The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 13

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, hello, hello. Good afternoon, Colonel. How are you? Good. How are you? Oh, great. Sarah and I went swimming today. Uh-oh. I know. She's not totally convinced she's a water dog, but she's worth learning. Isn't it a little cold to be going? What's the temperature up there now? Oh, no. It's Missouri, so 91 right now. Oh, cool.

0:29 Yeah, we're still well into the summer blast, even though it gets down to like 50 in the morning. So let me say this up front. We are not going to have a show tomorrow. I'm going to be traveling to Biloxi, Mississippi for Cruise on the Coast, the biggest car show in America. And we will be broadcasting next week from our mobile command post. And I may have to adjust the hours. I'm just saying because I will be on the road.

1:00 And my most precious, technically cousin, but more like my brother, who was also in the Air Force, is celebrating that following weekend, his 50th wedding anniversary to a wonderful woman. And we are going to surprise him. He doesn't listen to my show, so I can say this out loud.

1:29 We are going to dart up as quickly as we can to Indiana and surprise him for his 50th wedding anniversary. The only person that knows is his daughter. So we will be on the road quite a bit because when we go to cruise in the coast, my husband likes to drive his car like the entire time we're there. So it's going to be spotty over the next two weeks. I'm just going to tell you. That's awesome though.

2:00 Yes. So I just wanted to put that out there so everybody knows. And you guys got the update that we're going to have the Secret Society show on Saturday morning with Warhamster because he wasn't able to do it today. And just for anybody who is listening who hasn't gotten to see it, the Colonel was on Redacted just two days ago.

2:25 And it was amazing. And it was so great to watch Clayton Morris grabbing his head with both his hands going, oh, my God, I can't believe what you're saying. It's amazing. Yeah. So we're definitely getting out there. We had a great show with Alpha Warrior last night talking about the CIA's presence.

2:50 A little bit more in depth on college campuses and the nefarious things that they've been up to as well. So if you didn't catch that, it's definitely worth being aware of the extent to which they've invaded college campuses all over the United States. OK, so before we start, can Stellar take our hand? Go ahead, Stellar.

3:15 I wanted to say that my friend who is totally, totally asleep and I've been trying to talk to him for a year and a half about Operation Gladio said, well, I'm just going to say my name. Sharon, Sharon, come in here. Watch this. I'm watching Redacted. There's this colonel. She's freaking amazing. I'm like, oh, my gosh. A year and a half now I've been talking to you about Colonel Towner and you wouldn't listen to me. And because she's on Redacted, he is now listening to you. Thank you.

3:45 Well, that's great news. But I will tell you guys something. Bridget, can other people go and look at my analysis page? Or is it just us? No, it's just us. Okay. They have, since I appeared on Redacted, my numbers, like for that day yesterday and today, has taken a nosedive.

4:13 Just be aware that it comes with a cost. If you guys go out there and just pick a post, any post of Colonel, click on her profile, repost several of her posts and reply to some of her posts, it will break through the program. Yeah, it'll break the algorithm if a concerted effort is made to do that because you guys have done it before. It's just mind boggling to me.

4:43 That they're even able to do that. But whatever. It ain't going to stop us and it's not going to slow us down. All right. Let's get into it. We're on chapter 12. It's called This Guy Talks to God. So you remember that we had talked to. Well, let's just get into it. When they found Dr. Hugo Sedata Fora.

5:16 I wish they had just like Smith and Jones names. In September 1985, they found everything but his head. The rest of him had been tied up in a U.S. mail sack and dumped under a bridge at the border of Costa Rica and Panama. His body bore evidence of unimaginable tortures. The muscles in his legs had been neatly sliced.

5:43 so that he could not close his legs. And then something had been jammed up his rear end, tearing it apart. His testicles were swollen horribly, a result of prolonged torture. His ribs were broken. And then while he was still alive, his head had been chopped off with a butcher knife. And other than the head chopping off, this is torture that we have become very much aware of.

6:13 through the research we did in the Office of Public Safety. So it is very likely these same types of torture techniques were used on him. The horrors of Hugo Spadafora's death brought thousands of people into the streets in Panama City, where they formed a long human chain of outrage. The dashing young doctor had been a hero to many Panamanians.

6:42 He was an unusual mix of a warrior and a middle class professional. When he was murdered, Spada Fora had been fighting for the Contras in Nicaragua at the side of his old friend, Edan Pastora. That's the guy the CIA doesn't like. They had fought together in the 1970s against the Somoza dictatorship with Spada Fora leading.

7:11 a brigade of jungle fighters. It was called the Brigada Internacional Simón Bolivar in support of Pastora's southern forces. After the Sandinistas became too oppressive for Pastora's liking, he joined the CIA and took over the command of the Contra Army in Costa Rica. Hugo Spadafora gave up his medical practice in Panama and with his wife,

7:41 moved to Costa Rica to take up arms with Pastora once again, this time against his old Marxist comrades. The Reagan administration's Contra PR machine couldn't have dreamed up a better freedom fighter than Spadafora. The DEA called him reportedly the best-known guerrilla fighter in Central America. He was so popular in Panama that the country's civilian president

8:11 Nicholas Barletta announced an immediate investigation into his murder. It was to be one of Barletta's last official acts. A few weeks later, he was forced to resign by Manuel Noriega, the commander of the country's military. And the promised investigation never occurred. Charged with masterminding Spadafora's murder, Noriega was convicted in absentia,

8:41 by a Panamanian court in 1993. The New York Times in June of 1986 story that first exposed Noriega as a drug dealer and money launderer cited Spadafore's murder as an example of why U.S. government officials were growing tired of the tyrant. Now keep in mind, Noriega had been in bed with the CIA for a very long time.

9:07 Officials in the Reagan administration and past administrations said in interviews that they had overlooked Noriega's illegal activity because of his cooperation with American intelligence, meaning the CIA. They said, for example, that General Noriega had been a valuable asset to Washington countering insurgencies in Central America and now cooperating with the CIA and providing sensitive information in Nicaragua.

9:36 So Noriega's fine as long as he's useful to the CIA. But the Times story left unaddressed a rather obvious question. Why would a cunning political strategist like Noriega take the risky step of having the popular Spadafora, Panama's former vice minister of public health, kidnapped by government security men in full view of dozens of witnesses and decapitated? The answer.

10:04 which may be the reason the Times sidestepped the issue involved drugs in the CIA. When Noriega's goons hauled Spadafora off a bus at a Pandemanian border, he was on his way to Panama City, where he intended to publicly release information of Noriega's cocaine smuggling activities, activities that also involved the Contras in Costa Rica. Now, again, keep in mind.

10:33 He is aiding Pastora, the guy on the Contra team that refused drug money. He would not work with the CIA using proceeds from drug trafficking. This guy was his key guerrilla fighter. Before leaving for Panama, Spadafora had excitedly told friends that he now had the proof he needed to document the dictator's participation in cocaine trafficking.

11:02 and he was convinced that the revelation would sink the tyrant. In the months before the murder, the doctor had befriended a drug and arms smuggler who once ran Noriega's drug operation, Floyd Carlton Caceres. Carlton, who also served as Noriega's personal pilot, began confiding in Spadafora, sharing intimate details of Noriega's drug trade. Dr. Spadafora

11:32 was a very honest man, Carlton said. He was an idealist, and he tried to get the best for everyone needing justice. If anyone needed justice right then, it was Floyd Carlton. The smuggler was lying low, trying to avoid a hitman Colombian dealers had sent after him. Carlton had lost $1.8 million in cash the Colombians had entrusted with him to fly to Los Angeles to their banks in Panama City.

12:01 Since he was too busy to do it himself, he had delegated the task to another pilot. I had to pay that money, Carlton said, which he agreed to do by flying a drug load north for free. But again, he had sent someone else to fly the mission, one of his partners, Teofila Watson. Watson had never returned. He disappeared with the cocaine. Now the Columbians were very mad. They thought...

12:30 I had agreed or made a plan with Mr. Watson to steal the drugs, Carlton said. Carlton suspected that the Costa Rican Contra leader, Sebastian Gonzalez, and his strange M3 Contra group had done Watson in, leading him into an ambush at an airstrip owned by the local CIA man, John Hall. That's the guy the CIA is using in northern Costa Rica.

12:58 They killed him and then took the airplane of drugs to Mr. Hall's ranch, Carlton testified. The plane was cut up and thrown into the river that ran through Hall's property, and the cocaine was taken to the United States, where it was traded for weapons. The Colombians sent a hired killer by the name of Alberto Aldemar out to find Carlton and the cocaine.

13:24 Aldemar started by kidnapping Carlton's friends and employees and slapping them around. One of his relatives, Carlton said, was brutally beaten when the power shovels arrived and began digging up Carlton's ranch. They spent weeks there looking for some type of metal and found nothing. Next, the Colombians kidnapped the daughter of the Contra CIA liaison, John Hall.

13:52 on whose ranch the theft supposedly had taken place. Hall ransomed the girl back unharmed and blamed it on the communists, i.e. the Sandinistas. After that, Carlton bolted Central America altogether and took refuge in Miami, the U.S. headquarters of his cocaine transportation network. That's where Spadafora found him in hiding. He was trying...

14:19 to unmask Noriega, and he was successful in obtaining truth that would imperil Noriega. That, in large part, was due to Carlton, who had later astonished DEA officials with his photographic recall of Noriega's drug deals. Carlton eventually became the U.S. star witness against the Panama dictator at his trial on drugs. The pilot

14:49 gave Spadafora the names of other pilots involved and the dates of specific drug flights through Costa Rica. He also implicated Noriega's high school buddy, Gatchin Gonzalez, who was then hiding out in Panama from a Costa Rican cocaine indictment.

15:09 When he was finished, Carlton said, Spadafora announced, I am going to have a bomb explode in Panama. I am going to set it off with all the information that I have. Spadafora hurried back to Costa Rica and began sharing his discoveries with law enforcement and intelligence officials, which was probably his worst mistake. News of Spadafora's visit to DEA office, because remember, they're in bed with the CIA.

15:38 And San Jose was quickly relayed back to the CIA headquarters in Langley, which was informed that Hugo Spadafora had made quote-unquote vague allegations to DEA that Gonzalez, Manuel Noriega, and other Contra leaders were engaged in drug trafficking. The chief of the local DEA office, Robert Neves,

16:04 met Spadafora twice, and Spadafora had promised that he would provide evidence of drug trafficking by Gonzalez. If Neves needed a way to confirm the doctor's explosive claims, he had just the man to do it. His deep cover informant, none other than Menendez. In addition to Menendez's connection with the Contras, the trafficker was a close friend and trafficking partner of the Contra official.

16:34 that Spadafora was trying to unmask, Gonzalez. Somehow, Menendez's lieutenants got wind that Spadafora was planning, and they began devising a counterattack. During their investigation of Menendez's aide, Horacio Perina, the Costa Rican police taped Gonzalez and Perina's discussing Spadafora's probe and plotting ways to silence him.

17:04 So they're eavesdropping and listening to them plotting this guy's murder. Costa Rican newspaper obtained copies of the tapes and printed transcripts. One ploy Gonzalez and Perina battled around was paying a witness in one of the provinces between 200 and 300,000 to falsely accuse Spadafora of drug trafficking and exonerate Gonzalez of his pending Costa Rican drug charges.

17:34 Now he's surrounded because he comes over here. He's finished, Gonzalez said. Yes, Perino replied. If he shows up over there, you'll get him. The district attorney in the Pandemanian province where Spadafora was murdered ordered Gonzalez arrested in 1990 for allegedly offering to pay someone to kill the doctor, but no charges were ever filed, and Gonzalez was quickly released.

18:01 He strenuously denied any involvement in the death, but Spadafora's family remains convinced Gonzalez played a major role. I mean, he's on tape planning it. Though Noriega apparently felt the information Spadafora possessed was important enough to kill him over, DEA official Robert Neves had a different reaction. He told the Costa Rican newspaper that his discussion with Spadafora was not important.

18:32 and said that he did nothing with the information the doctor risked his life to bring him. Since Noriega's drug dealing was the official reason the United States invaded Panama four years later, Neves' perverse inaction is astonishing, but it would not be out of character for the DEA at the time. Floyd Carlton testified that he got the same cold shoulder from the DEA office in Panama City.

19:02 where he tried telling them about Noriega's drug dealing in January of 1986. I did actually make contact with intelligence agencies in the United States Embassy in Panama, Carlton said. And I asked, have you heard my name? And they said, yes, we have. And so I said, on different occasions, I have sent people to speak to you so that you would interview me. But you have always told them that you have nothing to talk to me about.

19:32 And the fact is that I believe that I can go before the American judicial system and speak about a lot of things that are happening in this country, and I can even prove them. So they ask, such as what? So I told them money laundering, drugs, weapons, corruption, and assassinations. When I mentioned the name of General Noriega, they immediately became upset. Carlton said the DEA agents, quote,

19:59 did not try to contact me again. And the only thing that I asked was for protection for myself and my family. And at that time, I had no problems with the American justice system, unquote. Judging from the DEA's response to a freedom of information request, Neves took a similar incurious stance when his informant turned up with his head missing. Apparently, none of the DEA Costa Rican agents,

20:30 ever looked into the doctor's gruesome death. All the agency had on Spadafora, it claimed, was a couple of paragraphs taken from Pandamanian newspaper stories written a year after the murder. So they recorded none of the information or they recorded it and destroyed it. The CIA's reaction was even more bizarre. Its Costa Rican station chief, Joe Fernandez,

20:58 helped Noriega plant false media reports about who actually killed Spadafora. Jose Blanton, then Noriega's consul general in New York, told Congress that he and Noriega discussed Spadafora's murder a few weeks after the body was found during a long flight home from New York aboard the dictator's plane. Noriega, who'd been in France when Spadafora was killed, wanted an update on how the public was reacting to the killing, the diplomat said.

21:28 Especially, he was interested in the developments regarding a witness by the name of Hoffman. It was a witness of German origin who appeared on Panamanian television saying that he knew who had killed Spadafora and publicly said that Spadafora had been killed by the leftist guerrillas of San Salvador. The German Manfred Hoffman

21:59 was a witness who was created by Noriega, and he was obtained through the CIA operating in Costa Rica. Blanton testified to this. He is a specialist in electronics, and he worked for the CIA. Blanton describes the episode as an absurd farce. He said that he told Noriega that nobody would believe the story.

22:25 A month after Spadafora's killing, Noriega's men contacted the CIA and asked for help in diffusing an effort by family members of the slain rebel to implicate Noriega in drug trafficking. The CIA cable discussed putting Gonzalez on a popular morning radio show to discredit Spadafora's brother, who was trying to obtain Costa Rican documents implicating the Contra commander as a drug dealer.

22:53 According to a handwritten note on the CIA cable, Brother Winston was barking up the right tree. Quote, if the truth be told, we had reason to believe that Gonzalez had been involved in drugs for about a year and a half ago, for as long as a year and a half ago, unquote. That was a handwritten note on the CIA cable. Actually, it was longer than that. A CIA contract agent had first reported on

23:23 Gonzalez's drug dealings as far back as October 1983, after Spadafora had informed him that Noriega was smuggling drugs with the Contras and that Gonzalez was involved. The agent said his CIA supervisor simply replied that CIA had heard some rumors of drug trafficking involvement with the Contras. Some rumors. They're actually doing it, but it's rumors. Unfortunately for Spadafora's family,

23:51 The good doctor had the bad luck of being murdered at a potentially inconvenient time. It was in no one's interest right then, Noriega's or the U.S. government, to delve too deeply into the crime for fear that it would expose the apparent complicity of two CIA assets, both Noriega and Gonzalez, in the murder of someone trying to expose that very drug trafficking.

24:19 At that point, the Reagan administration was smuggling up to Noriega as it had never done before, frantically searching for ways around the 1984 congressional ban on CIA supporting the Contras. For months, a steady stream of high-ranking visitors from Washington had been paying calls on Noriega, reminding him of how much the U.S. needed him. In June of 1985, aboard a yacht anchored in

24:48 the Pacific port of Balboa. North and Noriega struck an important bargain, said Jose Blanton, who attended the meeting. Colonel North was interested in gaining Panama support for the Contras, and he particularly requested training assistance in bases located in Panama. Blanton told Congress this in 1988. General Noriega

25:20 promised to provide training in specific locations to members of the Contra's training to be provided at bases located in Panama. He was also willing to allow Contra leaders free access to the country and made it clear to North that he was pretty much willing to do anything they needed him to do. Now, I'm going to stop right there for just a second because I want to share something with you guys, which is absolutely.

25:49 crazy. Let me tell you about the guy that I told you I was going to visit. I was talking to him on the phone the other day and my cousin up in Indiana. His job in the Air Force was security forces. He was a cop. Primarily, his assignments was

26:22 guarding nuclear facilities. He was assigned to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. And he was telling me a completely unrelated story about how he had submitted the paperwork for a particular badge awarded. It's called Brave Defender Patch.

26:52 When you participate in, I forget if he said three or four, joint programs as an Air Force cop, you can apply to be given the brave defender patch to wear on your uniform. He and several of his fellow cop mates in the squadron was tasked to provide security for the perimeter.

27:24 of a joint exercise that would have qualified as one of these brave defender submissions. And you're never going to believe. So, you know, cops talk to each other. The exercise that they were defending the perimeter of was a special forces joint deployment to practice.

27:54 taking over a ship that had Noriega on it. Now, it just so happens that that exercise was slightly after the story I just told you. Okay, so Noriega is very well known for taking his yacht out and it was called Operation Venom Strike.

28:24 Well, when he got his Brave Defender patch application back, it was denied because they said there was no existence of Operation Venom Strike, even though he had personally participated in it. So it was so highly classified that the Department of the Air Force wouldn't even recognize it.

28:53 As an actual exercise. And so I'm just listening to him babble on about what he thinks is completely unrelated to anything. And after he got done telling this story, I'm like, well, let me tell you something. And I turned to this part in the book and he was like dead silent. He's like, holy shit. So, yeah.

29:23 It's crazy. So I have firsthand knowledge, secondhand knowledge. My cousin has firsthand knowledge of special forces in the United States planning to take Noriega off his yacht. That is evidently as late as when he retired, still classified. So there's that. Anyway, going on with the story.

29:53 According to the government's documents filed during North's trial, Noriega offered to have the entire Sandinista leadership assassinated in exchange for a promise from the U.S. to help clean up Noriega's image. North raised the proposal at an NSC meeting and made it clear that Noriega had the capability to do what he was offering.

30:16 North was instructed to tell Noriega that the administration wasn't keen on murdering the entire Nicaraguan government officials, but that Panamanian assistance was sabotaged was another story. Now, again, let me just stop here for a second. They're literally trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Noriega is offering to do that. So are we to believe?

30:39 that the United States wasn't interested in doing that and the entire reason they're down there is to set up a drug trafficking network? Because that's what that sounds like to me. A month after Spadafora's body was found under the bridge, North went back to Panama for another visit, this time to assure the dictator that the U.S. government would be boosting Noriega's foreign aid payments. Within a year, an additional $200 million of our tax dollars

31:10 was sent in bank loans to Noriega. Meanwhile, a former staffer on the National Security Council, Dr. Norman Bailey, was frantically trying to alert various high-ranking government officials to the fact that Noriega was in bed with drug traffickers and other criminals. Bailey, the NSC's former director of planning, had discovered that Panamanian banks were taking in

31:39 Billions of dollars in $50 and $100 bills, money that Bailey concluded had come from criminal activities. Bailey set off on a quest to persuade Reagan administration to distance itself from Noriega, pressing his reports into the hands of Reagan's top advisors, including Admiral John Poindexter.

32:05 I took the initiative myself after the murder of Spadafora, Bailey testified. As far as I know, the only thing that actually took place was that Admiral Poindexter added Panama to a trip he was making to Central America in December of 1985. But Poindexter's meeting with Noriega was hardly what Norman Bailey had envisioned. According to Jose Blanton, who had

32:33 been in attendance, Poindexter did bring up Spadafore's murder, but only to give Noriega some friendly advice on how to handle it. Poindexter spoke of the need to have a group of officers be sent abroad outside of Panama while the situation changed and the attitudes changed regarding Spadafore's assassination. Noriega met with CIA Director William Casey after that.

33:01 again to discuss his help for the Contras. According to a Senate subcommittee report, Casey decided not to raise the allegation of Noriega's cocaine trafficking with him, quote, on the grounds that Noriega was providing valuable support for our policies in Central America, unquote. Their policies was drug trafficking.

33:26 While all of the official ring kissing was going on, Oliver North and the CIA was quietly knitting parts of Noriega's drug transportation system into the Contra supply line and hiring drug smugglers to make the Contra supply flights for them. At the time of his visits with Noriega, North was firmly in control of the Contra project, having been handed the ball personally by the CIA's director, Casey. Far from having

33:54 the dopey, gap-toothed zealot portrayed by the Reagan administration and the press, North was one of the most powerful men in Washington. The spring of 1985, he was on top and testified at Allen Fires, the CIA's Central American Task Force chief and North liaison at Langley. He was the top player in the NSC as well.

34:24 There was no doubt that he was the driving force behind the process. Former Iranian Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who indicted and convicted North on a variety of felonies, suspects the Marine officer was a cutout for the CIA, a human lightning rod to keep the agency from becoming directly involved in the illegal activities that they were involved in. The CIA had.

34:54 continued as the agency overseeing the U.S. undercover activities in support of the Contras after the Boland Amendments were enacted. Walsh wrote in his memoirs, the CIA's strategy determined what North would and would not do. So he's just a CIA cutout. North had access to the nation's deepest secrets.

35:21 Subjects so highly classified, even top CIA officials didn't know about all of them. He told me in 1985 that there was two squadrons of stealth bombers operational in Arizona. And I just thought he was crazy, Fiers testified. It was one of the greatest secrets the government had. And then all of a sudden, we in fact ended up having two squadrons of stealth bombers operational.

35:51 There were many other instances when he told me things that I thought was totally crazy that turned out to be absolutely true. One of the many surprises North had for Fires was the fact that he had received specialized training, usually reserved for only CIA officers. During one late night conversation about the Contra supply operations in Costa Rica, Fires testified North blurted out that he had put together the whole.

36:20 cascade of cover companies, just quote, just like they taught us at the CIA clandestine training site, unquote. And I thought that was pretty interesting because I went there and I didn't learn how to do any of that stuff. And I also didn't know that Ollie North had gone down to the training site. Savvy bureaucrats in Washington knew North was not someone to be taken lightly.

36:49 Fires called him a power figure in the government, a force to be reckoned with. When he asked for something, people jumped. When he gave orders, they followed. Ollie North had the ability to work down in my chain of command and to cause it to override me if and when I didn't do something. That's what Fires said. And I would like to add, subsequently,

37:16 I saw that happen in other ways in other places with other agencies. FIRE's boss at the CIA was Claire George. And he echoed, I suffer from the bureaucrat's disease that when people call me and say I am calling from the White House for the National Security Council on behalf of the National Security Advisor, I'm inclined to snap too. CIA Costa Rica Station Chief Joseph Fernandez was more blunt.

37:48 Quote, to a GS-15, this guy talks to God, right? Unquote. Fernandez said of North during a secret congressional hearing in 1987, quote, obviously I knew where he worked in the executive office building. He got tremendous access. I mean, North is not some ordinary American citizen that is suddenly in this position.

38:14 This is a man who had dealings with, obviously, the director of the CIA. You know, he deals with my division chief, unquote. North was telling U.S. ambassadors what to do. In 1985, before taking his new job as ambassador to Costa Rica, Louis Tams said North sat him down and gave him his marching orders. Colonel North asked me to go down and open up the Southern Front, Tams said.

38:42 We would encourage the freedom fighters to fight. And the war was in Nicaragua. The war was not in Costa Rica. And so that is what I understood my instructions to be. But with the CIA's billions officially banned from the scene, North had a big problem if he was going to get the Contras out of their Costa Rican border sanctuary and into Nicaragua. He had no way to supply them. The CIA had been doing it all.

39:10 It takes tons of material to sustain an army in the field, particularly one that is warring deep inside enemy territory, separated by days of supply depots. The CIA had plenty of experience handling such complicated logistics problems, but North didn't. It was a problem he took up with his friends at Langley, who, according to CIA officer Fiers,

39:37 spent major time, major effort, trying to come up with a solution. Air resupply of the Contras was the key, he said. We had 15,000-man army of guerrillas operating in Nicaragua and had to supply them. All of the supplies went by air. They carried in what? Their boots, their clothes, and immediate ammunition, but everything else had to be airdropped.

40:07 One of the vehicles North selected to handle that chore was a new unit set up inside the State Department called Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office. The office was officially created in the middle of 1985 to oversee deliveries of $27 million in quote-unquote humanitarian aid that Congress agreed to give to the Contras.

40:31 North and CIA first tried to get the operation placed inside the National Security Council, where it would be free from public scrutiny and North could control it directly. But that failed. Instead, Fiers said, North simply just hijacked it from the State Department in 1985. And again, this is like pretending the State Department's not part of the CIA, but whatever. We'll go along with it.

41:01 In 1985, he pressured the newly created organization to hire one of his aides as a consultant. It was a tall former L.A. prep school counselor named Robert Owen, a Stanford grad and one time advertising executive. Dang, that sounds like Lansdale. Owen idolized North. Since 1984, he had been, in his own words, North's.

41:31 trusted courier in Central America, zigzagging through the war zone for Ali, listening to concerns of the Contras. Owen's work had drawn rave reviews from the CIA contacts. That man has all the attributes that we want in our officers, Fernandez said. They were so impressed with Mr. Owen that he was being considered as a possible applicant for the clandestine service. He probably was.

42:01 Owen, in 1989, court testimony admitted that there was probably there was a possibility that I might have gone with the CIA on contract. Yeah, just a possibility. But because Owen was a private citizen, Fernandez said he couldn't legally send him out on intelligence gathering missions. He could listen when Owen reported back, but he couldn't task him.

42:30 which is the perfect situation to have an actual CIA asset pretend like he's a civilian for that exact reason. But that all changed once Owen began working at the Nicaraguan humanitarian office, which probably explains Norse insistence that he be hired. When he did that, then we did have a much...

42:54 more operational relationship, Hernandez confirmed, because then he was a government employee. I asked him to find out things. The director was Robert Dumling, D-U-E-M-L-I-N-G, and his aides couldn't figure out why they needed to have Rob Owen around, and initially they rebuffed the suggestion. I certainly didn't see a necessity for a middleman.

43:24 But North kept pushing. Doomling said North had Contra leaders write letters demanding Owens hire. He lobbied Doomling's superior at the State Department, Assistant Secretary Elliott Abrams, a fervent Contra supporter. After one stormy meeting with North and Abrams, Doomling said, Elliott Abrams turned to me and said, well, Bob, I suppose you probably ought to hire Owen in bureaucratic terms.

43:53 That meant I was hiring him. Owen was given a $50,000 contract as a quote-unquote facilitator, a job that mystified Doomling's aide, Chris Arcos. Arcos testified that no one was sure what, in fact, Rob Owens could do or bring to the office. He didn't have much Spanish. He didn't have an expertise in medical or anything like that because it was never a humanitarian effort. Hello.

44:21 The minutes from a November 1985 meeting show that for some reason, Abrams and North was extremely concerned about the fallout if someone discovered Owen's involvement in the office, and they began working on a cover story to explain his presence there in case it leaked. Abrams and North agreed that Owen will be expendable if it becomes a political liability. The minutes state, if that happened, Congress would be told that he was an experiment that hadn't worked out.

44:54 Oh, my gosh. Rob Owen's mission was to serve as the CIA's unofficial liaison to drug traffickers and other undesirables who were helping the Contras in Costa Rica, people who were too dirty for the CIA to deal with directly. He was going to be a cutout. He probably had the most extensive network of contacts among resistant leaders, the CIA station chief said, including people with whom we did not want to have contact.

45:24 Fernandez was referring to, were the Cuban anti-communists in Costa Rica. The Cubans, you know, like the CIA guys in the Cuban exile community, like Brigade 2506, those Cubans. It was a rough mix of mercenaries, bombers, assassins, and drug dealers recruited from Miami's station and given to tomorrow. And CIA agent Ernesto Crochet

45:57 Fernandez testified that he testified that they were leery of these people because Bob Owen had an entree with them. And now, thanks to his humanitarian office job at the State Department, he had official entree because he was now basically an operational CIA asset. And he gave him the authority.

46:26 to be directly over the drug traffickers that Fernandez and the CIA couldn't be seen with because of congressional oversight. He was assigned to monitor the contract with Costa Rican shrimp company called, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, a Spanish name, but it's a shrimp company. And remember that we've discovered in all of the other research that we've done.

46:53 that the shrimp companies in Latin America was critical for contraband coming into the United States. This consisted of a small fleet of fishing boats based in the Pacific Coast village of Pantorinas. And as an import company in Miami, Ocean Hunter, which brought these ships into the United States.

47:22 In reality, however, it was a firm owned and operated by Cuban-American drug traffickers, meaning ocean hunters and the shrimp company. The conclusion was based partly on congressional testimony of former Medellin cartel accountant Ramon Millian Rodriguez, a Cuban-American who was the cartel's money laundering wizard until his arrest in Miami in 1983.

47:51 when he and $5 million in cash were taken off a Learjet bound for Panama. The shrimp company, he testified, was one of the interlocking chain of companies he'd created to launder all of the cash that was pouring in into the cartel's coppers from the worldwide cocaine sales. Drug money would go into one company and come out of another through a series of intercompany transactions.

48:21 clean and ready to go in a bank. In 1982, the shrimp company was taken over by a group of major Miami-based drug dealers. Quote, were payments or arrangements made by which the Contras would receive money through the shrimp company? Unquote. This was asked by John Kerry during a hearing in 1987. Yes, sir, the accountant said. You arrange that?

48:50 I, through my intermediaries, made it possible. Was any of the money that you provided the shrimp company traceable to drugs or drug-related transactions, Carey asked? No, sir. Why was that? Because we were experts at what we do. Millian, a graduate of Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, told Carey's committee that he used the firm to launder

49:17 over $10 million in donation from the Medellin cartel to the Contras. A donation, he said, was arranged by and paid for by a former CIA agent. And you're never going to guess who that is. Felix Rodriguez. Yes, the infamous Felix Rodriguez. Money laundering, drug money. Holy crap. During the drug trafficking trial of Manuel Noriega, several years later,

49:50 One of the government's star witnesses, former Medellin cartel transportation boss Carlos Lader, confirmed under oath that the cartel had given the Contras $10 million, just as Millian had testified. Lader said he arranged the donation himself. Contra leader Calero has always denied the Contras received that money.

50:17 But Calero is hardly a credible source when it comes to Contra fundraising. He denied for many years that the Contras ever got any money from the CIA or worked with Oliver North, which we know always lies. The FBI first picked up word of the shrimp company involvement with drugs in September 1984 while the CIA was still running the Contra program, an investigation of a 1983 bombing of a Miami bank.

50:46 had led police and FBI agents into the murky underworld of Miami's Cuban anti-communist group, who were suspected of blowing up the bank. Miami police questioned the president of the Cuban League, Jose Coton, who told them what he knew of the bombing and then unloaded some unexpected information about Contras and drugs, naming

51:12 A host of Cuban CIA operatives and Bay of Pig veterans, he said, were working for the Contras in Costa Rica. One drug dealer Coton named was Francesco Chains, whom Coton said was giving financial support to the anti-Castro groups and the Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas. The monies came from narcotics transactions, he said.

51:38 He identified Chains as one of the owners of Ocean Hunter, the receptive company in Miami for the strip company in Costa Rica. The Miami cops quickly turned the information over to the FBI. Houghton's statements was corroborated years later by former drug pilot Carrasco, who admitted flying cocaine and weapon loads for the Contras in 84 and 85.

52:11 As a U.S. government witness, Carrasco testified that the shrimp company was being used by the Contras during the war as a front to bring cocaine into the United States and finance their war effort. To make sure I understand, this is a question. Is this company, the shrimp company, in any way involved in drug trafficking, a defense attorney asked Carrasco in a...

52:40 1990 drug trial in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's correct, was the answer. In what way was it involved? As I have said, they would load cocaine inside the containers, which were being shipped loaded with vegetables and fruit to the United States. Wonder if there's any oranges. Did that company have a role in your drug operation dealings with the Contras and the weapons that you believe to be involved with the CIA?

53:10 It did, the pilot said. So how could a company started by the Medellin cartel and used as a front to run drug into America ever wind up with a contract from the U.S. Department of State Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office? Yes, they contracted with this, thanks to Owens. Through Owens and the CIA, court records showed.

53:42 The people that were involved in Ocean Hunter in Costa Rica were ones that had been helpful to the cause. Owen testified in 1988 civil deposition. He identified those helpful souls as Frank Chains, the Miami Cuban who had been reported to the FBI as a drug trafficker in 1984, and Nunez, another Bay of Pigs veteran.

54:07 who was suspected by Interpol of being a drug trafficker as well as a CIA operative. Another man involved in the shrimp company was exiled Nicaraguan lawyer Francesco Velez Sainz. He was a CIA asset who claimed that $36,000 that police seized in the investigation. Remember that?

54:32 And from like 10 chapters ago, the frogman thing where they found the money in the drawer beside the bed and somebody claimed it was for the Contras and they had to give it back. This is the same guy, by the way. Same guy. Just shows up in a whole nother court case. So on several occasions, Velez, the brother-in-law of Menendez's lieutenant, Perina.

55:00 notarized affidavits submitted by the shrimp company to obtain payment from the State Department. Owen claimed the shrimp company was used mainly for an international bank account, serving as one of the several Central American brokers for quote-unquote humanitarian aid going to the Contras on the Southern Front. In all, more than $260,000 in U.S. taxpayers flowed through the shrimp company's bank accounts.

55:30 in only 1986. Quote, we needed an account in Miami that the State Department money could be deposited to. There were consistent financial transactions between Miami and Costa Rica between Frank, Chans, and Nunez. They had been helpful and supportive of the cause. They were willing to do it, unquote. Where it ended up is anybody's guess. Some of the money paid

56:00 to the shrimp company, bank records showed, was wired out in a never explained transfers to banks, where? Israel and South Korea. Yep. Oh boy. When the USGAO audited the Nicaraguan humanitarian account, broker's account, it was unable to trace most of the money.

56:29 Of $4.4 million that went into the account, less than a million dollars could be tracked. And much of that was for payoffs of Honduran military officials. The rest was traced to offshore banks and then disappeared. Owen insisted that the traffickers of the shrimp company had been cleared by the CIA and presumably the FBI.

56:57 U.S. intelligence sources were involved in Costa Rica to provide a check and balance on this, he said. They would be knowledgeable. They knew the lay of the ground. I thought it important and appropriate to talk with them, Owens testified. To the best of my knowledge, I talked with U.S. intelligence officials regarding Nunes. I believe I would have been asked by Frank Chains as well. In addition, Owens said

57:22 Their names were given to the Nicaraguan humanitarian office at the State Department. And it was my understanding that any account that that State Department office provided funds to was cleared by the FBI. The FBI was informed who was being used as a banker. Now, whether they did any checks on it or not, I'm not sure. The director of the Nicaraguan humanitarian.

57:51 testified that the FBI never answered his letters of inquiry. So it is fair to say then that you were the one that suggested these gentlemen be utilized. No one was asked during a deposition. It is fair to say in consultation with U.S. intelligence officials, Owen refused to identify them further, other than to say that it was someone who works in the CIA. One reason the CIA gave the shrimp company a clean bill of health

58:21 may have been because its Costa Rican manager, Nunez, was a CIA agent himself. John Hall, the CIA's Costa Rican liaison for the Contras, confirmed in an interview that Nunez was working with the agency as an intelligence source, and in a 1988 UPI story said Nunez was identified as an agency officer by at least two other Costa Rican government officials.

58:50 In addition to distributing State Department money to the Costa Ricas, Nunes was also permitting the shrimp company to be used by Oliver North and the CIA station chief, Fernandez, as a cover for a secret maritime operation that they were running against the Sandinistas. In February of 1986, one of the Cubans working with North in Costa Rica, a longtime CIA contract agent by the name of Felipe Vidal,

59:18 devised a plan for a small, professionally managed rebel naval force that would serve as a supply line for the Contras, an intelligence gathering operation, and a transportation unit to infiltrate into Nicaraguan's mainland areas. Fidel recommended using a Costa Rican shrimp company as a front, getting two shrimp boats to act as motherships.

59:46 and to gather intelligence. These boats could be acquired by the U.S. government, Vidal wrote, noting that existing connections with high-ranking officials in the DEA would facilitate the purchase of the boats. The cost of these boats with cooperation from the DEA could come in as low as $10,000 a boat. CIA records show that Vidal was employed by the shrimp company at the time he proposed this scheme. So in other words, he's working for the CIA.

1:00:16 Fidel's existing connections with a top DEA official was fascinating considering the Cuban Shady's background. Fidel's criminal history reflects the assortment of assault, robbery, narcotics, and firearm violations. A CIA IG wrote, and included in a 1971 drug conviction,

1:00:42 and a 1977 arrest for conspiracy to sell marijuana. Former CIA official Alan Fiers admits to be aware of his misbehavior and general thuggery, but claims he didn't know the Cuban was a convicted drug trafficker. Bullshit. That's probably the reason why he qualified. The following month, Owen informed North that the first hard intelligence mission inside by boat

1:01:12 What has been had taken place and the people are now out. He said five small boats were being constructed and a safe house in Costa Rica had been rented on a river which flows into the ocean. Nunez, a Cuban who was in the shrimping business in another area, was fronting the operation, Owen wrote to North.

1:01:40 He is willing to have Americans come work for him undercover to advise on the operation. If we can get two shrimp boats, Nunes is willing to front a shrimping operation on the Atlantic coast as well. These boats can be used as motherships. I brought this up a while ago and you agreed and gave me the name of a DEA agent who would help me get the boats.

1:02:07 In other words, in early 1986, the DEA was being asked to provide cheap, ocean-going vessels to a company started by the Medellin cartel to run drugs and espionage missions for the CIA. The identity of Adele's high-ranking DEA contact was not divulged, nor is it known whether the agency ever provided the boats, but records show the maritime operation was going strong.

1:02:36 by April 1986, and would soon be running several trips a week. So, obviously, they got the boats. Curiously, the Iran-Contra investigations barely looked at this clandestine operation, which was a clear violation of the Boland Amendment, since, according to Owen, it was directly involving the CIA station chief, Joe Fernandez. Despite his background, Nunes had maintained a close relationship

1:03:08 with supposedly anti-drug agencies, both in America and Costa Rica. Nunes got to be known by our authorities as a collaborator of the DEA and other police bodies. This was said in a Costa Rican prosecutor's report in 1989. Adding that the Cuban carried credentials from Costa Rican Ministry of Public Safety.

1:03:38 Department of Narcotics provided funds and vehicles for anti-drug units and went out on raids with them, though his effectiveness was somewhat questionable. The report said he blew a four-month investigation of a Colombian drug ring by making a premature arrest, which, of course, because he works for the CIA, he's going to sabotage everything.

1:04:02 Most of the strange activity was occurring with the knowledge and apparent approval of CIA Station Chief Fernando and other CIA agents in Costa Rica. So they basically embedded this guy into the Costa Rican drug operations so they could get advanced warning on raids. That's what that amounts to. Nunes, however, shed light on.

1:04:29 shed light on that question when CIA interrogated him in March of 1987 about allegations that he had been dealing drugs in Costa Rica through a shrimp company. Thanks to a DEA seizure, the CIA already knew that Nunez's partner in the firm was behind a 414-pound cocaine load shipped to Miami in January of 86.

1:04:53 Nunes revealed that since 85, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the NSC. Nunes refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but indicated it was difficult to answer questions relating to the involvement in narcotic trafficking because the specific task he performed was at the direction of the NSC. CIA headquarters ordered an immediate halt to Nunes' questioning.

1:05:20 The agency's position is not to get involved in this matter and to turn it over to others because it had nothing to do with the agency, but with the National Security Council, but with the National Security Council. That came from former CIA officer Louis DuPart on behalf of the CIA inspector general. That's all we had to do. It was someone else's problem that someone.

1:05:50 was the Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, upon whom every potential allegation of drug trafficking by the Contras was dumped by the CIA and the Reagan administration. Of course, Walsh had neither the time nor the authority to investigate any of it. He just became a convenient excuse to not do anything by anyone involved. Former CIA official Alan Fiers

1:06:17 who ran the Contra project at the time, confirmed that Nunes' questioning was stopped because of the NSC connection and the possibility that it could be somehow connected to North, otherwise known as the Iran-Contra affair. The CIA made the same decision when a security check on the CIA's logistic advisor to the Costa Rican Contra's Cuban mercenary, Philip Vidal, discovered evidence of drug running.

1:06:47 narcotics trafficking relative to contra-related activities is exactly the sort of thing the U.S. Attorney's Office will be investigating, the CIA attorney said. But of course they didn't, and they basically just shut the whole thing down. But the agency conduct was far worse than simply burying its head in the sand. For years afterward,

1:07:15 It shielded both Nunes and Vidal from criminal investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering. At various times, the CIA told U.S. Customs and DEA that it had no information on any of it. The CIA's Directorate of Operation, which runs their covert operations, lied even to the agency's own lawyers, denying knowledge of Nunes' shrimp companies, though they had plenty of information in their files on both of them.

1:07:44 CIA played a critical role in the humanitarian aid operation involving the shrimp companies without the agency, Byers said. He basically said that the humanitarian office had created a shell entity. We were to be the eyes and ears in the aid office as well as the shell companies. The only way that they could monitor

1:08:16 alignments, verify shipments and receipts was by having CIA capability in the region perform the function for them. And so that's what we did. But since at least three other drug dealing companies ended up working for the humanitarian office during the brief lifespan, either the CIA's oversight was woefully incompetent or they were part of it. One such company was DIA.

1:08:46 CSA. It was a Miami aircraft company that Floyd Carlton had used for years in the U.S., and it was headquarters for his Panamanian drug smuggling venture with Noriega. It was in DIA CSA's office, Carlton admitted, that he and his partners plotted their drug flights and arranged laundering for their cocaine profits.

1:09:15 Just like the shrimp company, this company was ran by a Cuban drug dealer who had been part of the CIA's Bay of Pigs. His name was Alfredo Caballero. Carlton testified that Caballero was involved in drug trafficking, and to a certain extent, he helped the Contras. But to be more specific, he was helpful to Mr. Pastora's organization.

1:09:44 Contras were dealing with D-I-A-C-S-A even before it was hired by the State Department. During the 1984 and 85, the principal Contra organization, the FDN, chose this company for inter-account transfers. The laundering of the money through this company concealed the fact that some of the funds of the Contras were deposited.

1:10:11 managed by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the report said. State Department selection of DIA CSA as a quote-unquote humanitarian aid contractor is perhaps the most egregious thing they did. At the time this company got its government contracts, the company had been penetrated by undercover DEA agent Danny Moritz, who was

1:10:41 churning out eyewitness reports of Caballero's drug dealing and money laundering. Both Caballero and Carlton were under indictment in the United States for conspiring to import 900 pounds of cocaine and laundering $2.6 million in drug money. Both were convicted and both became U.S. government informants. I'm sensing a patterning with these informants.

1:11:09 How the CIA missed those clues has never been explained because they hired them because of that, because now they're informants and that's their cover. It is highly likely the agency knew exactly who it was and who they were dealing with since its owner was said to have been working for the CIA. Caballero was CIA and still is, insisted Carol Prado.

1:11:37 Edan Pastora's top aide at the ARDE. Quote, I say that because I knew him very well. A lot of times I went to DIA CSA in Miami. Unquote. Prado has a reason to know. In 1985, CIA cable described DIA CSA as the cover company used by the Costa Rican Contras to secretly buy aircraft.

1:12:07 During Noriega's trial in 1991, Floyd Carlton testified that his smuggling operation was flying weapons to the Contras at the same time he was flying dope to the U.S., and he said some of the armed flights was organized by Caballero. When Noriega's lawyers asked Carlton about Oliver North's knowledge of these flights, federal prosecutors vehemently objected, and U.S. Judge William Hoveler became angry.

1:12:37 Just stay away from it, the judge snapped, refusing to allow any questions in the Noriega trial about any interactions with the CIA. Do you think he got a fair trial? Another Miami company the humanitarian office hired to ferry supplies was Vortex Aviation, which was being operated by a Detroit drug dealer by the name of Michael Palmer.

1:13:05 I'm sensing another pattern. Palmer, a former airline pilot, had worked since 1977 for the largest marijuana business cartel in the history of the country, according to a federal prosecutor in Detroit. Yet in 1985, Palmer became a freedom fighter and volunteered for the Contra War effort, contracted out of the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Office. In a recently declassified interview,

1:13:34 With CIA agents in 1991, CIA officer Fryer admitted that the CIA had gotten information that Palmer was dealing drugs during that. Fires heard that since Palmer's people got caught taking a plane of drugs into the U.S., and this is what caused a lot of the problems for Palmer.

1:14:04 The FBI reported CIA thought that the Northern Contras were clean, but Palmer was its exception. Yeah, they're all dirty. So I'm getting the sense that if you get convicted of drug trafficking in the United States, they just make you an informant and continue to use you. Are y'all getting that same thought?

1:14:27 One of D.C. one D.C. for Palmer was using to deliver contra aid was shot up in February 1986 as it attempted to airdrop over Nicaragua and it made an emergency landing in San Andreas Island off the coast of Nicaragua, a notorious haven for cocaine traffickers. Four days later, Owen wrote to North saying, no doubt you know about the D.C. for Foley got.

1:14:57 was used at one time to run drugs, and part of the crew had criminal records. Nice group of boys chose Pat Foley as the owner of the Delaware-based company Summit Aviation, a longtime CIA and U.S. military contractor, often for clandestine air operations. Foley was reported overseeing Palmer's operations at Vortex. Francis McNeil.

1:15:27 At the time, one of the State Department's top narcotics intelligence officers confirmed to Congress that the DC-4 appearance at San Andreas caused red flags to go up in Washington. A stop at San Andreas Island for a Contra resupply plane is a bit suspicious. San Andreas is known to be a transshipment point for drugs.

1:15:54 The pilot of that unlucky DC-4, former CIA contract pilot Robert Lippert, said in an interview that neither his trip nor his crew were involved in drugs, though the plane had been involved with drug trafficking flights before he acquired it. He said the landing at San Andreas was for repairs only, but he acknowledged that his plane was probably used for drug flights.

1:16:22 while Vortex was hauling, quote-unquote, humanitarian aid for the Contras. Those flights were piloted by Vortex's own crew, Lippert said. He knew one of the flights wound up in Columbia because he got a call from the FAA in Miami asking what his plane was doing there, taking off from a dirt strip in Columbia during a two-day mysterious absence on the Nicaraguan Contra flight.

1:16:50 Lippard, a Canadian who flew for the CIA in early 1960s until his imprisonment by Cuban intelligence agents in 1963 for espionage, so he was involved in the Cuban exile community and CIA as well, said that the most I was able to find out from a friend in the intelligence community was the name Operation Stolen Mercedes.

1:17:18 And that, aside from Costa Rica, its itinerary had included a stop in Panama in Mexico after it left Colombia. Another contra flight, Lippard's plane came back with a unexpected 12 and a half hours of excess flying time on it. Palmer told him that the pilots had to make an emergency detour to Costa Rica. That emergency, yeah, emergency detour.

1:17:49 In his testimony to the Iran-Contra Committee, Rob Owen confirmed that the airplane was involved in an unexplained, embarrassing situation in Costa Rica. That's when I decided some real strange shit was happening, Lippert said. It came back all messed up with bullet holes in the tail, and the engine burned out. And after that, I told him that was it. Unless I'm flying the plane, it's no dice, so Palmer says. Fine.

1:18:17 I'll buy the damn plane from you. Palmer, who the CIA admits was working as an agency subcontractor at this point, arranged to buy Lippert's DC-4 through some associates of his, a Cuban lawyer from Miami named Jose Insua and an aircraft company executive by the name of Richard Kelly, both of whom intimated to Lippert that they were working for the CIA.

1:18:46 After the cell, Lippert said the DC-4 was used to airdrop explosives off the coast of Cuba. Then, a month later, he signed the installment sales papers. It was seized in Mexico with 2,500 pounds of marijuana on board. A story in the Mexican newspaper quoted the Attorney General of Mexico as saying that the plane was being used by a powerful gang of drug smugglers. Just happens to be the CIA.

1:19:15 known to have been operating for a long time using large aircraft to transport arms southbound and bring back drugs northbound. Lippert never got the plane back, nor was he ever paid for it. The company that issued the letters of credit that guaranteed the purchase of his aircraft was later shut down by the state of Florida, which announced that its owners were drug traffickers and fugitive stock swindlers.

1:19:44 Can't we close a bank or even a supposed bank anymore without finding some sort of contra ties, the bank examiner said, Barry Gladden. He wondered to the Miami Herald reporter in 1987, what's the world coming to? One of the DC Force buyers, Jose Insula, was later exposed as a drug trafficker and DEA informant himself.

1:20:10 and was used by the agency in an unsuccessful attempt to snare a former chairman of the Florida Democrat Party in a bribery sting. So they set up the former chairman of the Democrat Party in Florida to dirty him up. During the trial, the government admitted that Insula was involved in the brokering of aircraft for narcotics smugglers approximately 12 different times.

1:20:39 As Lippert aptly observed in 1997, Jose Insua, a drug dealer, said he's hanging around a company, Vortex, with the State Department contractor, Michael Cepedis, and a drug dealer, and he issues two letters of credit for planes that are used by the CIA. Mike Palmer, a drug dealer, and he's running an airline for the CIA.

1:21:09 You tell me what's going on. Actually, the litany of drug dealers working for Vortex was less longer than that, according to, was even longer than that, according to the CIA inspector general. Michael Palmer, Joseph Haas, Alberto Herrero, Mauricio Latona, Martin Gomez, Donald Frazzoni.

1:21:38 and two pilots for the prime contractor, all who were affiliated with the CIA Contra support program, may have been involved in narcotics prior to their relationship with the agency. That came from a CIA IG report. Records show that top CIA officials were fully aware that Vortex was in the drug business.

1:22:04 even before they recommended the company for the humanitarian project. It's the fucking reason they did. Come on. At least two agency officials, Alan Fiers and an unnamed CIA contractor, knew about Palmer's drug dealing before the agency agreed to buy an aircraft from Vortex and approve the subcontracting of Vortex to the humanitarian office. The humanitarian office also hired a Honduran air freight company.

1:22:35 And this is another one that comes up in so many of our stories. Setco, S-E-T-C-O, which happened to be owned by Honduran drug kingpin Ballesteros. In fact, the U.S. Customs Service had known since 1983 that Setco was the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel.

1:23:05 to the FDN. That came from a CIA inspector general's report as well. Quote, Oliver North also used Setco for airdrops of military supplies to Contra forces in Nicaragua, unquote. In fact, that appears to have been the reason behind all of the State Department contracts that were awarded to cocaine smugglers, that they were the same people the CIA had hired to do that work.

1:23:35 before they had to turn it over to Oliver North because of a congressional law. So in other words, the CIA never stopped doing what they were doing despite laws that prohibit them from doing it, which means they're lawless, which means they don't work for the U.S. government. I believe we guided them toward the carriers they ultimately used, a former CIA official, Alan Fiers, said.

1:24:05 In 1998, Fiers told CIA interviewers in 1987 that he and the humanitarian office director, Robert Dumling, had frequent meetings regarding possible contract cargo carriers. Fiers said that he had checked out some of the carriers for Dumling. Dumling told Iran-Contra investigators that he was giving very specific instructions.

1:24:31 regarding who he could contract the humanitarian aid with. One of the policy guidelines was do not disrupt the existing arrangement of the resistance movement unless there's a terribly good reason to do so. That comes from the guy that was in charge of the quote-unquote humanitarian. So that entire office was a figment of imagination embedded in the State Department and ran by the CIA.

1:24:59 like so many other things that we've found. Who told you that, by the way, going back to the beginning of this? Doomling said Oliver North. He said North instructed him not to dislodge or replace existing arrangements. They certainly were, in one sense, working perfectly well, according to Danielle Blanton's lawyer, Brad Brunin.

1:25:30 The Contra's cocaine was arriving in the United States literally by the plane load. Transportation channels got established and got filled up with cocaine rather quickly, Brunin said in his interview. As I understood it, these large transports were coming back from delivering food and guns and humanitarian aid and things like that, and they were loading them up with cocaine and bringing them back to the United States.

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 air bases in El Salvador, the same one that we already had identified and the DEA didn't do anything about it.

1:26:29 Like the CIA before him, North had selected that base as his hub of Contra Air Force. His operatives worked there practically unfettered. And that came from a report written by Lawrence Walsh, the prosecutor. It was at the El Salvador Air Base where the whole mess started to unravel. And that is where we get into the next chapter. But we're going to stop here. What's up?

1:27:04 That's crazy shit. Where'd Bridget go? Oh, they dropped her down again. Go ahead, SR-71. Thank you, Colonel, and thank everybody for attending Spaces and on Rumble. We got a big crowd today. It's really great to see everyone here. Anyway, you mentioned that the FAA in Miami were the ones that got this information about where that plane had been. Correct. Now, my question is,

1:27:42 How often does the FAA really go through and look at any of this stuff? Well, I don't think they do it often, but there are some, just so that you guys know this, there are proverbial no-go places for U.S. aircraft because of their known drug trafficking activities. Obviously, that should be the entire country of Colombia.

1:28:10 that particular island was one of those designated locations. Like nothing happened on that island except for drug trafficking. So if you have an aircraft that you are following the flight plan on and you see them stop at that location, there are reporting requirements that you're supposed to do. So I don't think it happens very often, but there are some locations that are like that.

1:28:40 like try to land an airplane in north korea and the faa not know about it um stellar go ahead so it just sounds like like they um there's just it's mind-blowing how they were into everything it sounds like like nothing but a lot of shell companies i mean like you said before like there could have been a good

1:29:11 I mean, our U.S. government was part of the whole thing, too. I mean, I followed the Oliver North, like the hearings and stuff because I was an adult by then and stuff. And I had no idea that all of that stuff was going on behind the scenes. And then if they were working with the military, you know, he was telling he was I'm blown away. Sorry.

1:29:32 So now think about this. And this is this is on purpose. I would venture to say that Oliver North was a CIA operative for a an extensive part of his military career. And they understand that putting someone in a Marine uniform on the stand in Congress buys them a certain. This is how manipulative they are in their psyops.

1:29:59 buys them a certain amount of sympathy from the American people because we love our military. And they will use anything in order to subvert accountability. And so if you guys remember, there was a whole, they get off on all of these tangents during that trial where they were saying, oh, there was this misspending of this money for a security fence around his house because he was under attack.

1:30:29 The entire trial went down like 50 different avenues, all of which, oh, my God, the shredding of the paper. All of that is a kabuki show. As we have learned, every one of these Senate hearings is a kabuki show. And so they have this sympathetic figure up there in his.

1:30:49 Marine Lieutenant Colonel dress uniform being beat up by all of the politicians and they want that sympathy card. He was an evil bastard. And that's all there is to it. And he probably still today. Because as you guys heard when I was on the Alpha Warrior show, when he said that Oliver North was over in Afghanistan and they had to make an emergency rescue of him. Well.

1:31:18 What was we doing in Afghanistan? Drug trafficking. So, yeah, don't even get me started on him. Ron, go ahead. I was going to say, it sounds like you're talking about United Fruit Company. And I mean, I don't even really know where to go because it's a different decade, but we're talking about the same shit. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

1:31:44 I'm actually looking for something, so go to the next person because I want to come back and contribute something a little bit different. All right. Miss Lou, go ahead. Hey, Colonel, thanks. Listen, some things never change, do they? No. Meet the old boss, same as the new boss. Yes. Don't change a thing. What I wanted to ask you, and my mom worked for Reagan for a little while, and how much and how soon?

1:32:14 Did he know of this that you know of and in terms of being informed anything by Oliver North? And was he starting his mental decline around then? No, he was not. OK. And he didn't know about this stuff. Oh, I know he knew. But how was he like from the beginning of the operation? Was he like, you know? Yes, is the answer to that. And let me explain how that happens.

1:32:44 So the president is largely treated like the CIA tries to treat itself. So here's what they do. As we just read, the National Security Council is in charge of a lot of the covert operations, which is where Oliver North was.

1:33:08 And what they do is every presidency has a different nickname for their little group. Sometimes it was a group of 30. Sometimes it was a group of 40. Sometimes it was a group of 10. But and they all nickname it something. And that group, when it comes to actual covert operations, they meet and it does not include the president. But one of the assigned members of that group.

1:33:36 is the president's representative and will, after the meeting, immediately go back brief the president as to what the operation is. It is that person then that brings back to that group the president's approval. Who was that person during this time? You don't ever know because all of this stuff is classified.

1:34:03 Only in the case of people's memoirs do I know anything about this, because when we were researching Eisenhower and the coup that we orchestrated in Iran and Guatemala, some people had named those like it was the Committee of 30 or the Committee of 40 or whatever. And you have to read these people's biography in order.

1:34:29 to get these little pieces. This is not found in any one place. And so I'm presenting to you accumulation of all of the books that I've read. But every president has that body. And there are people that have described that have been physically present in those meetings.

1:34:49 The fact that there's one designated person, sometimes that person's the VP, sometimes that person's the Secretary of State. Sometimes that person is like the chief of staff of the White House. It varies in administrations. So that designated person goes back because assassinations require an actual finding. Overthrowing a government requires an actual finding signed by the president.

1:35:19 So in order to conduct what was essentially billed as the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government, Reagan would have had to have signed a finding in order for them to do it, to have any involvement at all. Even after the Boland Amendment, when they had to hand it off serendipitously to the State Department, he had to sign a finding in order for any taxpayer money to be used in that operation.

1:35:47 So they all know, but they're not present at the meetings for plausible deniability so they can do what Reagan did. I didn't know any of that. And there's no record of him ever attending the meetings. So he can plausibly deny, which is what the CIA is expert at. I can plot. That's why they hire all these contractors to do their shit. You can plausibly deny knowing it because there's no actual paper trail that you know it. But he knew it. S.R. Doe.

1:36:19 Wow. Thank you, Colonel. Same old shit. Same old shit. Thank you, Colonel. I was just thinking this guy who said Oliver North was like a god. And I'm sitting there saying, well, why wouldn't he be? Because he was NSC. I mean, when you're NSC, you practically have to rule the roost with what's going on. Let me kind of...

1:36:53 say this. As a lieutenant colonel in the NSC, you make coffee. Same thing at the Pentagon. A lieutenant colonel in reality, if you're not actually CIA, you're making coffee. You are following somebody around of a much higher rank than you are doing their shit for them. You are not a god as a lieutenant colonel in the military.

1:37:24 on the NSC staff. I know because I've personally known some of those people, and I've also known the civilian equivalents of them. Now, are they there for their expertise, like in a particular geographical region? Yes. And do they do studies and write papers and host meetings and stuff like that? Yes, they have an actual job.

1:37:49 For all intents and purposes, a person that is truly a lieutenant colonel, and that's the only thing you're doing on the NSC staff, you are not a god. You are there on assignment for a temporary period of time, usually loaned from the Pentagon over there to perform that job. And then they bring you back.

1:38:14 Oliver North was not functioning as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps at the NSC, not knowing the shit that he knew. On that, I can agree. And I can almost sit here and say that if that's the case, that loan of Oliver North was never going to come back, provided all of this stayed true. Yeah. Yeah. Jay, go ahead.

1:38:44 Hey, what's going on? Good afternoon, Colonel. Thank you so much for hosting this space and trying to raise awareness about who's actually dealing a lot of the drugs in this country right now. Because unfortunately, there's still a lot of people out there who think that, and I know this may be an unpopular opinion on this panel, who think that Trump is against the deep state, but I would argue his classification of

1:39:10 drug cartels as terrorist organizations kind of proves that he's going along with the plan when you consider his first target is actually Venezuela and not places where we have a lot more evidence of drug cartels actually being prominent. And if he actually wanted to stop the drug trade, it does kind of feel like a more effective way to do that.

1:39:33 would be to arrest people who were involved in the drug trade and flip them, not just bomb them and assassinate everybody who you say is part of the drug trade. So it doesn't really feel like Trump is actually trying to stop the drug trade. It just feels like he wants to overthrow another country for oil, which would be Venezuela, which has the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. So, you know, I really hope eventually, yeah, people do catch on to that. Sure. Can I ask you a question? Sure.

1:40:02 Has any other president ever designated anything to do with drugs in a literal sense, not the war on drugs, not that nefarious bullshit stuff where they don't actually do anything about it? Not that I can think of, but I could be wrong on that. I don't remember drug cartels being labeled exactly as terrorist organizations before, which gives the government a lot more power. It's a huge expansion, actually, of the power of the federal government. So if you're against the government.

1:40:32 Of attacking the drug trade. No, I would say if you want to attack the drug trade, the way to do that would be to conduct an actual investigation and not just bomb people who you say are part of the drug trade, which seems to be Trump's strategy. So you're assuming there's been no investigation, but you don't know that.

1:40:52 Well, they haven't presented any evidence. So it kind of feels like, you know, they're just telling us to accept what they're saying and they're not providing any evidence for their actions. And every other time drug people have been brought down, it's usually happened by doing drug busts and actually arresting people and getting them to flip. And yeah, if you look at the deep state, I mean, Trump's connections to the deep state are pretty.

1:41:19 They go back a long time. So we're not talking about his connections to the deep state. We're talking about drug trafficking. So your assertion is that all of the largest drug busts in the history of the country that has occurred in the last six months is not an indication that they're tracking the drug trade.

1:41:44 And it's your assertion that one of the talking points that is being used right now is the amount of individual drug busts in the United States has declined when we are cutting them off at the port. So that by necessity means that the amount of drugs getting to the interior of the United States is significantly less.

1:42:14 if you're making much more aggressive drug busts at the ports. So the end result is there's more drugs off the streets of the United States by busting them at the ports. Yeah, I mean, while Obama was president, they set record drug busts at the time as they were working with the Sinaloa cartel. So what the U.S. government usually does is it picks winners and losers in the drug trade.

1:42:40 So it may seem like we're getting bigger drug busts, but all the evidence seems to point towards nothing really changing because the cartels in Mexico, to the best of my knowledge, do seem to be the largest source of drugs coming into the country. They are not. They are not. Colombia is.

1:43:02 OK, well, either way, that's not Venezuela. And I haven't heard Trump designate any Colombian organizations as being tied to the drug trade. He's just using it as an excuse to steal oil in Venezuela. Hold on. Hold on. Trump just designated, removed the certification of Colombia as failing the requirement.

1:43:25 to combat drugs in Colombia. He just removed that. There's a certain amount of aid that goes to different countries. Was that before or after the Colombian president criticized Israel? Does it matter?

1:43:40 Yeah, I think it does, because I think it does, because if the reason they're doing it is because that, you know, president is criticizing Israel, then it would show you that it's not a genuine effort to tackle the drug trade. And it's probably just more of a political thing. You're talking about.

1:44:00 particular things and not looking at the overall operation there's three phases to basically identify buying a country as a narco state the first one is to remove their certification the second one is to remove aid and the third one is that designation and he took step one 98 of the cocaine that arrived in america last year came from columbia so he is addressing that and he is making um huge bust at

1:44:30 the port. So he is addressing the drugs coming into America. Yeah, but I was going to say, you do know that they said record drug busts, just like you're describing under Obama, as they were working with the Sinaloa cartel, right? You're aware of that? These drug busts far surpass those drug busts. And I agree with you on the point of them picking winners and losers. That's clearly true in Colombia, where the Medellin cartel

1:44:57 fell out of favor with the CIA. And the CIA never addressed the Cali cartel because it was part of the protection of the state apparatus in Colombia as the designated cartel. And so the taking down of Pablo Escobar was part of his noncompliance with the CIA, the way they wanted the drugs to be ran and where they were supposed to launder their money.

1:45:25 They do pick winners and losers, 100%. But I don't think you can look at the last six months of what is going on with the drug trade in America and not say that there's at least an earnest effort to reduce the amount of drugs coming into the United States.

1:45:45 Yeah, I mean, personally, I don't consider it any different from what Obama did. You know, they're they're getting some big busts. But until I see, you know, like the numbers at the end of the year and if the numbers at the end of the year say less overall drugs were sold in the country, then maybe I'll be a little bit more convinced. But just based off the past record and Trump's, you know, lack of, you know.

1:46:09 efforts and actually calling out the deep state involvement in the drug trade. I just don't see it, you know, as a serious effort, because if Trump's whole thing is being against the deep state and there's an easy layup of pointing out that the deep state is involved in the drug trade and he's not addressing that, it seems like, you know, he's not courageous enough to call out the actual problem. Just my opinion. All right. Health, go ahead. Health. Hey, my bad. I'm out here.

1:46:42 How you doing, man? You know, I love your space. You know, all you do is give us that knowledge that we need. And I just wanted to shout you out. I had to come up, especially when I just heard what I just heard. It's like, I don't understand some people. You know, they talk, they talk, they talk. Sound like they're reading off a script. Just say you don't like Trump. Just do that. You know, everything is against Trump. Don't like Trump. Bro, I'm not talking to you, bro. Shut up. I ain't interrupt you. I hate clowns. Like, clowns on this hat.

1:47:11 You can tell they're not like this in real life. You see what I'm saying? And then, Colonel, what I like is the fact that you pointing out this drug thing. Because people like me from the hood, we understand. Like, I understand. People like that, you can tell they never even seen a kilo. They don't know what it look like. The rubber seal, the stamps on it. They don't know what to do with your neighborhood. So you can understand that Trump is doing something because the prices is different. When Biden was in office, everybody was on. The prices was cheap.

1:47:38 Right now, it's tight in the hood. You can't even get the drugs like you used to. So Trump is doing a great job. I'm applauding him. So people like that that get on this app, you can just tell it's just an operation. It's something they're doing. And they're fooling people who don't have a strong mind. But people like me, I know. And I'm going to keep telling people and letting them understand that Trump is doing his thing. And I'm riding with him. I don't care what all these people get on this app and say. They're not fooling me. You do a great job, Colonel. And I appreciate you. Swear to God.

1:48:07 Thank you. Thank you. Ron, go ahead. So a couple of things. Just to address what that guy is talking about just a second ago. I don't want to get too deep into it. But, you know, the fact that we don't have a lot of evidence out there to me is strong. Because what that tells me is that they've isolated and rooted out the leakers. So the fact that we're not getting information in the media.

1:48:36 To me, it's not a bad thing. That's a solidly good thing. And the less information we hear, in my humble opinion, knowing how things work, and I'm sure you can attest to this, that's actually a positive. But what I wanted to get to in terms of the – is it possible that North was sheep-dipped, that he was on the CIA payroll the entire time, that he wasn't even a Marine?

1:49:05 And number two, you talked in there about how there were people – people would question, well, how in the world can these military flights go here and not be questioned? If you read Prouty's secret team, he talks in there very specifically about how – what they would do to place certain individuals that were – they would be like an air traffic controller.

1:49:35 But they would be a CIA officer being put in place as an air traffic controller funded by the CIA, but operating logistically as an air traffic controller on the daily. And then if a flight needed to come in, they'd make sure that that person was working that particular day to make sure that that plane could land, that sort of thing. Or have a particular judge that would hear a specific case to make sure that things went the way that the agency wanted it to go.

1:50:05 Correct. I mean, that, yeah, Purdy does a good job of documenting that in his book. So we talked about this at length yesterday as far as how operatives are embedded in the military, both internal, like with our own investigative, like NCIS for the Navy and OSI for the Air Force, where

1:50:33 they will take an agent that is not, say, a cop, and they will in-process him to a base as a cop, and he will be there undercover, and they can do a lot of them, obviously, and they did it at my first duty station. They embedded agents into the cop squadron and made, at that time, the largest drug bust in the history of the Air Force at the base that I was at.

1:51:01 So the same is true when the CIA wants to embed agents into the military or they, whatever the appropriate word is, capture someone that is in the military through a formal arrangement for them to operate internal to the military.

1:51:30 use senior military officers to make sure those people are assigned to different locations. Right. You talk about Oliver North, and it just makes me think of Lansdale. That's what I think of. I know I addressed this one time, and I'll make it quick, but I remember watching

1:51:59 The Eyes Wide Open guy on YouTube who does a pretty good job of stuff, and he put forth the concept that the Bay of Pigs was a deliberate failure on the CIA's part to put pressure onto the new president, whether it was going to be Nixon or Kennedy, to take pressure off of them.

1:52:23 I tend to think that the whole the whole Cuba operation, that Cuba is essentially working in concert with the CIA. And I'm probably I know I'm probably you're probably going to say, well, where have you been to the party? So anyway, I but I thought that for a long time. I'm just I'm just verbalizing it right now. Yeah. So there's an argument to be made on the Cuba.

1:52:51 side of things on both sides of that. And throughout our investigation into Operation Condor, there was a definite advantage to having

1:53:07 Castro sitting in Cuba as the quote-unquote communist because he was used to justify by the CIA the overthrow of all of the governments throughout Latin America because we didn't want another one of him in our hemisphere. Wasn't Fidel Castro on the CIA payroll when they were overthrowing governments?

1:53:33 In the 40s and early 50s? I have never seen any evidence that he was on the payroll. What I have seen is that the CIA had agents in the hills, in the mountains, in Cuba, training both Castro and his brother and Che Guevara.

1:53:56 Because at that point, the Batista installed guy that was as corrupt as hell and working with the CIA had pissed off enough people in Cuba that it was inevitable that there was going to be someone else in charge. And so they did that in order to make an effort to co-opt him. Now, again, that's where the stories diverge. There are some people that have argued they didn't ever.

1:54:24 Castro just became the next guy. And the communist allegations served the purpose of the CIA, which it certainly did. But there is another argument to be made that their support of him was contingent upon him.

1:54:46 being the next pliable guy so they didn't have to disrupt their heroin networks, which was coming through Cuba from the Sicilian mafia into the United States. And when Castro refused to go along with all of their demands, that they did in fact split. Now, again, you can make that argument on both sides. I've read books that document those theories on both sides of that.

1:55:16 I have not. I'm open to either one of those arguments because there's compelling evidence to suggest both. And I'll just leave it at that. That sounds like it sounds like what we're living in today could be. I mean, I just mean the two things are always that the two things can always be true at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. SR 71. Go ahead. Thank you, Colonel.

1:55:46 Seems everyone's focused on the drug problem and the way Trump is handling it and the busts that are going on here. I'm paying attention to it in total. And I look at it from the standpoint, all of a sudden we're seeing a lot of us internationally. It's not just here. So given that point, I'm looking at it that Trump is leading the way.

1:56:17 And saying, let's get rid of this crap. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Miles, go ahead. Good afternoon, Colonel. Yeah, guys, if you want to come into this space or this room, you're really going to have to know your stuff. So because we know so much about geopolitics and what's going on, like in Venezuela, and that they ship the drugs across.

1:56:48 Colombia, and they get them onto fishing boats, and then they have fast boats. They probably go into Guatemala. So look, you really don't know what's going on if you're going to come in here and try to tell us what you think is going on, because we do the research, and there's another plague going on in Venezuela, and it's on a military level. That's why there's a task force there.

1:57:16 So you don't have a task force for, you know, interdicting drug traffics. There's something else going on there. I wonder if there's some subs they're looking for. Thanks a lot, Colonel. Sure. Just just so that you guys are aware, I and to Jay's earlier point, I've made the case early on where.

1:57:45 I think there is, as Miles just said, a lot more going on. You have to attack this problem at every step. Obviously, closing the border was step number one so that the land traffic of drugs is curtailed. And obviously, that's an ongoing operation.

1:58:19 attacking the sea aspect of it is ongoing, and attacking the state of origins. And I believe all three phases of that is ongoing. It has been well known, we've talked about it many times in this space, and there's lots of records of this.

1:58:48 That drugs originating from Colombia under the control of the CIA has been funneled up through covertly through Venezuela. And the CIA and people that have become whistleblowers outside of the CIA and DEA whistleblowers have said the reason that they were transiting Venezuela was.

1:59:16 for plausible deniability. That just keeps coming back up. So if I traffic through there, I can always blame any interdiction of those drugs originating from Venezuela as an accusation against Venezuela, as opposed to the country of origin. That's a game that the CIA and the complicit DEA and FBI have played for a very long time.

1:59:44 I think that attacking those boats that go out to motherships that are anchored off the coast was a clear sign from a sea perspective that those avenues are closed. The borders closed, those avenues are closing, and then followed by, and those things happened, and then Trump pulled.

2:00:14 the certification from Columbia. Those are three concrete steps that occurred in that order in order to put the word out that it is going to be much more difficult to get drugs into the United States. Now, from my perspective, after having followed this for a very long time, this is the most comprehensive approach that I have seen.

2:00:42 This is not, I just spent an hour explaining that the drug arrests inside the United States and then turning those people into informants is the very problem that we're dealing with. Because those informants continue to do the drug operation with a tether to the U.S. government.

2:01:10 That is not a solution to this. That's the very problem I just spent the last hour explaining. Every single one of those people that were involved in Iran-Contra had been arrested in the United States for drug trafficking, and they used their informant status to continue drug trafficking because they were hired by the CIA to do it.

2:01:35 Because now they're a known drug trafficker to the CIA. They just pick up the phone and the CIA has the convenience of saying, no, no, we were working with them as an informant. They weren't. They were working with them as a trafficker. So you have to look at the entire pipeline of drugs and hit it at every level, land, sea, and air.

2:02:04 And that's exactly what we're doing. Miss Lou, go ahead. Thank you. I can't understand you, Miss Lou. Oh, can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm on Bluetooth because I'm in a horse barn. Real quick, do you think a lot of this rent-up drug operation and the plans of it are possibly opening the...

2:02:31 corridor to military operations that are going to be needed down toward Panama working against the CCP because of their infiltration into South America and Central America and Cuba. Do you think that the drug situation is a possible inroad to keeping an eye on what's going with that? No.

2:02:57 Do I think we're keeping track of that? Yes. But I think I think, well, I mean, separate in the fact that there are different mission sets needed to do both. But I think the actual concerted effort to tackle the illicit drug trade is for the sake of.

2:03:23 attacking the illicit drug trade. I don't think it's like step one of some 10-step process. I believe we literally are interested in saving people's lives and keeping illicit drugs out of our country. That's my belief. And Trump has said well before he was ever in office, I mean, decades ago, he's commented because he had family members that were addicts.

2:03:53 that that has always been a concern of his. He's talked about it repeatedly. So I believe that we are attacking the illicit drug trade as the actual objective of that operation.

2:04:10 Obviously, when you're gathering intelligence of those types of operations, it's going to bleed over, the intelligence will, into other things because most people that are involved in illicit activity are not just in one particular illicit activity. That bleeds over into other stuff. And they will use that intelligence in whatever way, you know, to hand it off to another task force or whatever.

2:04:39 Um, but yeah, um, Jay, go ahead. Hey, so, um, you know, good point. Um, you know, you made about how they've, uh, you know, been facilitating the drug trade before. Um, they did definitely work with informants, um, you know, who they were claiming that they were using to bring down the cartels and empowered those guys, um, to run drugs, um, you know, to that.

2:05:03 You know, I would just say, you know, it seems like there's another route they could have taken there once they have those informants. They could have actually used the information instead of sitting on it. And like, for example, they had non-prosecution agreements with the Sinaloa cartel, you know, as they were using those informants. So the non-prosecution agreements, if they were serious, you know, would have applied.

2:05:27 um, to maybe the person who was giving the information, but not that's person's bosses. And that's how it was implemented before. So they were all dirty. Yeah. And I get it. So, you know, my opinion still is that, you know, blowing up people who you think are part of the drug trade is not, you know, a good way to do it.

2:05:47 But I do have a question for you because I do want to keep an open mind. I don't want it to seem like, you know, if Trump did something right that I wouldn't give him credit for it. In fact, Trump has made some good moves with crypto since he came into office that I do commend him for. But, you know, Trump has spoken a lot about, you know, how he's trying to tackle the deep state. And so what is your question? Yeah, my question is.

2:06:12 If Trump has spoken about how he wants to tackle the deep state, but the only example he gives is how the deep state is working is, you know, in the last election. And he says the deep state is out to get him, but he won't name any of the other criminal activities they're involved in today. How can we really take him seriously, in my opinion, because wouldn't he name the. Who muted him? That was not me.

2:06:45 Yeah, sorry. Wouldn't he name the activities that the deep state is guilty of? That's my question. It depends on what your intended objective is. So you cannot come out as the president of the United States and say, this guy is guilty of this. You can't do that. Has he empowered the people that he put in place to run to ground the criminality,

2:07:17 of people that are responsible for a lot of the activities that has happened in the United States. Yes. So we're six months into his presidency and those of us who voted for him are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt while we see things like closing the border, like

2:07:45 tackling this drug epidemic, the leeway to do that. Now, if you understand how this drug operation works, the quote-unquote deep state, the banks, the chemical companies that are providing the material support to the making of this stuff, if this is taken to ground, it will expose all of them.

2:08:14 And you have to allow the operation to unfold in order to implicate all of the different people in the operation, because this is not just about the low level drug guys in boats. I think those were clear messages sent. But we know the entire top to bottom.

2:08:42 hierarchy of how these drug operations work, and we know why they're done. I mean, the whole placing of the crystal triangle in Latin America was very strategic for these, what you refer to as deep states, I call them oligarchs, because they wanted to exploit Colombian oil. They wanted to exploit

2:09:05 the minerals in Colombia. And running a narco state is one of the best ways you can do that because you own the government. And so exposing this stuff is going to, the farther up the chain you get, it's going to expose them. I mean, we exposed all of the chemical companies responsible for shipping the supplies over to the...

2:09:32 Vietnam, Laos area to produce heroin. And by the way, they just happened to be the same chemical companies that were selling all of the chemicals to Colombia by the, I think I said last night, like 200,000 tons of chemicals was being piped into Colombia from U.S. companies. And in the takedown of this operation, that's all going to get exposed.

2:10:01 So I think it's all coming. That's just my opinion. Miles, go ahead. Thanks. I'm going to use some garage logic here. Talking about the deep state, we kind of think almost every country has that, a.k.a. criminal, international criminal syndicate. So that's all across the world. How many times did they try to kill Obama?

2:10:28 How many assassination attempts were there? How many times did they try to put him in prison for the rest of his life? How many indictments did they have against Obama? So I didn't see any. So maybe they liked him. Maybe these international criminals liked him. They certainly want to take out Trump. Point taken. All right. Ron, go ahead. Yeah, I guess, you know, I think that I understand.

2:10:59 and respect where Jay is coming from. But I think the thing you've got to understand, Jay, and I know you've probably heard this a thousand times, I don't mean to litigate it, but we've got to be patient. If you listen to anything the colonel says, and anything that Warhamster, myself, the things that we talk about, we go back to like 1840s, 1850s.

2:11:24 I mean, this has been almost a 200-year endeavor to get us to where we are. And, you know, the naivety of some people, and I'm not saying you, Jay, but the naivety of most people who think, oh, all we got to do is just get a president in there like he's a dictator, a Hitler, going to come in there and going to just, with the stroke of a pen, going to get everything to go. No, I mean, you've got to understand the apparatus that's there, the bureaucratic resistance that comes.

2:11:53 the people that just absolutely avoid it. Look at the Constitution. The Constitution is our very document that's supposed to govern how we govern ourselves, and we just disregard it like it's nothing. So you've got to understand that the fight that the people that Trump is working with, and the point that I wanted to make yesterday, Colonel, because you had talked about something, but I think the Internet, the deployment of the Internet in the 1990s,

2:12:23 was basically the first salvo of the good guys trying to take the country back because it actually put a mechanism in the hands of the people, a way that they could get information that wasn't gatekept by the academia and the media. And with that, I'll get off my horse. Okay. Thank you. Stellar, go ahead.

2:12:48 I was going to just make comments. So how I look at everything, because I see it from a different perspective, like because of my Operation Gladio. So during the times that these other presidents were in office.

2:13:01 And as these quote unquote drug shipments got captured, I look at it as payment because I look at the conditions of our country at this point. I live in Nevada. It is owned by the Sinaloa cartel. California is owned by two to three different cartels. And so, you know, Donald Trump, he's only been doing this for less than two decades or a decade. Okay.

2:13:24 This fight and this war has been going on for such a long time. And the fact that there are people that are publishing novels and we have people like Colonel Towner to help us to understand what is going on, I had no idea. And the system as far as the crypto and the monetary system and the WEF, that's all part of the stuff that Trump is dismantling and having it go back to going to a decentralized, not a centralized system. It's all part of this Operation Gladio. It's all the control panels that...

2:13:54 you know, the international syndicate have, because this is larger than anything that I ever imagined. And Colonel Towners, and it's even, I mean, every day, even like today, blown away. I mean, just constantly because of more and more things, but the stuff that she's talking about today from Oliver North and things, those are still reverberations that we're having currently today, in my personal opinion. And that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bridget, go ahead.

2:14:24 I wanted to first apologize. That was my fat fingers. Then accidentally I hit the mute, everybody. And the other thing is, I have a friend who also sometimes can't see the forest for the trees because of her distaste for Donald Trump. You know, and proof's in the pudding. We'll wait and see how it pans out. But based on history, and I think, Jay, you'd really enjoy actually going back to listening to, we've got all Colonel Tyner's faces.

2:14:54 We've been taking this journey through history for several years now. And once you see these patterns, it really exposes what's going on behind the scenes. It's maybe not, you know, making it into the news cycle. Anyway, I think you might enjoy it. Thank you. Okay. SR, and then we'll go back to Jay.

2:15:21 Thank you, Colonel. The only other point I'd like to add to all of this is that Donald Trump, our president, understands you have to remove the root. Just removing the top and cleaning that up is no good because it's going to come right back. And the only way to get rid of the root is to do what he's doing now. Make them come forward. And once they come forward.

2:15:52 then we can get to the root. That's my opinion on what's really going on here. I'll hurt you now, but keep in mind, I'm going to do more than hurt you when all of this is done. I'm going to get rid of you, period. Thank you. Right. Jay, go ahead. Hey, so, you know, I really hope you guys are right and I'm wrong because if you guys are right, you know, that means the country will be in a better place. I mean, I will say.

2:16:21 You know, I'm really not convinced, though, because if Trump isn't afraid to call out the deep state for election fraud, but he's afraid to call out the deep state on every other issue, you know, that they're involved in today because he doesn't actually give any specifics, then it's just hard for me to take him seriously. That being said, you know, I know a lot of people believe in this 5D chess theory that, you know, he really is making moves to benefit people. So, again, I hope you guys are right.

2:16:50 just want to make that clear. Personally, I'm not convinced. And when I follow the pattern, like one of the last speakers said, usually following the money means a lot more than following campaign rhetoric and what politicians say. And when you follow the money behind Trump, it leads to the exact same place that Obama's money came from. So that's why I don't really separate them. I consider them all part of the deep state. And to just respond to what Miles said about the assassination attempts.

2:17:19 Again, I know I'll probably be alone here in my opinion, but I don't think Trump was ever actually in real danger. He was an actor most of his life, and that's what he's doing now that he's president, continuing his act. But yeah, great conversation, and I do hope I'm wrong, because if I'm wrong, then the country's moving in the right direction. All right. Ron and Stellar, and then we've got to close the space. I'm well over my 6 o'clock time frame.

2:17:47 I'll be real quick. I appreciate Jay. I appreciate Jay's understanding. And I completely understand the frustration that he feels because I have a lot of friends, I'm sure we all do, that share his sentiment. And there is a fracture.

2:18:02 within MAGA, and it is basically down those lines. But you've got to understand the strategy. If you read Art of the Deal and you understand how things go, you don't do a frontal attack and name people. By doing that, you play your hand and you reveal things that maybe you don't want to. And I think that it's important for us.

2:18:27 that don't have all the information that we should keep that in mind before we make decisions and judgments on people, concrete judgments. We don't know all the information. So with that, Stellar, thanks for the space. Go ahead, Stellar. We have been lied to so much, and I completely understand where Jay is coming from and appreciate where he's coming from, his perspective.

2:18:51 The executive orders that the Biden administration through the pause happened to sign and redo. There's three of them in particular that will hopefully help you see that things are being done. Israel is a nuclear. They're like the I refer to them as the the stepsister that everybody hates, but they're so powerful because of whatever, you know, money or whatever and how they were formed.

2:19:19 So in that respect, he has to play very carefully on what he says and what he doesn't, because I don't think that Israel would have an issue whatsoever causing even more chaos than they already have. In that respect, I feel that Israel is also being controlled by others as well. So it's not just Israel. I mean, there's other players at hand, and it's so huge.

2:19:42 And a lot of it, in my personal opinion, has to do with the monetary and the banking systems that we have in the world. And I felt that that's always where the war has been, because whoever controls the money and the banking systems has all the power. So I see that there's multi-levels being played. There's a lot of things that are being exposed that, you know, again, the Oliver North thing, because of Colonel Towner, even when she spoke about him before, helped enlighten me.

2:20:08 Again, like I think Ron had mentioned, I along, I'm sure with a lot of other people thought that he was a really, really good man, finding out that he's just the devil in disguise. But these things are these entities, this international syndicate, their exposure and the truth is what's going to set us free.

2:20:25 And bring us all together to realize that all these different factions of divisions that they've put in is just, you know, it's just a game that they have to keep us separated. But with people like Jay, Colonel Towner, and others that have questions and want to learn, I just hope that, you know, we can all come together and understand that all of us, everyone on this planet has been played. Thank you. Sure. Okay. So I was just looking.

2:20:57 at some numbers, and I'll have some information tomorrow, because it looks like the three top drug busts that Obama did during his administration, and I'm just looking at one line, and that's the cocaine. The drug bust that was just recently done at, I believe it was the Port of Houston,

2:21:28 surpassed the total amount of the top three drug busts done during the eight years Obama was in president. So that's just one line. And obviously, you know, now fentanyl is the big thing as opposed to some of the drugs that were available back then, because I don't see any fentanyl bust at all during then because it was not a primary.

2:21:55 uh drug at the time so it's it's not easy to go back and um uh compare apples and oranges um in those well carnal they probably were sending it to dc for parties baby all right um fentanyl fentanyl is getting um squeezed out at this present time i have friends that are in the dea and they said that fentanyl is getting really hard it's hard to get now um harder in the u.s um cocaine is back though

2:22:24 Cocaine is coming back in a rage, just FYI. Well, there's 200,000 pounds of it less thanks to the Houston raid. But anyway, so great conversation, everybody. Thanks for being here. I will not have the space tomorrow at four o'clock because we will be traveling. And I will see you at four o'clock on Monday again. And then we have the Warhamster.

2:22:52 um rumble show um saturday morning at 9 30 um for those of you who are interested and i will try to keep um the time frame stabled but i real may have to move it to the morning for next week just so that we can have the rest of the day for the car show free all next week but i'll keep you updated on that so again thanks everybody for being here

Entities here

CIA50 Hugo Spadafora26 Manuel Noriega25 Oliver North25 Panama22 Rob Owens21 Shrimp Company21 Costa Rica21 Nunez17 Floyd Carlton Caceres15 Alan Fiers14 U.S. State Department14 Murder of Hugo Spadafora12 Sebastian Gonzalez12 Contras11 Michael Palmer11 Colombia11 National Security Council10 DEA9 Miami9 Ron Lippert9 Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office8 Medellin Cartel8 Joseph Fernandez8 Cuba7 Venezuela7 DIA CSA7 Vortex Aviation7 Iran-Contra affair7 Reagan administration6 Ramon Millian Rodriguez6 Nicaragua6 Fidel Castro5 Francesco Chains5 Robert Neves5 Robert Dumling5 Eden Pastora5 Jose Blanton5 John Hall4 Felipe Vidal4

Claims made here

Hugo Spadafora member_of Brigada Internacional Simón Bolivar documented ▶ 7:11

“a brigade of jungle fighters. It was called the Brigada Internacional Simón Bolivar in support of Pastora's southern forces. After the Sandinistas became too oppressive for Pastora's liking, he joined…”

Eden Pastora member_of Contras documented ▶ 7:11

Manuel Noriega ordered_assassination_of Hugo Spadafora documented ▶ 8:11

“Nicholas Barletta announced an immediate investigation into his murder. It was to be one of Barletta's last official acts. A few weeks later, he was forced to resign by Manuel Noriega, the commander o…”

Manuel Noriega trafficked Hugo Spadafora host_asserted ▶ 10:04

“which may be the reason the Times sidestepped the issue involved drugs in the CIA. When Noriega's goons hauled Spadafora off a bus at a Pandemanian border, he was on his way to Panama City, where he i…”

Floyd Carlton Caceres spied_on Manuel Noriega documented ▶ 11:02

“and he was convinced that the revelation would sink the tyrant. In the months before the murder, the doctor had befriended a drug and arms smuggler who once ran Noriega's drug operation, Floyd Carlton…”

Teofilo Watson trafficked Floyd Carlton Caceres host_asserted ▶ 12:01

“Since he was too busy to do it himself, he had delegated the task to another pilot. I had to pay that money, Carlton said, which he agreed to do by flying a drug load north for free. But again, he had…”

Sebastian Gonzalez carried_out_attack Teofilo Watson host_asserted ▶ 12:30

“I had agreed or made a plan with Mr. Watson to steal the drugs, Carlton said. Carlton suspected that the Costa Rican Contra leader, Sebastian Gonzalez, and his strange M3 Contra group had done Watson …”

Alberto Aldemar carried_out_attack Floyd Carlton Caceres host_asserted ▶ 12:58

“They killed him and then took the airplane of drugs to Mr. Hall's ranch, Carlton testified. The plane was cut up and thrown into the river that ran through Hall's property, and the cocaine was taken t…”

Sebastian Gonzalez ordered_assassination_of Hugo Spadafora documented ▶ 17:34

“Now he's surrounded because he comes over here. He's finished, Gonzalez said. Yes, Perino replied. If he shows up over there, you'll get him. The district attorney in the Pandemanian province where Sp…”

Manuel Noriega trafficked CIA documented ▶ 18:32

“and said that he did nothing with the information the doctor risked his life to bring him. Since Noriega's drug dealing was the official reason the United States invaded Panama four years later, Neves…”

CIA covered_up Murder of Hugo Spadafora documented ▶ 20:58

“helped Noriega plant false media reports about who actually killed Spadafora. Jose Blanton, then Noriega's consul general in New York, told Congress that he and Noriega discussed Spadafora's murder a …”

CIA recruited Manfred Hoffman documented ▶ 21:59

“was a witness who was created by Noriega, and he was obtained through the CIA operating in Costa Rica. Blanton testified to this. He is a specialist in electronics, and he worked for the CIA. Blanton …”

Sebastian Gonzalez trafficked CIA documented ▶ 22:53

“According to a handwritten note on the CIA cable, Brother Winston was barking up the right tree. Quote, if the truth be told, we had reason to believe that Gonzalez had been involved in drugs for abou…”

CIA funded Contras documented ▶ 24:19

“At that point, the Reagan administration was smuggling up to Noriega as it had never done before, frantically searching for ways around the 1984 congressional ban on CIA supporting the Contras. For mo…”

Manuel Noriega ordered_assassination_of Sandinistas documented ▶ 29:53

“According to the government's documents filed during North's trial, Noriega offered to have the entire Sandinista leadership assassinated in exchange for a promise from the U.S. to help clean up Norie…”

Oliver North funded Manuel Noriega documented ▶ 30:39

“that the United States wasn't interested in doing that and the entire reason they're down there is to set up a drug trafficking network? Because that's what that sounds like to me. A month after Spada…”

Norman Bailey exposed Manuel Noriega documented ▶ 31:39

“Billions of dollars in $50 and $100 bills, money that Bailey concluded had come from criminal activities. Bailey set off on a quest to persuade Reagan administration to distance itself from Noriega, p…”

John Poindexter covered_up Hugo Spadafora documented ▶ 32:33

“been in attendance, Poindexter did bring up Spadafore's murder, but only to give Noriega some friendly advice on how to handle it. Poindexter spoke of the need to have a group of officers be sent abro…”

William Casey covered_up Manuel Noriega documented ▶ 33:01

“again to discuss his help for the Contras. According to a Senate subcommittee report, Casey decided not to raise the allegation of Noriega's cocaine trafficking with him, quote, on the grounds that No…”

William Casey appointed Oliver North documented ▶ 33:26

“While all of the official ring kissing was going on, Oliver North and the CIA was quietly knitting parts of Noriega's drug transportation system into the Contra supply line and hiring drug smugglers t…”

Oliver North recruited CIA documented ▶ 33:26

Oliver North member_of National Security Council documented ▶ 33:54

“the dopey, gap-toothed zealot portrayed by the Reagan administration and the press, North was one of the most powerful men in Washington. The spring of 1985, he was on top and testified at Allen Fires…”

Lawrence Walsh exposed Oliver North documented ▶ 34:24

“There was no doubt that he was the driving force behind the process. Former Iranian Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who indicted and convicted North on a variety of felonies, suspects the Ma…”

Oliver North trained CIA documented ▶ 35:51

“There were many other instances when he told me things that I thought was totally crazy that turned out to be absolutely true. One of the many surprises North had for Fires was the fact that he had re…”

Oliver North appointed Rob Owens documented ▶ 41:01

“In 1985, he pressured the newly created organization to hire one of his aides as a consultant. It was a tall former L.A. prep school counselor named Robert Owen, a Stanford grad and one time advertisi…”

Elliot Abrams appointed Rob Owens documented ▶ 43:24

“But North kept pushing. Doomling said North had Contra leaders write letters demanding Owens hire. He lobbied Doomling's superior at the State Department, Assistant Secretary Elliott Abrams, a fervent…”

Rob Owens member_of Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office documented ▶ 43:53

“That meant I was hiring him. Owen was given a $50,000 contract as a quote-unquote facilitator, a job that mystified Doomling's aide, Chris Arcos. Arcos testified that no one was sure what, in fact, Ro…”

Medellin Cartel financed_via Shrimp Company documented ▶ 47:51

“when he and $5 million in cash were taken off a Learjet bound for Panama. The shrimp company, he testified, was one of the interlocking chain of companies he'd created to launder all of the cash that …”

Medellin Cartel financed_via Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office documented ▶ 48:50

“I, through my intermediaries, made it possible. Was any of the money that you provided the shrimp company traceable to drugs or drug-related transactions, Carey asked? No, sir. Why was that? Because w…”

Felix Rodriguez financed_via Medellin Cartel documented ▶ 49:17

“over $10 million in donation from the Medellin cartel to the Contras. A donation, he said, was arranged by and paid for by a former CIA agent. And you're never going to guess who that is. Felix Rodrig…”

Jose Coton exposed Francesco Chains documented ▶ 51:12

“A host of Cuban CIA operatives and Bay of Pig veterans, he said, were working for the Contras in Costa Rica. One drug dealer Coton named was Francesco Chains, whom Coton said was giving financial supp…”

Carrasco exposed Shrimp Company documented ▶ 52:11

“As a U.S. government witness, Carrasco testified that the shrimp company was being used by the Contras during the war as a front to bring cocaine into the United States and finance their war effort. T…”

Rob Owens recruited Nunez documented ▶ 53:42

“The people that were involved in Ocean Hunter in Costa Rica were ones that had been helpful to the cause. Owen testified in 1988 civil deposition. He identified those helpful souls as Frank Chains, th…”

Rob Owens recruited Francesco Chains documented ▶ 53:42

Nunez member_of CIA documented ▶ 58:21

“may have been because its Costa Rican manager, Nunez, was a CIA agent himself. John Hall, the CIA's Costa Rican liaison for the Contras, confirmed in an interview that Nunez was working with the agenc…”

Felipe Vidal member_of CIA documented ▶ 58:50

“In addition to distributing State Department money to the Costa Ricas, Nunes was also permitting the shrimp company to be used by Oliver North and the CIA station chief, Fernandez, as a cover for a se…”

Oliver North recruited Felipe Vidal documented ▶ 58:50

Felipe Vidal member_of Shrimp Company documented ▶ 59:46

“and to gather intelligence. These boats could be acquired by the U.S. government, Vidal wrote, noting that existing connections with high-ranking officials in the DEA would facilitate the purchase of …”

CIA recruited Nunez host_asserted ▶ 1:04:02

“Most of the strange activity was occurring with the knowledge and apparent approval of CIA Station Chief Fernando and other CIA agents in Costa Rica. So they basically embedded this guy into the Costa…”

CIA spied_on Nunez documented ▶ 1:04:29

“shed light on that question when CIA interrogated him in March of 1987 about allegations that he had been dealing drugs in Costa Rica through a shrimp company. Thanks to a DEA seizure, the CIA already…”

CIA covered_up Nunez documented ▶ 1:04:53

“Nunes revealed that since 85, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the NSC. Nunes refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but indicated it was difficult to answer questions r…”

Nunez member_of National Security Council documented ▶ 1:04:53

CIA covered_up Philip Vidal documented ▶ 1:06:17

“who ran the Contra project at the time, confirmed that Nunes' questioning was stopped because of the NSC connection and the possibility that it could be somehow connected to North, otherwise known as …”

CIA shielded Nunez documented ▶ 1:07:15

“It shielded both Nunes and Vidal from criminal investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering. At various times, the CIA told U.S. Customs and DEA that it had no information on any of it. Th…”

CIA shielded Philip Vidal documented ▶ 1:07:15

CIA lied_to U.S. Customs Service documented ▶ 1:07:15

DIA CSA front_for Floyd Carlton Caceres documented ▶ 1:08:46

“CSA. It was a Miami aircraft company that Floyd Carlton had used for years in the U.S., and it was headquarters for his Panamanian drug smuggling venture with Noriega. It was in DIA CSA's office, Carl…”

Alfredo Caballero helped Eden Pastora documented ▶ 1:09:15

“Just like the shrimp company, this company was ran by a Cuban drug dealer who had been part of the CIA's Bay of Pigs. His name was Alfredo Caballero. Carlton testified that Caballero was involved in d…”

Alfredo Caballero ran DIA CSA documented ▶ 1:09:15

Danny Moritz spied_on Alfredo Caballero documented ▶ 1:10:11

“managed by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the report said. State Department selection of DIA CSA as a quote-unquote humanitarian aid contractor is perhaps the most egregious thing they did. At the t…”

U.S. State Department hired DIA CSA documented ▶ 1:10:11

Alfredo Caballero worked_for CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:11:09

“How the CIA missed those clues has never been explained because they hired them because of that, because now they're informants and that's their cover. It is highly likely the agency knew exactly who …”

CIA used DIA CSA documented ▶ 1:11:37

“Edan Pastora's top aide at the ARDE. Quote, I say that because I knew him very well. A lot of times I went to DIA CSA in Miami. Unquote. Prado has a reason to know. In 1985, CIA cable described DIA CS…”

Michael Palmer operated Vortex Aviation documented ▶ 1:12:37

“Just stay away from it, the judge snapped, refusing to allow any questions in the Noriega trial about any interactions with the CIA. Do you think he got a fair trial? Another Miami company the humanit…”

U.S. State Department hired Vortex Aviation documented ▶ 1:12:37

CIA knew_about Michael Palmer documented ▶ 1:13:34

“With CIA agents in 1991, CIA officer Fryer admitted that the CIA had gotten information that Palmer was dealing drugs during that. Fires heard that since Palmer's people got caught taking a plane of d…”

Vortex Aviation landed_at San Andrés Island documented ▶ 1:14:27

“One of D.C. one D.C. for Palmer was using to deliver contra aid was shot up in February 1986 as it attempted to airdrop over Nicaragua and it made an emergency landing in San Andreas Island off the co…”

Pat Foley oversaw Michael Palmer documented ▶ 1:14:57

“was used at one time to run drugs, and part of the crew had criminal records. Nice group of boys chose Pat Foley as the owner of the Delaware-based company Summit Aviation, a longtime CIA and U.S. mil…”

Pat Foley owned Summit Aviation documented ▶ 1:14:57

Francis McNeil confirmed_to U.S. Congress documented ▶ 1:15:27

“At the time, one of the State Department's top narcotics intelligence officers confirmed to Congress that the DC-4 appearance at San Andreas caused red flags to go up in Washington. A stop at San Andr…”

Ron Lippert worked_for CIA documented ▶ 1:16:50

“Lippard, a Canadian who flew for the CIA in early 1960s until his imprisonment by Cuban intelligence agents in 1963 for espionage, so he was involved in the Cuban exile community and CIA as well, said…”

CIA used Jose Insua documented ▶ 1:20:10

“and was used by the agency in an unsuccessful attempt to snare a former chairman of the Florida Democrat Party in a bribery sting. So they set up the former chairman of the Democrat Party in Florida t…”

CIA knew_about Vortex Aviation documented ▶ 1:21:38

“and two pilots for the prime contractor, all who were affiliated with the CIA Contra support program, may have been involved in narcotics prior to their relationship with the agency. That came from a …”

Alan Fiers knew_about Michael Palmer documented ▶ 1:22:04

“even before they recommended the company for the humanitarian project. It's the fucking reason they did. Come on. At least two agency officials, Alan Fiers and an unnamed CIA contractor, knew about Pa…”

U.S. State Department hired Setco documented ▶ 1:22:35

“And this is another one that comes up in so many of our stories. Setco, S-E-T-C-O, which happened to be owned by Honduran drug kingpin Ballesteros. In fact, the U.S. Customs Service had known since 19…”

Ballesteros owned Setco documented ▶ 1:22:35

Oliver North used Setco documented ▶ 1:23:05

“to the FDN. That came from a CIA inspector general's report as well. Quote, Oliver North also used Setco for airdrops of military supplies to Contra forces in Nicaragua, unquote. In fact, that appears…”

Alan Fiers guided U.S. State Department documented ▶ 1:23:35

“before they had to turn it over to Oliver North because of a congressional law. So in other words, the CIA never stopped doing what they were doing despite laws that prohibit them from doing it, which…”

Robert Dumling instructed_by Oliver North documented ▶ 1:24:59

“like so many other things that we've found. Who told you that, by the way, going back to the beginning of this? Doomling said Oliver North. He said North instructed him not to dislodge or replace exis…”

Oliver North member_of United States Marine Corps host_asserted ▶ 1:38:14

“Oliver North was not functioning as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps at the NSC, not knowing the shit that he knew. On that, I can agree. And I can almost sit here and say that i…”

CIA covered_up Sinaloa Cartel host_asserted ▶ 1:42:40

“So it may seem like we're getting bigger drug busts, but all the evidence seems to point towards nothing really changing because the cartels in Mexico, to the best of my knowledge, do seem to be the l…”

CIA covered_up Cali Cartel host_asserted ▶ 1:44:57

“fell out of favor with the CIA. And the CIA never addressed the Cali cartel because it was part of the protection of the state apparatus in Colombia as the designated cartel. And so the taking down of…”

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Pablo Escobar host_asserted ▶ 1:44:57

CIA recruited Oliver North speculative ▶ 1:48:36

“To me, it's not a bad thing. That's a solidly good thing. And the less information we hear, in my humble opinion, knowing how things work, and I'm sure you can attest to this, that's actually a positi…”

Ronald K. Prouty exposed CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:49:05

“And number two, you talked in there about how there were people – people would question, well, how in the world can these military flights go here and not be questioned? If you read Prouty's secret te…”

CIA carried_out_attack Bay of Pigs guest_asserted ▶ 1:51:59

“The Eyes Wide Open guy on YouTube who does a pretty good job of stuff, and he put forth the concept that the Bay of Pigs was a deliberate failure on the CIA's part to put pressure onto the new preside…”

CIA covered_up Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:52:51

“side of things on both sides of that. And throughout our investigation into Operation Condor, there was a definite advantage to having…”

CIA trained Che Guevara host_asserted ▶ 1:53:33

“In the 40s and early 50s? I have never seen any evidence that he was on the payroll. What I have seen is that the CIA had agents in the hills, in the mountains, in Cuba, training both Castro and his b…”

CIA trained Fidel Castro host_asserted ▶ 1:53:33

Fulgencio Batista member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:53:56

“Because at that point, the Batista installed guy that was as corrupt as hell and working with the CIA had pissed off enough people in Cuba that it was inevitable that there was going to be someone els…”

CIA trafficked Sicilian Mafia speculative ▶ 1:54:46

“being the next pliable guy so they didn't have to disrupt their heroin networks, which was coming through Cuba from the Sicilian mafia into the United States. And when Castro refused to go along with …”

CIA trafficked Colombia host_asserted ▶ 1:58:48

“That drugs originating from Colombia under the control of the CIA has been funneled up through covertly through Venezuela. And the CIA and people that have become whistleblowers outside of the CIA and…”