The Colonel Corner Dark Alliance Part 12

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Transcript

0:00 Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, Colonel. How are you? Great. Good news is that all of the indications for Dwayne is on the positive side. So, yeah, prayers definitely help. He will not be able to join us for dinner tonight, but everything is looking much better than what we had thought. So thank you all for your prayers.

0:30 Okay. Can I give you a puppy update just because I'm so excited and so thrilled. We worked all yesterday on getting in and out of the truck calmly and riding around. And she passed through the vet's office with flying colors and got her first round of shots and wormed. Cool. Yeah. She's a rock star. We like those kind of pets. Amen. Yep. All right. Let's get started.

0:59 So yesterday we left off with definitely confirming that Lister was involved in the CIA. So we're going to start from there. This is diving back into Costa Rica and their lack of any enforcement. The number of American agents stationed in Costa Rica exploded during the Contra years.

1:31 The reconnaissance aircraft spy satellites made routine overflight, photographing all of northern Nicaragua for the Contra War and monitoring Sandinista troop movements in rural airfields where the Contra is used for their supply flights. Now, what's interesting to me about this from my Air Force experience is we've got.

2:00 like a small army down there. And we never discovered any drug trafficking. And we never discovered any arms trafficking with all of the reconnaissance assets down there because it was us involved in it. In spite of all of this cutting edge technology.

2:30 plus firsthand human intelligence on Norwin Menendez, the Americans proved surprisingly inept at catching the drug dealers. Despite obvious and widespread trafficking throughout the entire area, the subcommittee was unable to find a single, was unable, sorry.

2:53 to find a single case against a drug trafficker operating in all of this area under reconnaissance, according to U.S. intelligence officials. A U.S. subcommittee reported in 1988, quote, this is despite an executive order requiring intelligence agencies to report trafficking to law enforcement officials and despite direct testimony that the trafficking on the Southern Front

3:23 That is how one of many indications that you know the CIA does not work for the American government. Costa Rican law enforcement officials said in interviews that the contingent of DEA agents working from the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica showed little interest in helping them probe the huge drug trafficking issue.

3:49 A former prosecutor by the name of Jorge Chavarria, who investigated several such cases in the 1980s for their office of investigations, said he was convinced the DEA knew all about the Contras and drugs. All of these flights and pilots were flying in and out with drugs, could not have been ignored by the DEA. They were just looking in the other direction.

4:19 That's an actual quote from him. During a 1987 Senate subcommittee hearing, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts told DEA Director John Lawn that, quote, the head of the DEA office in Costa Rica was interviewed by this committee. And he told us that the infrastructure that was used to supply the Contras was used to smuggle drugs. This is your DEA officer in Costa Rica. Are you familiar with that report?

4:51 Lawn replied, no, sir, I am not. The DEA's position, said Lawn, and his aide, David Westrick, was that there was no credible evidence to support the allegations. The DEA officer in Costa Rica who was questioned by the carry committee, Robert Neves, was in a perfect position to know, however, according to Norwin Menendez, Neves was his control agent and would be

5:20 throughout the entire time of the 1980s. Menendez's appearance in Costa Rica also coincided with the time when his drug network was rendered leaderless, accidentally disrupted by a Costa Rican police investigation. In May of 1984,

5:46 Costa Rican Office of Investigations raided the San Jose home of Menendez's business partner, Trulio and Sanchez, whom they suspected as moving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine every month. According to newspaper reports, Sanchez's wife ran to the bathroom and tossed out a package out the window containing nearly a pound of cocaine.

6:14 One former Costa Rican contra official, Leonardo Zeledon Rodriguez, told UPI in 1986 that Sanchez was caught in Costa Rica with pillows full of cocaine. Trujillo is a brother-in-law of Adolfo Calero. Both Sanchez and his wife was arrested on trafficking charges, but the charges against his wife was eventually dismissed.

6:43 Trujillo was acquitted after convincing the jury that he was an addict and it was all his own cocaine. Can't make it up. Nonetheless, the raid provided the Costa Rican authorities with a break they needed to land an even bigger fish in the Menendez organization. While searching Sanchez's house, the agents were interrupted by a banging on the front door. Opening it, they came face to face with Horacio.

7:15 Karina Lanunez. He was referred to as La Barra, the Menendez lieutenant who had been supplying cocaine to Caprese and Zavala in San Francisco and funneling the profits to the Contra Army under the command of Chavarro. In August or September of 1984, a recently declassified CIA cable shows that Menendez

7:44 had approached Chamorro and asked the Contra leader to help move drugs into the U.S. Neither Chamorro nor the CIA's response to Menendez's overture was disclosed. Through Pereira's drug trafficking activities, although his drug activities had been known to both the FBI and U.S. Customs since 1982, those agencies apparently never bothered to inform the Costa Rican officials.

8:16 that they had a major dealer in their midst. According to Costa Rican paper, the Office of Investigation Agents had no idea who Purina was the day he put in his unexpected guest appearance at Sanchez's house. Once they made his acquaintance, however, they were loathe to let it end. In November of 1984, they placed wiretaps on his phone and two of his associates.

8:45 They quickly learned that Pereira was one of the biggest narco traffickers to have operated in Costa Rica. The newspaper reported that the man behind nearly every major drug trafficking case in Costa Rica since 1981 with connections to Honduras, Colombia, San Andres, and the United States.

9:09 Costa Rican investigation agents listened in on phone calls. They were stunned to find themselves eavesdropping on Costa Rican Contra commanders who were discussing cocaine shipments, drug labs, weapons deliveries, and international politics with cocaine dealers. Among those captured wiretaps was the FARN subcommander, Chamorro, Ernesto Hidalgo Abonza.

9:39 the chief logistics guy, and the personal assistants of the commander, Shamaro, Guillermo Bolt, a CIA-trained Contra pilot who flew for Edan Pastora's ARDE Contra group, and Sebastian Gonzalez, the man in charge of the Panamanian logistics for the Contras.

10:10 During one conversation, a caller mentioned that Gonzalez was building a cocaine processing lab in Panama and hinted that he was kicking back $25 million a month to Panamanian authorities to do business there. Pereira's wiretaps were an intelligence bonanza for Costa Rican police. Gonzalez was a wanted man at the time that these calls were being made.

10:39 Having recently fled Costa Rica after he and the FARN's logistics chief were caught with 600 grams of cocaine in a house in Costa Rica. Gonzalez was overheard calling Pereira from his hideout in Panama, where he had been living under the protection of Noriega, who was at the time still in the military and not in charge of Panama. A intelligent smuggler.

11:11 Gonzalez had worked for the CIA since 1983 as the Panamanian quartermaster for all Costa Rican Contra armies, supplying supplies and deliveries from Noriega's armed forces because they were using Noriega as a drop-off point to supply the Contras. He was a personal friend of Manuel Noriega since high school. His job was to manage the armed flights from Panama.

11:40 to the Contras. According to a 1998 CIA report, Norwin Menendez was known to be involved in drug trafficking activities of Gonzalez. In a 1984 cable from the Costa Rican CIA station to Langley, Menendez said there was another trafficker, Tuto Moncal, who was involved in drug trafficking with

12:12 this Sebastian Gonzalez Mendetta in Costa Rica. It was reported that Menendez owned a restaurant, because they all do, in which Gonzalez might have had a financial interest. According to the cable, Menendez, Gonzalez, and Munkle were all well-known Nicaraguan mafias dealing in drugs, weapon smuggling, and laundering of counterfeit money.

12:44 Munkle memo mentioned the CIA cable. And basically, it was assumed that the Munkle was Augusto Munkle, a Contra supporter who had been detained in Miami with Pereira for currency violations during an FBI frogman case that we talked about a few chapters back. So these guys are on everybody's radar.

13:13 In a 1990 interview with a journalist, Gonzalez said that Horacio Pereira had offered him money to help finance a new contra movement he started when he broke with Pastora. It was referred to as M3. Horacio Pereira earlier had loaned money to Edan Pastora, and he offered to help M3.

13:38 But we rejected this because Norwin Menendez and Sanchez were involved in drugs. And we didn't want to be involved in drugs. So everybody knows they're involved in drugs. Largely on the strength of the wiretap, Pereira was convicted of drug trafficking in 1986 and sentenced to 12 years in jail. One of the harshest sentences handed out by a Costa Rican court.

14:06 The verdict was significant enough to attract the attention of CBS Evening News, which aired a brief report in June of 1986 on Pereira's trial and the undercover taps. The wiretap phones calls show that drug dealers have ties the highest level of contra leadership in Costa Rica. The correspondents said Mike O'Connor. That's who it was. Quote, Costa Rican narcotics officers say much more than dope has been flowing through.

14:44 Perera never served a day of his sentence. He was released on bail and disappeared. Menendez said his friend was chopped into tiny bits in Guatemala a few years later when he became embroiled in a dispute over a drug debt. The Costa Rican government's indictment of Perera, Gonzalez,

15:05 and Torrio Sanchez might have been expected to put a crimp in the cocaine trafficking in that small nation. After all, Costa Rica's biggest dealer, Pereira, was out of business. Gonzalez was on the run, and their supplier, Norwin Menendez, was now working as an undercover informant for the USDA. But you'd be wrong if you thought that.

15:30 Quote, it was precisely in that period when the transshipment of weapons and drugs grew. A Costa Rican legislative commission reported that. Again, this growth can be traced to a drug ring involving the conference and the CIA.

15:54 CIA records and declassified testimony of former CIA officials who oversaw the Contra program in Nicaragua confirm that the intelligence agency began receiving reports of drug trafficking from Edan Pastora's ARDE faction in late 1984. In a secret congressional hearing in April 1987, former CIA Costa Rican station chief Joseph Fernandez testified, quote,

16:22 There were certainly substantiated cases, and we can name names if you wish, of people in Pastora's group of supporters and their lieutenants that did have connections to drug traffickers. And in fact, he himself received funds from a person who was known to be affiliated with drug traffickers. Pastora admits all of that, but he says it was due entirely to the CIA. In an interview, the former Contra commander.

16:49 claimed that he was a target of an elaborate CIA scheme to force him out of the war, a plot that involved the use of drug dealers working for intelligence agency. This occurred, he said, after he refused CIA orders to unite his forces with the former assassins in the National Guardsmen of the former Samosan government, which was being ran by Norwin Menendez's friends, which, of course, is exactly what they did with.

17:23 Pablo Escobar. The problem for the agency, Pastora said, was that many of his fighters refused U.S. government help to desert him for the new Contra army the CIA was putting together, and they decided to fight on without the agency's assistance. The CIA had to get Pastora out of the way because it needed his veteran commanders and his men to run the new army because they were the best trained, not the assassins.

17:52 that had been trained as killers for Somoza. While it was tempting to dismiss Pastora's theory as just a ramblings of an embittered asset, a considerable amount of documentation suggests he was right. At one time, the CIA admits, quote, the agency's relationship with Pastora was one of the biggest significant blocks with combining the Contra.

18:23 effort. But after enduring years of anti-FDN rhetoric and unpredictable behavior, Langley began distancing itself from him and in 1984 ordered its agents to have no contact with him under any circumstances unless it was done for the purpose of manipulating him towards their objectives. One CIA policy objective became

18:48 became to replace the uncontrollable Pastora with someone the CIA could control. They wanted to use Fernando Chamorro. To get rid of him, Pastora complained, the Nicaraguan CIA assets approached him with offers of financial assistance, which he desperately needed after the CIA funding was cut off in May of 1984. Pastora said he accepted their money and their supplies, not knowing that the men were drug traffickers.

19:21 When it came time to dispose of him, Pastora said, the CIA leaked the information that he was getting help from drug dealers, both to drain his support in the U.S. and to make him the fall guy for the cocaine trafficking being done by the CIA's approved Contra armies, which was about to be exposed in the American press, which again is exactly what they did to Pablo Escobar. Former CIA station chief

19:49 Fernandez disputed Astor's claim. We attempted to diminish his influence by showing other political leaders that he was irresponsible and so forth, but never did we ever use narcotics or even the rumor of narcotics trafficking or anything like that as a means to that diminishment, Fernandez testified. But recently released CIA files show his testimony at best misleading.

20:16 The CIA told everyone and his brother about it. Quote, the reporting tying Pastora and senior members of his group to drug smuggling operations in the U.S. was disseminated by the CIA to a broad range of senior U.S. government intelligence and law enforcement officials, unquote. That was written by the CIA IG. That move stands in vibrant contrast to the agency's modesty.

20:46 about what was happening and the drug dealing. Further evidence of the CIA's role can be found in the backgrounds of the men who set up the drug deals and eventually ruined Pastora. They had long-standing ties to the CIA and Menendez, sometimes both of them. Two of them have since publicly admitted the CIA was aware of their drug dealing on behalf of Pastora's army and had in fact okayed it.

21:17 Pastora's first offer of assistance came from Agavian Cesar, the former social director of Menendez VIP nightclub in Managua. The CIA now admits that he was one of its snoops. The agency officers met occasionally with Cesar, usually in the U.S., to gather information and promote unity among the Contras.

21:46 In March of 1984, Cesar and two other contra officials who had close ties to the CIA's ARDE logistics chief, Aldolfo Chamorro, and the Air Force commander, Marcos Awando, met with a major Colombian drug trafficker named George Morales at his office in Fort Lauderdale.

22:13 and ask him to contribute to Pastora's army. During our conversation, they told me that they were CIA agents. Two of them said they were Cesar and Eduardo were the CIA agents. Morales said in 1986 congressional testimony, quote, I knew that they belonged to the CIA. And I also knew that through this, through several pilots who at the time worked for me and who had been

22:44 directly involved in the operations of Contra aircraft. Like Cesar, Acuando was another old friend of Menendez. He was also a close associate of CIA's man in northern Costa Rica, John Hall, who served as the agency's unofficial liaison for the Contras. Now, you guys may remember in several books that we've already went over, John Hall is the guy that

23:13 bought up all of that ranch land that installed airstrips in there and was a logistical hub, not only for the weapons trafficking, but for the drug trafficking as well in Costa Rica. Morales, the Colombian trafficker, had supplied a few shipments of guns to the Contras in 1983, and he was surprised that the Contras still wanted

23:39 his help in 1984 since he had just been indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and cocaine trafficking. But Morales said Cesar and Iguando made it clear that if he assisted them again, they would make his legal problems go away. Weird. Cesar told me that he had plenty of friends.

24:04 in the CIA and that they can advise the superiors about the financial support and aircraft and training. And therefore, we will finally eventually solve all my legal problems, which they did, Morales said. During the entire time he was working with the two Contras on drug deals, no action was taken on his pending cocaine indictment in the U.S. It was one postponement after another, Morales said.

24:30 When he started talking to the U.S. Senate investigators about his Contra dealings, two years later, however, the case got expedited and he got convicted. Morales later passed a DEA-administered lie detector test about his drug dealings with the Contras. Two of the pilots who flew with the Contra drug missions for him confirmed Morales' story under oath with U.S. government witnesses.

25:01 Morales and the pilots Carrasco and Gary Wayne Benzner said plane loads of weapons were flown to the ranch in northern Costa Rica owned by CIA operative John Hall, whose cover was that Midwestern farmer managing some large plantation for rich gringos in Costa Rica. In reality, Hall's ranch.

25:30 was a training area and a hiding place for Contra soldiers. It was where the Legion of September 15 gathered before its raid on the Argentina radio station, which we read about several chapters back. After they dropped off arms, Morales and the pilots said large green duffel bags full of cocaine would be loaded onto their aircraft and flown back to the United States, usually to public airports at Opelika, Florida.

26:00 Every one of the flights I made to Costa Rica, the cocaine was the Contras, not mine, Morales testified. I have no suppliers in Colombia. I don't need to go to Costa Rica, he said. While Hall was vehemently denied all of the accusations that drug trafficking occurred on his rant, one secret FBI report shows that the CIA official who was overseeing the Contra from Washington during the time Alan

26:28 Fiers Jr. was convinced that Hall's Ranch was being used for Contra drug flights. There is no doubt in Fiers' mind that Pastora's men trans-shipped drugs out of the airstrip on Hall's Ranch. Investigators for the Iran-Contra prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, reported in 1991, Fiers realized

26:55 this around 1986 when he heard all the evidence from Senator John Kerry's hearing and from the newspapers. Friars is adamant that he had no knowledge of CIA complicity in any of this. Hall said that about Friars' testimony that he was astonished. Hell, here I thought all this time the people spreading rumors like that were the Sandinistas and the communists. Now I find out it's my own government. In other words, that guy.

27:25 is the conspiracy theorist. That never happened. One of Morales' pilots who flew in and out of Hall's ranch, Tito Carrasco, testified that one of Pastora's commanders assured him that he had nothing to worry about because the CIA was protecting the flights from Costa Rica all the way to Florida. Octavio and Papo tell George Morales, listen.

27:56 These people are supposed to work for the CIA. Those people are supposed to have, you know, everything under control. So the people tell George, do it in Apalaca. Nothing will happen if the plane arrives in Apalaca. And he was asked, and you flew into Apalaca? Yes. Did someone stop you? Nobody. Carrero's opinion was that the entire operation was being protected.

28:24 from police interference all the way from Panama, where his drug flights originated. Every week, I flew from Panama, between Panama and Costa Rica, with different passports and different names, and they never asked me why. So if that's not protection, I don't know what is. The contra officials gave Carrasco and Morales good passports from Nicaragua during a party at Morales' house in Miami.

28:55 The passports were complete with entry and exit stamps from a variety of countries. They only lacked a name and a photograph, which they quickly filled in. Carrasco's co-pilot, Gary Benzer, also testified that their flights were protected by the CIA. And he was asked, did those CIA people permit you to fly airplanes into foreign countries carrying weapons?

29:28 Why, sure, he said. And bring drugs back? Yes. And did these CIA people know that you were doing this? Certainly, he said. Ask if he was surprised that his boss, Morales, was helping the Contras. Benzer, who pleaded guilty to federal drug charges, said no, actually. I wasn't surprised by it because I knew that George was an anti-communist, as are most Colombians.

29:55 So the cartel and people like that are definitely anti-communist. I don't suppose their world would function too well in a communist world. It's strictly a capitalist movement and a drug business. When money from the drug sales was collected, Carrasco said he would deliver it to the CIA operatives Chamorro and Cesar, sometimes in the United States and sometimes in Costa Rica.

30:22 He said he delivered bags of money sometimes two or three times a day. I paid a lot of money, maybe millions. In 1996 interviews with the Washington Post, Cesar and Chamorro both said the CIA was fully aware of their involvement with the Colombian drug traffickers and had approved it beforehand. Cesar informed a CIA officer stationed at the El Salvador.

30:50 Drug-based, this same thing. Chamorro went higher than that to Langley. I called our contact at the CIA. Of course I did, Chamorro told the Post. The truth is, we were still getting some CIA money under the table. They said Morales was fine. While the Post thoughtfully admitted the name of the CIA official who okayed the arrangement in an interview with Chamorro, he was identified as Alan Friars.

31:20 In congressional testimony, former Costa Rican liaison chief, excuse me, station chief Joe Fernandez and fires once ordered him to use two suspected drug trafficking in a still secret CIA operation involving the Contras. Quote, for political consideration, there were two individuals who were associated with Pastora who had allegations against them for drug involvement.

31:48 And the chief of the Central American Task Force wanted the declassified hearing transcripts that they wanted. That's according to declassified hearing transcripts. Quote, I objected to it in cable traffic in person and it was deemed necessary and then redacted name, at least since there were only allegations and not proof. And so I was overruled and we proceeded to do it and we did it.

32:19 So basically, they're describing setting up Pastora because he wouldn't play ball with the CIA. He was also asked by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. But in your mind, it went beyond allegations, didn't it? Fernandez said, yes, sir. Redacted, there were also indications that our suspicions might be more well-founded. So the rest of the exchange with Inouye was censored for national security reasons.

32:49 So in other words, everybody knew that they were setting up Pastora. After his first meeting with the Contras, Morales testified that he agreed to give men aged C-47 cargo plane that he had stored in Haiti. He also gave them $10,000 to fly the transport to the private El Salvador.

33:19 airport. Pastora's plane had been hangared there since 1983 under an arrangement worked out between the CIA pilot and the San Salvadorian Air Force. The C-47 was the first of many aircraft the Colombian trafficker would give to the Contras. According to a Senate subcommittee investigation, the airplane was officially transferred from Morales

33:48 on October 1984 for $1. In 1987, investigative reporter Jonathan Kitney, whose books we've read, obtained the refueling receipts for the C-47 and reported that the plane was repeatedly piloted into and out of the El Salvador airbase by Marcos Aguido.

34:18 Another one of the C-47 pilots Kitney found was Geraldo Duran, a Costa Rican drug pilot who also served as chief pilot instructor for the Southern Front Contras. Duran was convicted of narcotics trafficking in Costa Rica in 1987 and thrown in jail. Morales contends that his C-47 would continue on from El Salvador to Colombia.

34:45 where it was reloaded with drugs before flying back to Florida, Kidney reported. This assertion is entirely plausible and even somewhat corroborated in Justice Department charges that Morales was importing cocaine at the time for the largest Colombian cartel. Morales told Congress that his old C-47 remained part of the Contras Air Force for years, which both Aguardo and

35:13 Congressional testimony confirmed. Chamorro gave the subcommittee a list of flights made by the C-47 to ferry arms into El Salvador and to Costa Rica. That was in a Senate subcommittee report. It went on to say between October 18th of 1984 and February of 1986, some 156,000 pounds of material.

35:43 was moved from the El Salvador base to airfields in Costa Rica. When he quit the war in 1986, Aguardo said that he sold the aircraft for $30,000. Who bought it? Menendez. In 1997, Aguardo said the C-47 was still being used by Menendez in Venezuela. Soon after, Morales began supplying him with money.

36:15 Pastora said Danielle Blanton popped up waving cash. Pastora knew Blanton from before the Sandinista Revolution when Blanton headed the pro-Samosa student group in college. We knew of him as a man who had always had money, Pastora said. In fact, he was regarded in Nicaraguan as a millionaire. He was a member of the Blanton family, a family that always was well-to-do.

36:44 Pastora said he met Blanton during a trip to L.A. in late 1984. Marcos Aguardo confirmed this and said he had accompanied Pastora to the meeting. Both men agreed that Blanton provided cash, according to Pastora, some $6,000 to Pastora and $20,000 to Aguardo. He also provided pickup trucks and keys to Blanton's vacation home.

37:13 in Costa Rica, where Pastora lived rent-free for several years. Blanton told the CIA that he could have charged Pastora, but he didn't. The only time Daniello came to Costa Rica was for parties and to meet with Menendez. It was around this time, according to former CIA official fires, that the CIA learned Pastora was getting drug money.

37:40 We knew that everybody around Pastora was involved in cocaine, he testified. We knew it from November 1984 forward, and we reported it. Pastora summoned Blanton, assumed Blanton was a successful car dealer, not a drug dealer, and he thought nothing of the donations at the time because Blanton had always been a millionaire. It seemed to me totally natural that a friend of mine would want to help me.

38:10 Another Blanton associate who came to Pastora's aid after the CIA cutoff was Nicaraguan pediatrician named Dr. Felix Sabario, who Pastora said volunteered to become his representative to the anti-communist Cuban community in southern Florida. His liaison with U.S. news media and an ARDE fundraiser.

38:37 was frequently quoted in the Miami Herald and other papers as Pastora's spokesman from 1984 to 1985. He was a close friend of Blanton from childhood and Pastora's former aide, Carol Prado. I also knew them from childhood. They were very rich people as well. I went to a party in Miami at Felix's house in Edon, and that's where I met Blanton.

39:04 Sabario was also acquainted with Blanton's spooky associate, Ronald Lister. Lister told the CIA that he had traveled to Hialeah, Florida sometime in 82 or 83 and met with the Contra members named Dr. Sabario in an effort to sell military supplies to the Contras. The military supply was commercially available equipment such as non-reflective paint,

39:31 surveillance detection, blah, blah, blah. In 1992, court records show Sabario posted part of Shepita Blanton's bond after she was arrested on her drug trafficking charges in San Diego. The doctor did not return phone calls inquiring about his relationship with the trafficker or his wife. Blanton and Sabano both vanished from the ranks when it became clear.

40:03 This is from Pastora. Blanton and Sabario vanished from my ranks when it became clear that I was not willing to march to the CIA's tune. Blanton's interest in helping ARDE always mystified him because I knew he had been with the FDN from the very first time that I met with him.

40:27 Pastora's involvement with the Colombian trafficker Morales remained a secret until 1985 when two Associated Press reporters, i.e. CIA, began looking into the allegations of drug dealing and discovered the donations. Their source of information was a leak from the CIA. So that's just crazy. They said that the ADAR.

40:58 ARDE leader, Edan Pastora, used cocaine profits that particular year to buy $250,000 in arms shipment in a helicopter. The AP story also mentioned that Gonzalez's M3 group and the FDN were suspected of being involved in drugs as well, but offered no details about their drug trafficking. Robert Carey, one of the AP...

41:27 reporters who wrote the groundbreaking story and his editors sat on the piece for weeks and edited it heavily, only to spike it at the last minute when it was accidentally transmitted over the AP's Spanish wire. His editors had rewrote the story once again, and all references to the alleged involvement of CIA operatives were deleted before it was released to the American public.

41:55 Kerry later discovered that the AP Washington bureau chief was having regular meetings with Lieutenant Colonel North, who was running the Contra drugs for weapons program. So, although he was cut off from his editors and ignored by most of the American media, the AP story kicked up a heated controversy in Washington and prompted Senator Kerry's staff to begin an investigation.

42:26 As the evidence of Contra drug dealing piled up and suspicions mounted, CIA and State Department officials immediately pointed to Pastora as the only drug dealer for the Contras, citing him as an example at how ridiculous were accusations that the CIA would condone drug trafficking because Pastora's CIA support had been cut off to this day.

42:58 Eden Pastora remains the only Contra commander the U.S. has ever officially admitted was involved in the drug money. A few months after the AP story appeared, Pastora quit the Contra war and became a fisherman. The CIA linked ARDE commander who got him involved with the Colombian trafficker.

43:23 Cesar and Chamorro quickly joined forces with his remaining army at the behest of the CIA. Pastor's claim of a CIA plot becomes even more believable when one considers who the agency selected to replace him. Chamorro, his arch enemy, who had been getting cocaine money from Menendez's organization from the early 1980s. The former Costa Rican station chief.

43:56 Fernandez confirmed to Congress in 1987 that the CIA decided to diminish Pastora's influence and raise up the statue of Chamorro. What we needed to do was put Pastora aside and at the same time enhance the organization that we were supporting. Bastards! Why the CIA was so eager to promote such drug-tainted organizations is one of the most enduring mysteries of the Contra War.

44:26 Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, in his memoirs of the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote that Chamorro was picked because he had been acceptable to the Contra leader, Calero, and responsive to CIA. The agency's choice demonstrates how contrived the official shock was over Pastora's involvement in drug dealings.

44:51 had far more links to drug traffickers than Pastora's accusations ever did. And those ties can be traced all the way back to the beginning of the Contra War. The leadership of the FARN had been dealing directly with the Frogman case in 1983, a fact the CIA had strived mightily to conceal from the American public. Moreover, the Chamorro

45:20 was just as erratic and unstable a military commander as they accused Pastora of being, perhaps even more so, and far less effective in recruiting volunteers. Most of Chamorro's band were Cuban mercenaries, i.e. from Florida's CIA group, and terrorists. Yeah, that's the same thing. And the CIA had scoured the Miami underworld to find them all.

45:50 I don't know about that. These people were trained by the CIA to do exactly that. So I'm not sure how much effort was put into that because that's what they did. They called the Brigade 2506, like Felix Rodriguez, and they all jumped on board. But even when reports of the FAR and drug dealing reached the highest levels in Washington, the U.S. government financial and material support for the organization never stopped. The money and the CIA assistance.

46:20 kept right on coming. The concern about Chamorro is that he drinks too much and may surround himself with people that are not in the war to fight, but really just to make money. That came from one of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North's assistants, Robert Owen. He wrote that in a note to North.

46:52 in 1985. Owen was one of the CIA's top informants in Costa Rica. He listed eight of Chamorro's associates as having past indiscretions. The list included the FARN's Air Force chief, Robello, who Owen described as having potential involvement in drug running, and Menendez's partner, Gonzalez, whom Owen said was now involved in drug running out of Panama.

47:21 That Menendez and Gonzalez were dealing cocaine together had been known to the CIA since late 1984. One of the men closely involved in the Contra operation around that time was none other than retired Air Force General Richard Secord. That was written about by Leslie Cockburn in 1987. He had heard those allegations from the FARN.

47:54 And it was said that he didn't pick any of the people the CIA did. As the fighting force, FARN was an unmitigated disaster. Probably the most inept Contra group there was. Never numbering more than a couple hundred fighters, the FARN caused great grief for the U.S. government than they ever caused for the Sandinistas.

48:24 was creating a very difficult situation. The CIA station chief, Joe Fernandez, was reported to Langley. They said that they were catching flack from both Costa Rican government and the U.S. ambassador to get those people under control. And that's the reason they wanted Pastora out of the way so they could use his fighters because his fighters was much more disciplined and effective.

48:52 According to Fernandez, Chamorro and his men couldn't be driven into battle with a cattle prod. They certainly had to get their act together and their guts in place to say no more Costa Rican sanctuary. Let's go fight the Sandinistas, Fernandez told Congress. They were extremely, and that is not an overstatement, they were extremely reluctant to do so. Chamorro to this day.

49:18 that I know of has never been in Nicaragua as part of the Contra effort. CIA informant Rob Owen confirmed that. The Costa Ricans wanted the people. They were up near Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border. They were in several camps. They wanted them to move out. They wanted them to move at least inside of Nicaragua, Owen testified. There was a hesitancy on part of the Chamorro group.

49:49 Their hesitancy was based on going deep inside of Nicaragua. They would not have Costa Rica to be able to run back to. Blanton's drug-dealing friends, the Torres brothers, told L.A. County Sheriff's investigators that during the height of the Contra War, they would continually run into supposed Contra Comandantes in casinos throughout Nicaragua. So in other words, we're paying, not we, you and...

50:19 you and I, the CIA is paying these guys to not actually fight the Sandinistas because they're not. They're paying them to traffic weapons and drugs. It says that some of them were still on the CIA's payroll at $7,000 a month.

50:48 CIA officer Fernandez testified that the last time I remember Chamorro being inside of Nicaragua was 1983 when he crossed the border and was attacked. And if you can imagine a guard post, a guard house, 30 meters or 30 yards inside of Nicaragua. And then when he started to get his, when the Sandinistas counterattacked, he ran to a telephone.

51:16 on the side and dialed me in Washington DC headquarters asking for them to attack the guard shack with mortars. So help me God, Fernandez said. And I asked him, where the hell are you calling from? And he said, from the guard post at whatever location it was redacted. We're under attack. You need to send arms immediately. And I just responded, you've got to be out of your mind.

51:47 Fernandez went on to say this was no joke. He called our outside line. The lawmakers were apparently so amused by Fernando's story that none of them thought to ask why the CIA continued to train and finance these clowns. But Chamorro and company weren't the CIA's headache for long. Shortly after the FARN became the agency's anointed force in Costa Rica,

52:14 The CIA was forced to give up its active role in the Contra Project and left the mess it had created for someone else to clean up. When the Boland Amendment went into effect in October 1984, the day-to-day control of the Contra Project was passed to the Reagan White House and Lieutenant Colonel North at the National Security Council. As of the summer of 1984 came to an end, I felt like I was straddling a canyon, North wrote.

52:41 On one side was resistance, always expanding, always needing more. On the other side, the CIA that was steadily withdrawing its support. And by the way, I don't think the CIA ever withdrew their support. They just, like they do all the time, they just morph it into another area. The CIA's blindness to the Contra's drug trafficking was bad.

53:06 It was nothing compared to what happened after North and his network of spooks and mercenaries took the wheel. Again, the mercenaries we know are under the control of the CIA as well. And there was no blindness to the drug trafficking. It was all part of it. Perhaps for the first time in history, the U.S. government became the business partners with cocaine traffickers and Norwin Menendez's cocaine began arriving in the U.S. aboard military transport.

53:36 And just so that you guys know, you can see I wrote the big word. Nope, it's not the first time. And it wasn't the last time. The CIA has been involved in drug trafficking since the very beginning. If only Gary Webb knew what we knew. Oh, my gosh. All right. That's it. We're now at Chapter 12. I'm going to stop there for the day.

54:06 Crazy, crazy, crazy stories. So what happened to Bridget? Hopefully she got her leak fixed. I don't see her anywhere. I guess she had to go do something. Let's bring Ron up. Go ahead, SR71. She did message me that, yeah, the plumber had finished their job and the plumber was leaving. So she should be back shortly, I assume. Okay.

54:36 But other than that, you make a $29,999 profit on a plane? Now, come on. Yeah, that was basically given to him. And then on top of that, General Secord himself was an interesting character in this as well. He was also charged in this affair. However, his...

55:07 His participation was vacated by the judge for some reason. Yeah, we'll get to more about him in some of the later chapters. He was knee deep in all of this. And that's why I say when people jump to defend all military, they are woefully uninformed because we have some very nefarious people in the ranks.

55:35 And in the retired ranks of the military. Yeah, go ahead, Ron. Is it Secord or Secord? Secord. Okay, that's what I thought. So he was, wasn't he like deputy, like the secretary of defense or something under Reagan in his first two years? And then.

56:03 He got busted, and the charges were just like, ah, we're just going to give you probation or something like that for moving all the arms as a private citizen after the fact. But this whole thing gives me, not that this is a new revelation, but it really gives me pause on the Reagan administration. It was corrupt as hell. Yeah. Well, so here's my question to you.

56:36 Was Reagan corrupt or was Bush in charge? All right. So here's my first response to that. I'm sorry. I got a phone call. I don't know if you heard my... I didn't. So you can't say Reagan's a great president while saying Bush was in charge. Those are oxymorons.

57:07 If Reagan was a figurehead and Bush was actually in charge, then Reagan is not a great president. So that's my immediate response to anybody that asked me about Reagan. Number two, if you want to know the truth of that, you have to go back before. Hush. Hey, you have to go back before.

57:29 Reagan was president and look at his time as governor and his time as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. And every single one of those research projects bears out the same thing. He was bought and paid for. Lou Wasserman basically gave him the position. Hey, hey, stop it.

57:56 gave him the position as the president of Screen Actors Guild. And in return, Ronald Reagan gave him a waiver and allowed him to be a talent organization as well as a movie guy, which no one else was ever granted a waiver for. And then Lou Wasserman goes on and basically funds his campaign as governor, which if you go back and look at his tenure as governor of California, it wasn't as great as everybody says it was. Oh, hell no. Yeah. And so he was corrupt.

58:26 Then because he's a bought and paid for guy, they stick him in as president to with Vice President CIA Director Bush. So, yeah, it either no matter how you look at it, you know, if he wanted to come out and tell America after he got shot that, hey, I got shot because I won't do these things.

58:51 The people want me to do so I'm going to resign and the guy that's going to replace me as a crook and needs to be impeached. That's one thing that would have made him a great president. Having done none of that and never revealed. I mean, he lied repeatedly to the American people, not just about Iran-Contra. Everybody forgets about Angola. They were.

59:11 up to their eyeballs and nefarious and using the Cuban exiles in Angola to try to exploit Angola's uranium and gold and minerals. They wanted the UNITA, which was as corrupt as any government could have ever been, potential government. And that's who we backed because he was related to the guy that the CIA had installed in the Congo, which at the time was called Zaire.

59:40 Well, there's that, and then there's Grenada, and Libya, and I mean... Yes, and Grenada was another regime change in order to get the guy out that refused to go along with the exploitation of his people and his country. They wanted that as a drug and arms trafficking place as well, which is exactly what they used it for after we overthrew the government.

1:00:12 I don't know. I've actually been having second thoughts about Reagan now for probably a good 10 years. And listening to this, it's like the concrete is solidifying even harder, if that's even possible. So anyway, I don't know if there's anybody else. I don't want to dominate if there's anybody else who wants to say anything. All along, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to.

1:00:48 suggest a possible pattern going on here that the way I see kind of the question that Ron brought up about the relationship between Reagan and Bush, you know, I think it can be seen in terms of a longer term relationship between like what might be termed the Eastern East Coast sort of Republican core of the CIA being, for example, Dewey, Prescott, Bush.

1:01:20 And, you know, they lost the 48 election in a close election to Truman. And yes, Truman was, you know, the guy who signed the CIA. But I still think that, you know, when kind of matters in the sense of the later it gets, the more the CIA is running everything. I mean, an example of what you could look at Truman's, his Justice Department was still thinking of, you know.

1:01:48 doing the Antitrust Act on the gigantic oil cartel. And then Dulles came in with Eisenhower and it was a done deal. It was not going to be, there would be no antitrust and the oil cartel would go on running everything. So the later, and so I think you see that in 48 where they're weak in the Midwest and West.

1:02:10 So they start watering their Nixon, you know, as the colonel has shown, you know, the East Coast money was going to Nixon as early as 1946. Right. And so Nixon and Reagan are the kind of their stage phase one, phase two Western strategy, you might be called it. And I mean, you can overdo that. But I think there's possibly some like Reagan and Bush as the final welding in of the CIA, the GOP aspects merging their Western flank.

1:02:40 With the East Coast, you know, Dulles Dewey, older East Coast Dulles Dewey faction, you kind of see some of that merging of a Western strategy in both like 52 and 1980. So I think that the relationship between Bush and Reagan is very interesting long term, you know, in terms of that long term process. Absolutely. Renee, go ahead.

1:03:07 Hey, everyone. Yeah. And to add on to the Reagan Chronicles and part of the destabilization of the West Coast, or I should say California, he was the one that signed into law in 1967 while he was governor.

1:03:23 the LPS Act, which was what deinstitutionalized mental people, you know, people from mental institutions and that not only in California, but around the same time, this also happened in Chicago, New York, Massachusetts, you know, it was kind of, if you reflect back, it's all part of the steps of destabilizing these cities and whatnot. And then

1:03:49 with the social engineering of the 60s and the whole LSD and the music and the blah, blah, blah. You can see more of a timeline now. And then it was another kablam with this in the 80s and the whole crack epidemic and the music and et cetera. Yeah. And I never even put this together, but California was a major jump off point for all of the people that were going to Vietnam. Yeah.

1:04:17 And he was governor of California at that time. Yep. Yep. I'll go ahead. Yeah, I think also a key kind of good old boy figure in Governor Reagan's, you know, camp was Eval Younger, you know, who was like one of the Burma boys with Richard Helms and whatnot, you know, in World War II, goes back to that core.

1:04:56 Good old boy. See, Hirsch, not Seymour Hirsch, but the more legitimate Hirsch, in my view. What's his name? The other Hirsch calls, you know, the old boys from Burma. And because Evel Younger was just so I think that there's a lot of there there that's yet to come out about him. I mean, he was so instrumental in in the RFK assassination and the RFK assassination cover up. I mean.

1:05:26 Literally, he was working hand in glove with special unit senator, which is basically, you know, the CIA running of the CIA. It's the CIA investigation of the CIA assassination of New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy is what it was. And he is especially the new James W. Book by James W. Douglas shows that he was.

1:05:55 working hand in glove with that. And he's even has his people trying to change Dr. Thomas Noguchi, you know, who's a world famous doctor. And yet his commentary about the RFK assassination never seems to spread. I guess it's just bad algorithm. What are you going to do? And he was involved in, he has people trying to change the wording of Thomas Noguchi in special unit centers.

1:06:24 you know, trial of Sirhan Sirhan, which, which an utter fiasco. And it's absolutely stunning that, that, you know, more of that trial is not released because, but you understand why it's not released as soon as you see it. It's just like, this is, you know, devastating in literally the turning point of us history in terms of the history of the democratic party, the history of the degree to which the CIA is running everything. And, um, but anyway, yeah.

1:06:54 And a Burma boy is very important to look at his long term evolution with Governor and Governor Reagan. Yeah. Along with Ed Mesa, I might say. But anyway. Yeah. Anybody else? I just, you know, speaking from a conservative presidential perspective, you know, for a while there, I thought it was Reagan was the.

1:07:25 You know, the last conservative president we had, which now I'm not so sure. But looking back now, I mean, I feel like I have to go back to even Taft or maybe even the 19th century or the 20s before we actually get a true conservative. Looking at because we had an FDR all through the 30s and then.

1:07:54 Um, Taft would have been, uh, Taft's grandson would have, uh, was a Senator and would have run. But, uh, Eisenhower, Eisenhower ran. Eisenhower was no conservative. In fact, he was the key Rhino. He was the King Rhino. He destroyed the Republican party for almost 30 years. And it, and anyway, I, um, who, who would you say in terms of like conservatism, what would we have outside of Trump?

1:08:22 That was conservative. I mean, at this point in time, I've got to say even JFK, but I can't even say that JFK wasn't corrupt in certain places. Well, he was less corrupt than the rest of his predecessors and successors, or they wouldn't have killed him. And I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah. Southern, go ahead. This is a question I've never had answered.

1:08:53 Where I believe it. When Carter was president, we had the iron hostage crisis, but all of a sudden Reagan's in office and all of a sudden he's the hero and they're coming home. Did the Republicans play with that to get the negotiations to happen after the election? That was the original coining of the term October surprise.

1:09:21 There was meetings that Haig and soon-to-be Vice President Bush took place in Europe that was meeting with Iranian officials to announce their release after the election so that they could ensure Carter's defeat. That's documented.

1:09:51 I thought so, because even one of Carter's big aides has come out publicly and said the Republicans were involved in the negotiations. Most people don't realize that there were actually two missile shipments to Iran, the one involving the Iran-Contra.

1:10:15 But there was one prior to that that happened right at the beginning of Reagan administration that was the payback for holding off on the releasing of the hostages. So and both of those were done using Israel as the cutout. All along. Go ahead. Yeah, Colonel, in terms of as was being discussed, the history of the Republican Party and when was the last time there was a conservative.

1:10:49 You probably have read here and there some little tidbits, perhaps you've read more than I have, about the Warren G. Harding presidency and how some believe that there was a conspiracy going on there to get Warren G. out, that it involved a bipartisan coalition, as usually is going to happen when there's going to be a major switcheroo.

1:11:19 And I just think that it's kind of critical to, I haven't read really enough about that, but I think it's a critical, critical stage in U.S. political history. Okay, look what Woodrow Wilson, the scumbag, had just done in 2016. He lied about saying he was going to keep the U.S. out of World War I, but look who he got working with him. I'm talking like the Baker-Botson people, you know, the same Baker family of Houston that is going to be so important later on.

1:11:47 These are, you know, this is the real core of bipartisan internationalist interventionist MS, as it were, you know. And so I'm thinking that there may have been a contradiction there between because we know that Woodrow kind of was involved in some oil scandals. But really, you know, what are both sides of those scandals? And did they I I'm getting some indication that there may have been like sort of a difference between.

1:12:17 Like one faction of the duopoly was more internationalist. And, you know, we don't think of the 20s as being internationalist, but it kind of was way more so than we're led. It's just more like, unlike under government cover, it was more private corporation investment. It wasn't really isolationist, you know, like we are told. It's just more like pure syndicate running shit.

1:12:45 without the later government cover that would occur, you know, later on. And so I think that the transition from Warren G to Coolidge and how that happened might give us leads into the forces, you know, contradictions of the Republican Party between conservatives versus more like disguised internationalists, as it were.

1:13:20 Yeah. SR-71, go ahead, and then we'll go to Ron. Thank you, Colonel. I do want to thank everybody for being here in spaces today and on Rumble. You make this a pleasure. But the one thing I want to say and just want to add on to what all along he's talking about here, and I think if you view or watch the Colonel in War hamster go through the secret societies and the families involved,

1:13:49 you might get a better picture. Thank you. Ron, go ahead. Trust me, I've known Warhamster for, we and I have had hours of conversation, so this is kind of my, I don't want to say wheelhouse, but it's certainly a strong point. You look at the conservative movement in the 20s, it wasn't really that conservative. Harding was probably the most conservative between Coolidge and

1:14:22 What's the guy, Herbert Hoover? Herbert Hoover was a freaking douchebag. I mean, that dude, that dude literally ran the Belgium food relief and hit one of his primary objectives was to make sure that Germany had enough food to prosecute the war so they could get the Americans in.

1:14:38 And that was the whole point, was to prolong the war. But if you look at what World War I was supposed to be, the war, the end-all wars, what came out of World War I? The League of Nations. It was too weak. They couldn't have it. So what did they have to do? During the interwar years, they had to build the whole thing back up and have another war so that they could get their global thing in place, which is exactly what Colonel's talking about with Operation Gladio and the CIA and all that other stuff.

1:15:06 Woodrow Wilson, oh, I'm so sad. I unwittingly destroyed my country. Bullshit. Spare me your freaking crocodile tears. You agreed to that shit before you even went into office. So I don't even want to hear that crap. And it's the same thing with the...

1:15:25 With the Eisenhower's speech about, oh, the military-industrial complex, you're the one that freaking put it together. So I don't know. I guess I'm just ranting and venting right now, but we haven't had – it just feels like the deeper I get into this, the Republican Party –

1:15:46 literally of the latter half of the 19th century, led to the progressive movement. And essentially, it's the same mindset. It's that Eastern liberal establishment. Because the Republicans, people don't know, there was no Democrat, there was not a Democrat president.

1:16:02 The last Democrat president that we had before the Civil War was Johnson, before Woodrow Wilson. And the only reason he became president was because Lincoln got assassinated. The Republicans had a – it was a single-party rule from the end of the Civil War through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age all the way up until the Progressive Era. And then the Democrats and whatnot, they were essentially – they laid the foundations for all the stuff that you were talking about all along with the CFR.

1:16:30 In 1919, if you guys have ever read a book called Hidden History by McGregor, and it's about the start of World War I and all about Hoover. And then there's another one called Prolonging the Agony. That was specifically about Hoover. Those will blow your mind.

1:16:58 All of the stuff that happened in the 20s with the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and we talked earlier. Colonel, I don't know if you – we haven't had this discussion since I asked you a long time ago about the 18th Amendment. Was it created to foster organized crime, to increase gun control and all these other things? I found out recently that the reason that the 18th Amendment was put in place was because –

1:17:23 And there's probably two things are true at the same time, but it was because that was right about the time when the automobile industry was really starting to get ramped up and Rockefeller wanted all of the engines to be running on gas because you own standard oil. So they had to outlaw alcohol so that they couldn't use alcohol to propel automobiles. And then once they had established that, then they repealed the 18th Amendment.

1:17:51 But they got the ancillary benefit was all of the organized crime. Yeah. Sorry for the rant. Sorry for the rant. Travis, go ahead. I just wanted to clarify the facts about the Iranian hostage situation. Reagan had nothing to do with it. Carter's last two official acts while leaving the White House were one.

1:18:27 citing ultimatum to Khomeini stating that he had 24 hours to release the hostages unharmed or Tehran would be erased from history, end quote. Two issue orders to my unit, sealed orders that weren't to be open until we were, that weren't open until we were over.

1:18:59 in their space, to shoot everything, not us, end quote. Then Carter left the presidency. Him, his entire staff, Reagan staff, totally kept their mouths shut so that Reagan could come in as the heroic president. That's all. I know this because I was on the plane with my parachute.

1:19:35 That's okay, Travis. I appreciate what you knew about that operation, but it doesn't negate the fact that Vice President Bush and Alexander Haig did meet with Iranian officials to bribe them to hold on to the hostages. And it was unbeknownst to Carter that any of those communications occurred.

1:20:04 And it's well documented those meetings happened. Lone Traveler, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Colonel. I really don't think in America we have Democrats or Republicans. They are basically was put out there by one boss to put a show on the American people. So, I mean, you know, in the Congress, you can hear them debate this and that.

1:20:35 And what they are doing, basically, they have the same goal. Whoever wins the election will push ahead the goal. And on the other side, they are going to just say, oh, this is so bad. We cannot do this. We have to do that. But they always lose. And then they will gain the vote the next time. And once they get the vote, then they will stop doing what they were doing.

1:21:02 I went through this whole thing in 2005 midterm election. They were so anti-war everything. But the moment they win the election, the next day, everybody forgot what they promised, what they're trying to do. I was like hardcore, you know, come here in this country, you know, for 10 years and finally get into the politics. And finally, I was, you know, working for the...

1:21:30 Democrats and trying to get the voter registration, all that. I'm working extremely hard, trying to get the war stopped. The moment of the win. And it's like nothing happened. Everybody forgot. I went to the radio talk show host, their website, and said, hey, you guys, we win. Let's do this, do that. You know what? Nobody replied. Two days later, they kicked me out. And just from that point on, I told myself.

1:21:59 I will never, ever vote in this country until they fix the system. So until people in this country understand both parties controlled by the same boss and we have stand out, have our own party, just like Ron Paul, what they are doing, until that happens, we're not going to win anything. So I will just end it here. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Southern, go ahead.

1:22:33 Southern? I don't know if I buy that Jimmy Carter put his thumb down because he gave away Panama Canal. He cut our defense spending right when he came in, but he increased it later. He's a service to humanity. He's not a president or commander in chief. Jimmy Carter did not give the Panama Canal away. That's a misnomer.

1:23:03 That Panama Canal Treaty had been being renegotiated for two presidencies before Jimmy Carter. The negotiation team that had been put together finalized the treaty. So the original Panama Canal Treaty was never signed by Panama. There was no real treaty. It was the United States saying, here's what we're going to do.

1:23:37 We built the canal for the 60% that the French didn't build originally. And we're telling you what we're going to do. Panama never signed that. So it was never actually a treaty. For every year after that, Panama complained about it. Finally, and I don't even remember which president, but like two before Jimmy Carter, Johnson. Johnson was the one that started the renegotiation.

1:24:07 the maybe it was JFK I don't remember but it was two administrations so that had gone on for years and years and years and within the first few months of the Carter administration that team that had been working on it presented a treaty to the U.S. Senate like all treaties are presented and they approved it and Jimmy Carter signed it it was the first actual treaty in which the United States and Panama

1:24:37 So you can't say Jimmy Carter gave the Panama Canal away. Okay. Okay. But going back to Bush, I think it was strategic to bring him in as vice president because he's not like camera friendly. I think it was intentional for them to continue to manage what they were doing to set him up to run for president. Well, as everyone knows.

1:25:05 The negotiations for who's going to be your vice president is largely outside the control of who's actually running at the top of the ticket. I mean, that was kind of how we ended up with Pence with Trump. And Biden as well. Obama did not want him. There's a lot of negotiation for wiggle room on who's going to be the VP.

1:25:34 Bush was definitely part of the negotiations going in and having someone that for almost his entire adult life, to include the time he was posing as an oil person, was in service to the CIA as a sitting vice president.

1:25:58 would be disaster for the country, and it was in fact a disaster for the country. I mean, you basically have the CIA running the office of the presidency. Who would ever think that's a great idea? Not me. Not after what I know about the CIA. I think we might have had a different feeling about it a long time ago, but now we have a more clear understanding. Well, sure.

1:26:30 I mean, if you go back to the I mean, that was my first election I ever voted in. I didn't know the ties that the Bush had, the Bush family had to, you know, skull and bones. I didn't even know what the hell skull and bones was. So in the past where you have limited information fed to you by what they refer to as the mainstream media, which is basically CIA mouthpiece, we've been.

1:26:59 voting blindly for a very, very long time. That stopped with the invention of the internet and social media. There's more information out there than you could ever wrap your head around now. So it becomes more difficult for them to fool us. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I just want to tag on to something that Ron said. I think what makes it

1:27:30 much harder for the American public. I know it was specifically for myself while I was in the military. You're not thinking about these things. You're not thinking about politics. You're not thinking about any of this. And of course, it wasn't until I hooked up with the colonel and other people. I'm 69 years old and it's taken me this long to come around.

1:27:58 So when you stop and think about what the public knows, when it knows it, why it knows it, when they get involved, they're not going to get involved until their later years. That's the way I see it. And I think that's our biggest problem. Thank you, Colonel. You're welcome. I do think that's changing, though, with social media. If I look at the younger people in my community.

1:28:23 Even my kids, they're much more involved in things. And it's like I told you, my daughter that's like the least involved in any of this was my youngest daughter that's a school teacher. And the one time we were talking about, I had just read McGowan's articles about landing on the moon. And she looked at me and she goes, mom, we didn't land on the moon.

1:28:53 And so I do think that the younger generation completely understands that you cannot trust the United States government in a way that we never did, nor even the generations after my generation. So, you guys, I'm going to have to run. It's 530 and it's Wednesday night. So, Southern, I'm going to let you go ahead and go and then I've got to run. Basically, it's redundant.

1:29:21 Look at all the different books, Colonel, that you've read. Once you got the Gladio eyeglasses out and all the different books to pull all of this together. Yeah, it's in pieces all over social media, but you're the nexus right now pulling all that together. We're learning the true history right now. And that is amazing.

1:29:49 Don't thank you enough for that. And thank you very much. Thank you, Southern. That's a great way to end the session. Let me just say this. It's taken me three years of almost 12 hours a day to learn in 120 books because this is not written in a single book. The single book would be, you know, 3000 pages long, which you can't do in a book. So.

1:30:15 And it was a concerted effort to find the truth. It's not just because I told you guys casually reading. I've already read like over 600 books. None of the shit's in them books. And going back over those books, there's tiny little pieces that now make a lot more sense that I know what I know. So, yeah, the information is out there. It's segmented.

1:30:43 And until you understand that structure that we've discovered, a lot of the books is just information without a place to put it. So now we have a place to put all of the information and make sense of it. And I do feel like that to me is the greatest takeaway from the last three years is to give people.

1:31:10 that structure of where to file the information that they have. And like I said, over half of the information and half of the books that I've read has come from you guys through DMs and comments that's piqued my interest about this information on places to go dig deeper. So it has definitely been a team effort as far as all of us working together.

1:31:40 I literally could not have done it without every day you guys going to my page because the X, it unfollows you guys. When I follow you, it unfollows me. When you follow me, it has taken a lot of effort on your part in order to get the information out. And I could have never done any of this without you. So we at least are getting.

1:32:09 I did just schedule the, so you guys know that I went on Redacted again yesterday. If you haven't seen that, I highly suggest you go watch that. It was, as Ron said, he texted me right after and goes, it was fun watching their jaw drop. So tonight I'm going to be on Alpha Warrior. We're going to go into more depth of the CIA's presence at a whole bunch of different universities.

1:32:39 What's behind all of it? Who was funding all of that? The timeline in which it was being funded. So you definitely want to watch that. And we're, of course, as we always do, naming names, naming the foundations that were behind it, naming the universities that embrace the CIA coming and taking over their campuses. So anyway, there's that. And again, just thank you all for being here.

1:33:07 I really appreciate it. So with that, I'm going to close up shop today and we'll be back tomorrow. Take care.

Entities here

Eden Pastora36 Costa Rica25 Contras25 CIA25 United States25 Norwin Menendez20 Ronald Reagan18 Iran-Contra affair13 Horacio Perina12 George Morales12 Joseph Fernandez11 George H.W. Bush11 Roberto Chamorro11 Colombia10 Nicaragua9 Oscar Danilo Blandón9 Jimmy Carter9 Agavian Cesar8 John Hall8 Sebastian Gonzalez8 FARN7 Fernando Chamorro7 ARDE7 Panama7 Carrasco6 El Salvador6 Hall's Ranch6 California5 Associated Press5 Florida5 Félix Sábario5 Alan Fiers5 Fernando Sanchez4 Richard Secord4 Oliver North4 Marcos Aguirre4 Rob Owens3 Screen Actors Guild3 Robert F. Kennedy3 U.S. Congress3

Claims made here

Horacio Perina trafficked Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 7:15

“Karina Lanunez. He was referred to as La Barra, the Menendez lieutenant who had been supplying cocaine to Caprese and Zavala in San Francisco and funneling the profits to the Contra Army under the com…”

Manuel Noriega provided_bridge_financing_for Sebastian Gonzalez documented ▶ 10:39

“Having recently fled Costa Rica after he and the FARN's logistics chief were caught with 600 grams of cocaine in a house in Costa Rica. Gonzalez was overheard calling Pereira from his hideout in Panam…”

Sebastian Gonzalez member_of Contras documented ▶ 11:11

“Gonzalez had worked for the CIA since 1983 as the Panamanian quartermaster for all Costa Rican Contra armies, supplying supplies and deliveries from Noriega's armed forces because they were using Nori…”

Sebastian Gonzalez supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 11:11

Norwin Menendez trafficked Sebastian Gonzalez documented ▶ 12:12

“this Sebastian Gonzalez Mendetta in Costa Rica. It was reported that Menendez owned a restaurant, because they all do, in which Gonzalez might have had a financial interest. According to the cable, Me…”

CIA trafficked Contras documented ▶ 14:06

“The verdict was significant enough to attract the attention of CBS Evening News, which aired a brief report in June of 1986 on Pereira's trial and the undercover taps. The wiretap phones calls show th…”

CIA covered_up Eden Pastora guest_asserted ▶ 18:48

“became to replace the uncontrollable Pastora with someone the CIA could control. They wanted to use Fernando Chamorro. To get rid of him, Pastora complained, the Nicaraguan CIA assets approached him w…”

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Eden Pastora documented ▶ 18:48

Agavian Cesar member_of CIA documented ▶ 21:17

“Pastora's first offer of assistance came from Agavian Cesar, the former social director of Menendez VIP nightclub in Managua. The CIA now admits that he was one of its snoops. The agency officers met …”

Marcos Awando trafficked George Morales documented ▶ 21:46

“In March of 1984, Cesar and two other contra officials who had close ties to the CIA's ARDE logistics chief, Aldolfo Chamorro, and the Air Force commander, Marcos Awando, met with a major Colombian dr…”

Agavian Cesar trafficked George Morales documented ▶ 21:46

George Morales supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 23:13

“bought up all of that ranch land that installed airstrips in there and was a logistical hub, not only for the weapons trafficking, but for the drug trafficking as well in Costa Rica. Morales, the Colo…”

CIA covered_up George Morales guest_asserted ▶ 24:04

“in the CIA and that they can advise the superiors about the financial support and aircraft and training. And therefore, we will finally eventually solve all my legal problems, which they did, Morales …”

CIA trafficked John Hall documented ▶ 25:30

“was a training area and a hiding place for Contra soldiers. It was where the Legion of September 15 gathered before its raid on the Argentina radio station, which we read about several chapters back. …”

John Hall front_for CIA documented ▶ 25:30

Alan Fiers covered_up John Hall documented ▶ 26:28

“Fiers Jr. was convinced that Hall's Ranch was being used for Contra drug flights. There is no doubt in Fiers' mind that Pastora's men trans-shipped drugs out of the airstrip on Hall's Ranch. Investiga…”

CIA covered_up Carrasco guest_asserted ▶ 27:25

“is the conspiracy theorist. That never happened. One of Morales' pilots who flew in and out of Hall's ranch, Tito Carrasco, testified that one of Pastora's commanders assured him that he had nothing t…”

CIA covered_up Gary Wayne Benzner guest_asserted ▶ 28:55

“The passports were complete with entry and exit stamps from a variety of countries. They only lacked a name and a photograph, which they quickly filled in. Carrasco's co-pilot, Gary Benzer, also testi…”

Fernando Chamorro laundered_money_for CIA guest_asserted ▶ 29:55

“So the cartel and people like that are definitely anti-communist. I don't suppose their world would function too well in a communist world. It's strictly a capitalist movement and a drug business. Whe…”

Agavian Cesar laundered_money_for CIA guest_asserted ▶ 29:55

CIA approved Agavian Cesar documented ▶ 30:22

“He said he delivered bags of money sometimes two or three times a day. I paid a lot of money, maybe millions. In 1996 interviews with the Washington Post, Cesar and Chamorro both said the CIA was full…”

Alan Fiers approved Agavian Cesar documented ▶ 30:50

“Drug-based, this same thing. Chamorro went higher than that to Langley. I called our contact at the CIA. Of course I did, Chamorro told the Post. The truth is, we were still getting some CIA money und…”

Joseph Fernandez covered_up Eden Pastora documented ▶ 31:48

“And the chief of the Central American Task Force wanted the declassified hearing transcripts that they wanted. That's according to declassified hearing transcripts. Quote, I objected to it in cable tr…”

Eden Pastora recruited Contras documented ▶ 32:49

“So in other words, everybody knew that they were setting up Pastora. After his first meeting with the Contras, Morales testified that he agreed to give men aged C-47 cargo plane that he had stored in …”

Oscar Danilo Blandón funded Eden Pastora documented ▶ 36:44

“Pastora said he met Blanton during a trip to L.A. in late 1984. Marcos Aguardo confirmed this and said he had accompanied Pastora to the meeting. Both men agreed that Blanton provided cash, according …”

Oscar Danilo Blandón funded Marcos Aguirre documented ▶ 36:44

Roberto Chamorro funded Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 43:23

“Cesar and Chamorro quickly joined forces with his remaining army at the behest of the CIA. Pastor's claim of a CIA plot becomes even more believable when one considers who the agency selected to repla…”

Rob Owens spied_on Roberto Chamorro documented ▶ 46:52

“in 1985. Owen was one of the CIA's top informants in Costa Rica. He listed eight of Chamorro's associates as having past indiscretions. The list included the FARN's Air Force chief, Robello, who Owen …”

Richard Secord trafficked Norwin Menendez book_quoted ▶ 47:21

“That Menendez and Gonzalez were dealing cocaine together had been known to the CIA since late 1984. One of the men closely involved in the Contra operation around that time was none other than retired…”

Lou Wasserman funded Ronald Reagan host_asserted ▶ 57:56

“gave him the position as the president of Screen Actors Guild. And in return, Ronald Reagan gave him a waiver and allowed him to be a talent organization as well as a movie guy, which no one else was …”

Ronald Reagan funded UNITA host_asserted ▶ 59:11

“up to their eyeballs and nefarious and using the Cuban exiles in Angola to try to exploit Angola's uranium and gold and minerals. They wanted the UNITA, which was as corrupt as any government could ha…”

United States overthrew Grenada host_asserted ▶ 59:40

“Well, there's that, and then there's Grenada, and Libya, and I mean... Yes, and Grenada was another regime change in order to get the guy out that refused to go along with the exploitation of his peop…”

Alexander Haig traded_network_to Iran documented ▶ 1:09:21

“There was meetings that Haig and soon-to-be Vice President Bush took place in Europe that was meeting with Iranian officials to announce their release after the election so that they could ensure Cart…”

George H.W. Bush traded_network_to Iran documented ▶ 1:09:21

Israel supplied_arms_to Iran host_asserted ▶ 1:09:51

“I thought so, because even one of Carter's big aides has come out publicly and said the Republicans were involved in the negotiations. Most people don't realize that there were actually two missile sh…”

Andrew Johnson succeeded Abraham Lincoln documented ▶ 1:16:02

“The last Democrat president that we had before the Civil War was Johnson, before Woodrow Wilson. And the only reason he became president was because Lincoln got assassinated. The Republicans had a – i…”

John D. Rockefeller funded Standard Oil host_asserted ▶ 1:17:23

“And there's probably two things are true at the same time, but it was because that was right about the time when the automobile industry was really starting to get ramped up and Rockefeller wanted all…”

George H.W. Bush member_of Skull and Bones host_asserted ▶ 1:26:30

“I mean, if you go back to the I mean, that was my first election I ever voted in. I didn't know the ties that the Bush had, the Bush family had to, you know, skull and bones. I didn't even know what t…”