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Subject: CAQ: CIA: The Cocaine Connection
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"NSC, CIA, and Drugs:  The Cocaine Connection"
By Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein
CovertAction Information Bulletin
Number 28 (Summer 1987)

Vince Bielski is a freelance journalist in San Francico. Dennis Bernstein
is a journalist in New York City, and one of the producers of the Pacifica 
Foundation's WBAI program, Contragate.

Ronald Reagan loves the contras and hates drugs: both
are wars he has publicly vowed to fight. The President and the
First Lady have given speeches from their home in the
White House extolling the virtues of a drug-free society and
urging the youth across America to "Just say no." Reagan has
even tied the two favored causes into one, neat, 
anti-Sandinista knot. For three years. Reagan has accused the
Nicaraguan government of drug trafficking, and he has used
the issue in pushing contra aid through the congress.

But the knot has recently begun to unravel, as evidence 
surfaces showing that the CIA, not the Nicaraguan government.
is facilitating the importation of cocaine into the United States
The evidence shows that the CIA tapped into the South
American-U.S. drug trade to keep the Nicaraguan contras
armed and fighting during the two-year prohibition against
U.S. support. Only two decades ago, the CIA became a
partner in the heroin trade stemming from its coven 
assassination programs in Southeast Asia. The consequence of this
complicity was a U.S. heroin epidemic which left thousands
dead on the streets of New York, Detroit and Los Angeles.
The CIA has shifted its focus to the contras in Central 
America, a major thorough-fare in the South American-U.S.
cocaine trade. And here at home, Americans are shocked at the
widespread use of cocaine and crack, the deadly cocaine 
derivative--in urban ghettos and corporate highrises.

The evidence from king pin traffickers, contras. U S.
mercenaries, and congressional investigators suggests 
extensive CIA involvement in the cocaine trade, from a top
cocaine producing family in South America to the pilots who
transport drugs. Blaming the contras for drug trafficking, as a
few in the press and Congress have done, misses the
point -- that the contras are a CIA operation. Yet, it would also
be mistaken to isolate the CIA as the culprit from the larger
White House conspiracy, managed by Lt. Col. Oliver North.
Reagan's contra pipeline -- as laid out in the current joint
House-Senate hearings apparently utilized well-known drug
traffickers in Miami and Costa Rica to fund and organize
weapons shipments.

Nothing better indicates the depth of U.S government 
involvement in drug trafficking than its direct dealings with the
family of Jorge Ochoa, one of Columbia's two largest drug
exporters, according to an eye-witness account. The Agency
apparently obtained cocaine directly from Ochoa in Columbia.
To move the illicit substance, the CIA also recruited drug
traffickers who piloted the narcotics from Colombia north to
refueling points in the northern Costa Rican jungle.

Costa Rica was the location where CIA-backed smugglers
interfaced with the contra military operation. For the traffickers,
Costa Rica's geographical location between Columbia
and the United States made it a perfect transshipment point. A
CIA operative, John Hull (see below) allowed the traffickers
to use several small jungle airstrips under his control to refuel
and store cocaine before shipping it to the United States. In
return, they paid user fees and made payoffs to the contras,
and on return trips from southern Florida, the traffickers
brought plane loads of weapons.

This evidence is also part of a Senate Foreign Relations
Committee probe into drug trafficking and the national security.
While the investigation, beginning in June, 1986, is now a
year old, it has yet to publicly report on any of its politically
explosive evidence showing that drug trafficking was a major
pillar of the Reagan doctrine for democracy in Central America .
Senator John Kerry (Dem.-Mass.) has been one of the few
committee members bold enough to implicate the CIA in
trafficking. It was his presentation at a closed-door committee
meeting in 1986 that forced the then Republican-led committee
to begin its own investigation.

"It is clear that there is a networking of drug trafficking
through the contras," Kerry said at the meeting, "and it goes
right up to...[contra leaders] Mario Calero, Adolfo Calero
Land] Enrique Bermudez."

"And in the name of national security," Kerry added, "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."

Organized Crime, Heroin, and the CIA

The CIA's use of drug smugglers to circumvent the Boland
Amendment banning support to the contras made practical
sense. Few groups could better execute clandestine weapons
deliveries to a Central American country than drug pilots.
These traffickers already had the necessary planes, pilots and
expertise to make weapons deliveries at hard-to-find jungle
locations. And this practical arrangement between seemingly
strange bed-fellows is as old as the CIA.

>From the time of its birth after World War Two, the CIA has
repeatedly depended on allies in the criminal underworld to
help fight its anti-communist wars. Alfred McCoy's "The
Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia" concluded that the result
of this historical relationship was the CIA's "inadvertent but
inevitable" role in drug trafficking, of which the contra war is
but the latest chapter.

In Sicily, for example, the Office of Strategic Services, the
forerunner of the CIA, used the Sicilian Mafia to fight the
Italian Communist Party after the war. In Marseille, France,
"the CIA recruited Corsican gangsters to battle communist
strikers and backed leading figures in the city's Corsican 
underworld who were at odds with local communists," McCoy
writes. This engagement helped "the Sicilian Mafia and the
Corsican underworld play a key role in the growth of Europe's
post war heroin traffic...which provided most of the heroin
smuggled into the United States over the next two decades."

European organized crime brought Southeast Asia into their
heroin trade as a source of opium in the 1950s.  U.S.
policy facilitated the heroin trade there by supporting anti-
communist armies in Burma and Laos which were deeply 
involved in the manufacturing and sale of heroin. From these
cases McCoy found CIA complicity in the drug trade on three
levels: ( 1 ) "coincidental complicity" by allying with groups
actively engaged in the drug traffic; (2) abetting the traffic by
covering up for known heroin traffickers and condoning their
involvement; (3) and active engagement in the transport of
opium and heroin " (See David Truong D.H., "Running Drugs
and Secret Wars." in this issue.)

The CIA's recent role in the South American-U.S. cocaine
trade fits squarely into the historical pattern.

The Ochoa-CIA-Contra Pact: An Eyewitness Account

The family of Jorge Ochoa, along with a few other South
American families, control most of the cocaine flow from
South America to the United States. In the South American
drug world, Ochoa is a drug lord, as is Carlos Leder, whose
extradition in early 1987 to the United States grabbed the 
attention of the national press for days.

Ironically, the CIA was striking business deals directly
with Ochoa, the evidence suggests, within a short time of the
DEA bust of Leder, its biggest in years. The evidence comes
from a major trafficker very close to the Ochoa operation who
in 1986 volunteered eye-witness evidence on the Ochoa-CIA
link to the FBI. A U.S citizen married to a Colombian
trafficker, the witness is known by her pseudonym "Wanda
Doe." The FBI subsequently used her as an undercover drug
trafficking informant, and in preparation for her testimony
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerrv's office
produced a "legal proffer" about what she knows.

On two occasions, the proffer reads, Doe witnessed the
loading of cocaine from the Ochoa family into CIA-owned
planes by CIA agents in Barranquilla, Columbia. In 1983,
while she was visiting the Ochoas to make a cocaine deal, she
saw "army trucks" being unloaded from a Hercules plane and
"tupperware type containers" loaded on the plane. She was told
by "Jorge Luis Ochoa that the plane was a CIA plane and that he
was exchanging drugs for U.S. guns ..., [that] these
shipments came each week from the CIA, [and that] two men in
green uniforms [unloading the plane] were CIA agents," the
proffer says.

In October, 1985, she saw a similar transaction in
Barranquilla with a plane "clearly marked as a Southern
Airways plane." Doe was told that the Southern Airways
plane "sometimes brought U.S. products such as washing
machines, gourmet food, and fancy furniture" in exchange for
cocaine .

Doe provided this evidence to the FBI before the Nicaraguans
shot down the C-123 cargo plane over Nicaragua carrying
Eugene Hasenfus in October. 1986. The log of a co-pilot
killed in the crash shows two visits of a Southern Air
Transport plane to Barranquilla in October. 1985.

The proffer says "that the FBI has told [Doe] that they have
confirmed many of the things she told them, land] that it was
difficult for them to respond to many of the things...because
there weren't enough agents."

The Drug Pilots

Two convicted drug traffickers now in federal prison in
Miami provide strong evidence of the CIA's role in smuggling
cocaine between Costa Rica and the United States. The most
important trafficker to come forward with evidence is George
Morales, a U S citizen, a multi-millionaire, a world-class
speed boat racer, and a king pin smuggler by U.S. standards.
Morales. a resident of Ft. Lauderdale. Florida. is a key 
witness in the Senate probe, according to a congressional 
investigator. Morales' credibility is bolstered by the fact that he
has assisted the CIA on another operation in Latin America
separate from the contras, the investigator said.

Morales said in a CBS report that he was recruited to set up
a contra air force to deliver weapons to the contras by CIA
operative Octaviano Cesar. CBS was told by eight sources that
Cesar works for the CIA. Morales said in an interview with
these writers that he "was supplying aircraft and pilots, and
other financial support. We were flying weapons from Florida
to Ilopango [a military base in El Salvador] and then to Costa
Rica." He said his pilots made numerous such trips between
1984 and 1985.

As evidence, Morales said he gave a plane to Costa
Rican-based contra leader Adolfo Chamorro in 1985. He said
the plane was a Cessna Titan 404, tail number N5273J. Federal
Aviation Administration records show that Chamorro tried
to register this plane in the U.S. in May 1985. Morales said he
also contributed $250,000 to contras on a quarterly basis,
while working for contra leaders Alfonso Robelo and Fernando
Chamorro.

In return, the Agency assisted Morales, and his traffickers
smuggled "thousands of pounds of cocaine into me United
States through Costa Rica," the investigator said. "Morales
was successful in the scheme. He exploited the CIA 
connection to its fullest."

Providing the Intelligence

It appears that one form of assistance given to the
traffickers was intelligence information to help them avoid
detection when entering the United States. Morales said the
CIA assured him that his phone lines would not be monitored
by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug trafficker
Wanda Doe provides evidence that the CIA used its air traffic
intelligence information in smuggling drugs. "She was told by
Michael Cocham that Cocham is past or present CIA." the
proffer said, "that Cocham has knowledge of air traffic
patterns and clearances for military planes, and that Cocham
uses this knowledge to facilitate narcotics trafficking, that
Cocham was seeking to move 9000 kilos from Miami to
Tampa by van and from Tampa to Los Angeles by private
planes which he controls, [and] that his pilots are ex-U.S
military fliers."

Convicted drug trafficker Michael Tolliver, who is serving
time in a federal prison in Miami, said under oath that he was
allowed to use a U.S. military installation to smuggle
marijuana into the Florida. Tolliver said he flew a shipment of
weapons to the contras in Honduras under the supervision of
Felix Rodriguez, a key operative in the White House arms
network. On the return trip to Florida, Tolliver said he
transported 25,000 pounds of marijuana from a CIA-built
airstrip in Honduras to Homestead Air Base near Miami.

Another source of assistance given the traffickers was the
use of hidden airstrips in northern Costa Rica controlled by an
American rancher named John Hull.

American Rancher Turned CIA Operative

John Hull, a wealthy U.S. rancher from Indiana with dual
citizenship and 8,000 acres of fertile land in Costa Rica, is a
key link in the CIA's drug scheme. According to a June, 1986,
memorandum on contra gun running from the Miami U.S.
Attorney's Office, "It is unclear whether Hull has had an 
official role in the U.S. sponsored contra operation since March
1984. [Costa Rica CIA station chief Joseph F.] Fernandez
denied that Hull has been an operative for the CIA...since that
time. Hull, however, has allegedly made remarks that suggest
otherwise." Hull also told his mercenaries that he worked for
the National Security Council, and on several occasions he met
with North in Washington, according to the Tower report.

The contra military operation and the drug trafficking came
together in Costa Rica under Hull's command. He was the
FDN's commander in Costa Rica, and established contra
military bases on his ranch land from which at least two 
military raids into Nicaragua were launched, according to Peter
Glibbery and Steven Carr, two of Hull's mercenaries. Hull
also controlled many airstrips in the area, which were used to
deliver weapons and supplies to Hull during the congressional
ban.

Hull allowed the traffickers who delivered the weapons to
also use the airstrips for transporting cocaine from South
America. Morales transported tons of cocaine into the United
States through Hull's airstrips, and paid Hull for the service.
the Senate investigator said. "George Morales was close
enough to Hull that he can describe the color of Hull's bedroom
dresser," the investigator said. Hull said in an interview that
he has never allowed his airstrips to be used by traffickers,
though he admitted that traffickers did use other airstrips in the
area.

Additional evidence against Hull comes from convicted
drug smuggler Gary Betzner, who said in a prison interview
that he flew arms to Hull's ranch and l,000 kilos back to
Florida as one of Morales contra pilots in 1984. And Steven
Carr told a fellow mercenary interviewed by these writers that
he was given the job of guarding the cocaine shipments on
Hull's land, before he died under mysterious circumstances in
Los Angeles in late 1986 of an accidental cocaine overdose.

Evidence continues to surface, as in a recent CBS report,
which stated that U.S. Customs Commissioner William Von
Raab "hit the roof' when he found out that the CIA had
employed Michael B. Palmer. Palmer, who was under federal
indictment for drug-smuggling, was hired by the CIA to fly
covert flights to Central America.

Bay of Pigs Revisited: The Cuban-American Connection

The tale of CIA complicity in drug trafficking is not 
complete without describing the role of Cuban-American anti-
communists in Miami. They rose to national prominence in
the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961, arid while
many remained with the CIA, others went out on their own. In
the ensuing years, they honed the skills taught them by the
CIA in a series of anti-communist bombings in Miami. They
also greatly expanded the local narcotics trade, with eight 
percent of the Bay of Pigs veterans already having been convicted
of drug trafficking. Not surprisingly, they have been called
into action again as foot soldiers in the U.S. government's
arms-cocaine pipeline.

The Miami Cuban-Americans trained the contras and
facilitated mug trafficking under Hull's command. Hull said
his "humanitarian assistance to the contras" has been 
assisted by Felipe Vidal, Rene Corbo and Francisco Chanes --three
Cuban-Americans who as of 1986 were under a Miami FBI
investigation for drug trafficking out of Costa Rica, according
to a June, 1986 memorandum from the House Select 
Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control and other sources.

The hardest evidence to date of the Hull-Cuban-American
connection is a March, 1985 arms shipment from Florida to
Hull's ranch which is now under investigation by the Miami
U.S. Attorney's Office. The arms were stored at the Miami
home of Chanes, along with three kilograms of cocaine, valued
at about $75,000, according to Jesus Garcia, another 
Cuban-American who assisted on the shipment. Garcia said
Chanes paid for the flight with $8,000, and Corbo was on the
plane as it left Florida.

This cocaine-financed shipment is also directly linked to
Oliver North. Robert Owen, North's "courier" to the contras,
witnessed the arrival of the weapons on Hull's airstrip in
Costa Rica, according to Glibbery, who was also there.

The Bi-Partisan Coke Coverup

The current Iran/contra investigation of the joint House-
Senate panel has been a forum for propagating the idea of a
bi-partisan foreign policy, which amounts to a one-dimensional,
military crusade against communism. Exposing the
White House and the CIA's complicity in drug trafficking
would produce the much feared congressional dissent and stall
the crusade As a result, panelists have allowed witnesses to
make categorical denials about their role in drug trafficking
without presenting the hard evidence against them. For 
example, during his testimony before the panel, Robert Owen
was not asked any questions about the drug traffickers' role in
the March 1985 arms shipment which he was involved in. Yet
evidence was readily available to the panelists that the flight
was funded by drug money and organized by smugglers.

The cover up of the drug trafficking, however, appears to
have begun with the CIA.

National Security and the CIA Cover Up

Evidence that the CIA has actively tried to cover up its own
drug operation comes from a transcript of June, 1986, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee meeting. The CIA apparently
blocked federal drug investigations of contra supporters to
prevent the evidence from spreading.

At the meeting, Senator Kerry said: "I am incensed at the
notion that in the name of...national security we are allowing
drugs to come into this country....

"The contra infrastructure consists of the supply lines for
the contras, used to move men, money, and supplies and
munitions to the contras.... They have been able to gain a
license, if you will, of access to airfields, of the muting of
Customs officials, an ability to be able to circumvent the law.
in the name of national security. And in the name of national
security, 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."

One federal drug investigation that was called off targeted
FDN leader Enrique Bermudez. He was the target of a 
government-sponsored sting operation He has been involved in
drug running.... And the law enforcement officials know that
the sting operation was called back in the interest of protecting
the contras," Kerry said.

When asked by Senator Nancy Kassenbaum (Rep -Kans.)
about approaching the CIA for help with the Senate investigation,
Kerry said, "Let me say that I would be amazed if the CIA
were to be very cooperative in this. We had a meeting with the
CIA. [They} jumped out of their seats at some of the stuff that
they heard we were thinking of looking at."

A CIA Plant?

The cover up has also been helped along by the appointment
of a 35-year CIA veteran to the House-Senate investigation to
probe CIA wrongdoing in Costa Rica. Thomas Polgar. a 
former CIA station chief in Vietnam, is also currently an active
member of the Virginia-based Association of Former 
Intelligence Officers, a CIA lobbying organization. Polgar
traveled to Costa Rica in April, was led around by the U..S.
embassy there which was deeply involved in the arms
network and didn't bother to interview Hull and others linked
to CIA trafficking in Costa Rica. Polgar did reveal what side of
the investigation he was on when he told local reporters at the
Tico Times, a Costa Rican weekly, that he doubted that "a 
conservative farmer like Hull would traffic in drugs."

A Leak, a Murder, a Death Threat, and a Set Up

The witnesses and investigators of the drug trafficking
have had a rough time staying alive and out of jail

Leaks to the press about what Wanda Doe knows have
forced investigations into the evidence to close down, and
have ruined Doe as an extremely valuable informant into the
drug world by forcing her into hiding. Laurel Marc-Charles,
Doe's attorney, believes the Justice Department sat on the
evidence, then leaked it to the rightwing Washington Times,
which ran articles in January, 1987, suggesting that Doe had
"altered her story" after talking with Senator Kerry's staff. "I
simply know of no other circumstance in which the Department
of Justice has acted so irresponsibly," the attorney said.

It appears that those involved the CIA-cocaine scheme have
also resorted to murder to keep things secret. One of the first
sources to surface on Hull's connection to trafficking was
Hull's personal assistant, a contra known as David. He
passed the information on to Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan,
two Costa Rican-based American reporters who work for CBS
and BBC in the spring of 1985. According to Costa Rica 
authorities, in July, David was kidnapped and brought to Hull's
ranch, and then tortured and killed.

Then in April of this year, Hull threatened mercenary Peter
Glibbery with death. Glibbery, who is in a Costa Rica prison
for violating the country's neutrality law, said Hull's threat
came after he refused to sign a document retracting the
evidence he had given federal authorities about Hull's contra
activities. The document also referred to Senator Kerry as a
"communist." After Glibbery refused to sign. Hull said, "I'll
ruin your family And you'll die just like Steven Carr died.
Don't you know the CIA killed Carr?" Glibbery said.

One month later, the Christic Institute, a non-profit law firm
which has been in the forefront in developing evidence on the
contra-cocaine connection, was the target of a bizarre drug set
up in Costa Rica. The Washington based Institute has filed a
civil law suit in federal court in Miami against Ret. Gen.
Richard Secord, Ret. Gen. John Singlaub, John Hull and other
figures in the Iran/contra scandal for their alleged participation
in an arms-drugs-assassination conspiracy to help the
contras. The Institute has recently taken sworn depositions
linking Hull to the 1984 terrorist bombing in Nicaragua which
was intended to kill renegade contra leader Eden Pastora, but
instead killed eight others, including three U.S. journalists. A
Costa Rican security official said Hull was traveling with
Amac Galil, the Libyan anti-Qaddafi terrorist who planted the
Bomb, three weeks before the blast in Costa Rica.

While lawyers from the Institute were in Costa Rica taking
the depositions from witnesses, the plaintiffs in the case,
Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, received a package of
cocaine in a small box at the post office. Enclosed was a letter,
supposedly from Nicaraguan interior minister Tomas Borge,
saying "Dear Tony and Martha, sell this for me.... The
[Sandinista] commandantes are very happy with your 
mission . "

Costa Rican narcotics police were waiting at the post office
and arrested the reporter's secretary after she picked up the
package. And Institute lawyer Tom Kellenberg was taken
into custody by the narcotics police and beaten. But evidently
the set up was too obvious and charges were never brought
against Institute workers.

Blaming the Sandinistas

"I know that every American parent concerned about the
drug problem," Reagan said, "will be outraged to learn that top
Nicaraguan government officials are deeply involved in drug
trafficking . "

Some panelists at the hearings have repeated Reagan's
thinly based accusation, despite the evidence to the contrary.
The administration has bolstered its claim with photographs
taken by DEA informant and former drug smuggler Barry Seal,
which allegedly showed a top Sandinista official in Nicaragua
handling narcotics bound for the United States.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported recently that the
DEA "could find no information beyond Mr. Seal's word tying
any Nicaraguan official to the drug shipment." The administration
claims were also refuted by Deputy CIA Director
Richard Kerr, who said at a National Drug Enforcement Policy
Board meeting that "There is no solid evidence to Support"
charges of Cuban-Nicaraguan drug trafficking, according to a
recent Jack Anderson column.

Public opinion, however, influenced by concern over the
current cocaine and crack epidemic, doesn't always follow the
trends set in Washington. Witness a recent editorial in the
Charlston Gazette, in West Virginia, entitled "Just Say No."

"The CIA apparently used drug smugglers to ferry arms to
contra bases.... [T]hese accusations must be investigated. If
nothing else, U.S. foreign policy has been tarnished; only a
thorough going-over will clean it up. Meanwhile we have a
suggestion for Congress next time the president asks for tax
dollars to support his so-called 'freedom fighters': Just say
no."

CovertAction is online at:
http://www.worldmedia.com/caq/

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