San Salvador place
Explore in graph → Export claims (CSV) ↓
Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Ilopango Air Baseplace · 16Felix Rodriguezperson · 11Contrasorganization · 10Guatemalacountry · 8Celerino Castillo IIIperson · 7CIAintelligence service · 5Juan Rafael Bustilloperson · 5DEAintelligence service · 4Nicaraguacountry · 4Salvadoran Armed Forcesorganization · 4Luis Posada Carrilesperson · 4Hondurascountry · 4Sandinistasorganization · 4Romero Guerreraperson · 4Costa Ricacountry · 4David Castilloperson · 3United Statescountry · 3Death Squadsorganization · 3Alan Fiersperson · 3El Salvadorcountry · 3Óscar Romeroperson · 3Drug Enforcement Administrationorganization · 3Colombiacountry · 2Argentinacountry · 2
Claims (3)
Felix Rodriguez appointed
San Salvador documented
“who had a remarkable career with the CIA, becoming a paramilitary specialist, i.e. Operation Gladio. Among other operations he had been involved in was the execution of Sheikh Havera. In the early 1985, Rodriguez appeared in El Salvador as …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 14 @ 14:35
Francisco Garola Baseli trafficked
San Salvador documented
“When the agents announced that they were arresting the men for smuggling the cash out of the country, Garola claimed diplomatic immunity because his mother was a Costa Rican vice consul in New Mexico. In court records, federal agents charge…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 14 @ 35:30
Contras trafficked
San Salvador book_quoted
“The Contras were also dealing in cocaine, he told Castillo. He said they were using a small air force to do it that was based at Ilopango, and they were ferrying war materials for the cause. He justified the trafficking by blaming the U.S. …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 14 @ 9:37
Mentions (62)
▶ 24:55
Then when the demonstrators reached San Salvador's Central Plaza, snipers fired at them from surrounding building tops and at least 21, left 21 people dead and 120 seriously wounded. And some reportedly, it was reported that some people fro…
▶ 25:54
A week later, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, an outspoken critic of the government's human rights violation, called on President Carter, Christian to Christian, to cease providing military aid. He was assassinated then. In hi…
▶ 1:31:49
oil fields and the connection with the JFK assassination is by looking into Chechnya when that event happened. And that's how I've gained all of this knowledge is one thing leads to another, leads to another. So having said that, just like …
▶ 1:35:02
All around the world. OK, so if you look at, you know, look at what El Salvador did. They dismantled their entire system. Argentina had a big bust in 2020 that took out a lot of their syndicate members as well.…
▶ 1:35:39
are mislabeled as nationalist, as if that's a derogatory thing, that have taken control of some of these countries, like in Italy, Argentina, El Salvador, just to name a few, that it portends to be a good news story, as well as what Trump d…
▶ 36:19
ventures that we've looked into because remember what we were talking about when in Nicaragua they formed those camps on the outside of Nicaragua and recruited from those countries their paramilitary to then launch them into Nicaragua we us…
▶ 1:02:26
And it goes back to the part of this book in the earlier chapters that we were reading about how Barry Seale landed his plane throughout a bale of cocaine, took a picture in Nicaragua. And then everybody in the CIA controlled media ran with…
▶ 1:03:38
Those weapons were being ferried out on aircraft down to Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, where all the death squads were, and they all need lots of guns, and they were bringing drugs back on the same aircraft. And then to find an entire …
▶ 1:25:59
I think 1,000 kilo shipments were not unheard of that scale because all of a sudden they seem to have unlimited sources of supply. According to former Menendez aide Enrique Miranda, Menendez drug-laden airplanes were flying out of military …
▶ 3:34
to basically outline the entire operation that was being ran out of El Salvador. So he got some people that began telling him how many of the hangers at, I'm not even sure how you say the name, it's I-L-O-P-A-N-G-O, El Opango.…
▶ 4:04
air base in El Salvador. That's where they're running a significant portion of the arms, the drugs, and the air operations out of. So, and it's under the control of the El Salvadorian death squad, narco-terrorists, and it's where Felix Rodr…
▶ 4:35
So it says it didn't take him very long to discover what was going on at the airbase. Two days into his new job as the DEA's regional office in Guatemala City in October 1985, Castillo said the agent in charge, Robert Stia, took him aside a…
▶ 5:32
Whatever they were doing at the military airfield outside of San Salvador couldn't possibly concern him. At any rate, it wasn't as if he was going to be spending a lot of time in El Salvador, though he was the country's only DEA agent. Cast…
▶ 5:32
Whatever they were doing at the military airfield outside of San Salvador couldn't possibly concern him. At any rate, it wasn't as if he was going to be spending a lot of time in El Salvador, though he was the country's only DEA agent. Cast…
▶ 6:05
Besides, El Salvador in the late 1985s had all of the makings of a very sorry posting. The war-torn country produced no drugs, and as far as anyone knew, there was no major drug rings operating inside. It was as little concern to an America…
▶ 10:06
was trying to impress him or just pull his leg. The idea of the U.S. government sponsoring an operation dabbling in drugs struck the six-year DEA veteran as absurd. The next time he was in El Salvador, Castillo said that, let's see, he boun…
▶ 10:43
Guerrera, who owned a coffee shop in San Salvador. Guerrera was working for the DEA as a result of a pending cocaine trafficking indictment in San Francisco, where he had lived for several years. While hiding out in San Salvador, Guerrera p…
▶ 10:43
Guerrera, who owned a coffee shop in San Salvador. Guerrera was working for the DEA as a result of a pending cocaine trafficking indictment in San Francisco, where he had lived for several years. While hiding out in San Salvador, Guerrera p…
▶ 11:14
that wanted him in jail back in the United States. He had also insinuated himself into the death squads in El Salvador Arena Party and had risen to very high ranks in the party structure there. To Castillo's surprise, Guerrero told him that…
▶ 11:14
that wanted him in jail back in the United States. He had also insinuated himself into the death squads in El Salvador Arena Party and had risen to very high ranks in the party structure there. To Castillo's surprise, Guerrero told him that…
▶ 11:44
that the information about the drugs was probably true. He heard the same rumors, and he confirmed that there was indeed a small Air Force base there, and that allegedly they were flying supplies to the Contra. But it really wasn't very sec…
▶ 12:14
The Contra Air operation was being ran quite openly and that a lot of his friends knew about it throughout the local area. The woman selling tortillas at the gate of the Air Force Base could tell you what was going on there. The assistant r…
▶ 12:14
The Contra Air operation was being ran quite openly and that a lot of his friends knew about it throughout the local area. The woman selling tortillas at the gate of the Air Force Base could tell you what was going on there. The assistant r…
▶ 14:35
who had a remarkable career with the CIA, becoming a paramilitary specialist, i.e. Operation Gladio. Among other operations he had been involved in was the execution of Sheikh Havera. In the early 1985, Rodriguez appeared in El Salvador as …
▶ 15:02
working on helicopter-based counterinsurgencies into and attacking the FARC in Colombia. While Rodriguez had always claimed, sometimes under oath, that he was retired from the CIA, and in El Salvador, mainly as a volunteer and a private cit…
▶ 15:58
of our efforts in San Salvador and made adjustments in the undertaking that left certain questions, certain activities that we had, it left a void, said, unquote, said Byers in 1992. Quote, Felix Rodriguez was put into, sent to El Salvador …
▶ 15:58
of our efforts in San Salvador and made adjustments in the undertaking that left certain questions, certain activities that we had, it left a void, said, unquote, said Byers in 1992. Quote, Felix Rodriguez was put into, sent to El Salvador …
▶ 16:27
was going to take over the responsibilities, or at least in part, take over those responsibilities, unquote, not as a volunteer, but as a worker. And we know that he was reporting to Donald Gregg directly to the National Security Advisor of…
▶ 16:57
El Opango began with a very strange step. Shortly before he left Washington, D.C. to get final approval for his mission to El Salvador, he received a call from a friendly private eye in Miami who wanted to meet with him. And they wanted him…
▶ 19:31
date the Contras' use of Ilopango to September 1985 when North wrote to Rodriguez asking him to use his influence with the Salvadoran Air Force commander Juan Rafael Bustillo, a secure hangar for the Contras to use as supply flights. Rodrig…
▶ 19:56
He greased the skids with Bustillo and eventually became the overseer of Norse Contra resupply operations at the El Salvador base. The Contras had been using El Opango with General Bustillo's blessing since 1983, when Norwin Menendez's frie…
▶ 28:04
He spent 10 years in jail. He escaped in the summer of 1985 and went underground. He resurfaced at the airbase in El Salvador in 1986, working as Felix Rodriguez's right-hand man, telling investigators that Rodriguez and other Cuban friends…
▶ 28:36
and relocate to El Salvador. Upon arriving in El Salvador, Posada stayed with Rodriguez for two or three days. Rodriguez then helped Posada get a house in San Salvador where he was living for the next year or two, running the airbase for Fe…
▶ 28:36
and relocate to El Salvador. Upon arriving in El Salvador, Posada stayed with Rodriguez for two or three days. Rodriguez then helped Posada get a house in San Salvador where he was living for the next year or two, running the airbase for Fe…
▶ 29:07
Though allegations of contra drug trafficking was swirling around the El Salvador base, DEA agent Castillo was having difficulty getting firsthand evidence of it. For one thing, the air base was very protective. It sat high atop a plateau s…
▶ 29:37
tightly guarded by San Salvadorian military. If he was ever going to find out the truth, he figured he needed to get on that side of the base. He went to the Salvadoran Air Force commander, Bastillo, and asked for permission, but was given …
▶ 30:04
The agent from the DEA branch office in Guatemala City came to San Salvador seeking access to the air base. The New Republic reported in 1990, adding that Bastillo stalled all such requests for Castillo. There was never a good reason given …
▶ 30:04
The agent from the DEA branch office in Guatemala City came to San Salvador seeking access to the air base. The New Republic reported in 1990, adding that Bastillo stalled all such requests for Castillo. There was never a good reason given …
▶ 30:34
So Castillo improvised. He recruited a Salvadorian named Merga, who wrote the flight plans for private planes on the civilian side of the base. Merga had excellent contacts on the military side and could come and go at will. He became Casti…
▶ 31:37
A one secret 1992 interview with the FBI ex-CIA agent Posada recounted that the resupply project was always looking for people to carry cash from the United States into El Salvador for Posada to disperse. They were always looking and worrie…
▶ 33:02
Garola Baseli. He was one of El Salvador's most influential families. How Chico Garola wound up in El Opango flying for the Contras is an illuminating tell. He should have been sitting in federal prison in the United States.…
▶ 21:40
But he said his impression was that the phrase was common usage in the military before an inspection. I've had a lot of inspections in the military. I've never, ever said I was going to jail. Just saying. Colonel Pena, another Bay of Pigs v…
▶ 22:11
on the Civil War in El Salvador, you know, where we were training the death squads and then pretended they were a political party. Pena was a close friend of former CIA agent, the star of our show, Felix Rodriguez, who was overseeing Norse …
▶ 18:26
Could we ask you to please not print anything until we've talked again? Can you give me a week? I told him I'd wait for his call. When Gary returned to Sacramento, he phoned a former DEA agent, Castillo, the guy that was down in El Salvador…
▶ 23:59
been among the founders of the Contras. And he said Menendez's chief aide, Enrique Miranda, had admitted at trial that Menendez sold cocaine for the Contras, flying it out of the airbase in El Salvador into military airfields in Texas. In s…
▶ 29:02
a fellow ambassador. In light of Emundo's murder, Norwin figured the Sandinistas probably had the same fate in mind for him, and he left Nicaragua in early June of 1979. He caught a flight to El Salvador, went to Ecuador for a while, then t…
▶ 36:56
At the height of the campaign, residents of the capital city, San Salvador, would wake up to find 40 new bodies every morning. The Salvadoran government officially denied any connection with the death squads, but they were running them. The…
▶ 37:52
Power Party and its leader, Roberto Dias Buen. He actually ran all the death squads. He was reported running the death squads leaked to the assassination of San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, allegedly by Hitman from the FDN's predeces…
▶ 51:26
But the real purpose, LaFrance said, was to set up an operation in El Salvador that would allow us to get around U.S. laws to supply guns to the Contras. It was much easier to build the weapons down there because then you didn't have to wor…
▶ 41:26
Now, remember, Alan Fiers is the guy that was covering for the corrupt DEA in El Salvador, where they were running everything out of El Palapango, whatever the airport is there, with the death squads in El Salvador. He covered all of the op…
▶ 10:47
And as you guys know, I am not making apologies for the role that the military played in all of this because it sickens me. But at the same time, I'm not going to ignore the fact that the majority of the military's actions were based on CIA…
▶ 31:07
as Jacob Esserling had done with Tom Mann in Guatemala when Mann had been the ambassador to El Salvador. But this had been voluntary. After a 1958 interagency study, Eisenhower gave the CIA virtually complete autonomy, directing the ambassa…
▶ 28:43
But the CIA doesn't know anything about any of this stuff. There, Posada worked as a helper. He rented three houses in nice districts for Sawyer's pilots and a hotel in San Salvador for visitors and the mechanics. You know, doing logistics …
▶ 1:26:02
from the 60s through the 80s the catholic church kind of declared anathema yeah no no not that and they all got disappeared no no um oh shoot it was um there was like six of them that were assassinated um oh shoot i want to say it was in gu…
▶ 38:12
Actually, his advice would be simply close the CIA since I find their intelligence track record abysmal and vastly overrated. They have been politicized since the beginning. 100% agree with that assessment. Chapter three, El Salvador. Saler…
▶ 39:46
His future with the DEA, however, was cut short after he exposed what he saw as corrupt operations in Central America being undertaken through the sponsorship of another federal agency and the White House. That's at Il Pango in El Salvador.…
▶ 40:46
El Salvador. Those airport hangars, Castillo discovered, were serving as weapons in narcotic trans-shipment sites for funding and arming the U.S.-backed Contras. That was prohibited by the Boeing Amendment. From that moment forward, Castill…
▶ 41:18
Gonzalez, who retired after a long career in the DEA, his last post as the head of the agency's El Paso, Texas field office. Gonzalez told the author, quote, they ruined his reputation over the stuff that happened in El Salvador and he beca…
▶ 1:01:31
The New York Times reported in 1992, quote, Felix Rodriguez, a retired CIA officer who spent most of his career on the shadowy side of espionage business, appeared today in federal court to testify in the trial of the agency's former chief …
▶ 54:33
was going to be used to avoid that as well. Representatives of the Contras came to the reservations often for weapons demonstrations. Oh, we'll take five of those. We'll take 10 of those. It was like a shopping mall for terrorists. Then the…
▶ 51:33
It goes on to say, Cal would gradually involve themselves in all of Latin America's domestic security forces, intelligence services, military, paramilitary, death squads, including using Cuban immigrants, Alpha 66, which is basically the CI…
▶ 54:59
Howe also demanded that they be excommunicated from the church. Various lists of individuals were sent to the Pope. Most of the people on those lists, they send them to the Pope to have them excommunicated. But most of everybody on that lis…