from "60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME"
The World According to Daniel Sheehan
[cont'd]
"... Nixon was responsible for establishing, inside the
National Security Council, a secret committee to mount a
contra-like war against Cuba. It was going to secretly recruit
ultra-right-wing supporters of dictator Batista and train them at
a military base in Southern Florida and at another in Guatemala.
These people were to become a guerrilla force for undertaking
attacks into Cuba, riding on Swiss boats. They would blow up
bridges, burn crops, poison materials to be exported from Cuba --
all to destroy its Communist economic infrastructure.
"This joint NSC-CIA secret team, code-named 'Operation 40,'
began in late 1959.
"But not even satisfied with that, then-vice president
Richard Nixon made contact with Santos Trafficante.
"Trafficante had been the lieutenant for Meyer Lansky,
running the Havana operations for the New York mob. In Florida
he had learned about secret 'Operation 40,' since a large portion
of the people the CIA was recruiting for it were Mafiosi who had
worked for Batista and Trafficante in Havana. Learning of the
plan, he wanted to 'help.' Having lost a multi-million dollar
criminal enterprise when he was driven out of Havana, he wanted
to re-establish it.
"Trafficante reached out to two men. One was John Roselli,
and the other was Sam Giancana, don of the Chicago mafia. Santos
Trafficante arranged for these two to meet with a representative
of Nixon. As his representative, Nixon chose Robert Maheu, [CIA-
friendly] head of the Howard Hughes empire. Because the secrecy
of their relationship had already been long established, Maheu
was selected to mediate secret communications with the Mafia.
"In early 1960, at the Fountainbleau Hotel, a meeting took
place at which Richard Nixon, through his representatives, agreed
to establish a sub-group inside Operation 40 -- a professional
assassination unit. This unit was given the responsibility for
carrying out the political assassination of Fidel Castro, his
brother Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and five other men in the
leadership of the Cuban government. That Mafia-sponsored 'death
squad,' known only to Nixon and a limited number of other people,
was trained at a secret base in Mexico.
"This group included a number of very interesting people.
"One was a man by the name of Felix Gomez. You may know him
as Felix Rodriguez. He was also known as Max Gomez -- the man
who was named by [Eugene] Hasenfus as the person directing the
Ilopango airlifts into Nicaragua.
"Another member of the secret assassination team in 1960 was
Ramon Medina, whose real name is Jose Posada Carriles -- the
second man running the Ilopango airlift into Nicaragua.
"Another was Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero -- who supervised
construction of the secret air strip in Costa Rica that you've
heard so much about of late. With Tom Clines, he was one of the
men who delivered the $2 million bribe to rescue Mr. Buckley from
the terrorists in Beirut. The money was donated by Ross Perot.
"Other people from Nixon's secret team of assassins circa
1960 of whom you may have heard are Frank Sturgis (caught in the
Watergate Hotel in 1971, after Nixon became President), Eugenio
Martinez (caught with him in the Watergate Hotel in 1971), and
[Virgilio] Gonzalez (also caught in the Watergate Hotel in 1971).
"Three others, Rafael and Raul Villaverde and Ricardo
Chavez, were also on that "shooter team."
"One of the directors of Nixon's squad of assassins was a
CIA man by the name of E. Howard Hunt.
"Nixon's secret assassination squad within 'Operation 40'
had extraordinary freedom of action thanks to authorization by
the National Security Council, headed by the vice president of
the United States. After President Kennedy came to office in
1961, indications are that he was told about 'Operation 40' --
meaning the contra operation against Cuba-- but NOT about Nixon's
team of assassins. Kennedy's industrious younger brother Bobby
decided to transform 'Operation 40' into a full-scale invasion --
the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961.
"All members of 'Operation 40' participating in the Bay of
Pigs were killed or captured.
"By June of 1961, Bobby Kennedy had dropped back and
reconstituted 'Operation 40,' renaming it 'Operation Mongoose.'
'Mongoose' was put under the command of a 34-year-old CIA
official -- Theodore Shackley. Shackley's director of training
was Tom Clines. Together with Ed Lansdale, Shackley and Clines
ran covert operations against Cuba from 1961 to 1965.
"Then a very strange series of events began to unfold.
"In 1965, the entire unit, including its 'death squad,' was
transferred to Laos in Southeast Asia. Under Gordon Jergenson,
Theodore Shackley became chief of station. Shackley brought with
him Tom Clines.
"Accopanying them were Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, Felix
Rodriguez, and Jose Posada Carriles, professional assassins.
"By 1966, Shackley and Clines were, peculiarly enough,
supplying air power for a major druglord named Vang Pao, who was
engaged in a three-way war with rivals for control of the opium
trade in Laos. They arranged to bomb Vang Pao's rivals.
"The man who ran the air operation for druglord Vang Pao,
under Tom Clines, was a young Air Force major, Richard Secord.
"By the end of 1966, all Vang Pao's opponents had been
assassinated and he was left in undisputed control of the opium
trade in Laos. In gratitude, Vang Pao agreed to contribute an
ongoing portion of drug profits to his benefactors, to finance
the secret US training of Hmung tribesmen in Southern Laos.
"The Hmung were being trained by the same man who, in
'Operation 40' under Richard Nixon, had been commander of the
Guatemalan base for training Cuban contras.
"The Hmung, secretly trained to be 'hit men,' were then
dispatched to carry out the assassination of suspected Communist
sympathizers throughout Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia.
"By 1966, such programs had been formalized into a group
called the Special Operations Group, also known as the Joint Task
Force on Unconventional Warfare, based in Vientiane.
"The SOG, while technically under the control of the US
military, was in practice run by Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines
of the CIA. The man chosen to be military commander of that unit
(supervising its assassination program using the Hmung tribesmen)
was Major General John K. Singlaub. Deputy Air Wing Commander
for this Special Operations Group was Richard Secord.
"In late December 1966, the Special Operation Group in
Vientiane was joined by a young Marine, a recent graduate of the
Naval Academy, whose name was Oliver North.
"One of the commanders of the Army's Special Forces Unit in
the SOG was Dewey Owens, older brother of Rob Owens.
"The function of this group was to oversee the political
assassinations of some 100,000 NONCOMBATANT CIVILIANS in Laos,
Cambodia, and Thailand --mayors, bookkeepers, clerks, school
teachers-- to destroy the economic-political infrastructure of
each country, for fear its best and brightest minds might survive
to become assets to Communist regimes in the future.
"As soon as Theodore Shackley became the CIA's chief of
station in Laos, Santos Trafficante flew to Southeast Asia to
meet with Shackley's buddy Vang Pao in a hotel in Saigon.
"By the end of 1968, Trafficante had become the number one
importer of 'China white' heroin into the United States. The
'China-white' heroin trade grew, and commensurate profit accrued
to Shackley's buddy Vang Pao. Consequently, the size of
Shackley's 'death squads' in Southeast Asia began to grow.
"In 1969, Shackley was transferred, becoming the CIA's chief
of station in Vietnam, where he established the now-infamous
'Phoenix Program,' which carried out the political assassination
of some 60,000 noncombatant civilians in that country.
"Shackley remained in that position until 1972, when he and
Clines were brought back to the United States. The two were put
in charge of CIA 'black ops' in the Western Hemisphere.
"Clines and Shackley ran the 'Track Two' operation against
president Salvador Allende in Chile. They supervised the capture
and assassination of Allende's Chief of Staff, General Schneider,
and eventually the assassination of Allende himself.
"That having been accomplished, in September 1973, Shackley
was made head of Far East Operations for the CIA.
"Now, at this point, we reach an extraordinarily important
juncture in our story, because Theodore Shackley, Tom Clines, and
cohorts now realized that the less militaristic, more liberal
government of late '70s America was not going to allow them to
continue their 'private enterprise' --for example, their 'death
squad' business, the 'Phoenix Program'-- in Southeast Asia.
"Using the cover of needing to fund a more massive Phoenix
Program, they began to take a larger share of Vang Pao's heroin
funds and transferred it from Vietnam, secretly, to a bank in
Australia -- the Nugen-Hand Bank.
"Between 1973 and 1975, Tom Clines and Richard Secord loaded
millions of dollars into suitcases, got on an airplane and flew
to Australia, unloading the money into Nugen-Hand bank accounts.
They also pilfered thousands of tons of US military equipment
from Vietnam and transferred it to a secret camp in Thailand.
"They had already salted away all the resources they would
need to continue their 'private enterprise' when the Vietnam War
formally ended in 1975 and the CIA transferred them elsewhere.
"And to where were they transferred? IRAN.
"Secord was made the director of Foreign Military Sales for
the Pentagon in the Middle East.
"Shackley was promoted from director of Far East Operations
to assistant deputy director of the CIA. Under CIA Director
George Bush, he was put in charge of covert operations WORLDWIDE.
In fact, Shackley was expected to be Bush's hand-picked successor
as the next Director of the CIA, if Ford were to be re-elected
president and the Republicans remained in control.
"However, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the election, and his
man Stansfield Turner became Director of the CIA.
"Yet Shackley, Clines, Secord and Co. CONTINUED to siphon
off profits from the CIA's drug economy and stash that money in
their secret bank accounts.
"In Iran, they established their own unauthorized, illegal
assassination program for the Shah, working with the SAVAK, the
Shah's much-hated secret police. Their director of operations in
the program was Edwin P. Wilson; Frank Terpil was his assistant.
"Between 1976 and 1978, the Shackley-Clines-Wilson-trained
'death squad' succeeded in assassinating nearly every political
opponent of the Shah of Iran, a tyrant hated by his people.
"The 'reign of terror' seen in Iran generated a peculiar
resistance on the part of the State Department, which had not
authorized a program of assassinations and was not supervising
it. The Director began to dismiss people from the CIA who were
involved in covert operations. Pressure was applied to get
Shackley to cease his operations -- unsuccessfully.
"Next, Theodore Shackley became a major defense-industry
contractor, in partnership with Edwin Wilson, Richard Secord, and
Erich von Marbod. They formed a company originally known as the
International Research and Trade Corporation, which later became
EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Service Company).
"Through the good offices of Von Marbod, who was Assistant
Secretary of Defense, their company received ALL of the contracts
to ship weapons to Egypt as a result of the Camp David accord.
They made hundreds of millions of dollars.
"When it was discovered that EATSCO partner Wilson was
selling C-4 explosives to Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, Assistant US
Attorney Larry Barcella insisted on indicting him.
"Barcella ALSO began to investigate Shackley, Clines,
Secord, and Von Marbod, but he was told to stop ... He limited
his indictments to only Wilson and Terpil.
"That was a terrible mistake, as it turns out.
"While Barcella was weighing whether or not to indict
Shackley and Clines, the CIA was able to act first, asking the
two to resign. Who was it that made that decision? The CIA's
Deputy Director for Operations at the time, Frank Carlucci.
"By the beginning of 1979, the American people, Congress,
the President, and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency
had all resolved to cut off military aid to dictator Somoza.
"But in late February and early March 1979, Shackley and
Clines sent Edwin Wilson to see Somoza.
"A contract was signed under which they would sell military
hardware to the dictator, in total defiance of US policy.
"After all, these men were now private citizens. They had
not been indicted. They were running a company making billions
of dollars in profits, because they had access to all of the
end-user certificates to get military equipment and access to
all the biggest defense contractors. So they simply continued to
sell armaments -- to whoever would pay for it.
"Even when, in July 1979, Somoza had fled to the Bahamas,
Shackley and Clines sent their people to visit him again and to
reaffirm their business relationship with him.
"Theirs, indeed, was the 'Secret Team' that kept the weapons
flowing to Nicaragua despite the wishes of the US government.
Likewise it continued to sell its other product, assassinations.
"The Contras would identify persons whom the dictator wished
to have assassinated. That information would then be sent to a
man in Army intelligence, Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, whose job it
was to take the Contras' orders for military equipment and make
sure these orders were filled. Quintero passed the "hit list" to
Clines and Shackley, who in turn passed it to Buckley, head of
the CIA's Anti-Terrorist Program.
"Such operations continued all the way up until Reagan
became President. After Reagan took office in January 1981, a
series of meetings took place in the White House, chaired by
then-Chief of Staff Ed Meese, along with Vice President Bush,
President Reagan, CIA Director Bill Casey, and Richard Allen,
their National Security Adviser. By June 1981, these men in the
White House had resolved that they would take over the functions
of the 'Secret Team,' supplying the Contras with military
hardware, weapons, and training.
"In a June 1981 National Security Decision Directive,
Victor M. Canastrero of the CIA was assigned to take over the
operation until then managed by 'Chi Chi' Quintero. The White
House-run operation continued all the way to the end of 1983
when, despite the White House's claims it knew nothing about the
Contras, its covert operations team was caught mining Nicaraguan
harbors and passing out an assassination manual.
"It was becoming clear that Congress was going to pass the
Boland Amendment prohibiting such activity. So what did they do?
They dispatched Lt. Col. Oliver North, now in the National
Security Council, to ask the 'Secret Team' to resume doing what
they had been doing until the NSC took over the job in 1981.
"The 'Secret Team' did. But in order to divert attention
from the CIA's role in all this, it sent Oliver North in search
of a cover story. North turned to Gray & Co., a Washington
public relations firm made up of spooks. John Tower was vice
president of the company at the time. Gray & Co.'s Rob Owen
obliged, for the purpose setting up a group called 'Idea, Inc.'
"Through use of this 'private' group, Owen began to drum up
national support for the Contras. Owen made General Singlaub
head of the operation, which raised around $5 million -- most of
which was spent on private Lear jets used to fly around the
world. So, Singlaub provided the cover story for the massive
influx of weapons to the Contras supplied by the 'Secret Team.'
"When the future Reagan-Bush administration decided it had
to make its now-famous deal with the Iranians, they figured no
one could make it work better than the 'Secret Team?' So it was
Secord and his associates who were sent to Iran to deliver the
cake and the Bible and the missiles.
"Until then, Reagan and Bush did not seem distressed by
Iran's holding of US hostages. So, why was only in 1984, when
Buckley was kidnapped and tortured, that they began to care?
"You may recall, first we were told that Buckley was an
independent businessman in Beirut. Only later were we told he
was CIA station chief in Beirut. What we were never told is that
Buckley was the director of the CIA's Anti-Terrorist Program,
which worked with Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Wilson.
"What did Buckley know that made him so dangerous under
interrogation by the Iranians? Why was it that, even after we
knew Buckley was dead, the White House sent the Iranians 40
tractor-trailer loads of TOW missiles? What did he confess to
that could have been worth all that?
"And why was it that, when they wanted to know what they
could offer in exchange for those weapons, the Iranians sent
Ghorbanifar to act as secret negotiator? Why would Ghorbanifar
deal not with North, Poindexter, or McFarland --that is, with the
National Security Council-- but only with Theodore Shackley?
"In November 1984 in Hamburg, Ghorbanifar met with Shackley.
Shackley decided that the stakes here were so high, whatever
Ghorbanifar's people wanted, the 'Secret Team' had to give them.
"Now, who were Ghorbanifar's people? Moderates in the Iranian
government? No, they were the very same people who had tortured
and killed Buckley. Buckley had in reality been taken from
Beirut to Teheran, where he died under torture, as recorded on
videotape.
"So, what was it that Buckley had revealed to the Iranians
that made keeping it secret from us worth so much hush money?
The answer is: the cold facts about this 'Secret Team' --led by
Shackley, Clines, Secord, et al-- which has secretly operated,
deep in the bowels of our own government, for over 25 years."
DATE: 1986
++++++++++
60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME
The World According to Sheehan
Indeed, Richard Nixon was the point man responsible for
establishing inside the National Security Council a secret
committee that was to be responsible for mounting a contra- like
war against Cuba. They had determined that they did not like the
politics or the economics of the Cuban government, and therefore,
they were going to secretly recruit the ultra right-wing
supporters of the dictator Batista, train them at a military base
in Southern Florida --in the Cays-- and set up another military
training base in Guatemala.
There they would train these people to constitute a "contra"
guerrilla force, and they would undertake attacks into Cuba,
riding on Swiss boats. They would blow up bridges, burn crops,
poison materials to be exported from Cuba -- all to destroy their
economic infrastructure. This operation began in late 1959 and
it was code-named "Operation 40." But not satisfied with that,
the then-vice president, Richard Nixon, received communications
from a man by the name of Santos Trafficante.
Santos Trafficante had been the lieutenant for Meyer
Lanskey, running the Havana operations for the New York mob. He
had come to Florida and learned about this secret "Operation 40,"
since a large portion of the people who had been recruited by the
CIA to work in it had been the criminal elements working for
Batista and Santos Trafficante in Havana. After learning about
it, he wanted to help. Being the red-blooded patriot that he was,
and, of course, as the beneficiary of a multi-million dollar
criminal enterprise that he had lost when he was driven out of
Havana, he wished to re-establish it. And he reached out to two
men.
One was a man by the name of John Roselli. The other man was
a man by the name of Sam Giancana, the don of the mafia in
Chicago. THese two men were designated by Santos Trafficanted to
meet with representatives of Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon
selected a man with whom he had maintained an extraordinary
secret contact. This man was the head of the empire of Howard
Hughes, a man by the name of Robert Maheu.
Because the secrecy of their ongoing relationship was long
established, he was selected to undertake this super- secret
communication. This meeting took place at the Fountainbleau Hotel
in early 1960. And there, Richard Nixon, through his
representatives, agreed to set up a sub-organization inside
Operation 40 which was a professional assassination unit. This
unit was given the responsibility for carrying out the political
assassination of Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, Che
Guevara, and five other men in the leadership of the Cuban
government. This group was recruited out of the Operation 40
people, known only to Richard Nixon and a limited number of
people. They were trained in a secret base down in Mexico. This
particular group had in it a number of very interesting people
who you are coming to hear about every day that we live.
One of the men on this secret team -- this assassination
unit -- was a man by the name of Felix Gomez. You know him as
Felix Rodriguez and you know him as Max Gomez, the man who was
named by [Eugene] Hasenfus as the man who directed the Ilopango
airlifts into Nicaragua. Another man on this secret assassination
team in early 1960 was a man using the name of Ramon Medina,
whose real name is Jose Posada Carriles, who was the second man
running the Ilopango airlift into Nicaragua. Another man in this
group was a man by the name of Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero. He was
the man who supervised the construction of the secret air strip
in Costa Rica that you've heard so much about of late.
Indeed, those who delivered the $2 million that was being
given as a bribe to get Mr. Buckley away from the terrorists in
Beirut, were Chi Chi Quintero and Tom Clines. The money was given
by Mr. Ross Perot. The other people in this assassination team
who you've probably heard about are a man by the name of Frank
Stirgus, later caught in the Watergate Hotel in 1971, when
Richard Nixon was President. With him in the Watergate Hotel was
a man by the name of Eugenio Martinez, another man on the
assassination team in 1960 run by Richard Nixon. Another man by
the name of [Virgilio] Gonzalez was on that assassination team.
He was also found in the Watergate Hotel. Two more men, Rafael
Villaverde and Raul Villaverde, were on that "shooter team."
Ricardo Chavez was also on that team.
One of the directors of that team was a man by the name of
E. Howard Hunt. This particular group had the extraordinary
authority given to them by this secret grouping inside the
National Security Council, and headed by the vice president of
the United States to carry out the slaughter, the murder of
political leadership of the Cuban government. Now, that operation
ran all the way to 1961. When President Kennedy came to office,
all the indications are that he was never told about the
assassination team. He was told about Operation 40, the contra
operation, the contra operation against Cuba. His young
industrious brother, Bob, decided that he would transmute
Operation 40 into a full-scale invasion. This they tried, in
April of 1961, with the disastrous Bay of Pigs resulting.
The invaders from Operation 40 were all killed or captured.
By June of 1961, Bobby Kennedy had dropped back and
re-established the Operation 40 program. Only they renamed it
"Operation Mongoose." That particular program was put under the
commanding control of a young 34-year-old CIA official by the
name of Theodore Shackley. His director of training was a man by
the name of Tom Clines. They ran the contra war, along with Ed
Lansdale, against the Cuban government from 1961 to 1965.
And then a very strange series of events began to unfold. In
1965, the entire unit and team was transferred to Laos in
Southern Asia. Theodore Shackley became chief of station under
Gorden Jergenson. Shackley brought with him Tom Clines. They
brought with them Rafael Chi Chi Quintero. They also brought with
them Felix Rodriguez and Jose Posada Carriles -- assassins,
professional assassins.
By 1966, Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines were, peculiarly
enough, supplying air power to a man by the name of Vang Pao, a
major opium trafficker in Laos. He was engaged in a three-way war
with two other men for control of the opium trade in Laos. They
actually figured out a way of dropping bombs on these drug
dealers for Vang Pao. The man who ran the air operation for Vang
Pao, under Tom Clines, was a young major in the Air Force by the
name of Richard Secord.
By the end of 1966, both of the opponents of Vang Pao in
this war for the opium market had been assassinated, and Van Pao
was the undisputed controller of the opium trade in Laos. Very
interestingly he then, out of the largess of his heart, decided
that he would contribute an ongoing portion of the heroin income
to finance the secret training of the Lao tribesmen, the Hmung
down in Southern Laos. They were being trained by the same man
who had been commander of the Guatemalan base for the Cuban
contras. They were sent out to carry out the covert assassination
of suspected Communist sympathizers throughout Laos, Thailand,
and Cambodia.
By 1966, this program had been formalized into a group
called the Special Operations Group, also known as the Joint Task
Force on Unconventional Warfare, based in Vientiane. It was
placed under the control fo the military even though it was in
fact run by Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines of the CIA. The man
who was chosen as the military commander for that unit (that
supervised the Lao tribesmen in the assassination program) was
Major General John K. Singlaub. The Deputy Air Wing Commander for
the Special Operations Group became Richard Secord.
In the end of December of 1966, a young Marine, a recent
graduate of the Naval Academy, joined the Special Operation Group
in Vientiane, a man by the name of Oliver North. One of the
commanders of the Army's Special Forces Unit in the Special
Operations Group was a man by the name of Dewey Owens, the older
brother Rob Owens. This group functioned to supervise the
political assassinations of some 100,000 non- combatant civilians
in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand -- young mayors, bookkeepers,
clerks, school teachers -- attempting to eliminate the
infrastructure of that society for fear it would fall into the
hands of the Communists.
In 1968, Theodore Shackley became the chief of station in
Laos, and a man by the name of Santos Trafficantes, from Southern
Florida, flew to Southeast Asia and met in a hotel in Saigon with
Vang Pao. By the end of 1968, Santos Trafficantes had become the
number one importer and trafficker in China-white heroin in the
United States. The China-white heroin began to flow and the
commensurate profits began to flow to Vang Pao. And the size of
the Hmung tribesmen training group that was committing the
assassinations began burgeoning accordingly.
In 1969, Theodore Shackley was transferred to become the CIA
chief of station in Vietnam, and they established the now
infamous Phoenix Program that carried out the political
assassination of some 60,000 non-combatant civilians in the
country. He remained in that position until 1972, when Theodore
Shackley and Tom Clines were brought back to the United States
and put in charge of Western Hemisphere operations of the CIA.
Now, since they don't do an awful lot in Canada, and less
and less in the United States, that leaves you Central and South
America. Tom Clines and Theodore Shackley ran their "Track Two"
operation against Salvador Allende in Chile and supervised the
political capture and assassination of Allende's Chief of Staff
General Schneider, and, eventually, the assassination of Allende
himself. When that had been accomplished in September of 1973,
Theodore Shackley was transferred to become the head of Far East
Operations for the CIA.
Now at this point, we reach an extraordinary important
juncture in our story, because Theodore Shackley, Tom Clines, and
cohorts had come to the conclusion that the waffling American
democracy was not going to continue their efforts in Vietnam.
They were not going to continue their effort against the
Communists. And so, they began an extraordinary program by means
of which they took more and more money from Vang Pao's heroin
funds, had them transferred into Vietnam, with the cover of
having to carry out a more and more massive Phoenix Program. But,
in fact, they brought more money in there than was necessary and
began to embezzle this money from Van Pao's heroin sales and
transfer the money secretly to a bank in Australia -- the
Nugen-Hand Bank.
Millions of dollars were transferred between '73 and '75 in
an extraordinarily sophisticated program. What they did was have
Tom Clines and Richard Secord load millions of dollars into
suitcases, get on an airplane, and fly to Australia and unload
the money and put it in the bank account. That went on from '73
to '75. They also began to pilfer thousands of tons of U.S.
military equipment from Vietnam and transfer it to a secret camp
in Thailand. When the war ended in 1975, all of these people
simply transferred.
Where did they transfer to? Iran. Richard Secord was made
the director of Foreign Military Sales for the U.S. Pentagon in
the Middle East. And where did Theodore Shackley go? Theodore
Shackley was promoted from director of Far East Operations for
the CIA, to the assistant deputy director for the CIA. Now he was
in charge of worldwide covert operations under George Bush. It
was anticipated that Theodore Shackley would be director of the
CIA if, in fact, Ford had won the presidency and the Republicans
remained in office.
But when Carter won, and Stansfield Turner became head of
the Central Intelligence Agency, these people continued their
operation of pilfering funds and sending them to the secret fund.
They established an unauthorized secret, illegal assassination
program in Iran, working with the Shah and with the SAVAK [the
Shah of Iran's much-hated equivalent of the CIA]. The man who was
the director of their operations in Iran was a man by the name of
Edwin P. Wilson. His assistant was Frank Turpel.
These people carried out the assassination of many opponents
of the Shah of Iran from 1976 to 1978. Now, that operation
generated a peculiar resistance on the part of the Central
Intelligence Agency, which had not authorized it and was not
supervising it. They began to dismiss people from the CIA who
were in covert operations. You recall that history, with
President Carter moving the people out of "covert ops" and the
CIA. They began to put pressure on Theodore Shackley to get him
to stop some of his operations. But the fact is they did not stop
him.
Shackley formed a private company, in which he joined as
partners with Edwin Wilson, Richard Secord, and Eric Von Marbod.
They formed a company originally known as the International
Research and Trade Corporation, which later became EATSCO (the
Egyptian American Transport and Service Company). This company,
through the good offices of Eric Von Marbod, who had been the
Assistant Secretary of Defense, received all of the contracts to
ship all of the weapons to Egypt consequent to the Camp David
accord. And they began to make hundreds of millions of dollars in
that company. When it was discovered that Edwin P. Wilson was
selling C-4 explosives to Qaddafi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry
Barcella, insisted upon indicting him. Larry Barcella also began
to investigate Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Von Marbod. But he
was told to stop, and his indictments were restricted to simply
Edwin Wilson and Frank Turpel.
That was a terrible mistake, as it turns out. What happens
is that while they were thinking of indicting him, a decision was
made to tell Shackley to resign -- he and Tom Clines -- from the
CIA. Who was it that made that decision? The Deputy Director for
Operations for the CIA at the time, Frank Carlucci.
By the beginning of 1979, the U.S. people, the U.S.
Congress, the U.S. President, and the head of the Central
Intelligence Agency had resolved to cut off all military supplies
to Somoza. Ted Shackley and Tom Clines, at the end of February
and early March in 1979, sent Edwin Wilson to visit Somoza. And
they established a contract wherein they would be selling
military hardware to the dictator in total opposition to the U.S.
policy. But after all, these men were now our private citizens.
They had not been indicted. They were running this company making
billions of dollars. And they had access to all of the end-user
certificates to get the military equipment. They had access to
all of the contractors, and they continued to sell the equipment.
Even when Somoza fled in July of 1979 and went to a place called
North Cay in the Bahamas, Shackley and Clines sent their people
to visit him again and to re-establish the contract -- but now to
sell them the military hardware in their new incarnation as the
contras.
This, indeed is the secret team that continued the flow of
weapons. They continued the program of political assassinations.
The contras would target the people who had to be assassinated.
Then they would send the information to a man who was at the time
based in Army intelligence -- a man by the name of Rafael Chi Chi
Quintero -- who at the same time was the man visiting the
contras, taking their orders for military equipment, and making
sure that they were filled. Then, Quintero would pass the
information as to who should be assassinated on to Tom Clines and
Theodore Shackley, who would then pass the information to a man
by the name of Buckley, who was head of the Central Intelligence
Agency's Anti-Terrorist Program.
This operation continued all the way up until Reagan became
President. When Reagan became President in January of 1981, a
series of interesting conversations began to take place in the
White House, chaired by Ed Meese, then chief of staff, along with
Vice President Bush, President Reagan, CIA Director Bill Casey,
and the first National Security Adviser Richard Allen. By June of
1981, they had resolved they would take over the secret team, and
the supplying of the military hardware, the weapons and the
training.
In a June 1981 National Security Decision Directive, they
decided that they would assign a man by the name of Victor M.
Canastrero from the CIA to head up that operation that had been
run by Chi Chi Quintero. That operation ran, as we recalled at
the beginning of our discussion, throughout that strange series
of falsehoods from the White House about how they didn't know
contras. This went on all the way to the end of 1983 when, in
fact, they were caught mining the harbors and passing out the
assassination manual. Then it became clear that Congress was
going to pass the Boland Amendment to prohibit their activity.
So what did they do? They sent a young man who was by now a
lieutenant colonel in the National Security Council, Oliver
North, to a contact the secret team to say, "Why don't you do it
some more? You did it from March of '79 until '81. Why don't you
sell the weapons to the contras and give them what they need?"
They did. However, they needed a cover story. After all,
everyone knew the Agency had been supplying the contras for years
now. If they continued to receive the same amount of aid, people
might suspect the Agency. So what they decided to do was to have
a cover story. They sent Oliver North to Gray and Company, a
public relations firm of spooks in Washington. A vice president
of this company at that time, we understand, was a man by the
name of John Tower. Further, they sought out a man by the name of
Rob Owen from that company. And he, Rob Owen, set up a thing
called "Idea, Incorporated."
Using this "private" company, he began to provide the
inspiration around our country to help these poor contras. Rob
Owen was sent to get a man to head up that operation, a man by
the name of General John K. Singlaub. That operation raised
probably $5 million total, most of which they spent on their
little Lear jets flying around the world. Singlaub had to give a
cover to the massive influx of weapons to the contras, all being
run by this secret team.
When the administration decided that it had to undertake
this famous deal with the Iranians, they figured: who better than
the secret team? After all, "in for a penny, in for a pound." So
these were the people who were sent --Secord and the other men --
to Iran to deliver the cake and the Bible and the missiles. But
earlier the administration was not so distressed by the holding
of all the hostages. Why was it they became terribly distressed
only in 1984 when Mr. Buckley was kidnapped? When Mr. Buckley was
kidnapped and tortured, then they became intensely interested in
getting him out. You recall we were told he was an independent
businessman in Beirut. Then we were told he was the station chief
of the CIA in Beirut. What we were not told is that he had been
the director of the Anti-Terrorist Program for the CIA.
What was it hat he knew that made this man so terribly
dangerous in Iranian hands? And why was it that we sent the
Iranians 40 tractor-trailer loads of TOW missiles after we knew
he was already dead? What do you think it was that he told them
that was worth all that? And why was it that the Iranians sent a
man by the name of Ghorbanifar to establish contact to see if
they could exchange something to get the weapons? And who did Mr.
Ghorbanifar go to? Oliver North? Poindexter? Bud McFarland? No.
He went to Theodore Shackley.
Ghorbanifar, in November of 1984, met with Theodore Shackley
in Hamburg, and it was decided that this was so serious,
something had to be paid to these people. And who are the people?
Were they the moderates in the Iranian government?
What will be discovered is that they were the very people
who had tortured Mr. Buckley. These were the people to whom Mr.
Buckley had been delivered from Beirut. He, in fact, had been
taken from Beirut to Teheran, and was tortured to death in
Teheran, all recorded on video tape. What was it that he told
them that made it worth paying all that hush money? The fact of
the matter is, that it was what Buckley had said about this
secret team that had been functioning in the bowels of our
government for 25 years.
The United States has not been humiliated. We have been
blackmailed. And who is it that doesn't know what we have been
doing? Is it the Russians? Do you think it's the Cubans? Is it
the Nicaraguans? It is you. And it is me.
It is the American people who these people fear. They are
afraid because of the program of assassinations, the horrible,
dark secrets that they know. They are afraid because they know
the source of their funding, from the largest shipments of heroin
into our country for the past 20 years to the influx of over one
ton of cocaine per week coming in through a shrimp company in
Miami, owned by Francisco Paco Chavez, that has been financing
these black, covert operations. They're afraid we'll find them
out. So the questions that are floating are not, indeed, the
right questions.
Should we be asking ourselves the question: Do we think that
Donald Regan should resign? Do you think maybe Mr. Meese should
quit? Do you think all of these lower guys will be cleaned up by
Frank Carlucci? Do you think these were a group of subordinates
acting without authority within the White House? Or is this, in
fact, more like Watergate where the Congressional committees will
go so far as to impeach Mr. Reagan, impeach Mr. Bush, impeach Mr.
Meese, prosecute Messrs. North and Secord and Hakim?
Because let me say to you: if in fact that is all that
happens, we will be dealing with a small cancerous nodule on the
nose of the President. Rather as a fact, what we are dealing with
is a cancer deep in the chest of our body politic.
And the intelligence community will tell us, along with the
Republican Party, "Please, we can't operate. The body politic is
not healthy enough and strong enough. Please, maybe we don't have
cancer. Hope we don't have cancer. Maybe it will go away. You
cannot do this." The Democrats are suggesting that the people's
confidence in our governmental structures will be too shaken if
this information is made available to our public.
The fact of the matter is this: These are the people who
have never had confidence in the structures of our constitutional
government, have never obeyed the American people, have never had
confidence in the U.S. Congress. These are the people who have
been dealing in the back alleys and underworld for 25 years.
Will we listen to those people when they say, "Please our
body politic isn't strong enough to survive the operation"? No,
we won't. The fact is that this operation will be undertaken, our
body politic is healthy enough, and our body politic will rid
itself of this cancer.
And the people who will make that so are you and me. And
there are millions of people across our country who will not
stand for this type of hypocrisy, who will not allow our country
to take these positions, by means of which, we can be so clearly
blackmailed. This will be put to a stop. It will be put to a stop
now. We will not be allowed to face these minor questions.
We will do this work. The Christic Institute has the federal
case that has now been endorsed by the federal court system. We
now have federal subpoena power. We know that this group is not,
in fact, the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. They are
indeed the moral equivalent of the mafia. And they will be
treated as such.
[Tumultuous applause]
Question and Answer Session
QUESTION: There are two questions that occur to me right away.
Some of this information must have come out in the Watergate
investigation. Why wasn't it pursued at that time? Obviously,
there must have been that information. The other one: You talk
about a shadowy world. When did this shadowy world begin? When
did the separation between the military and civilian clearly
collapse, causing so many of our problems?
SHEEHAN: The first question: A number of these issues must have
surface at least during the the Watergate investigation. And why
were they not pursued?
Well, let me give you one very special example of an issue
that arose during the Watergate investigation. You will all
remember that extraordinary conversation of March 21 [1973],
where President Nixon was discussing the Watergate investigation
with John Dean. And Nixon said to John Dean, "John, I want you to
go to the CIA and have them tell the FBI to get out of this
investigation." And John Dean said to him: "Well, Mr. President,
what am I going to tell them?" And he said, "Tell them all the
'Bay of Pigs' stuff will come out."
John Dean didn't know what that meant and he later asked what
that meant. They asked this question of a number of people during
the Watergate hearings. One of the men they asked was Mr.
Halderman. And they said, "Mr. Haldeman, what was it that
President Nixon was talking about when he said 'All the 'Bay of
Pigs' stuff would come out'?" And Mr. Halderman said, "Oh, they
were talking about the assassination of President John Kennedy."
At which point, everyone looked at each other in the room and
said, "What the hell was that?" And they went on to a new
subject. It's a very strange issue one that has haunted us ever
since 1963.
What we face in this case is the possibility of striking up
that music, of getting back to some of those issues, of delving
into those people. I'll just say this in closing on that topic.
Richard Spraig was appointed to be the general counsel for the
Select Committee on Assassination Investigation for the House of
Representatives, and he was investigating the assassination of
President John Kennedy. He was doing some investigation that led
him to issue a subpoena to John Roselli.
John Roselli, you will remember, is one of the two men who
met with Robert Maheu in January or so of 1961 or 1960 to set up
this assassination team. In the very week that he was subpoened,
John Roselli was found wrapped in chain and sunk in a barrel in
Biscayne Bay. Because of the fear that they had, Mr. Spraig sent
three FBI agants to protect Sam Giancana, who had been the other
man in the meeting, before he issued a subpoena to him.
Mr. Spraig did issues a subpoena to him. With three FBI
agents in the house on Thursday morning before the Monday that
Sam Giancana was to testify before the Select Committee on
Assassination, one of the FBI agents left to go get a pack of
Camels, one went to the bathroom, one was out getting some fruit
for the cereal, and someone entered the house and killed Sam
Giancana in his breakfast and left without a trace. And Richard
Spraig was immediately fired as general counsel for the Select
Committee on Assassinations. G. Robert Blakey was appointed. He
said, "That's enough, no more investigations," and filed a final
report which you can read, which says: "There appears to be some
circumstantial evidence that President Kennedy may have been
assassinated by a conspiracy group. And the main suspects are
certain elements of organized crime and Cubans."
What he didn't say, which is the truth, is that the
suspected elements of organized crime were Santos Trafficante,
and that the Cubans were the Cubans who were inside the shooter
team for Operation 40!
The second question was: When did all this shadowy world
begin -- this peculiar blending between the civilians and the
military? I would say that it actually began in 1947 with the
passage of the National Security Act, the establishment of the
Central Intelligence Agency, the establishment of this entire
covert world. In the first meeting of the National Secutiry
Agency, they passed a resolution, I think, called the 54/12
Resolution. It authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to
gather intelligence data, to correlate intelligence data, and to
preform other functions from time to time as were designated by
the National Security Agency. That is the resolution pursuant to
which the CIA has taken unto itself the belief that it has the
authority to carry out covert operations, such as these
assassinations.
The major fear now, amidst the Central Intelligence Agency
officials, is that all covert action capacity will be taken away
from the Central Intelligence Agency and assigned to a Special
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. That is
the way of a shakedown in Washington. All that that will do is
get rid of this strange blending of the civilian and military and
put it under the control of the military.
But in the final analysis, we at the Christic Institute do
not personally believe that Oliver North was a bad soldier.
Oliver North was a good soldier. Oliver North took his orders. He
followed his orders. The question is: Who did he take the orders
from? Why would he be taking the orders from a man by the name of
Theodore Shackley or Tom Clines, who are no longer in the
government? Because they used to run covert operations for the
entire Central Intelligence Agency. This is a strange identity
that they have: when they leave, they don't really leave and they
continue covert operations. We have to undertake absolutely major
surgery on the public policies relating to covert operations
before this scandal is over.
QUESTION: Dan, as one lawyer to another, I want to compliment you
for the skill and the finesse with which you carried on that
campaign against the racketeers down there. I think we have a
rather immediate problem before Dan can get all of his facts in
deposition form and in documentary form, preparatory to courtroom
use. That is: What can we do in this Congress about monies for
the contras?
We need, it seems to me, to look at this in a number of
ways, and I'd like to get Dan's reaction to this. One of them is
this: What's going on down there is conducted by the U.S.
President through his agents, the contras. It consists of acts of
war against another nation. By international law, the use of
force against another nation is an act of war. By the
Constitution of the United States, nobody can wage war in the
name of the United States without the declaration of war by the
Congress. So, isn't it an important element in the months to come
that we emphasize this unconstitutional conduct by our President
as the basis for denying aid to the contras?
SHEEHAN: Absolutely. The fact of the matter is that here, in
February [1987], there's going to be a vote taken in the U.S.
Congress. The vote has a lot of peculiar technicalities to it. It
is a caveat on the resolution that was passed by the 99th
Congress to authorize the expenditure of $100 million for the
contras for military equipment. Only $60 million was given to
them originally. There is a certification vote that has to be
taken here in mid-February to determine whether or not Congress
will affirmatively certify to allow the last $40 million given to
the contras to be used for heavy military equipment.
Now, they did not want to allow the Congress to vote on
whether they get the $40 million at all. So, some people, usually
in the Democratic Party, are saying: "Let's really show them.
Let's vote to let them get the $40 million only without using it
for heavy equipment." There are others who argue, "Let's alter
the resolution, after all, we are the government of the United
States. We aren't helpless in the face of the executive branch.
All we have to do is say that on the basis of newly discovered
evidence, we're going to alter the vote here in February to
eliminate the last $40 million and make them give back the
original $60 million."
Now, at base, what we have here is a lack of resolution on
the part of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party doesn't
know whether it's going to have Governor Cuomo as its nominee, or
Joe Biden as its nominee, or a number of other people as its
nominee...Gary Hart. But the American people have to speak out,
they have to be determined. In fact, the Republican Party has
stood behind the funding of the contras, insisted upon the
funding of the contras in a vote that went down on the last day
of the 99th Congress to give money to the contras with a straight
party vote. And the Democratic Party, now, wants to take
advantage, to take the credit for all of this. Let them take it.
But make them earn it. Insist that they cut off the remaining $40
million, have them stand up to this program and pass a resolution
condemning the contras, cutting off all military equipment and
stopping the war, stopping the invasion.
Now, the fact of the matter is that the Congress of the
United States is capable of doing anything it wants to do. But it
doesn't want to do this. And you have to insist that they do
this, you and your friends, and your family, and your neighbors,
all of the people you went to school with. We can't do it out of
just an office at the Christic Institute with 15 people in
Washington, D.C. It has to be magnified all across the country.
We now have 35 national organizations that have joined with us --
church and synagogue groups, and labor groups and women's groups
-- all across the country, to get this word out to their
constituents to make Congress stand up and face this issue, cut
off this money and once again, return our country to operating
under democratic legal processes.
QUESTION: It was said that during the Karen Silkwood case, a few
years ago, that your staff uncovered a private training academy
in Florida that was involved in the killing of Karen Silkwood.
Does this have any connection to this case?
SHEEHAN: That particular place was called the National
Intelligence Academy, down in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It is where,
in fact, the people were trained and equipped who were behind
Karen Silkwood that night on the road. We can tell you now, there
was a man by the name of Harold Barron, a man by the name of
Larry O'Brian, and a man by the name of David McBride. These were
the people who were trained in a group called the Law Enforcement
Intelligence Unit, a private fraternity of law-enforcement
officers who are secretly trained and equipped at the place
called the National Intelligence Academy down in Fort Lauderdale.
This is the same place they trained the DINA (the secret
political police from Chile), the same place where they trained
the Bureau of Special Services from South Africa, the same place
where they trained and equipped the SAVAK, the secret political
police of the Shah of Iran. But this place has been engaged in
this type of training for many years.
I will tell you this: The fact is that the equipment that
was used to kill Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier on the
streets of Washington, D.C., came from the National Intelligence
Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from Audio Intelligence
Devices, which shares their building with them. They made the
"hound dog" bumper beeper that was used to detonate the
explosives in the car. When Jose Posada Carriles, back in 1973,
blew up the Venezuelan airliner that killed 73 Cuban nationals,
the equipment came from the National Intelligence Academy's Audio
Intelligence Devices in Fort Lauderdale.
This place is a veritable ethical cesspool in our nation,
and it has been funded with grants from the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration, which have been used to purchase
equipment there. I
It's funded by profits from GEICO, the Government Employee
Insurance Company.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My God! I'm insured by them!
SHEEHAN: That's right. And the man by the name of Leo Goodwin,
Jr., is the man who runs it. He is the heir to the GEICO estate,
which finances that place. There are so many things that are
known that have never had anything done about them. One of the
extraordinary things about this case is that it has them all up
in front of us now. They're now in front of us, these people,
and they can be brought to justice.
QUESTION: Now, this other question is: What is the connection
between this secret group and the assassination of Martin Luther
King?
SHEEHAN: I know of none. I simply know of no connection at all at
this point in time.
QUESTION: What is the real reason the press has been protecting
Ronald Reagan?
SHEEHAN: It's an extremely interesting question, actually, that
has been discussed a lot of late. How could it be possible for
him to have been so much like he is and for them not to be
talking about it and writing about it all the time. Now, I knew
it during the very first Super Bowl, when President Reagan was
President and he came on at half time, I remember, and he was
interviewed by the fellow from NBC. And he said, "Mr. President,
you used to be an announcer, didn't you?" And he said, "Well,
yes. Yes, I was."
"In fact," he continued, "When I had my audition, I had to
sit there and recall a game and see how well I did. So, what I
did," he said, "I went back to a game in which I had actually
played. And I was given all the names of how we made these blocks
and we ran for a touchdown and made it." He said, "Of course, in
real life, we didn't run for a touchdown." The NBC man and
everybody went: Ha, Ha, Ha. Isn't that strange that he would have
told a story like that?
And Reagan followed it up with another story, saying he
recalled one time that how he learned to do this audition was
that he used to broadcast baseball games. He used to get the
ticker tape, and he used to broadcast as though he was right
there. And all they really had was that the ball went from
Number One to Number Three to Number Four (or whatever it was,
however they number the players). T hat's all he knew about the
play. And he used to go, "Well, it's a hot grounder -- there it
goes to the shortstop -- it goes to the second base -- it'll be a
double play -- it goes to first base. You've go a double play!"
And he said, "One time, I was doing this and the ticker tape
stopped. And so, I just went right along and kept on making up
things and never missed a beat." At which point, the NBC man
laughed and said, "Oh, good for you, Mr. President."
And now we're living with it, you see.
One of the major problems is that so much of the media is
involved in what we call "infotainment" that it's not really the
news anymore. It's all the news that's fit to print. And I
discovered it the other day. I was riding along with a New York
Times reporter and a man from the Washington Post and I was
giving them a ride through the snow in Washington, and they were
sort of comparing their sources. And one of them says: "My
sources are better than your sources."
As it turns out, the Washington Post has the very best
inside-the-White-House sources. The New York Times has the very
best inside-the-intelligence-community sources.
And the intelligence community tells the New York Times what
they're doing. And the New York Times, therefore, can't burn
their source and tell what they know or else they'll lose their
access to the story. And the Washington Post can't burn their
sources in the White House. So they can't tell the story. If
that tells you anything, it's something that I couldn't
understand because I kept thinking: I thought you were supposed
to be telling the American people. And that isn't what really
happens most of the time. But there is this interesting in-crowd
community at the highest levels of the media. B ut now they're
beginning to suspect the American people insist upon knowing and
want to know. Therefore, they're caught in the situation of
having to tell them. And the sources! you can smell them burning
all over Washington. They're going to continue to burn until
this story gets out.
QUESTION: I have a question: Dan, could you explain Israel's
participation in the Iran affair?
SHEEHAN: As far as we can tell, at this stage, the Israeli
government was merely doing what they were asked by an ally. The
highest levels of the U.S. government, once they decided that
they were going to undertake this exchange of arms with Iran,
contacted Israel, discussed this with them and initially utilized
a covert method of moving arms to Iran. What they would do is
have the Israeli government move a bunch of the American arms
that had been given to Israel up to Iran with the assurance that
the United States would resupply Israel with an equal number of
those arms. The U.S. government did that to conceal the direct
participation of the United States in the activity.
You'll recall that embarrassing November press conference in
which President Reagan had specifically stated that there were no
other countries involved in this. This story held up for, I
think, 20 minutes. At which point he had to send a little memo
out to all the media people saying: "Excuse me, there was one
country. It was Israel."
And then they tried as a trial balloon that, well, Israel
did it -- and we didn't -- which lasted, I think, even less time
because the Foreign Minister for Israel then decided to resign so
that he could talk about it.
He got up before international cameras, told them what had
been done, and said that the U.S. government had specifically
asked them as an ally to do this. And they had done it. So far
as we can tell, that's all that really was involved, they were
doing something that an ally had asked them to do. And as far as
they knew, there was nothing illegal about it for them to
participate.
QUESTION: There are a couple of the questions that ask for
sources. Could you please cite your sources to substantiate the
Buckley angle as the key explanation of the Reagan-Iran
initiative exchange.
SHEEHAN: The fact of the matter is that we are in the process
right now of obtaining certain tapes and direct documentary proof
of these details. We have talked to people who have listened to
the tapes, have taken notes on the tapes, and have assured us
that we can have them. I have discussed those with them. We, in
fact, have shared this information with the special prosecutor's
office and are awaiting those very specific pieces of
information. Obviously, it would not be appropriate to tell you
who the source was for fear I'd never see that person again.
But, the minute we get those things, and have given them to the
special prosecutor, you can rest assured we'll make them
available to the public.
QUESTION: How about contributions to the Christic Institute?
SHEEHAN: The Christic Institute is in Washington, D.C. We are a
public-interest law firm that can only survive with
contributions. That's the only way our investigation can go
forward. They are all tax-deductible. You can send them to the
Christic Institute. The address is 1324 North Capitol Street in
Washington, D.C. And the zip there is 20002. Now, if you don't
get a chance to write that down, just ask information in
Washington, D.C. for the Christic Institute, and give us a call.
And we'll give you our address and everything then, and you can
send any contribution you want.
"Christic" is a phrase that comes from Teilhard de Chardin, who
was the Jesuit paleontologist who had discovered Peking Man. He
was a theologian in the church, and this phrase has to do with
the bonding force that bonds everything together in harmony in
the universe. We took that name as a public-policy center. A
number of our Jewish directors were concerned about it. We all
had a long discussion about it and said, well, that it seemed to
be a really good term. I mean, at least, that's what he meant it
to be. And since he had been condemned by the Catholic Church
and forbidden to publish at all, we thought that was a great name
for our institute.
QUESTION: There was a number of questions that rather tie in
together, Dan, can we expect a military invasion before the dry
season is out in Nicaragua?
SHEEHAN: There is a great deal of concern about this issue. The
moderate forces in Washington, D.C., seem to be sanguine about
this. They don't really believe the administration could have
the audacity to undertake such an invasion. They end their
observations by saying, well, that would be an act of desperate
men. At which point, I asked them if they've got an hour or two
when I can explain to them exactly how desperate these people
must be right now, in light of what we know.
So, we believe that based on direct information that we've
got, there are plenty of special forces, men being trained right
now for a jump into Nicaragua. They've been given Nicaraguan
maps. They've been trained on Nicaraguan terrain. They're
planning, specifically, to invade Nicaragua.
The real question is whether or not they dare to go through
with it. The degree of courage that they have to do this is
dependent soley upon how emphatically the people in the United
States demand that they refrain from it. Because there is no
doubt that they do not feel bound by the majority demands of the
people. So, I would say that there is very detailed information
indicating that they intend to undertake the invasion sometime by
the end of March [1987]. We're talking about a very serious plan
here. And you have to communicate with your Congresspeople and
your senators and demand that they confront the administration,
call them before Congress, and insist that they renounce any
plans to undertake such an invasion.
The fact is that such an invasion would be preceeded by
some major provocative action. So that is where we are focusing
our intelligence data, to ascertain what type of provocation they
would be trying to MANUFACTURE to get everybody cranked up to
authorize an attack of that sort. So do write your
Congresspeople, confront them, and insist this be prohibited.
QUESTION: There's a question here. Have you a body guard? I hope
so.
SHEEHAN: Well, the closest thing I have to a bodyguard is Sarah
Nelson, who is here, who has a limited vested interest in this
since we get to see each other so infrequently now. But
seriously, people have asked this question before and the fact of
the matter is that professional bodyguards are very expensive.
They charge $500 per day and have all kinds of strange equipment.
I have been contacted by a number of friends who are in the
security business who have made it very clear that we should have
a bodyguard since the court has now entered the order giving us
the authority of the federal subpoena to go after these people.
I think we have to bring on a security force. But they're
going to be very unhappy if I tell them they can't bring their
guns. Nevertheless, we will have some sort of security force but
I think we're going to have to develop a kind of higher
consciousness security forces that don't use guns. But we will
have some sort of security force.
QUESTION: Can talking about all this jeopardize the lawsuit?
SHEEHAN: That is an interesting question. The fact is that the
attorney for Adolfo Calero, who is one of our defendants, he head
of the FDN (contras), has hired the former general counsel for
the Central Intelligence Agency, a man by the name of Tony
Lapham. The biggest gunrunner in the Western Hemisphere, who is
also a defendant in our case, a man named Ronald Joseph Martin,
has hired the former U.S. attorney from Miami for his lawyer.
The fact of the matter is that they filed a motion demanding
that the judge put a gag order on us to prohibit us from
communicating to the public any of the information that we
obtained about their defendants, even from our private
investigations. At which point, the court threatened to hold us
in contempt if he, the judge, heard that we had discussed
anything else -- i.e., discussed the case after the court's
warning with a large public group. So I hope he's listening now.
The fact is that we have pointed out to the judge that his
local court rule has been declared unconstitutional in the
Eleventh Circuit, where he sits. So I know he's not happy. But he
has a choice. He can either try to invoke the rule against us,
only to lose the battle completely, when it's declared totally
unconstitutional. Or he can leave us alone. And he has chosen
the latter. So we're here today to speak with you and will
continue to speak.
QUESTION: Dan, on ABC Nightline, Tony Avirgan brought up the
drug connection with the Iran-Contra affair. Ted Koppel said
that he didn't now anything about it. Has there been any serious
interest in the drug connection by the three major networks?
SHEEHAN: Yes, as a matter of fact. In March, CBS --what is their
show?-- CBS's West 57th Street will be broadcasting some
extraordinary footage closing the issue once and for all about
the contra drug connection. We've been trying to get them to
reveal it earlier, but they don't come back on the air until
March. In fact, we've given ample information to the courts, to
the Justice Department, to the Congress, about the drug
connection.
Senator John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee has interviewed under oath numerous witnesses. Indeed,
we have put before them aircraft pilots who have directly
testified under oath about traveling down to John Hull's ranch
and back, bringing down guns and bringing back cocaine. There is
no way that they are going to be able to conceal this
information. Now, I've had some conversations with people at ABC
about this. I guess, all I would suggest is that the newspeople
at ABC talk to the people at ABC Nightline and get the
information from Ted Koppel.
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