Hidden government group linking JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11

[Robert Mady]

Paul, thank you for the reply, you have defined and refined the points extremely well, I agree with what you have posted.

I had not considered that HOOVER could have put an end to the pro Castro Cuban connection, but he certainly could have done so and did.

Excellent post, good food for thought!!!

I tried the quote button, it does nothing, or the multiquote button for whatever reason my buttons broken.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Robert Mady

[Paul Trejo]

...I tried the quote button, it does nothing, or the multiquote button for whatever reason my buttons broken.

Robert, if you see the buttons, but they do nothing, then probably your browser is out of date. Try Firefox Mozilla -- or just update your browser to its very latest version and try again.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

In any case, I want to summarize my position on this thread.

Peter Dale Scott is flatly mistaken in trying to generalize a solution for the JFK murder by linking it with "Structural Events" of the later 20th century -- e.g. Watergate, Iran/Contra and 9/11.

It's just pseudo-academic pablum, IMHO. His connections are made with English flamboyance, and not with historical accuracy.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Trejo - get over it. Your attacks on the esteemed Peter Dale Scott make you look stupid. You have reiterated this pont enough. Give it a rest already.

[Cliff Varnell]

In any case, I want to summarize my position on this thread.

Peter Dale Scott is flatly mistaken in trying to generalize a solution for the JFK murder by linking it with "Structural Events" of the later 20th century -- e.g. Watergate, Iran/Contra and 9/11.

It's just pseudo-academic pablum, IMHO. His connections are made with English flamboyance, and not with historical accuracy.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

A case can be made that the Harriman-Bush crime family played a central role in the JFK assassination, government sanctioned drug smuggling,

October Surprise '80, and 9/11.

Blue blood fingerprints are all over.

[Cliff Varnell]

"Hidden" government?

Was it really all that "hidden"?

Let's take a look at 4 pieces of Contemporaneous Analyses, 3 regarding the JFK assassination and 1 regarding the murder of the Ngo brothers in So. Viet Nam -- "deep" insights rendered while the post-assassination events were still unfolding, before the murder of Oswald.

1) "Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter," by Vincent Salandria.

http://politicalassa...m/2012/11/1560/

emphasis added

I explained [to Arlen Specter] that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman.
We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the
assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the
assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot.

Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot.
We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth.
In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.

"If Oswald was killed by a Jew...high level WASP plot."

Who were the highest level US Government blue blood White Anglo-Saxon Protestants on 11/22/63?

Averell Harriman -- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (#3 man at State) -- Skull & Bones 1913.
Mentored Prescott Bush (Skull & Bones'17) in the banking biz.

McGeorge Bundy -- National Security Advisor -- Skull & Bones 1940.

Richard McGarrah Helms - Deputy Director for Plans Central Intelligence Agency -- grandson of hotshot Rockefeller banker.

2) From autopsy-attendee FBI SA Francis O'Neill's sworn affidavit for the HSCA:

(quote on)

Some discussion did occur concerning the disintegration of the bullet. A general
feeling existed that a soft-nosed bullet struck JFK. There was discussion concerning
the back wound that the bullet could have been a "plastic" type or an "Ice" [sic]
bullet, one which dissolves after contact.

(quote off)

From autopsy-attendee FBI SA James Sibert's sworn affidavit for the HSCA:

(quote on)

The doctors also discussed a possible deflection of the bullet in the body caused
by striking bone. Consideration was also given to a type of bullet which fragments
completely....Following discussion among the doctors relating to the back injury, I
left the autopsy room to call the FBI Laboratory and spoke with Agent Chuch [sic]
Killion. I asked if he could furnish any information regarding a type of bullet that
would almost completely fragmentize (sic).

(quote off)

Here's the testimony of Charles Senseney before the Church Committee in 1975 regarding the development of high-tech weaponry at
Fort Detrick, Maryland, where a group of US military men operated within the US Army Special Operations Division under the cover of
an entity called "Staff Support Group," which was actually a CIA operation.

http://www.aarclibra..._6_Senseney.pdf
page 161

Senseney said that the FBI had been briefed on the existence of these weapons.
page 166

3) The Gary Underhill story. Underhill was a heavy-weight military affairs journalist who showed up in New York City the night of 11/22/63
at the home of friends Robert and Charlene Fitzsimmons.

From Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked, pg 496:

Quote

When Underhill arrived...it was late and he was excited and scared. The couple was preparing for a trip to Europe and Robert was already asleep.
Underhill spoke with Charlene (Charley) Fitzsimmons at length while she continued packing for the trip.

Underhill's concern was that he had become aware of a "clique" within the CIA--a clique dealing with weapons and gun-running and making money.
These individuals had Far Eastern connections, narcotics was mentioned, supposedly the clique was manipulating political intrigues to serve their own
ends. Underhill believed that these individuals had been involved with JFK's murder; he felt that JFK had become aware of their dealings and was about
to move against them in some fashion. He also believed that members of the clique knew that Underhill was aware of their dealings and that his own life ould well be in jeopardy.

Paranoid delusions or deep political insight?

4) William Corson's contemporaneous analysis of the overthrow and murder of the Ngo brothers in So Vietnam.

From Joseph Trento's Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5:

Quote

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing
has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools
and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy
immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he
came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his
brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long
public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full
confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963,
according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it,
“Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor,
was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about
Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Saigon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his
replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer,
John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role
has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge
for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

Harriman. SE Asia. CIA operatives within US Army Special Operations Division who didn't answer to institutional hierarchies.

Where there's smoke...

Edited October 24, 2014 by Cliff Varnell

[Paul Trejo]

Trejo - get over it. Your attacks on the esteemed Peter Dale Scott make you look stupid. You have reiterated this pont enough. Give it a rest already.

Esteemed by whom, Paul B.? Not everybody, surely.

Peter Dale Scott feeds the mind-set of wild conspiracy theories, including the more ridiculous ones, like Bush Family plots, Jewish plots, UFO plots -- and tries to link it all in with later US history, including Watergate, Iran/Contra, 9/11, the Iraq War and contemporary Middle Eastern politics.

It's the kind of thing that makes JFK research look stupid. So much for "Real Researchers".

Stick with the politics of 1963 -- that's the only way anybody will ever solve the JFK murder. Only historians will be able to crack this murder, ultimately, because political partisans only make the whole business look idiotic.

Let me say one last thing about the left-wing ideology today -- which resembles nothing so much as the right-wing ideology of 1963, with its paranoia over the CFR, the United Nations and International Bankers.

The core problem of American History was shown in stark relief in the Civil War -- it's the race problem. One hundred years after the Civil War we had the Civil Rights Movement. JFK and LBJ gave us Civil Rights legislation -- but what's obvious is that the wounds are still bleeding. One only has to look at the US news of 2014.

Southern Politics was outraged by Earl Warren's Brown Decision, and fed the flames of paranoia by calling the Civil Rights Movement a Communist Conspiracy. The John Birch Society fed off that paranoia, and made millions with their slogan, "Impeach Earl Warren."

In the words of the John Birch Society, Washington DC was the "Eastern Establishment." Just think about how popular that phrase was in the American South. The subversive tripe promoted by the John Birch Society was that the "Eastern Establishment" was Communist. Just think about how the South lapped that up. .

It was enough to mobilize enough wackos to murder JFK. That's exactly what happened. To finally solve the murder of JFK, learn the history of the USA ending in 1963. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

Edited October 25, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Actually Paul, the historical links Mr. Scott provides and spent his adult life researching in great detail are real. He is most certainly not a crazy conspiracist. If anyone reading this agrees with Trejo's assessment of Scott I'd welcome your contribution here.

[Gary Murr]

Actually Paul B., I daresay you will not get many, if any takers who will agree with Trejo's assessment of Scott.

[Paul Trejo]

Actually Paul B., I daresay you will not get many, if any takers who will agree with Trejo's assessment of Scott.

While you might be right about the popular opinion, Gary, that in itself proves nothing. No legitimate theory relies on a voting process. This is strictly a problem for logic and reason.

I will continue to argue -- as long as I'm permitted to speak on this Forum -- that a political partisan approach to the JFK murder is a waste of time.

It's been 50 years and the JFK murder has not yet been solved to the satisfaction of most Americans. That's a dismal result.

The despair over this contributes to wild theories. This began with Jim Garrison, who (despite his many accomplishments in this field) finally gave up and just blamed the CIA for everything.

That was the wrong approach. Jim Garrison was followed by his protégé, Joan Mellen, whose otherwise excellent book, Farewell to Justice (2005), suffers from this prejudice of Jim Garrison's, that the CIA must be behind everything. Therefore she makes wild leaps of logic and names all these street people, like Jack S. Martin, David Ferrie, Fred Crisman, and even elementary school dropout Thomas Edward Beckham, as CIA Agents!

It has become absurd. Everybody and his uncle looks like a CIA Agent. It's as bad as John Birch Society folks finding Communists under every bed.

Then, since the JFK readership has swallowed that fiction, it's just a short jump for an English professor like Peter Dale Scott to sell the book-buying public on equally wild theories involving COG, the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, Iran/Contra, 9/11 and so on.

It's a digression! You're off topic! Get back to 1963 and the murder of JFK! Otherwise, I'll conclude that you're simply giving up on it, and I won't sit by and let that happen.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

Edited October 25, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Steven Gaal]

an English professor like Peter Dale Scott

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

======================================================

PETER DALE SCOTT: CURRICULUM VITAE

Born Montreal, January 11, 1929. Married (1) Mary Elizabeth Marshall, June 16, 1956 (divorced, 1993): three children (Catherine Dale, Thomas, John Daniel). Married (2) Ronna Kabatznick, July 14, 1993. A Canadian citizen.

Education and Teaching:

B.A. (McGill University, Montreal), 1949. First Class Honors in Philosophy, Second Class Honors in Political Science.
Studied six months at Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris; and two years at University College, Oxford (1950-1952).
Ph.D. in Political Science (McGill), 1955. Dissertation on The Social and Political Ideas of T.S. Eliot.

1952-1953. Teacher at Sedbergh School, Montebello, Quebec.
1955-1956. Lecturer, Department of Political Science, McGill University.
1961-1966. Speech Department, University of California, Berkeley: Lecturer (1961); Acting Assistant Professor (1962); Assistant Professor (1963).
1966-1994. English Department, University of California, Berkeley: Assistant Professor (1966); Associate Professor (1968); Professor (1980). Retired 1994.

Professional Service

Foreign Service Officer, Canadian Department of External Affairs, 1957-1961: Twelfth and Thirteenth Sessions, United Nations General Assembly, 1957, 1958; Canadian Embassy in Warsaw, Poland (1959-1961); United Nations Conference on Statelessness (Geneva, 1959); United Nations Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities (Vienna, 1961)
Senior Fellow, International Center for Development Policy, Washington, D.C., June-November 1987.

Fellowships

Canadian Social Sciences Research Council, 1956-57. Guggenheim Fellow, 1969-1970.

Honors and Awards

International Center for Development Policy, Freedom Award, 1987.
Finalist, Canadian Governor-General's Award for Poetry, 1988.
Reed Foundation Poetry Chapbook, Dia Art Foundation, 1989.
Writer in Residence, University of Toronto, Fall 1992.
Honorable Mention, Mencken Awards, Best Book, 1992.
Sylvia Meagher Award, Coalition on Political Assassinations, 1996.
JFK Pioneer Award, JFKLancer, 1997.
Resident, Bellagio Study Center, Aug.-Sept. 1997.
Lannan Poetry Award, 2002 (with Alan Dugan).
Lannan Writing Residency, Marfa, TX, March-April 2004
Honoree at Symposium and Seminars, Open Center, New York City, March 13-20, 2010.

Two journal issues devoted to his poetry: Chicago Review, Fall 1998; Agni, 31/32 (1990).

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Posted 01 April 2014 - 04:12 PM

It has been stated that,"...we will never discover who killed John F. Kennedy. "

We can agree to disagree,for to me little "interpretation" is needed.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(from JFK Assassination: The Garrison Commission")

===========================================
It is fair to say that not much in the way of Caribbean intrigue
went on in those days without the CIA, or at least CIA operatives, having
a finger in it. Thus the allegations of Gary Underhill, a weapons
expert and sometime CIA "unperson," may be quite plausible [RAMPARTS,
June 1976]. Immediately after the assassination, a distraught Underhill
told friends that a semi-autonomous CIA clique which had been
profiteering in narcotics and gun-running was implicated in the
assassination. Several months later, Underhill was found dead of a
bullet would in the head; although police decided it was self-inflicted,
the circumstances indicated otherwise. When an old friend wrote to
Underhill's widow asking about his demise, the reply came from an
official of a now defunct Washington firm, Falcon Aeronautics, Inc.,which Underhill was not associated with. Falcon Aeronautics assisted CIA JM-Wave anti-Castro operations.
+++++++++++++++++++++
FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC.
Ratting4 1 FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC. Ratting class for FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC. is 4.
Company data
Company number: 600633
Incorporate date: 22.11.1960

Company type: DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION
(Gone but "NOT !!!" forgotten)
+++++++++++++++++++++++
The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs
=======================
Valentine deeply examines the practices of the CIA, carefully and skillfully
making a connection between it and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). Valentine reported that Jack Ruby was a FBN asset. The head of the FBN ,George White, worked from time to time with CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.
++++++++++++++++++++++
At a now defunct website was posted a page out of David Ferrie's phonebook.Next to the number for the CIA was penned next to it the extension that was identified as for Tom Karamessines.


http://www.history-m...RomanSaid_3.htm


#########################################################
NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe

http://books.google....id=VAbkogswOmEC

Ganser Daniele - ‎2005 - 336 pages

The CIA invested millions into the secret Greek army and built an entire ...
Karamessines set up the CIA headquarters in Greece located in Athens on the
fifth ... In 1962 Karamessines was forced to leave Rome amidst rumours that he
had ...
•SEE PAGE 217 background Karamessines.
########################################
•SEE also http://educationforu...?showtopic=3658 background Karamessines.

Current status: Revoked

Edited October 25, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Paul Trejo]

hidden government ? WAS GARY WEBB SUICIDED TO KILL NEW BOOK?

By: Blacklistednews

The movie Kill the Messenger on Gary Webb debuts in movie theaters across the United States today. Questions still remain as to whether the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who was betrayed by his colleagues for his brave investigative work, wasn’t “suicided” by the very forces whose crimes he endeavored to expose.-JFT

This post reminds me of the literature of Lyndon LaRouche in the 1990's, who was trying to alert the world to his findings that the British Monarchy had been involved in heroin traffic for over a hundred years, including the traffic in Hong Kong in the 1800's.

Their justification, argued LaRouche, was that the gargantuan amounts of capital raised by the traffic in vice had to be controlled by the British Monarchy, otherwise that capital would be used to vastly enrich pirates, international criminals or the Prussians.

There was no way to stop the drug trade -- it was already out of control in the 1800's. The only question was how to manage or control these Godzilla amounts of capital that arose from its very existence.

The British Monarchy, argued Lyndon LaRouche, decided to take control of it directly, and became the world's most powerful heroin smuggler. This also gave the British Monarchy international intelligence that they never dreamed possible before.

Now that the British Monarchy is no longer the Global Empire that it was in the 1800's and early 1900's, but the USA has taken over that dismal duty, the question must necessarily arise again -- is the War on Drugs truly winnable? Isn't it like the War on Poverty -- the more money you throw at it, the bigger it grows?

These are the problems of every Global Empire. It is naïve to imagine that the Global Empire can easily control the world. The world is far, far larger than most people seem to realize. Yet these problems are the problems of life and death for any Global Empire.

That said -- these topics about the "Hidden Government" are off topic when we're trying to solve the 1963 murder of JFK. It's inadequate to simply insinuate the theory of a Hidden Government, the way that Peter Dale Scott does.

By exploiting sensationalism within the market for conspiracy theories, writers like Peter Dale Scott fail to clarify the truth behind JFK murder -- on the contrary, they obscure it more and more.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

Edited October 25, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Steven Gaal]

Paul Trejo analysis of Peter Dale Scotts CV zero.

+++++++

The CIA and Drug-Trafficking: Affidavit by Peter Dale Scott

THE CIA AND DRUG-TRAFFICKING BY CONTRA SUPPORTERS

Affidavit by Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.

==

My name is Peter Dale Scott. I am an author with a doctorate in Political Science from McGill University. After four years as a diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service I taught for thirty-three years at the University of California, Berkeley.

Four of my books have dealt with the problem of drug-traffickers who owe their prominence and protection to their involvement with CIA-backed covert operations. The most relevant of these books is Cocaine Politics, co-authored with Jonathan Marshall and published in 1991 by the University of California Press. (Four of the chapters dealt with the subject of Contras and drug-trafficking, including the California network of Norwin Meneses.) (1)

At various times I have taken leave from teaching to conduct full-time research into covert politics. In 1970 I was a Guggenheim Fellow for a year. In 1973 I took leave again for six months, for part of which I was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. In 1987 I served in Washington for six months as a Senior Fellow at, and drug consultant to, the Center for International Development Policy, gathering information in support of the investigation into Drugs and Foreign Policy conducted at that time by Senator John Kerry. In that capacity I consulted with a number of experts in Washington inside and outside government. I was also a personal eyewitness to the falsity of a story published in the Washington Post (and subsequently retracted) which exonerated the Contras from involvement in drug-trafficking (2).

My researches into U.S. government involvement with drug-traffickers date back to 1970, when I wrote a book, The War Conspiracy, about the origins of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. I returned to this topic yet again in 1986, when I noticed that certain Cuban exiles I had already written about, some of them indicted or convicted drug-traffickers were involved in the Contra support movement in Costa Rica. (3)

After twenty-five years of research, I have come to believe, as I wrote in 1992, that “governments themselves, and the links they develop with major traffickers, are the key both to the drug-trafficking problem and to its solution.” (4)

The United States Government is by no means the only example of such involvement, but it is the one with the most deleterious impact on its own citizens.

One can see this impact in the efforts in the 1980s by the CIA, and later Oliver North, to arrange for extra-governmental support for the Contras. These arrangements led to documented U.S. government involvement with, and often support to, top-level drug-traffickers in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama, as well as with domestic traffickers in the states of Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and California. This recurring pattern of involvement with those who dominated the drug traffic cannot be dismissed as an accidental or coincidental aberration.

In a few cases, Contras and their supporters became traffickers after their contact with CIA officers. This was the case with Ricky Ross’s supplier, Danilo Blandon Reyes. The CIA might argue in its defense that Blandon, and others like him, were not traffickers at the time contact was made. But one hears recurring reports that such recruits were given to understand that funds should be raised for the Contras by any means, which was taken to include drug-trafficking. Blandon has testified that he heard this from a leading U.S. protégé in the Contras, Enrique Bermudez. Other, more senior Contra officials are said to have heard the same indirect guidance from at least one high-ranked CIA officer.

It is a matter of record that the CIA has also established contacts with those already known to the U.S. government as major narcotics traffickers. This was the case with Blandon’s supplier, Norwin Meneses, a highly publicized Contra supporter who had been listed as a trafficker in DEA records since the 1970s.

Officials in at least four law enforcement agencies have confirmed that Meneses was untouchable in this country in the era of Contra support. A key illustration of this was the so-called Frogman case in 1983, at that time the largest cocaine seizure ever made on the U.S. West coast.

Although 150 agents and police rounded up members of Meneses’ network, and over thirty of them were ultimately convicted, Meneses himself (so I have been personally told by one of his contacts, a fellow Contra supporter), was warned by law enforcement officials to leave town to escape arrest. Other sources in law enforcement have complained that Meneses was protected for reasons of “national security” (5). The protection given to Meneses was given to other traffickers as well. Jorge Morales in Miami testified under oath that he agreed to fly arms-for-drugs flights for the Contras after he was promised legal protection for them by two Nicaraguans, Marcos Aguado and Octaviano Cesar, who represented themselves to him as CIA agents (6).

Leslie Cockburn subsequently corroborated Cesar’s CIA status from no less than eight sources, including high-level administration officials in Washington (7).

Marcos Aguado was close to two other CIA-linked Contra supporters later indicted in Central America for drug-trafficking: John Hull in Costa Rica, and Norwin Meneses in California (8). (Neither Hull nor Meneses was ever prosecuted in the United States.) It remains to be established whether the cocaine introduced into Florida by Morales found its way to his friend and future drug-trafficking partner Norwin Meneses in California.

Morales made a point of letting CIA personnel know of his Contra-related drug-trafficking, to ensure his protection. Government behavior for two years confirmed that he was protected. Despite a previous indictment, and DEA objections, a court order permitted him to enter and leave the country on his drug business (9).

He was directed to land his drug planes at two government controlled airports, Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador and Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in Florida; and thereafter for two years arms and drugs were loaded and unloaded at Fort Lauderdale in broad daylight without any problems. Morales heard from one of his own informants that Florida law enforcement knew of at least one of his 1985 drug flights, but did not act on it (10). (Morales was ultimately indicted and arrested in 1986, after the Contra-drug story had been broken by AP.) (11)

In a 1990 drug case against Jose Abello in Oklahoma, one of Morales’ pilots, Fabio Carrasco, testified under oath that he had delivered millions of dollars of cocaine earnings to Octaviano Cesar and another Contra leader. He said that he had personally supervised flights of arms to Costa Rica which had returned [to Fort Lauderdale] with cocaine. He added that he believed this to have been done with CIA knowledge and approval. In this trial Carrasco was a federal prosecution witness (12).

CIA knowledge of drug-trafficking in support of the Contras was possibly admitted by Alan Fiers, in the mid-1980s the Chief of the CIA’s Central American Task Force. In a sworn deposition to the Congressional Iran-Contra Committees, the Task Force Chief said, “We knew that everybody around [Contra leader Eden] Pastora was involved in cocaine… His staff and friends [redacted] they were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling.” (13)

Whether or not they were named in the redaction to his deposition, we know that Octaviano Cesar and Marcos Aguado were top aides to Pastora, Aguado being the chief of his Air Force. Inasmuch as drug-trafficking in Costa Rica (where Pastora was based) was conducted almost exclusively by airplane, Fiers’ statement corroborates the claim of others that the CIA had knowledge of Aguado’s activities.

Major international drug traffickers who supported the Contras enjoyed the same kind of protection. A flagrant case in 1983-87 was that of the top drug trafficker or kingpin in Honduras, Juan Ramon Matta Ballesters. Matta was an integral part of the Contra support apparatus in that country. As Senator Kerry’s drug investigation revealed, Matta’s airline SETCO received supply contracts not just from the CIA-funded Contras, but from Oliver North and the U.S. State Department (14).

Newsweek (5/15/85) cited official estimates that Matta was responsible for perhaps one third of the cocaine reaching the United States. Yet the DEA station in Honduras was closed in 1983, as it was moving in on Matta. Matta himself remained untouchable until 1988, after Congressional support for the Contras was terminated altogether (15).

By this time Matta Ballesteros was sought by the DEA for the murder in Mexico of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena. Two of his associates and co-defendants in that murder case, Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Felix Gallardo of the then dominant Mexican Guadalajara cartel, have been identified in U.S. government records as major drug-traffickers who were also Contra supporters. A DEA Debriefing Report of their top informant Lawrence Harrison, introduced into a U.S. Federal Court in Los Angeles, reported how CIA-sponsored training of Contra guerrillas was conducted at a drug ranch owned by Rafael Caro Quintero near Veracruz. This training activity had been reported by two Mexican journalists in 1984, after which both journalists were murdered within a day of each other (16). Though a CIA spokesman at the time dismissed these charges as “nonsense,” they are corroborated from other sources (17).

According to the DEA Debriefings of Harrison and of Werner Lotz, another pilot for the Guadalajara cartel, Caro’s drug-trafficking partner, Miguel Felix Gallardo, was also a “big supporter” of the Contras; and advanced Lotz $150,000 to pass on to the Contras (18).

These coordinated drug-trafficking and Contra-supporting activities of Matta, Caro, and Felix Gallardo, all members of the Guadalajara cartel, were mirrored by the Contra-supporting drug-trafficking originating in Colombia and protected in Panama by Manuel Noriega. A witness in the Noriega trial testified that the Medellin cartel gave $10 million to the Contras (19).

The first drug case for which Noriega was indicted in Miami in 1988 involved flights of a Miami-based air company, DIACSA, owned by two convicted drug-traffickers, Floyd Carlton and Alfredo Caballero (the latter a veteran of the CIA’s Bay of Pigs). These drug flights, which eventually led to the conviction of all three men, were simultaneously Contra support flights. This no doubt explains why in 1986 the State Department chose to contract for “humanitarian assistance” to the Contras with the drug airline DIACSA, at the same time as it allotted a similar contract to the Matta-owned drug airline SETCO (20).

These State Department contracts are but one reminder that the U.S. Government assistance and protection for Contra-supporting drug traffickers was not confined to the CIA. Perhaps the most flagrant and undeniable case of such official assistance and protection was the opening to traffickers of the Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador.

Cocaine for the Meneses connection came from the Ilopango Air Force base in El Salvador, a closed base totally under government control, and virtually under control of the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1985 this control was exercised by Col. James Steele, who in 1985 was chief of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, and in that capacity oversaw the Contra supply operation at Ilopango at first hand. (Oliver North’s notebooks record a meeting on September 10, 1985, with Colonel Steele and former CIA officer Donald Gregg of Vice-President Bush’s staff, to discuss logistic support for the Contras.) (21)

This was at a time when Celerino Castillo, the Drug Enforcement Agent in Charge of Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica, was reporting to DEA HQ about a huge drug and gun smuggling operation that was run out of the Ilopango military airport by the ‘North Network’ and the CIA. According to Castillo’s later book,

“my reports contained not only the names of traffickers, but their destinations, flight paths, tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight. Hundreds of flights each week delivered cocaine to the buyers and returned with money headed for the great isthmus laundering machine in Panama (22).”

According to Castillo, the entire program was run out of Ilopango’s Hangars 4 and 5: “The CIA owned one hangar and the National Security Council ran the other.” (23)

Castillo also reported that the CIA in El Salvador requested a U.S. visa for one Contra pilot listed by the DEA as a trafficker, while his attempt to arrest another was forestalled by intervention from Washington (24). (Like other whistle-blowers inside the DEA, Castillo was eventually reprimanded and threatened with suspension.)

These are only some of the documented links between the U.S. Government and Contra-supporting drug traffickers. I hope that they are enough to demonstrate a systematic pattern of U.S. Government assistance and protection, involving the CIA but by no means limited to it.

September 30, 1996

————————————————– Footnotes

1. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection (Boston: South End Press, 1987); Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1972).

2. Cocaine Politics, 179-81.

3. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 42-49.

4. Peter Dale Scott, “Honduras, the Contra Support Networks, and Cocaine: How the U.S. Government Has Augmented America’s Drug Crisis;” in War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of U.S. Narcotic Policy, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Alan A. Block. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, 126.

5. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 106-09.

6. Kerry Hearings, I, 54-55; III, 278-80; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 112-14.

7. Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), 170.

8. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 113 (Hull); San Jose Mercury , August 18, 1996 (Meneses).

9. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics , 115, 231; Eddy, Cocaine Wars, 332: “To the chagrin of the DEA, Morales was allowed bond…and he was given extraordinary freedom by the court to travel abroad.”

10. Kerry Hearings, III, 361-68, 300-03. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics , 115.

11. Kerry Report, 53; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 117.

12. Tulsa World , April 7, 1990; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 115-16.

13. Iran-Contra Committees, Appendix B, Volume 3, pp. 1121, 1230; reprinted in Kerry Report, p. 38; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 8-9.14. Kerry Report, 44-45; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 56-58.

15. Christian Science Monitor , 3/7/88; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 63-64.

16. DEA Debriefing of Lawrence Harrison, 2/13/90; Los Angeles Times , 7/5/90; 7/8/90; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 41.

17. Washington Post, 7/6/90 (“nonsense”). A later written denial from the CIA asserted that the CIA “never used Mexico as a training site for the Nicaraguan contras or for Guatemalan guerrillas, nor did it use Mexican drug traffickers or territory as a conduit for support of any type to the contras” (Washington Post, 7/18/90, emphasis added). Note that this lawyerly language evades the charge made by defense attorneys who introduced the Harrison debrief: namely, that the CIA knew of the drug and training activities and tolerated them, in exchange for the drug lords’ support of the Contras. Cf. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 41.

18. DEA Debriefing of Werner Lotz, 11/20/87, introduced into Federal Court in August 1988; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 41.

19. New York Times, 11/26/91.

20. Kerry Report, 47-48; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 11, 70, 110, 116.

21. Peter Dale Scott, in War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of U.S. Narcotic Policy, ed. Alfred W. McCoy and Alan A. Block, cf. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 120.

22. Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon, Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1994), 138.

23. Ibid.

24. Castillo and Harmon, 144, 155-77.

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Posted before Paul Trejo comment zero.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Paul Trejo]

Paul Trejo analysis of Peter Dale Scotts CV zero.

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The CIA and Drug-Trafficking: Affidavit by Peter Dale Scott

THE CIA AND DRUG-TRAFFICKING BY CONTRA SUPPORTERS

Affidavit by Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.

==

My name is Peter Dale Scott. I am an author with a doctorate in Political Science from McGill University. After four years as a diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service I taught for thirty-three years at the University of California, Berkeley.

Four of my books have dealt with the problem of drug-traffickers who owe their prominence and protection to their involvement with CIA-backed covert operations. The most relevant of these books is Cocaine Politics, co-authored with Jonathan Marshall and published in 1991 by the University of California Press. ...

<snip>

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Posted before Paul Trejo comment zero.

Once again, Steven, what you've shown here is that Peter Dale Scott knows a lot about the politics of illegal Drugs and the Iran/Contra scandal.

Why then, should this have any bearing on the JFK assassination whatsoever?

This is a Forum to discuss the JFK assassination. Why both bringing up Watergate, Iran/Contra and 9/11 on a Forum dedicated to researching the JFK assassination?

If you want to propose a connection, then for heaven's sake propose one -- because this incessant insinuation is wasting time and space.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

[Mark Knight]

Sounds as if Mr. Trejo believes that everyone involved in the JFK assassination had either died or retired by the end of 1964, and was never involved in anything of consequence again in their lives.

Nope, not connected to anything else, nothing to see here, you people need to move along...The world stopped in 1964, and then started again anew in 1965 with all new players and all new structures.

He's convinced me.