Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410240062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Very little in my life has angered me as much as the allegations that I or anyone else involved with the resistance had a drug connection," he wrote in his autobiography, "Under Fire."
But as the Republican campaigns for the U.S. Senate and mocks Democratic incumbent Charles Robb for associating with drug figures a decade ago, evidence suggests that North knew of drug connections on the part of his associates in the 1980s.
What he did about that is a matter of open debate.
North jotted down a series of notes in the mid-1980s that indicate knowledge of possible drug-running into the United States while he directed the White House's covert program to arm the Contras.
On July 9, 1984, North wrote in his notebook that Contra leader Federico Vaughan "wanted aircraft to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, want aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos."
On Aug. 9, 1985, North noted: "DC-6 which is being used for runs [to supply the Contras] out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into the U.S."
On July 12, 1985, North wrote: "$14 million to finance Supermarket came from drugs." The Supermarket was a warehouse in Honduras where weapons dealers stored arms that Contras purchased.
Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in the mid-1980s, says the notes were North's way of tracking rumors so that bad apples could be purged from the Contra supply effort.
Abrams will not go as far as North's blanket statement that drug-running never touched the operation. "I'm not going to say it never happened, but we made efforts to cut it off," Abrams said in a recent interview.
North declined to be interviewed. Rather than answer written questions requested by his campaign, North released a statement denouncing any suggestion that he tolerated drug trafficking as a "moral outrage and a cheap political dirty trick by desperate opponents."
North's handwritten notes are not the only evidence that seem to contradict his claim. The CIA, a bipartisan Senate investigative committee and many Contra leaders have acknowledged that drug-running into the United States was rampant during the rebel supply effort of the mid-1980s.
There is no evidence that North encouraged the smuggling or profited from it. But a number of federal investigators who probed the allegations say they concluded that North knew about the drug-running and turned his back on it so as not to undermine the anti-communist war effort in Nicaragua.
"North had to know about it; I'm unshakeable about this," said Jack Blum, the lead investigator of a late-1980s probe by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "He viewed the drug problem as something secondary to his mission. He believed he was on a mission from God to stamp out communism."
Blum, now a Washington, D.C., lawyer, said he was aghast when he saw a North TV ad last week that referred to parties Robb attended in Virginia Beach when he was governor from 1982 to 1986 at which cocaine reportedly was used. Robb has replied with virtually the same defense North uses - that he was unaware others around him were involved with cocaine.
"How hypocritical," Blum said of North. "That's why, when I watch that commercial and see the self-righteousness, there has to be a complete disconnect with history."
Contrary to North's denials, a review of thousands of pages of testimony and documents from congressional panels investigating Iran-Contra and Central American drug trafficking make a strong case that cocaine was a staple of support for the Contras.
"I'm not proud of it, but ... the U.S. Congress didn't give us any choice," Contra leader Octaviano Cesar told the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations in April 1988. Cesar was referring to passage of the Boland Amendment in late 1984 that cut official U.S. funding to the Contras.
Several convicted drug smugglers told the subcommittee of an operation in which weapons were flown covertly from the United States to Costa Rican airfields. The planes, they said, would then be loaded with cocaine for the return trip to the states.
The subcommittee - headed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. - concluded in December 1988: "It is clear that individuals who provided the support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking connections, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."
The chief of the CIA Central American Task Force drew a similar conclusion in 1987 testimony to Congress: "With respect to [drug trafficking by] the resistance ... it is not a couple of people," he said. "It is a lot of people."
The State Department, in a 1986 report to Congress, also gave credence to allegations of Contra drug running, although it suggested that the effort was not widespread.
None of the reports assessed whether North knew of the operations or took steps to stop them.
Celerino Castillo III, a former federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was stationed in Central America in the mid-1980s and recently wrote a book recounting his experiences, points his finger at North.
"He's going to have to be held responsible for what's going on in the streets of America today because a lot of cocaine was flown in," Castillo said in an interview. "He can't look me in the eye and say people didn't die because of activities he turned his back to."
A DEA agent from 1979 to 1992, Castillo said he submitted several reports to his superiors questioning North's operation. The DEA, in a formal statement, said that "No evidence has been found to support the allegations" made by Castillo.
North's possible knowledge of drug activities never has been investigated by Congress. North has claimed that, if there were drug connections, Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra affair, would have found them. Walsh asserts that his probe was limited to abuse of governmental power and that allegations of drug activity were outside his authority.
Members of the congressional Iran-Contra committee questioned North about the entries in his notebook during a closed-door session on July 9, 1987. According to a since-declassified transcript of the session, North testified that he had no knowledge of drug money being used for the Contras.
Explaining his notebook references, North said that he was merely jotting down "allegations" he had heard and that, in most cases, he turned the information over to the DEA or the CIA.
Asked if DEA files contain information from North about possible Contra drug-running, agency spokesman John Hughes recently said: "Not to my knowledge."
Abrams, the former assistant secretary of state, said North routinely passed rumors of drug trafficking to the CIA and the State Department.
"If we heard rumors that someone was involved in drugs, we cut them out, sometimes unfairly, because we knew what damage it would do" to efforts to win public support for the Contras, Abrams said.
He said the U.S. refused to funnel covert arms shipments to the $14 million Honduran Supermarket mentioned in North's notes "because of rumors they were involved in drugs."
"When you're trying to do what we were trying to, have a guerrilla war, you run into a lot of strange people," Abrams added. "Some are gun runners, some are soldiers of fortune, some are drug smugglers and some are patriots. It's very hard to keep the good guys in and the bad guys out. ... Ollie did his best."
Records indicate that, in at least one instance, North actively promoted the use of drug money to arm the Contras. As a result, he may have exposed and destroyed a promising U.S. sting operation against the late Pablo Escobar, the longtime leader of Colombia's largest drug cartel, according to the testimony of two DEA officials before the House Judiciary Committee on Crime in 1988.
The officials said that in 1984 they briefed North, a member of the National Security Council, on preliminary evidence the DEA had linking the drug cartel with Nicaragua's Sandinista government.
DEA officials Dave Westrate and Ron Caffrey told the subcommittee that North asked if he could release the information to newspapers. North, they said, noted that a key Contra aid vote was pending in the House of Representatives and that information linking the Sandinistas with drugs might sway sentiment in favor of the Contra rebels.
When Caffrey warned that a leak might destroy the Escobar sting operation, North came up with another idea. According to testimony, North pointed out that an undercover informant for the DEA was scheduled to fly into Nicaragua to deliver $1.5 million in drug profits to cartel kingpins. North proposed that instead, the money be turned over to the Contras - a move the DEA rejected.
On July 17, 1984, shortly before the House Contra vote, the Washington Times ran a front-page story about the DEA sting operation that was attributed to unidentified government officials. The leak destroyed the operation. North denied being the source of the story. Frank Monastero, former DEA chief of operations, told the subcommittee: "I don't accept that statement" because it is "a standard way to cover your tracks."
There was another casualty: Barry Seal, a one-time drug smuggler who helped agents set up the sting, refused to enter the federal witness program and was murdered in 1986 by a three-man hit squad in New Orleans.
North's notebooks record frequent conversations with John Hull, an Evansville, Ind., farmer who had an ownership interest in a vast ranch in Costa Rica. Hull approached North in 1983 to ask how he could help the Contras.
Hull developed at least six airfields on his ranch. Five convicted drug smugglers testified in 1988 before the Kerry subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics that they used the airstrips in the 1980s to unload arms for the Contras and pick up bundles of cocaine for their return trips to the United States.
One of the smugglers, pilot Gary Betzner, testified that in July 1984 he delivered a load of guns to Hull's ranch and watched with Hull as 17 duffel bags packed with cocaine were loaded onto the plane. Betzner said he then flew to Florida.
Hull, who has never faced drug-related charges, has denied the allegations.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB