claims and did not recklessly disregard the truth when search warrants were issued for Robert Wayne O'Ferrell's home and surplus store in January 1990. During the investigation of O'Ferrell, agents looked for a typewriter with keys to match the typed labels on mail bombs that killed U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Vance of Mountain Brook, Ala., and civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson of Savannah in 1989. The typewriter was never found, but FBI investigators determined the mail Bomb labels matched letters that O'Ferrell had previously written to the courts."
  • Background on the La Penca bombing
    • New York Times, "Costa Rica Reopens Inquiry in 1984 Bombing", 1993/08/08: "Costa Rican prosecutors and others believed the bombing was engineered by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, which was aiding the Nicaraguan rebels in their war against the Sandinista Government. The C.I.A. was suspected because Mr. Pastora was getting aid from the agency but had reportedly refused to ally his faction fully with the rest of the contras. Last Sunday, The Miami Herald reported that the bomber was a leftist Argentine rebel, Vital Roberto Gaguine, and that he had been hired by the Sandinista Government. [...] In 1990 Costa Rica accused two men -- Felipe Vidal, a Cuban-American, and John Hull, an American farmer who lived in Costa Rica -- of orchestrating the bombing for the C.I.A. Mr. Hull was already facing charges in Costa Rica of aiding the contras. [...] A Costa Rican prosecutor, Jorge Chaverria, said that he had no plans to withdraw the charges against the two men. His investigation in the late 1980's found no evidence to point to the Sandinistas, and he said he was not convinced that the Sandinistas alone were behind the bombing."

Lawrence Walsh investigation

Other curiosities

  • The Guardian, "The Bush dynasty and the Cuban criminals", 2002/12/02 - details the involvement of Jeb Bush with Cuban exile Miguel Recarey and his company International Medical Centres (IMC)
  • Federico Vaughan as a US double agent
    • Omaha World-Herald, "Drug Agent: Leak Forced Probe to End", 1988/07/29: "Jacobsen testified that convicted drug pilot Barry Seal was working for the Drug Enforcement Administration in the sting operation and had made contact with the cartel and Federico Vaughn, whom Jacobsen described as a Nicaraguan interior ministry employee. However, the subcommittee also released information that cast doubt on Vaughn’s connection with the Nicaraguan government [...] [Panel Chairman William J.] Hughes said the subcommittee staff recently called Vaughn’s number in Managua, Nicaragua, and spoke to a “domestic employee” who said the house belonged to a U.S. Embassy employee. The employee, who was not named, was among a group of U.S. officials expelled recently by Nicaragua's leftist government, Hughes said. Hughes said his investigators were told the house has been “continuously rented” by the United States since 1981. He later told reporters that Vaughn’s name never surfaced before the drug operation, “and no one knew about him afterwards.” Jacobsen said, “To our knowledge, Federico Vaughn had no association with the U.S. Embassy or anything related to the U.S. government.” North’s diary, however, had several references to “Freddy Vaughn” including a July 6 entry that said, “Freddy coming in late July.”"
    • Danville News, "Oliver North could have been source of leak on sting operation, lawmaker says", 1988/07/29: "A portion of a North notebook distributed at Thursday's hearing showed he had extensive knowledge of the DEA sting before the Times story was published. Moreover, the notebook also indicates he made or received a telephone call from Federico Vaughan, a key Sandinista official linked to the cartel, July 12, 1984. Hughes said investigators traced the phone number given as Vaughan's Managua residence and found the U.S. Embassy has rented the house since 1985. Those dual dislosures raise the possibility that Vaughan may have worked in fact for the U.S. government as part of a ploy to frame the Sandinistas."
    • LA Weekly, "COCAINE AND THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION", 1988/09/30-10/06
      • "Meanwhile, new evidence has surfaced indicating strongly that the entire case against the Sandinistas, photos included, was concocted by Oliver North and the CIA. Most telling is the new evidence about "Frederico Vaughan", the supposedly photographed aide to the comandantes In other media in 1985, it has been noted, "If Frederick Vaughan remains a mystery, his cousin's career is better known. Barney Vaughan is a banker in Miami, and he has tied to the contras. Vaughan....now works for BAC International Credit Corporation of Miami, and the popular bank is one of several Florida banks the General Accounting Office had identified as holding contra accounts...BAC International is part of a CIA-gun money laundering operation which has shuttled millions of taxpayer's dollars to the contras in violation of congressional restrictions. Vaughan, who acknowledges his connections with top contra leaders, says he has not seen his cousin since 1982, and denies any involvement with the Sandinista sting.""
      • "Other evidence indicates Vaughan had ties to Oliver North. Hughes made public two references from North's diaries, dated June 26, 1984, and July 17, 1984. One read, "Freddie Vaughan." The other said: "Freddie Vaughan coming in late July." A knowledgeable source told the Weekly that still-classified portions of North's diaries contain at least six references to Frederico Vaughan."
  • CIA background of Bill Clinton
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