
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994                    TAG: 9406170582 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A8    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: 940617                                 LENGTH: AUSTIN, TEXAS

EX-DEA AGENT SAYS NORTH KNEW OF DRUG SMUGGLING

{LEAD} Oliver North knew large shipments of cocaine were being smuggled into the United States by mercenary pilots hehad hired to assist Contras in Nicaragua, a former federal agent says.

Celerino ``Cele'' Castillo, who was a supervisory agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in El Salvador, said he told a U.S. ambassador to El Salvador as well as then-Vice President Bush in 1986 about the drug smuggling in North's Contra supply operation.

{REST} ``(Former Marine Lt. Col.) Oliver North was running the operation. His pilots were known drug traffickers listed in government files and these people were being given U.S. visas,'' Castillo said Thursday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Castillo's account was first told to The Texas Observer, a 10,000-circulation magazine that carries the story in its Friday issue. He also has written a book due out next month on the North case.

Messages left with DEA officials in Washington went unreturned, and a secretary for Bush in Houston who refused to give her name said he was out of the country. No one else would be available to comment, she added.

North, the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from Virginia, denied Castillo's allegations.

``It's totally garbage, absolutely, 100 percent untrue,'' North spokesman Dan McLagan said. ``I think he's trying to sell books, make money. It's a nutty conspiracy theory with not one scintilla of truth.''

by CNB