The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 17

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Transcript

0:00 Okay, good evening, everyone. Thank you for attending part 17 of Dark Alliance. Let me get us going over here on Rumble. Oh, dear goodness. Rumble's like going crazy. My whole screen just started going crazy. All right, let's try this again. SR, if you...

0:39 Can you hear me? Oh, there's Bridget. All right. Yes, ma'am. I most certainly can. Okay. I'll get Bridget over here and we're going to get going. Thank you again for attending and for being flexible on my traveling schedule. Appreciate it. So where we left off. Good afternoon, Colonel. Hey, Bridget. I'll talk about all the craziness today.

1:10 after the show, so that we can get right into the book, because it's crazy. It's just literally crazy going on. Okay, so where we left off, we were in August of 1986, and the Riverside DEA agent, Thomas Shretner, who was the guy that the majors

1:38 In LA, the police department and the sheriff's department was kind of skeptical about because they had literally the biggest case of the biggest cocaine dealer in the world going on. And the DEA wasn't really interested. He was busy doing other stuff than going after literally the biggest drug ring they had ever uncovered. And so in August of 86,

2:05 Shretner had debriefed a Nicaraguan informant who had known Blanton since meeting him in Miami in 1983, which, as you guys recall, is when he came over. The informant from Nicaragua. The informant admitted hauling cocaine and millions of dollars across the country for Blanton during 1984 and 85, but said that he felt.

2:34 He had felt bad about doing it and was planning to turn Danielle in eventually. Yeah, you know, sometime when it's not convenient for me making money. Okay, as a matter of fact, the informant said he had already tried to turn him in once before starting a drug hauling trip to the West Coast. He informed the FBI in Miami about the shipment, but...

3:05 The FBI wasn't interested. Shretner's informant described the drug ring as consisting of loosely associated Nicaraguans under Somoza, located principally in the Northern California area. Said the groups together purchased or distributed approximately 400 kilos per month. Cocaine is often transported.

3:32 to the Blanton organization, and then from Blanton to Menendez in San Francisco. This is according to the informant. For Gordon, that information, Gordon is the major's guy that's the police that's investigating the drug ring in Los Angeles. That information held special meaning. It provided independent verification of the accuracy of what Guzetta had gotten from

4:02 The Torres brothers and the data that the majors had pulled off of the drug computer. According to Shretner's informant, Norwin Menendez was involved. Roger Sandino was also involved. So were the Torres brothers, Ron Lister and Antasio Somoza's former bank chairman, Orlando.

4:32 Morella, who was allegedly laundering Blanton's money in Miami and serving as a front to buy property for Blanton. The informant told the DEA that Blanton's millions were being driven to Florida in motorhomes and taken to Fontainebleau apartment complex between Miami and Sweetwater, which had been purchased for Blanton by Orlando Morella.

5:03 Morella, now remember he was like the chief banker for Somoza, the CIA-installed and controlled dictator in Nicaragua before the Sandinistas arrived. Morella was identified as working at the government security bank in Coral Gables and acting as the principal money launderer for Blanton and Menendez, while Morella denied.

5:29 those accusations, Blanton admitted under oath that Morella had hauled cash transfers to Panama for him and put his name on the deeds to the property that Blanton owned in the surrounding area. He said Morella didn't know he was handling drug money. Come on. However, in an interview with Gary Webb, Morella said that he'd known Blanton was a drug dealer.

5:58 So he did, in fact, know he was dealing in drug money. According to Shretner's informant, the Nicaraguan drug ring was made up of two separate organizations. The principal group is controlled by Blanton and is the focal point for the drug supply and money laundering for the others. Blanton utilizes the nickname Chonson, which means fat pig, which we learned earlier, and works closely with his wife, Chapita, in his trafficking.

6:28 The other group is ran by Menendez and located principally in San Francisco. The informants filled seven pages with names, dates, cash delivery, stash houses, drug storehouses, and business fronts. History has proven that nearly every piece of information the informant gave was accurate.

6:54 Among those named as members of Blanton's operation was Claudio Vallecaristio, a.k.a. Ivan Argelas, Rick Rasta's first major supplier. Another one of Blanton's employees, a cocaine distributor by the name of Ivan Torres, was listed as having political connections to the Contras.

7:26 Then Shredder dropped a new bombshell on Tom Gordon. The DEA wasn't the only federal agency that had their eye on Blanton. Just a few days earlier, Shredder related he'd met with an FBI agent named Douglas Auklan, A-U-K-L-A-N, whose office was just down the hall from Shredder. The FBI agent had told him a story that was a dead bang.

7:55 the same as what had happened to Shredner. Auckland was sitting in his office, minding his own business, when a stranger came in off the street with a story right out of the movies. A monster drug ring ran by high-ranking Contras pouring cocaine into the ghettos of Los Angeles when it was, where it was being turned into crack and marketed in crack houses.

8:26 According to Auckland's official report of the encounter, the man said the ring was being ran by Blanton and Menendez, who imported the cocaine from Colombia through Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and was one of the largest distributors of cocaine on the West Coast. A pilot named Oklahoma Dick

8:54 who possibly lived in Tulsa area, regularly flew to South America to obtain the cocaine. Among the members of Blanton's organization were his wife, Chapita, Orlando Morella, the launderer, and Ronald Lister, the former cop turned CIA agent. In September 1985, he allegedly drove

9:23 with Blanton to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a major supplier of the L.A. Rock houses in exchange for almost $3 million. And these weren't your everyday run-of-the-mill drug dealers, the informant warned Auckland. They had connections. Blanton and Menendez were founding members of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, known as FDN.

9:52 A wing of the Contra movement headed by Calero and Blanton and Menendez used their drug profits to help fund the FDN, meaning the Contras. In January of 1985, Eden Pastora, another Contra leader, had met with Blanton in Miami in an effort to seek cocaine funds from Blanton to fund Contra operations, but no deals were made. Now, let me tell you why this is bullshit.

10:23 This guy, this informant, just walks off the street into the FBI and fingers Pastora. Now, as we've established in many chapters, Pastora is the only guy fighting in the Contra effort that refused repeatedly to use anything associated with drug money. So this informant was sent by the CEI to finger.

10:54 to finger Pastora as a drug dealer, which he was not. He's probably the only one that wasn't. For the first time, the pieces were falling together to form a complete and horrifying picture. Now, and again, let me just stop right here. We're supposed to believe the FBI got this big drop of information and did zero with it other than write a report so it can be a memo for record.

11:27 for when they want to finger Pastora. They have to get it in the system somehow so that when they can leak it to the media to try to finger Pastora as the drug guy and not all of the DEA, CIA, and FBI guys down in Costa Rica that are actually dealing the drugs. It was a plant. Okay, all the blanks were being filled in.

11:55 The CIA's secret warriors were not only killing the citizens of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica, but if the two informants were right, they were using LA's inner city to create addicts in order to sell the cocaine to buy their guns. At the same time, the Contras were being sold to the American public as the freedom fighters so they can get money from Congress to supplement the income.

12:27 In other words, from us for their drug dealing. They were providing the demons for Ronald Reagan's hyperbolic war on drugs at home. The Contras were largely to blame for the birth of the L.A. crack market. They were part of why the L.A. gangs had gotten so powerful and fearsome. And those developments were part of the reasons for the draconian

12:57 anti-crack laws that came out of Washington that summer, a product of the congressional stampede whipped up by all the lurid propaganda the media was carrying for the CIA. It was a self-propelling cyclone with obvious benefits for both foreign and domestic initiatives. Though FBI agent Douglas Auckland had never worked a dope case in his life,

13:28 He knew a major crime when he saw one. His informant was believable. He had a lot of details, lots of valuable information, things that could only have come from inside the operation. Auckland checked on Menendez with his counterparts in San Francisco at the FBI office and got an earful from Donald Hale, H-A-L-E, who had been following Menendez in the Bay Area.

13:57 for many years and still did nothing. No one had been able to catch the drug lord with dope or anyone inside his operation because they got people on the inside. Hale, the guy from San Francisco, told him he had recently got permission from the U.S. Attorney's Office to build a historical case against Menendez in anticipation of an indictment.

14:27 which they had no intentions of doing because that U.S. attorney is the one hiding Menendez. Convinced that his informant was reliable, Auckland went to his superiors in Riverside and to his supervisors in Los Angeles and pleaded for permission to open an investigation. For a probe this big and this sensitive, Auckland told them, he'd need an off-site location from which to operate.

14:55 He couldn't work on something like this inside the FBI. He also wanted a PIN register put on Blanton's phones, and he'd need surveillance teams to set up stash locations that the informant had given him. Auckland got permission to start an investigation. If he wanted to look into this, his bosses said, fine, but you're only going to do it on your own. Now, again, this is supposedly an investigation into the biggest

15:26 drug network in the United States, but only one guy's going to do it. Auckland said he didn't get any help on the case from his superiors or any other agents. That was according to the Department of Defense, or excuse me, the Department of Justice IG report. Nor were the DEA particularly eager to assist, except when he could steal an hour or two. Tom Sretner.

16:02 wasn't allowed to work on the Blanton investigation at all. So the DEA is not interested, D as in drugs, enforcement agency, not interested in doing drug enforcement. In hindsight, the FBI and DEA's refusal to assign more than one rookie drug agent to a case, this grave seems almost incredible. It is evidence either of an amazing amount of incompetence, cowardness, or

16:35 a blatant obstruction of justice. I'm going with option C. After LA Deputy Tom Gordon solved the lay of the land, he decided the majors weren't going to wait for the feds to get off their duffs. His crew could handle the bad boys themselves, but Auckland objected. The FBI. The majors should step aside, he told Gordon. This was a federal case. The FBI was on it first, and their informant was in the best position.

17:06 to take the operation down, which they had no intentions of doing. But Gordon was adamant. The majors were going ahead if the FBI didn't like it too bad. The drug ring was bringing in too much dope to sit around and wait for a lone FBI. Nobody wanted to help build a federal case. The majors didn't need the feds. They could make their own case.

17:32 He now had three independent sources telling the same story. The majors had enough evidence to obtain a search warrant and bust the operation. Gordon told the FBI agent, and that was what they were going to do. Once it became clear that Gordon was not going to back off, Auckland said he agreed to help with their probe. Now, you guys can decide whether he helped or not, because my opinion is...

18:01 He was the weak link. Gordon also had enough bureaucratic experience to know he was heading into some very dangerous political territory. Anyone who read the papers knew who the Contras were and how strongly the U.S. government felt about them. Congress had just approved the $100 million aid package, and Reagan was getting ready to sign it. If Gordon was going to end up investigating his own government,

18:32 or its proxy army for drug trafficking, he realized he'd better get someone to sign off on it. So he approached his lieutenant, Mike Fossey, the acting captain of the Bureau, and laid out the whole scenario. The allegations were that the Contras were selling cocaine throughout the United States, particularly in Southern California, according to what Fossey recalled when he was later questioned. Fossey said that the CIA was involved with them.

19:00 screened them, and protected their operation. Gordon's immediate supervisor, Sergeant Ed Hoffman, decided to brief the commander of the Sheriff's Narcotics Bureau, Captain Robert Wilber, just to make sure that the top brass had no qualms about the operation. Wilber confirmed that Hoffman and his men believed that suspects were possibly Contras. During this conversation, they also said they were reluctant to work with the FBI on the case.

19:31 because the FBI might burn them. Wilbur wasn't sure if Hoffman's suspicions were a political thing or if he really felt the feds were in on it. During this period, Wilbur told investigators in 1996, almost 10 years later, his guys were not working with the federal agents very well, and he pushed his deputies to work with them on the case.

20:01 It was a tough nut to crack, he said, but I was constantly emphasizing they had to work with the feds. Hoffman reluctantly agreed to bring the Department of Justice agents aboard, but had the L.A. officers known what was going on right then with the DEA office in Costa Rica and their agents who were monitoring Menendez, Blanton, and Lister, it's doubtful they would have done it. Joseph Kelso was an undercover

20:31 informant for the U.S. Customs. He slipped quietly into Costa Rica in April of 1986 on the trail of an elusive drug dealer. Before his visit was over, he would be chased, beaten, shot at, clubbed, caged, threatened with death, and deported. Kelso's horrific misadventures

20:55 would earn him a minor place in history, a footnote to one of America's worst scandals, the Iran-Contra. His case would be cited by the Congressional Iran-Contra committees as an example of how Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and the National Security Council impeded law enforcement investigations to protect his illegal Contra supply operation from public exposure.

21:23 But the four paragraphs about Joe Kelso buried deep in that official report only tell a fraction of his story. How the former fireman from Golden Valley, Minnesota, happened to attract the gaze of Oliver North and his preppy CIA informant, Robert Owen, was never explained by the Congressional Committee. That omission bothered some Democratic members of the Iran-Contra panel.

21:50 Congressman Peter Rodino of New Jersey and Dante Bassel of Florida, Jack Brooks of Texas, and Louis Stokes of Ohio, who decided to write their own report about Joe Kelso. The significance of Kelso's section of the committee report is not entirely clear from the facts as stated, the congressman said.

22:18 Quote, in order to understand why Owen and North were so concerned about Kelso, one must understand just what Kelso was doing and learning in Costa Rica, unquote. What Kelso was doing, the record showed, was investigating allegations that the same Costa Rican DEA agents watching over Norwin Menendez and Danielo Blanton were trafficking in drugs and funny money.

22:47 What he was learning was just how hazardous investigating such matters could be. Kelso, a would-be spy, had been working as a CIA informant since the early 1980s, after he befriended a German-born arms dealer named Heinrich Rupp, R-U-P-P.

23:13 Kelso said he was approached by a CIA agent who called himself Bill Chandler and asked to gather information about Rupp's activities. Rupp was selling arms to the Argentines during the Great Britain-Faulkland Islands War, and CIA wanted to know what they were buying. At the CIA's suggestion, Kelso began working for Rupp, posing as a weapons broker seeking arms for Iraqi President

23:43 Saddam Hussein. The agency figured it would draw some interesting people out of the woodwork, Kelso said, but the mission ended in a disaster. A tough-talking 26-year-old was arrested by the U.S. Customs Service and charged with attempting to buy harpoon missiles, big radar-guided cruise missiles designed to blow up ships for the Iraqi government. Unbeknownst to Kelso, the men he had been negotiating the deal with

24:12 were undercover customs investigators. Kelso's arrest presented the CIA with a problem. The agency's charter prohibits it from working inside the United States, which it was doing. To keep the operation under wraps, Kelso was advised by his CIA handlers to keep his mouth shut and plead guilty. They promised his legal problems would go away. How is that going to happen if the CIA can't work inside the United States?

24:45 Federal court records lend support to Kelso's story. Despite the severity of his crime, attempting to acquire cruise missiles for a quote-unquote unfriendly government, although it was actually propped up by the CIA as well, Kelso was put on probation and promptly banished. Supplied with a new identity and a matching passport, Kelso went back to work for the federal government, this time as an informant.

25:15 The very agency that had just arrested him, the U.S. Customs. Now, you guys, this is a pattern that we've come across over and over and over again. They set people up. They arrest them. They tell them that if they play ball with them as a quote-unquote informant, that they can make their legal troubles go away. This is a pattern. It's setting people up, which...

25:44 by the way, is just what they did to Tom Homan. And they tried to do to Matt Gates. They tried to do this to everybody that they feel they can control or that they can use for whatever their purpose is. His control officer, Special Agent Larry LaDodge, registered him as an informant under the name of Richard Williams and sent him to Europe to hunt down a fugitive.

26:11 methamphetamine dealer who was wanted in the U.S. on numerous charges, Kelso said. Kelso followed the dealer's trail around Holland, England, and then LaDodge picked up word that he had a ranch in Costa Rica, as all good drug dealers did at the time. In the mid-1986, Kelso went to find him. He also had another mission to perform while there.

26:41 a standing directive from the CIA to gather intelligence about Robert Vesco. And by the way, Robert Vesco was also employed by the CIA. The millionaire swindler and fugitive who lived in Havana and had been going to Costa Rica and Nicaragua during the time of the Contra War always managed to stay one step ahead. I wonder how that is.

27:13 It helps when you're working for the CIA. Kelso found the methamphetamine dealer's ranch, but not its owner. He had a house on the Mexican border, so he'd hop back and forth between the U.S. border and the Mexican border so that he could conduct his narcotics business and not get caught. But Kelso continued his search for Vesco. He found the financier's private jet, he said, parked at a hangar.

27:44 in San Jose, Costa Rica. When he checked to see who was paying the storage bills, he learned that it was the owners of the shrimp company, the cocaine-dealing CIA threat, that was helping Oliver North funnel U.S. government money to the Contras. Vesco's airplane was being housed by the CIA in Costa Rica.

28:13 while they're pretending they're hunting for him. Just want to make that clear. A decision was being made up here in the United States whether we were going to put a satellite pinger on it or not, Kelso said, and they chose not to. So they found the guy's airplane that they supposedly are hunting relentlessly and decide they don't want to track it. While on his Vesco hunt, Kelso started frequent...

28:45 frequenting a bar in San Jose across from the headquarters of a political group known as Costa Rica Libre. To hear Kelso tell it, the bar was like something out of Casablanca. It was where most of the upper echelon of Costa Rica hung out. This is actually in his deposition, by the way. Quote, none of the oddity that we found was that the ETA

29:16 a guerrilla group, would hang out there and drink with them. M-19, a Colombian terrorist group, was there as well. The German mafia people were there. And it was just, they were all drinking together and having a good old time, like they were old buddies, because they are. So you see here kind of the remnants of Operation Gladio all coalescing in Costa Rica in a bar where you have

29:48 supposedly right-wing people and supposedly left-wing terrorist groups all hanging out together. I'm telling you guys, this is all a kabuki dance. It's all bullshit. From the crooks and mercenaries, Kelso picked up word that the U.S. embassy was dirty and that the embassy, you know, had leaks in the visa program, in the passport section.

30:16 Some Costa Ricans that were hired there had been manufacturing passports for a long time and selling them. Where have we heard that story before? Kelso said he forwarded a report to the FBI and they turned around and shut the embassy down for 45 days while they did a security check. Then Kelso began hearing rumors that the DEA agent, Robert Neves, the country's attache, which is also...

30:46 Kind of double-hatted as a CIA guy. And Norwin Menendez's control agent had been taking cocaine from seizures made in Costa Rica's narcotic police. Kelso said the allegations were largely conjecture, but he confided them to the Department of Defense officials stationed in Costa Rica. They just shrugged their shoulders and said, geez, he found out.

31:16 and left it at that. Kelso claimed that Agent LaDodge authorized him to pursue the allegations further. He snooped around Neves and the other DEA agents working at the embassy for a couple of months, enlisting the aid of a Canadian who worked as a U.S. customs informant, Brian Caldwell. By the end of the summer of 1986, Kelso testified he had hardcore documentation that was court-proof.

31:48 saying six witnesses, current and former Costa Rican and American government officials, were willing to testify that the DEA agents were skimming cocaine from drug seizures, taking counterfeit money, sanitizing intelligence reports to Washington, and protecting cocaine processing labs in northern Costa Rica, including at least two Contrabases, Kelso testified. What did they say to you?

32:18 was their direct knowledge of Mr. Neves and his activities. Kelso was asked during his deposition, which was taken by a Washington Bank Christic Institute as part of a civil racketeering lawsuit filed in 1986 against a variety of current and former government officials. Well, they were all reverting back to direct involvement with narcotic smuggling.

32:48 If you want to use the word protection in that situation, and that's the bottom line. I mean, it was all relative to that with exact situations, exact information, documentation. The witnesses also told Kelso that the Contras were involved in cocaine. And there were the people that were reiterated that they were, quote unquote, bad Contras.

33:14 These particular Contras were in fact involved in narcotics and were smuggling them, period. That was his statement. One of Kelso's witnesses was Warren Trece, T-R-E-E-C-E, the deputy director of the narcotics department of the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Affairs. Tracy, according to a 1989...

33:43 Costa Rican prosecutors report had a strange experience with one of Neve's men, Sandy Gonzalez, the DEA agent who had yelled at the L.A. detective Tom Gordon about not talking on the phone through Nicaragua. Quote, information from the existence of cocaine laboratories in the Costa Rican Peninsula area and another one in another area.

34:11 were transmitted by Tracy to an official of the DEA with the surname of Gonzalez in Costa Rica, but they were not investigated on account of the leak of information from that same agent. So anytime the DEA guys got someone caught on to what they were doing, they would leak the information to tell the people involved at a particular lab or...

34:41 a route being flown so that they could get out before they got caught. And that's according to the Costa Rican police. Gonzalez and Neves were never charged with a crime, either in Costa Rica or the United States, and the allegations were never proven. In response to a Freedom of Information Act, the DEA claimed they could find no records about Kelso or his investigation.

35:09 which was rather unbelievable considering that some DEA records concerning Kelso were made available to the Iran-Contra investigators in 1987, so they lied. The DEA would not allow Gonzalez to be interviewed, and Neves refused to answer any questions. Costa Rican attorney Gloria Navez, a former prosecutor and judge who advises the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly on drug issues,

35:38 strongly believes that the DEA agents stationed in Costa Rica during the Contra War were not what they appeared. Quote, in my opinion, both Neves and Sandy Gonzalez were connected with the CIA. There is no doubt, she insisted, you aren't going to find hard evidence because these were covert operations, but I did my own investigations and you can't come to any other conclusion, unquote. The DEA refused to...

36:07 release any records or answer any questions about the agent's background or their possible work for other government agencies. Sometimes the lines really got blurred when you were working for Oliver North, agreed former Iran Contra Committee attorney Pam Naughton, who investigated the Justice Department's role in the scandal. He was using DEA agents in Europe as CIA.

36:33 I mean, they were doing activities that were way beyond the scope of DEA. Those were clearly covert activities. That was her statement. One of these double-duty DEA agents was James Kibble, a Madrid-based agent who visited jailed Medellín cartel Jorge Oca in Spain in 1984

37:04 implicate the Sandinistas in drug trafficking. According to a 1987 story in The Nation, Kibble was one of the select group of DEA operatives who conducted secret missions for Oliver North and the National Security Council. On October 24, 1986, Kibble and another DEA agent, Victor Oliveira, were apprehended by Spanish customs officials

37:34 while boarding a plane for Switzerland. In their possession was a briefcase filled with $5 million in cash. According to Spanish government officials, in May of 1987, the money was destined for a bank account in Zurich controlled by North. Some of the funds were intended as a ransom to free American hostages in Lebanon. That's where you get into the Iran-Contra piece of this.

38:07 Because we were sending weapons to Iran to basically get them to work with the Lebanese to free hostages. That's where all of that comes into play. At the time, the DEA agents Neves and Gonzalez were stationed in Costa Rica. The CIA station chief was Joe Fernandez, close friend and confidant of Oliver North.

38:32 who was later forced to resign from the CIA for his illegal involvement in the Contras. Fernandez was indicted by Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, but the charges were dropped when the U.S. attorney, Richard Thunberg, refused to declassify records needed in the trial, the first time in history that had ever happened, under none other than George H.W. Bush.

39:02 Mr. CIA himself. Kelso said his witnesses claim the CIA was involved in the operation of a drug lab at a contra base near northern, it was, I don't know how you say the name of the city, but it was in northern Costa Rica. So it was my problem or my duty to go and respond back to the CIA that this allegation is, is that we got two CIA agents at this base, at this laboratory,

39:33 participating in drug manufacturing. Okay, Kelso said. He said it was later determined that the two men may have been part of Norse resupply operation, which could or couldn't have been official CIA, but they were basically still working for the CIA. Kelso claimed to have obtained maps pinpointing the locations of 32 cocaine labs in Costa Rica alone.

40:01 and some personal papers of DEA agents, including the radio code names. A customs agent familiar with the case said Kelso stole Agent Neves' briefcase from his car. In an interview with the Jack Webb, Kelso denied this. At the end of July 1986, Kelso felt he had enough information about the DEA activities to report his findings to his control agent, Larry LaDodge.

40:33 and to the U.S. military Southern Command headquarters in Panama, to their CIA officer located there. It was hand-carried on a microcassette. The allegations included counterfeiting, and those were sent to Secret Service. William Rosenblatt, then head of the enforcement at U.S. Customs, confirmed in a deposition that Mr. Ladage had received communications from one of these

41:05 two gentlemen by phone that they had uncovered a counterfeit ring in Costa Rica, and there was other information that the informants wanted to provide, but they did not feel comfortable doing it over the phone. The other information Rosenblatt said in one secret testimony in Congress concerned narcotics allegations relative to the DEA. Rosenblatt said the allegations were taken seriously in Washington.

41:35 The Customs Service, quote, coordinated with Secret Service as well as our Customs Attaché in Panama, who is responsible also for the country of Costa Rica. Arrangements were made for one of New Orleans agents to travel to Miami down to Costa Rica to meet up with the informants and the Secret Service so that they could provide firsthand information to the Secret Service about the counterfeiting money operation, unquote.

42:03 The New Orleans agent, Douglas Lee Kotchenberger, met with Kelso and Codwell in early August, ostensibly to debrief them and also to pay them the money that Mr. LaDodge felt was owed to them. Rosenblatt testified to this. He did not check in with the embassy. He immediately met with the informant, paid the informant, and to some extent was debriefed by them.

42:31 According to the Iran-Contra Committee Minority Report, Kelso and Caldwell told Customs that the DEA agents in Costa Rica knew the location of the drug labs and had been paid to conceal the locations of narcotics. Kelso said he gave Kotchenberger maps showing the locations of the labs, cassette tapes of interviews, and other documents. But Kotchenberger, whom Kelso called a newbie, and Rosenblatt termed

43:01 relatively inexperienced, became nervous, insisting that he had to report the information to the DEA attache in Costa Rica at the embassy, the very person that was being accused of the wrongdoing. Kelso couldn't believe his ears. If he had this rumor and either qualified it or disqualified it, going and telling the person that you're doing the research on,

43:30 To qualify or disqualify it would be stupid, Kelso testified, because if he was doing it, he would normally head over and do something to protect himself so that no one could touch him. Kelso said Kotchenberger had explicit orders not to say anything to Neves to keep his mouth shut. Go in there, tell him he found nothing.

43:58 that it was a waste of time, get back on the airplane, and immediately take the documentation out of town. The agent's response, Kelso said, was, wow, that's not State Department policy. I can't do that. I'm going to get in trouble. Kotchenberger made a beeline for the U.S. Embassy and spilled everything Kelso had shared with him. But the customs representative from our Panama office, as well as the customs agent from LaDodge's office,

44:27 sat down with the DEA personnel and related, summarized everything that had been told. Iran-Contra lawyer Pam Naughton, who questioned Rosenblatt, was incredulous. Did they do that on your instruction, she asked? Or was that their own idea to tell the DEA about the allegations about the DEA?

44:56 Rosenblatt insisted that it was their idea. They didn't do that on my instructions. I didn't even know about it until after they came back. He agreed one may believe it not prudent to tell the very same office that the allegations were made against and relate those allegations to them. But he pointed out that it was part of the agreements that we have that we fill in DEA about information. Yeah, it's just standard policy.

45:26 How standard is it that you get accusations about the DEA dealing drugs? How standard is that? The next day when Kelso and Brian Caldwell were lounging in their rooms in the hotel in San Jose, the DEA called the Costa Rican National Narcotics Police and asked them to arrest the two on grounds that they were impersonating narcotics agents. Okay, so.

45:56 The DEA has been tipped off. Kelso's got the goods on him. So they call the Costa Rican police to go arrest Kelso. Kelso said they came stomping in there and demanding to see Caldwell and the stuff. And he saw a couple rolled up maps and he started yelling, you know, are those some of those GD maps, you know, floating around here? And we want those. And started taking them. The DEA agent, accompanied by two Costa Rican national police agents.

46:28 started confiscating everything in the room, tried to take our notebooks, my briefcase, everything, Kelso said. Kelso and Codwell was hustled off to a construction warehouse owned by the Costa Rican Electric Company, where they were shoved around and interrogated about whom they had been working with and who they worked for. When Kelso told of finding Robert Vesco's airplane, he said the DEA agent became very nervous.

46:58 He then said, get in the effing car. So we go there and we go down to the Costa Rican National Police main office, right up to the director's office. Soon, Kelso said, DEA agent Neves comes in and he starts screaming, I'm going to blow your effing ass away. U-S-O-B and on and on. His short temper exposed. I said, all you are is a M-effing

47:28 Puerto Rican, and that that's the key word that makes him trip off, okay? He goes psychotic. He goes bananas, Kelso said. Neves told him, you are a dead SOB. And he's actually saying out the words. I'm just not going to say them. He also said that he must have repeated that he was going to blow my effing head off about 50 times. He was furious, absolutely out of control.

47:58 Kelso's story was confirmed by the Costa Rican police officers that were present at the incident. According to Costa Rican newspaper, which asked Neves about Kelso in 1986, Neves did not even disguise his anger then about the fact that the U.S. Customs was investigating a matter that is a priority task for the DEA. In other words, get out of my shit. I'm doing shit illegally.

48:29 but get out of it. Kelso was taken to the U.S. Embassy, where he said the DEA agents began copying the documents in his briefcase until a person that I had never saw before came in, sat down at one of the desks, very nice suit, well-dressed, which later I learned was none other than Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North's sidekick, Robert Owens. What Kelso didn't know was that Robert Owens

48:56 was the eyes and ears of the CIA and Oliver North. Kelso testified that after Owen got a look at the documents seized at the hotel room, he ordered the DEA agents to stop making copies. He whisked Kelso out of the embassy and dropped him back at his hotel. Owen, in a deposition, admitted being in Costa Rica in August of 86, at the same time that Kelso was abducted, but he denied even meeting him.

49:27 ran to the Costa Rican narcotic investigator Warren Tracy's house and hid out. The next day, Neves called him there and ordered him back to the embassy. Kelso refused to go, and Neves told him he would be at Tracy's house in five minutes. I said, F you, try to find me, and I slammed down the phone, and then he ran for his life. Tracy and Alexander McNulty, the chief of security for Costa Rican president,

49:56 Arias took Kelso up in the jungle and dropped him off and then returned to San Jose to pick up weapons in one of the presidential security cars. Kelso said he had been instructed by his handlers to rendezvous on the CIA operative John Hall's ranch, which, by the way, is CIA too, if he got in trouble because Hall had an airstrip where he could get away.

50:24 In the dead of night, Tracy and Minolte drove Kelso north to Hall's well-guarded compound and dropped him off with a dentist friend of Hall's where he spent the night. The dentist drove Kelso to Hall's ranch the next day. Rob Owens later recounted the meeting in a deposition. This guy Kelso came in and said, look, I have been told that you are.

50:53 the one guy that I should contact. There's a real problem here. I think the DEA people are trying to kill me. I'm convinced that they were involved in the narcotics trafficking and looking the other way. I don't know who else to turn to. Paul, in an interview, confirmed all of this. He wrote a report on Kelso's visit the next day, noting that Kelso claimed a name redacted of the USA DEA.

51:21 has his maps of coke labs located in Costa Rica, but is protecting them. A large lab located up north and other ones in other areas. While Kelso talked, Hall carefully examined the stranger's passport, which bore the name Richard Williams, and showed immigration stamps for several European and Mid-Eastern countries. Though Kelso clearly seemed in fear for his life,

51:48 Hall, who had been accused repeatedly of facilitating contra-drug trafficking, was weary, thinking Kelso may have been sent by the Sandinistas. He knows he wasn't. Hal is part of the CIA. And obviously, he's just putting that in there for his own protection. So he basically says, Kelso can go to the guest house under guard until we can figure out what to do with him. But at three in the morning, Kelso said,

52:18 He was waking up with automatic rifle fire, and he saw in the yard Costa Rican guards armed with AK-47s and heard this guy yelling something in Spanish. Suddenly, Kelso felt his head explode. One of his captors bashed him in the head with the butt of a gun. It had drawn blood. Kelso was then...

52:45 He tries to get up and he hit me again, knocking me right back to the ground. Paul watched this parade from his porch. It was very, very obvious attempt to get him to resist so they could shoot him. The colonel kept running up, pointing his finger at me, saying the U.S. Embassy says he's extremely dangerous. It's better if I kill him. According to the Costa Rican prosecutor's report, the embassy official who issued those dire warnings.

53:14 was DEA agent Neves. Paul's report stated that the embassy told the rural guard colonel that if he resisted arrest to kill him. So I'll spare you the rest of the details because it's pretty crazy, but suffice it to say, Kelso lived and they beat the living crap out of him, tortured him.

53:45 It was all done by the DEA agents that, or ordered by the DEA agents that he had tried to turn in. So it goes on later to say that Owen confirmed, North's sidekick, Robert Owen, confirmed that he had picked up the tapes from the customs office and listened to him. He said the tapes he heard the custom agents debriefing Kelso's chief informant.

54:17 Robert Tracy. Owen said there are some thought, at least according to Mr. Tracy, that the DEA officials may have been in on the take. There was accusations made. Rosenblatt said he washed his hands of the whole matter after he turned the tapes over to Owen, and he never heard another word. The congressmen on the Iran-Contra panel were stunned by Rosenblatt's action. Quote,

54:46 He gave the only copy of the tape recording made by an undercover source to a total stranger, the congressman complained. Owen did not tell Rosenblatt that he worked for North or the CIA. He told him he worked for a private organization. Not surprisingly, Owen never returned the tape recordings. Instead, he made two trips to Costa Rica to meet with the DEA agents.

55:15 That were the subject of the tapes. Owen said his last trip to Costa Rica to meet the DEA agents occurred in October 86. Within a day or two of the Iran-Contra scandal breaking, Owen threw the Kelso tapes away. They were thrown out, along with a bunch of other stuff. When I moved, he testified, you know, no big deal. When the Iran-Contra committee heard about the Kelso investigation, they asked the DEA to provide them with the records of the case.

55:45 It was like pulling teeth out of the justice to get any cooperation. And we finally had to threaten everything imaginable to get these documents, said the Iran contract attorney. Finally, they caved in and we had to go over to justice to look at them in a secured area on the sixth floor and was reminded. They said it reminded them of Get Smart, which I thought was hilarious since we've used that Get Smart analogy several times.

56:13 You remember all of the doors that you had to go through. We finally get to the situation room and they had turned down the heat to about 30 degrees so that we wouldn't stay very long. And then they find out all of the documents are in Spanish. Naughton said that to her knowledge, the DEA never investigated the drug trafficking allegations of the Costa Rica DEA agents.

56:43 Jack Lawn, the DEA director, told Congress in 1987 he'd never even heard of it. The U.S. Customs also quit looking. Customs agent Hilberry said the DEA allegations were turned over to DEA. Two Costa Rican intelligence officers were eventually charged with illegally arresting Kelso, but the only American agent to go to jail as a result of the investigation was none other than Joe Kelso.

57:12 In January of 1987, he was charged with violating his probation on his 1983 weapons charge. And that's why they do that. They convict you of something, then they let you off as long as you're an informant. But if you step out of bounds during this period of time, they always have that hanging over you. And Joe Kelso did his job so well.

57:40 that he discovered their own wrongdoing, and then he's the one that goes to jail. Not any of the criminals, him, who was set up by the government to begin with. So anybody that tells you the FBI just started doing this bullshit, laugh at them. The DEA was dirty from the day it was set up. Laugh at them. During Kelso's probation hearing, both Snow and the U.S. Attorney Bruce Black vouched for his credibility.

58:11 Some of what he said was totally checked out to the best of my ability to corroborate it, Black told the district judge. He confirmed that Kelso worked around the world under another name for the U.S. Customs Service. Argued Snow, quote, by his belief and quite frankly mine, he was working for the government. I believe the U.S. attorney believe these is.

58:43 There's a fairly high percentage of truth in everything he says, unquote. But the judge wasn't interested in anything they had to say. He ordered Kelso to prison for two years for violating parole and didn't discuss the matter further. Kelso served his time quietly at a federal prison in California and later became involved in working something in Southern California.

59:14 The target of Kelso's investigation, DEA Robert Neves, went on to have a long and illustrious career at the DEA, rising to great heights. He became the head of cocaine investigations in Washington. Then he became the chief of all the major investigations. And at the time of his retirement in 1995, he was.

59:41 serving as the chief of DEA's international division, which means that he was the guy that was thwarting all of the investigations into the entire international drug trade, not just the Contra, Nicaragua, Costa Rica links. Dirty, dirty, dirty. After his retirement, guess where he goes to work? Neves went to work for a body armor manufacturing company in Virginia.

1:00:12 called Guardian Technologies. And guess who owned that? Lieutenant Colonel Fricking North. And the guy that ran the CIA office in Costa Rica, none other than Joe Fernandez. So this bastard ordered the death of an American, wanted to kill him, was dirty the entire time.

1:00:46 never spent a day in jail, and when he retires from being a dirty DEA agent, he gets rewarded by the guy he was actually working for, CIA, Joe Fernandez, and Lieutenant Colonel North. That's the end of that story. Bridget got dropped again. If that doesn't make your blood boil, you're dead. You're just dead. Bridget, can you get back up here?

1:01:31 Go ahead, SR. I must be doing something right. I found it interesting here that he was talking about counterfeiting. And we know that counterfeiting took place back in, what was it, 1941, I believe it was, in Costa Rica. So maybe it never shut down. Maybe. It's crazy. The more you...

1:02:07 And that's why I keep saying everybody goes, oh, my God, what happened to Trump is like the worst thing. It's the worst scandal in all of history. It's not. It's a continuation of the worst story in history. Every single year that goes by, every decade that goes by, there's one of these stories. And it's always the same people in the stories as far as the organizations go. Miles, go ahead.

1:02:36 Yeah, Colonel, what movie is this? I'd like to watch it. It's not a movie! What? It's real? It can't be real. Only Hollywood could make this up. So, I have a question for you. It seems like, and you'll probably talk about all the things that are happening, I'm assuming, but I could be wrong, that some of the things that are getting done could not happen if...

1:03:07 The people that we've been talking about are still in control. Well, interestingly enough, using the word control, are the political appointees that Trump has put in charge of these organizations good? Yes. Are all of these same kind of people still in all of these organizations? Yes.

1:03:39 So if you don't understand the depths of depravity of these people, these were not high ranking people in the DEA. These were not high ranking people in the CIA. These were not high ranking people in the DOJ, the state, the federal attorney out in San Francisco, the federal attorney, which now is that dumbass judge in Oregon that just tried to stop Trump.

1:04:07 She was the drug narcotics person in Los Angeles. That same woman that just told Trump he couldn't use the Oregon Guard. That's the same woman. She was a lowly Department of Justice U.S. attorney dealing in narcotics in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 90s. These are the same people. That's why you have to understand.

1:04:38 What is going on today goes directly back to history. And Emmergut, thank you, Megersarge over on Rumble. Yeah, it's the same people, people. So they're still in the belly of the beast. These immoral, unethical bastards are still in the system.

1:05:09 And that's why all of this, if you think about it for, you know, 10 seconds, it does get overwhelming. It's like right now going on in the military. Everybody that gets nominated that's wearing a uniform, everybody screams bloody murder, and rightfully so, that they were part of the infrastructure that mandated the clot shot.

1:05:36 Well, literally everybody in the military in a command structure did that or you lost your job. You had to retire. You had to resign, which only a few did. So who else are you going to pick to be in there? It's the least bad. It's not good. It's the least bad. There's a lot of rot in here. This has been going on for 100 years, people. Bridget, go ahead.

1:06:04 I just had to share with everybody over here, a few of McModern's been on fire over on Rumble. He said, shrimp company again. I am never looking at shrimp the same way again. He said, they may as well have just named the bar Operation Gladio. He said, that is price of all ducks in Spanish. You would think someone would know Spanish. Anyway, it's just cracking me up. Thank you.

1:06:34 So, yeah. And so you tell them, yeah, you can come over here and look at this shit. We're going to freeze your ass off while you're over here. And we're not going to tell you it's in Spanish until you get here. So you can't read any of it. SR, go ahead. And then we'll go back to Miles. Thank you, Colonel. And thank everybody for attending today and those on Rumble as well. What I what what I find kind of strange here is they got Tracy to to testify in in these.

1:07:07 Now, Tracy is a Costa Rican official. I assume he's Costa Rican national. So how in the world did they manage to get him into a hearing? Oh, I mean, you can do that multiple ways. You can take depositions. You know, there's ways to do that. But there were a lot of Costa Rican legitimate people.

1:07:41 that were appalled at what the U.S. was doing in Costa Rica and tried repeatedly to stop it. Not with a lot of success because the Costa Rican president was on the take, but there were a lot of legitimate patriots in Costa Rica that were appalled that they were using their country for the Contra scam. Miles, go ahead. Yeah, just to let you know, I was paying attention because I was,

1:08:11 preparing dinner, you brought up something about what I call the prisoner's dilemma. So, yeah, they roll you up and then they'll say, yeah, we'll take care of you. Nothing's going to happen. We'll give you a call when we need you. So I was paying attention to that. And so all these sealed indictments, those are just for jaywalkers? The sealed indictments that's in our system today? Correct, sir. No.

1:08:42 I don't think they are. Well, there's a lot of them. I know, but I also, I'm telling you that the people that are in the system today, you're talking apples and oranges. When the people at the top in every organization, I spent 30 years in the military. I wouldn't have touched any of this shit. I would have resigned if COVID would have come up.

1:09:10 I wouldn't have cared. You're not sticking that shit in my arm. I was already vaccine injured with anthrax and I wasn't taking another damn thing that they had to give us. So there are good people. One of my very best friends is still on active duty and he did take the J&J vaccine, not the mRNA one. But he has documentation. He forced his commander to sign a direct order.

1:09:40 And he was a commander at the time to sign a direct order making him take that vaccine so that if anything ever happened to him civilly, he could sue the government. So there are people that are good patriots, and he definitely is, that are still in there having taken that vaccine. But there are also, especially at the more senior levels in the military.

1:10:07 dirt bags that rolled over without ever even questioning any of it. And I can tell you unequivocally, if a group of senior officers at the four-star level would have refused to participate in that, it would have changed everything. It literally would have changed everything, but they didn't have the courage to do it at that level. And my friend was only a lieutenant colonel squadron commander at the time. So yeah, it's...

1:10:35 There's good people throughout the system on the inside. And we have to believe. So understand that the indictments are done by grand juries. There has to be a handful of good federal attorneys at any given time, just like there's the bad ones that we've all seen. And any of those federal attorneys can convene.

1:11:05 grand jury and do an investigation. So I believe during Trump's first term, there were several of those done, like a whole bunch of them. As a matter of fact, Brian Cates talks about the one that was done for three years investigating Congress, and it was not until they adjourned the grand jury on the anniversary of what was coming up for the fourth renewal of that grand jury. It had been continued for three years.

1:11:34 That the Swalwell and what's the other idiot from California shift came out and made a public statement that they had been spied on for the three years, even though it wasn't spying. It was under a grand jury investigation. So there's a ton of potential sealed indictments from that grand jury alone because they.

1:12:04 were investigating 80 political people and their staff during that time. And how we know that is when Swalwell and Schiff made their statements, Apple had a gag order on them to not reveal the surveillance under the grand jury.

1:12:33 When that gag order lapsed because they adjourned the grand jury, Apple sent out notifications for all of the Apple customers. And I don't know if any of the other companies did because those two are the only ones that I know that acknowledged it. But Apple sent out a notification saying that for the last three years, we've sent all your shit to the grand jury. And they went apoplectic.

1:13:02 I'm sure we're going to hear more about that. SR-71, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I can't help but believe that Tracy is the one who put the icing on the cake. Without him, there's no doubt in my mind that Kelso would have been toast. Period. Yeah, I don't doubt it. Miles, go ahead. Yeah, Colonel, you got to be careful when you say that other idiot in California. I mean, about 100.

1:13:33 people came into my head like Katie Porter. Oh my God. Could you speak on the Idaho base a little bit? Okay. First of all, let me say this. You guys, there's about three or four major narratives forming right now. We are in an information war and information war is conducted with information. And if you are

1:14:06 um in our group you know how to spot these operations so operation number one is every single muslim that walks the face of the earth is awful that that is being echoed everywhere that is a lie every single muslim is not a radical islamic terrorist they are not the same the other narrative

1:14:37 is that every single Jewish person in the world is awful. That, in fact, is not true either. Any sane person understands that every country has a deep state element in it, just like the United States does. That does not make you or I a bad person. It makes our government...

1:15:05 a very, very bad entity like the CIA or the FBI or the DEA that we've been exposing. But again, not all of the people in there are guilty of treason and poisoning Americans. Some of them are. So this particular subject of the... It's so clear in the clip of...

1:15:37 Secretary of War Hegseth saying that they are setting up a facility for Qatar to train F-15 pilots in Idaho on an Air Force base called Mountain Home. If you've been in the military since, and I will attest to since 1970s,

1:16:14 The United States military has trained foreign militaries to include Muslims since 1970s. About 10 to 20 percent of my class for the three years I was an instructor was foreigners, primarily Muslims. And you have to understand the hilariousness of that. A very young airman.

1:16:43 Barker at the time, female with these men from these foreign countries. And they were not 18 to 20 years old like the rest of the students in there, teaching them how to do aircraft maintenance on airplanes that they had bought from the United States Air Force. So it was kind of hilarious and also kind of blows their entire story out of the water.

1:17:13 The way flight training works is especially when you're going to have a long commitment like we have with Singapore at Mountain Home. There was a facility built for the administrative function. So when you have a foreign contingency of even if it's 20 people, they have.

1:17:36 an administrative tail that comes along with them. They'll have a squadron commander. They'll have administrative people to pay them. They will have all kinds of other entities because they have family that they bring with them sometimes. So that administrative tail has to have a place to sit. And if you've ever been on a military base, there's not a lot of...

1:18:00 empty facilities on military installations, especially now that they've done joint consolidation. They're like overflowing. They're in temporary. Like when I moved to Warner Robins, I was in a double wide trailer for like the first six months I was there because I was a brand new organization. They had to rent space downtown for me to even have an office when I got there. So part of the foreign military sells when we sell aircraft to foreign countries.

1:18:29 Part of that deal is we will teach your country how to fly that aircraft. The deal to sell F-15 aircraft to Qatar was completed in 2016 in October, and it was part of a deal Obama made with Qatar to sell them Boeing aircraft. You buy all of these Boeing aircraft, like regular cargo aircraft,

1:19:00 from the United States and we'll throw in some F-15s for you. That was the deal in 2016 under Obama, not Trump. So once that foreign military cell was finalized, there's planning that goes into which aircraft are we going to sell them?

1:19:23 They have to come from somewhere. They have to be operational. So there's a reallocation of F-15s. Are we going to get rid of this squadron over here of F-15s and sell them those? However that works. Are we going to build brand new ones and we're going to sell them to them? That takes years, literally years. And once they get all of that paperwork worked out and all of the deals made, then you set up the actual operation for training them.

1:19:53 which is where we're at right now. And the Singapore facility at Mountain Home is already there with their administrative tell and a place for the pilots to hang out when they're not flying. Most likely from the people that I've talked to, all they're going to do is build an extension onto that building and there's going to be a cutter part of the building and there's going to be a Singaporean part of that building.

1:20:23 they're going to house the day-to-day administration of the capability of having cutter pilots at Mountain Home in that building. Now, keep in mind, the majority of their training is done on simulators. They're not done on aircraft.

1:20:48 There's going to be flying. There's going to be air-to-air engagement, teaching them tactics on how to fly against an aggressor. All of that stuff takes place there. That's normal training. And by the way, we do it for lots of different countries. And a lot of different, as a matter of fact, Singapore is like 20, 25%, something like that, Muslim. They're going to have Muslim pilots already at Mountain Home.

1:21:18 This is not literally even a deal. We have IDF, F-16 flight training. We have Saudi people here training. The entire country of Turkey is Muslim. Turkey's been training here for decades. The entire narrative is bullshit. Just like I said, we've had, and oh, by the way.

1:21:47 At all of the aircraft maintenance schools, the avionics schools, they're going to have Qatari people there, too, because every aircraft comes with a maintenance tail. They've got to learn how to use the liquid oxygen. They've got to learn how to repair the air conditioning on them, the flight gear, every part of that airplane. Now, there's a chance that they could contract out that entire maintenance package.

1:22:16 But normally they do not do that because they can't guarantee the contract maintenance deploying with them when they're going to fight. So they have the inherent capability. So there's going to be Qatari F-15 people all over training on how to maintain those aircraft. It's not just a pilot thing. You can't just fly the airplane and never fix it. So again, the entire thing is bullshit.

1:22:45 The entire thing is even more bullshit when you think about the fact that it was Obama that set the entire thing up while he was pimping for Boeing. So this is another way, and you can see Laura Loomer's total over-the-top bullshit. I'm not going to vote in 2026. Who gives a shit if you vote? I certainly don't.

1:23:13 Still espousing the fact that they're going to have an entire base. There's no foreign military bases in the United States and there's never going to be foreign military bases. Unlike us, it has a base in almost every country now. So the hypocrisy is all over the place. Go ahead, Miles. Am I the only guest with a speaker? Yes. Well, OK, then I'm going to speak. So thanks, Colonel. I appreciate that.

1:23:44 That was very in-depth. And when I talk about this stuff to supposedly people that do research, I mean, I just get yelled at. They're like, they're the enemy. I'm like, oh, okay. They're the jihadists. Oh, my God. So I went, oh, all right. So I think, look, I'm just going to say one more thing that, because I've been, you know, had a lot of time on my hands and being very observant.

1:24:12 You know, fifth generation warfare. And I think General Flynn's talked about this. I look at things that were in a warfare or warfare status that we're in at war right now. And I mean, a couple of people have already said that they're, you know, in that they are in warfare status, too. I think that was Mike Johnson said that. I think Trump said that.

1:24:41 So I kind of look at operations more like at a fifth generation warfare. And there are so many things happening all at once, which I think you stated when you first started the show. And I think whoever came up with that strategy, it's brilliant because you can't focus on one thing and get mad about, oh, my God, we have to do this now because of that. There's so many things going on that.

1:25:09 It's actually lowering the tension and not creating any violence because you can't focus on just one thing. You know, am I wrong, Colonel? No. I mean, if you've got four years to fix this, shit's going to be fast. And that has its downsides and its upsides. And I think the navigation has been.

1:25:39 well done to date. But I also want to point this out too. Another one of their talking points is, oh my gosh, Qatar. Oh, and the other point I didn't even mention is the largest U.S. base in the Middle East is in Qatar. U.S. Central Command's headquarters.

1:26:03 The U.S. Central Command commander actually lives at MacDill Air Force Base. His forward deployed, his AOR is the Middle East. His forward deployed headquarters, which he goes to all the time, is in Qatar. It's been in Qatar since like the late 1990s. We built it over there. We spent a billion dollars building that command center there. It houses over 10,000 U.S. military troops. So if Qatar's our enemy, that's weird.

1:26:35 That's really, really weird that we would put the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East in the middle of vampant enemies. So their talking point is that the Qatari government has been funding Hamas. And the only thing that you need to point out, do your research, go on Yandex. As a matter of fact, let me just tell you this funny thing.

1:27:02 If you go on Brave or any other browser, I tried three of them, and you type in Cutter, F15, and whatever else, Obama, I think I typed in. Brave gives you zero or one, depending on when you do it. If you type that in Cutter, it will tell you like there's 20, 25.

1:27:30 different articles from CNN, from Reuters, from all of them talking about the deal. It's like they've scrubbed them off the internet that Obama did in selling the F-15s to Qatar. So I guess they don't think we use Yandex. But anyway, they will tell you that the Qatari government is the funders of Hamas. But the part they leave out is that Israel

1:28:00 was using Qatar as a cutout to fund Hamas. The origins of Hamas is Israel, not Qatar. They created Hamas to attack the PLO as a cutout. They've used Hamas to conduct terror events, just like the Cuban exiles was used in the United States to create domestic terror events here.

1:28:32 same thing that's the part they leave out though go ahead miles well just on a personal note you've done a great job um i know where i'm going to be wintering i'm going down to gonzalez texas and you won't be able to find me guys i'm in anon and i'll be under a rock so um and with the rattlesnakes but uh wintering down with them but uh do you know about gonzalez texas

1:29:04 I know where it is. Well, do you know the history? It was their 190th, I guess, anniversary of the start of the war with Mexico. And they have a flag that says it's got a cannon on it. And it says, come and get it. That's their flag. So I'll be down there for the winter. I don't know if I'll be able to. Well, I may come to Florida because my sister lives south of Tallahassee.

1:29:35 But how far away are you from Tallahassee? Tallahassee is what we refer to as Lower Alabama. Yeah, I know. It's that close, I know. Lower Alabama, that's funny. Well, you know, maybe I could meet you at a car show. Yeah, well, you could definitely do that. Yeah. So there's lots of car shows. I didn't know there were so many until I met you.

1:30:05 Oh, my God. There's at least three or four car shows within an hour of my house every single weekend, at least three or four. Oh, wow. OK, well, thanks, Colonel. Great show. I kind of like the night spot, you know, because I can have dinner and listen to you. OK, I'll note that because there's going to be a few of them over the next few days. So anyway, what I will probably do just for you guys to know.

1:30:36 Tomorrow, since I skipped yesterday, tomorrow we are going to get to our destination a couple of hours early. If I can squeeze in a show, then I will. And on Monday will be a travel day as well. So it will probably be a late show on Monday as well. We will not do the normal four o'clock show on Monday because of that.

1:31:00 And it's going to be a long travel day because we were going from Indiana down to Georgia to meet my daughter down there. So just a few updates on our travel schedule. So anyway, I will keep you posted. I appreciate you guys all being here and this crazy ass book. I'm telling you, it is just every chapter is like I and I.

1:31:28 You can see I write on my book, it says, good God, after I read the part about where that guy went back to work, the DEA guy. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. But anyway, it gets better. So stay tuned for part 18.

1:31:48 You guys take care and have a nice evening. And if I don't see you, if you guys have to not be with us whenever I'm able to do the show this weekend, have a nice weekend. And we'll be back on Monday, probably around the same time on Monday evening. Take care, everybody.

Entities here

Joe Kelso51 Costa Rica25 Drug Enforcement Administration25 Contras20 United States18 Robert Neves17 CIA17 Daniel Blanton16 Oliver North13 U.S. Customs Service12 Norwin Menendez12 Thomas Shretner10 Doug Auckland9 Rob Owens9 Los Angeles9 Tom Gordon9 William Rosenblatt8 Brian Caldwell8 John Hall7 Nicaragua7 Larry LaDodge7 Qatar7 Costa Rican National Narcotics Police6 U.S. Department of Justice6 Iran-Contra6 U.S. Embassy6 Sandalio Sandy Gonzalez5 Robert Vesco5 Mountain Home Air Force Base5 Orlando Morello5 San José5 Iran-Contra Committee5 Miami5 Douglas Lee Kotchenberger5 Joseph Fernandez4 Eden Pastora4 Barack Obama4 Panama Canal4 Warren Trece4 United States Secret Service3

Claims made here

Orlando Morello laundered_money_for Daniel Blanton host_asserted ▶ 4:32

“Morella, who was allegedly laundering Blanton's money in Miami and serving as a front to buy property for Blanton. The informant told the DEA that Blanton's millions were being driven to Florida in mo…”

Orlando Morello laundered_money_for Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 5:03

“Morella, now remember he was like the chief banker for Somoza, the CIA-installed and controlled dictator in Nicaragua before the Sandinistas arrived. Morella was identified as working at the governmen…”

Norwin Menendez member_of Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented ▶ 9:23

“with Blanton to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a major supplier of the L.A. Rock houses in exchange for almost $3 million. And these weren't your everyday run-of-the-mill drug dealers, the informant …”

Daniel Blanton member_of Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented ▶ 9:23

Eden Pastora member_of Contras documented ▶ 9:52

“A wing of the Contra movement headed by Calero and Blanton and Menendez used their drug profits to help fund the FDN, meaning the Contras. In January of 1985, Eden Pastora, another Contra leader, had …”

Democratic Force of Nicaragua funded Contras host_asserted ▶ 9:52

Joe Kelso member_of U.S. Customs Service documented ▶ 20:01

“It was a tough nut to crack, he said, but I was constantly emphasizing they had to work with the feds. Hoffman reluctantly agreed to bring the Department of Justice agents aboard, but had the L.A. off…”

Oliver North covered_up Contras documented ▶ 20:55

“would earn him a minor place in history, a footnote to one of America's worst scandals, the Iran-Contra. His case would be cited by the Congressional Iran-Contra committees as an example of how Lieute…”

Oliver North member_of National Security Council documented ▶ 20:55

Joe Kelso spied_on Heinrich Rupp host_asserted ▶ 23:13

“Kelso said he was approached by a CIA agent who called himself Bill Chandler and asked to gather information about Rupp's activities. Rupp was selling arms to the Argentines during the Great Britain-F…”

Heinrich Rupp supplied_arms_to Argentina host_asserted ▶ 23:13

Joe Kelso attempted_assassination_of Saddam Hussein host_asserted ▶ 23:43

“Saddam Hussein. The agency figured it would draw some interesting people out of the woodwork, Kelso said, but the mission ended in a disaster. A tough-talking 26-year-old was arrested by the U.S. Cust…”

U.S. Customs Service covered_up Joe Kelso host_asserted ▶ 24:12

“were undercover customs investigators. Kelso's arrest presented the CIA with a problem. The agency's charter prohibits it from working inside the United States, which it was doing. To keep the operati…”

Larry LaDodge member_of U.S. Customs Service documented ▶ 25:44

“by the way, is just what they did to Tom Homan. And they tried to do to Matt Gates. They tried to do this to everybody that they feel they can control or that they can use for whatever their purpose i…”

Drug Enforcement Administration funded Contras host_asserted ▶ 33:14

“These particular Contras were in fact involved in narcotics and were smuggling them, period. That was his statement. One of Kelso's witnesses was Warren Trece, T-R-E-E-C-E, the deputy director of the …”

Warren Trece member_of Costa Rican Ministry of Public Affairs documented ▶ 33:14

Sandalio Sandy Gonzalez member_of Drug Enforcement Administration documented ▶ 33:43

“Costa Rican prosecutors report had a strange experience with one of Neve's men, Sandy Gonzalez, the DEA agent who had yelled at the L.A. detective Tom Gordon about not talking on the phone through Nic…”

Gloria Navez member_of Costa Rican Legislative Assembly documented ▶ 35:09

“which was rather unbelievable considering that some DEA records concerning Kelso were made available to the Iran-Contra investigators in 1987, so they lied. The DEA would not allow Gonzalez to be inte…”

Robert Neves member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 35:38

“strongly believes that the DEA agents stationed in Costa Rica during the Contra War were not what they appeared. Quote, in my opinion, both Neves and Sandy Gonzalez were connected with the CIA. There …”

Pam Naughton member_of Iran-Contra Committee documented ▶ 36:07

“release any records or answer any questions about the agent's background or their possible work for other government agencies. Sometimes the lines really got blurred when you were working for Oliver N…”

Oliver North recruited Drug Enforcement Administration guest_asserted ▶ 36:07

Drug Enforcement Administration covered_up Joe Kelso documented ▶ 36:07

James Kibble member_of Drug Enforcement Administration documented ▶ 36:33

“I mean, they were doing activities that were way beyond the scope of DEA. Those were clearly covert activities. That was her statement. One of these double-duty DEA agents was James Kibble, a Madrid-b…”

James Kibble member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 37:04

“implicate the Sandinistas in drug trafficking. According to a 1987 story in The Nation, Kibble was one of the select group of DEA operatives who conducted secret missions for Oliver North and the Nati…”

James Kibble carried_out_attack Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 37:04

Oliver North funded Contras documented ▶ 37:34

“while boarding a plane for Switzerland. In their possession was a briefcase filled with $5 million in cash. According to Spanish government officials, in May of 1987, the money was destined for a bank…”

Oliver North supplied_arms_to Iran documented ▶ 38:07

“Because we were sending weapons to Iran to basically get them to work with the Lebanese to free hostages. That's where all of that comes into play. At the time, the DEA agents Neves and Gonzalez were …”

Joseph Fernandez member_of CIA documented ▶ 38:07

Lawrence Walsh ordered_assassination_of Joseph Fernandez documented ▶ 38:32

“who was later forced to resign from the CIA for his illegal involvement in the Contras. Fernandez was indicted by Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, but the charges were dropped when the U.S. atto…”

Joe Kelso spied_on Drug Enforcement Administration host_asserted ▶ 39:02

“Mr. CIA himself. Kelso said his witnesses claim the CIA was involved in the operation of a drug lab at a contra base near northern, it was, I don't know how you say the name of the city, but it was in…”

Joe Kelso spied_on Costa Rican Legislative Assembly guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

“participating in drug manufacturing. Okay, Kelso said. He said it was later determined that the two men may have been part of Norse resupply operation, which could or couldn't have been official CIA, …”

Joe Kelso spied_on John Hall guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Rob Owens guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Joseph Fernandez guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Drug Enforcement Administration guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on U.S. Customs Service guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on United States Secret Service guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Iran-Contra Committee guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on National Security Council guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Costa Rican Ministry of Public Affairs guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Costa Rican National Narcotics Police guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Guardian Technologies guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Medellin Cartel guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Sandinistas guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Contras guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on U.S. Embassy guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on U.S. Department of Justice guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Costa Rican Electric Company guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Tom Gordon guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Brian Caldwell guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Robert Vesco guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Snow guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Bruce Black guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Jack Lawn guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Hilberry guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Warren Trece guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on CIA guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Robert Neves guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Sandalio Sandy Gonzalez guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Oliver North guest_asserted ▶ 39:33

Joe Kelso spied_on Drug Enforcement Administration documented ▶ 42:31

“According to the Iran-Contra Committee Minority Report, Kelso and Caldwell told Customs that the DEA agents in Costa Rica knew the location of the drug labs and had been paid to conceal the locations …”

Douglas Lee Kotchenberger covered_up Joe Kelso guest_asserted ▶ 43:58

“that it was a waste of time, get back on the airplane, and immediately take the documentation out of town. The agent's response, Kelso said, was, wow, that's not State Department policy. I can't do th…”

Robert Neves covered_up Joe Kelso guest_asserted ▶ 45:56

“The DEA has been tipped off. Kelso's got the goods on him. So they call the Costa Rican police to go arrest Kelso. Kelso said they came stomping in there and demanding to see Caldwell and the stuff. A…”

Robert Neves attempted_assassination_of Joe Kelso guest_asserted ▶ 47:28

“Puerto Rican, and that that's the key word that makes him trip off, okay? He goes psychotic. He goes bananas, Kelso said. Neves told him, you are a dead SOB. And he's actually saying out the words. I'…”

Rob Owens member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 48:29

“but get out of it. Kelso was taken to the U.S. Embassy, where he said the DEA agents began copying the documents in his briefcase until a person that I had never saw before came in, sat down at one of…”

Rob Owens covered_up Joe Kelso documented ▶ 48:56

“was the eyes and ears of the CIA and Oliver North. Kelso testified that after Owen got a look at the documents seized at the hotel room, he ordered the DEA agents to stop making copies. He whisked Kel…”

John Hall member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 49:56

“Arias took Kelso up in the jungle and dropped him off and then returned to San Jose to pick up weapons in one of the presidential security cars. Kelso said he had been instructed by his handlers to re…”

John Hall covered_up Joe Kelso guest_asserted ▶ 51:48

“Hall, who had been accused repeatedly of facilitating contra-drug trafficking, was weary, thinking Kelso may have been sent by the Sandinistas. He knows he wasn't. Hal is part of the CIA. And obviousl…”

William Rosenblatt covered_up Joe Kelso documented ▶ 54:17

“Robert Tracy. Owen said there are some thought, at least according to Mr. Tracy, that the DEA officials may have been in on the take. There was accusations made. Rosenblatt said he washed his hands of…”

Joe Kelso member_of U.S. Customs Service documented ▶ 58:11

“Some of what he said was totally checked out to the best of my ability to corroborate it, Black told the district judge. He confirmed that Kelso worked around the world under another name for the U.S.…”

Robert Neves member_of Drug Enforcement Administration documented ▶ 59:14

“The target of Kelso's investigation, DEA Robert Neves, went on to have a long and illustrious career at the DEA, rising to great heights. He became the head of cocaine investigations in Washington. Th…”

Robert Neves member_of Guardian Technologies documented ▶ 59:41

“serving as the chief of DEA's international division, which means that he was the guy that was thwarting all of the investigations into the entire international drug trade, not just the Contra, Nicara…”

Oliver North secretly_owned Guardian Technologies host_asserted ▶ 1:00:12

“called Guardian Technologies. And guess who owned that? Lieutenant Colonel Fricking North. And the guy that ran the CIA office in Costa Rica, none other than Joe Fernandez. So this bastard ordered the…”

United States targeted_for_regime_change Costa Rica host_asserted ▶ 1:07:41

“that were appalled at what the U.S. was doing in Costa Rica and tried repeatedly to stop it. Not with a lot of success because the Costa Rican president was on the take, but there were a lot of legiti…”

Apple spied_on Eric Swalwell host_asserted ▶ 1:11:34

“That the Swalwell and what's the other idiot from California shift came out and made a public statement that they had been spied on for the three years, even though it wasn't spying. It was under a gr…”

Apple spied_on Adam Schiff host_asserted ▶ 1:11:34

Pete Hegseth appointed Qatar host_asserted ▶ 1:15:37

“Secretary of War Hegseth saying that they are setting up a facility for Qatar to train F-15 pilots in Idaho on an Air Force base called Mountain Home. If you've been in the military since, and I will …”

United States trained Qatar host_asserted ▶ 1:16:14

“The United States military has trained foreign militaries to include Muslims since 1970s. About 10 to 20 percent of my class for the three years I was an instructor was foreigners, primarily Muslims. …”

Barack Obama supplied_arms_to Qatar host_asserted ▶ 1:18:29

“Part of that deal is we will teach your country how to fly that aircraft. The deal to sell F-15 aircraft to Qatar was completed in 2016 in October, and it was part of a deal Obama made with Qatar to s…”

United States trained Singapore host_asserted ▶ 1:19:53

“which is where we're at right now. And the Singapore facility at Mountain Home is already there with their administrative tell and a place for the pilots to hang out when they're not flying. Most like…”

United States trained Saudi Arabia host_asserted ▶ 1:21:18

“This is not literally even a deal. We have IDF, F-16 flight training. We have Saudi people here training. The entire country of Turkey is Muslim. Turkey's been training here for decades. The entire na…”

United States trained Turkey host_asserted ▶ 1:21:18

United States Central Command member_of Qatar host_asserted ▶ 1:25:39

“well done to date. But I also want to point this out too. Another one of their talking points is, oh my gosh, Qatar. Oh, and the other point I didn't even mention is the largest U.S. base in the Middl…”

Qatar funded Hamas host_asserted ▶ 1:26:35

“That's really, really weird that we would put the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East in the middle of vampant enemies. So their talking point is that the Qatari government has been funding …”

Israel funded Hamas host_asserted ▶ 1:27:30

“different articles from CNN, from Reuters, from all of them talking about the deal. It's like they've scrubbed them off the internet that Obama did in selling the F-15s to Qatar. So I guess they don't…”

Israel founded Hamas host_asserted ▶ 1:28:00

“was using Qatar as a cutout to fund Hamas. The origins of Hamas is Israel, not Qatar. They created Hamas to attack the PLO as a cutout. They've used Hamas to conduct terror events, just like the Cuban…”