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Cele Castillo Former DEA Agent Author: Powderburns Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your personal history. My name is Celerino �Cele� Castillo III and I'm a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent. I was with the Agency for 12 years - most of my time was down in Central and South America with some tours in New York City and the San Francisco area. I took an early retirement in 1992 because of the atrocities that I saw happening down in Central America. I teach now. I teach the other side of law enforcement, as they say, and I also teach Latino studies in South Texas. How did you first become involved with law enforcement, how did your work for the government begin? First of all, I come from a very patriotic family in South Texas. My father was shot six times in the Philippines and we lost an uncle to the war - WWII - and all of our families have been involved. Me being the only son in my family, I was instructed by my father to pay my dues to my country by going to Vietnam and fighting for my country, which I did. And, I come also from a law enforcement family involving my father who used to be a police officer for some time and my sister who used to work for the police department and I also had worked for a police department and as a federal agent for the U.S. government. At what point did you encounter a certain type of corruption in the system and what did you do? First of all, what I encountered when I went to work at the US government - I encountered discrimination - there was a lot of discrimination. In the 1980�s, twenty years ago, when we, as Latinos or minorities, went to work for the US government, we thought that everything was on the uppity up - and it wasn�t. I found out that every Agency in the federal government has filed class action suits for discrimination against their own agencies. When I got hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration, I was hoping that they would send me somewhere in South Texas, somewhere where there was a Latino community of Mexican Americans and so forth. But they sent me to New York City where, at that time, the 1980s, there were no Mexicans in New York City. I ended up being the first Mexican American in New York City and that's when I first started to see what it was really like to work for the U.S. government. But it backfired on the government because, as they say: if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. And in reality I got the best experience an undercover agent could have gotten in New York City working Organized Crime, working all kinds of major major cases� and I did a tour of four years in New York City and I loved it. I got educated into what was known as the �opera� and the �theatre�, where if I would have been somewhere in the Southwest, there was no way I would ever learn that. You know reading the New York Times down in Central Park - it was just fabulous for me. I was in culture shock at the very beginning but then you wake up and you get off it and you just go with it� I loved it. I really loved New York City. Describe your work in New York and what it involved � specifically. My job was to conduct undercover operations. I ended up doing a lot of undercover work as a South American connection with the Italian organized crime families - the Gambino family, Lucese family and so forth. And me and my partner - my partner being an Italian American - we ended up doing the biggest heroin bust in New York City and that was in 1984 when we took down hundreds of kilos of heroin and it was written up all over the world how heroin was still very big in New York City. And because of that I was promoted to go down to South America and actually conduct the search and destroy missions on cocaine labs in South America. And so what did that consist of? That consisted of flying air assault helicopters into clandestine air strips, destroying the airplanes, the cocaine labs and� we had an operation called Operation Condor that seized a cocaine lab valued at 500 million dollars, and a large seizure of cocaine. The airstrip was a mile long, they had barracks, they had guard-houses and the lab was producing hundreds of kilos a day of 100% pure cocaine. So when did you realize that there was corruption? I found out when I was on patrol up there in Peru with the anti-narco-terrorist units in Tingo Maria - the Huayaga Valley. We would find the Colombian drug traffickers playing soccer with the Colombian and the Peruvian military. And that was my initial contact with the corruption and we used to see those jets that would come in from Lima, Peru into the Huayaga Valley to pick up narco-dollars for their banks. So if you wanted dollars in Peru you would have to fly down to the Huayaga Valley and pick up US dollars because that�s what the Colombians dealt with in the processing of the cocaine in the source countries. And that was one of my first experiences of how the US government was building what was known as cocaine democracies. They could build and sleep with the cartels as long as they stay to be a democracy. So cocaine democracies are intimately tied to the war on drugs. Describe that relationship. Well, first of all, there is no such thing as the War On Drugs, there never has been and there never will be. I call it the �drug war follies� because, for example, when I was sent to fight the war on drugs in Guatemala City, we had two agents that covered four countries. I mean how can you have a war on drugs when you have two agents covering four countries - which were Belize, Salvador, Hondurans and Guatemala. How can you do that? It�s impossible to do that. And when we came face to face with the contradictions of my assignment - when we had these governments, they were all documented in DEA files as drug traffickers. I'm talking about the President�s brother and so forth - all documented in the DEA files as drug traffickers. They were sleeping with the cartels and it was OK for the U.S. government because it was a democracy and not a Communist or Socialist government. So, in fact, are the leaders of these countries - are they totally involved? Absolutely, they are totally involved. And nothing moves without the Central Intelligence Agency's approval. We saw it in Mexico when we had Carlos Salinas and all the Salinas brothers who were heavily involved in drug trafficking with the U.S. government. You gotta remember that George Bush - the father - was an associate of Carlos Salinas in an oil company called Zapato Oil. And they were both Yale graduates and they were friends after they left the presidency. And we had Salinas where they seized 250 million dollars in a City Bank in New York City - so we knew from the get-go that those governments were heavily, heavily involved in drug trafficking. Never in the history of our time did we have more cocaine on our streets. Because the floodgates opened and those rivers were full of cocaine and they just segregated the whole country - from L.A. to South Texas to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was just everywhere. So do you see this as a strategic policy that emanates from Intelligence � of bringing drugs into the country, making money from them for covert ops while at the same time, creating division within the country they are trying to control? Or is it just a money thing� To me it was money thing. You gotta go back to the history of the Central Intelligence Agency - how they have been involved in drug trafficking. We gotta go back to the Vietnam era when they were smuggling heroin in body bags back to the U.S. and using the U.S. soldiers that were back here as soldiers to distribute the heroin that was coming in. And you gotta remember that at that time period, we had those same individuals who operate as the apparatus outside the Central Intelligence Agency, that don�t have to report to anybody - that�s why there is no paper trail to find. We had like Felix Rodriguez - former CIA operative, Oliver North� we had John Secord. All of those individuals who were in Vietnam working those covert operations were the same individuals working in El Salvador at Ilopango Airport where they were running the Iran-Contra operations. There was a civil war going on in Nicaragua and basically what happened was we were supporting the Contras � �contra� means against - which means that we were supporting the rebels in Nicaragua that were fighting against socialism in Nicaragua. The United States government didn�t want to have Communism in the background so we needed to put a stop to it. So, we ended up supporting the Contras by letting them go ahead and sleep with the cartels and get them involved in drug trafficking in the name of democracy. And, of course, the United States government knew and didn�t care how they made money for covert operations. It�s a history that goes back to where you get involved with drug trafficking and you use that money for covert operations and for lining their own pockets - which they did. Iran Contra was a smokescreen - the diversion was not from the sales of the US government selling missiles to Iran, but the diversion was actually from the Contras to Swiss bank accounts where they ended up finding millions of dollars in the name of Oliver North and General Secord and Project Democracy - a company they had opened up to launder all that money. So it seems like everyone who is above a certain level is compromised. Once they're into it, they are compromised and they can't get out of it. Is that then case? Absolutely. It goes to the highest level. I'm talking about the National Security Agency, the National Security Council, we had Oliver North who was heavily involved and in his own diaries he had documented the drug trafficking stuff that was occurring. January 14, 1986, when I was in Guatemala City, I had a chance to talk to then Vice President George Bush and he came up to me and he asked me what my job description was and I told him I was conducting international drug trafficking investigations. And I also told him that I was the agent who actually was investigating the Contras in El Salvador and he just smiled at me shook my hand and walked away. So I knew then and there that he knew that the Contras were heavily involved in drug trafficking. Number two, that same afternoon, he went up there and met with Oliver North, Collero (who was head of the Contras) and a whole bunch of military officials on the third floor of the US embassy to discuss the Contra operation. See, if we go back, every drug trafficker that was signed for the Contras were all documented in DEA files and yet they were getting US Visas to fly to the US by the Central Intelligence Agency. So the corruption went right to the top. All the way to the very top. There is no doubt in my mind that the President of the United States knew. You gotta remember we had the best Intelligence network in the world, which was the Central Intelligence Agency. We knew who was doing what when and where and why. Let's talk about your book Powderburns. Powderburns was co-authored by another individual and myself who was an excellent reporter - I was the guy who actually saw what happened. So we put our things together. One of the reasons that we were able to put Powderburns together was because I kept journals. One of the things, if you want to learn, in life is you always document everything. People used to make fun of me - saying you know, �you keep diaries.� Well, you can call them diaries, I call them journals. And at the end of the day I would go home and I would sit down and write just about everything that happened that day. And believe it or not, I did that for my whole experience with the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is twelve years - and I have a stack of journals and those stacks of journals is what saved my life because I was able to document every allegation. Every allegation that I make in my book Powderburns can be verified by documentation or by pictures. I also took over 2,000 pictures while I was down in Central and South America. So Powderburns was written in 1994, that, ironically, was an election year in which where Oliver North ran for U.S. Senate. He was one of two Republicans who lost the elections. Mind you he had 45 million dollars to run for President and yet the American people were not fooled by that and they voted against him and he lost. So Powderburns was just the tip of the iceberg. And it was sabotaged. The book? There were close to 500 pages written and actually 200 and some odd pages were actually printed because I feel that it was sabotaged. The introduction and the forward on the book was sabotage where they claimed that the CD-ROM on it went haywire on them and they printed 16,000 before they got to it and the pictures were perfectly clear and they ended up being very dark - the pictures. So from the get-go, there's no doubt in my mind that that book was sabotaged. And, it was never marketed properly. It was printed in New York City from a company out of Canada and it was never distributed anywhere. So I kept the books and I ended up buying whatever was left of the books so that I could sell my books to people that are interested in this issue. How do you distribute them? I got them all in storage now and what I do - when I go on a lecture tour, I try to sell them. I have Mike Ruppert, a friend of mine, who tries to sell them for me. He gets half of whatever he sells and I keep the other half�. Do you think people are aware of what's happening in Colombia right now? Well the question about the people caring about Colombia is an issue that has not hit home yet. And the people don�t realize and they don�t really care that much but they�re starting to care. I feel the reason why people are caring about what is going on in Colombia is that now we have one out of four of every family who's actually involved - whether they're selling drugs or using drugs - and it's destroying the family. So now they want to get involved and now they want to write the Congressmen and now they want to do something about it. But are they aware of the political reasons for the U.S. intervention in Colombia and the relationship between the US military and Intelligence and drug traffickers? Well, what�s happening is that the American Government is saying it�s safe to go into Colombia when, in reality, Colombia is the Spanish word for Vietnam. And it�s exactly what's going to happen. I saw it in Vietnam, I saw it in Central America, I saw it in Mexico. It's an apparatus outside the CIA that�s going to go in there and of all the same atrocities will be committed where there's no paper trail to be followed and its all gonna blow up in their face. And it�s got to stop. Kind of reminds you of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam, where we had to take that hill. It took us days to take that hill and then once we took it, after we lost hundreds of soldiers, we took it and then we gave it back the following week. It didn�t make sense but that�s exactly what's going to happen in Colombia. They're gonna use all that military not against drug traffickers or anything else - they're gonna use it against the guerrillas, the subversives down there, which they did in Mexico with those helicopters that Clinton shipped down to Mexico. They were supposed to be used on the War On Drugs. In reality they started using them against the Zapatistas in Chiapas. Salvador, the same thing. There's no such thing as the War On Drugs. There never has been because we don�t even make a dent. We have more drugs today than we ever did thirty years ago. Or twenty years ago. So it�s more like the War For Drugs. The War For Drugs - exactly. Because if you have - and none of this thing about legalizing marijuana - that will never happen. Not because of the moral issue but because there's too much money to be made on it. Look at the money that�s been laundered - some of it - a very small percentage being seized OK? It�s being seized in the US - very small numbers. We got more banks in South Texas than we do 7-11s or Circle Ks, whatever you call it. There�s just so much money to be made on this. So if people were to question the government about what they are doing in Colombia, what would the government say they are really doing? We�ll they say that they're fighting the so-called War on Drugs because the numbers are there. Our elementary schools are infested with cocaine. They're starting to use heroin now. It used to be the middle class people, or the lower income people that were doing coke and now we got like in Plano, Texas, where the rich kids are, they are using heroin and we got a lot of people doing heroin. We got so many drugs and they're using those numbers to justify the War On Drugs when in reality they�re going down there and getting involved in drug trafficking. Let the people - they're blaming the guerrillas for being involved in drug trafficking when all these years we�ve known that the government has been involved in drug trafficking. It's very well documented, very well established that those governments or these third world countries down there are known as cocaine democracies. Talk about Clinton and how he fits into the equation. Well Clinton, as far as I'm concerned, was involved with the Mena operation when the CIA was involved in training the Contras in Mena, Arkansas. And there was the allegation of cocaine coming in to Mena, Arkansas and so forth. Now this is my understanding� the fact is that it's not a two Party thing - remember, the Republicans were accused during the Iran-Contra thing of being involved in drug trafficking and so forth. They had investigations. The House Select Committee on Intelligence did an investigation on the CIA and so forth. You�ve got to remember he was Governor of Arkansas when this whole Contra operation with the CIA started so he was part of the problem to the extent that he didn�t want to admit to the fact that Mena, Arkansas was being used by the CIA to train the Contras. When you first discovered the CIA drug operation at Ilopango you were warned to leave it alone. Describe the climate of fear you endured as a DEA agent knowing that if you did your job, you would face some form of retaliation. Well, when I started - one of the things as you grow up - as you grow up in the world� you know, your parents taught you what was right and wrong. And my father always said: �you're gonna come to that Y in the road. You can go to the right - the right means doing the right thing. You go to the left, and it means you ain't gonna make any waves. You go with the flow, and you do what you gotta do. But there are consequences you will pay if you go to the right and tell the truth. And what happened to me was when I started to see all of this, I started documenting and writing reports and I was forewarned by my supervisor that if I kept it up, I was going to get kicked out of the country and sent back because I was making waves against the country. When I approached the Ambassador in El Salvador and I told him, "Look, the Contras here at Ilopango Airport - your airport - they're flying in drugs." He says, "Cele, my hands are tied. It�s a covert operation being run by the White House - there's nothing I can do about it." So I said, "Well I'm going to go ahead and report this to Washington." And he said: "Cele - do what you gotta do, let the chips fall where they may." And, in reality, I felt that he just wanted to put a stop to it and he was gonna use me to do that and that�s exactly what happened. Then again they came after me. You're right, you start stepping on people's toes and they're gonna come after you and what they did is they came after me with little claims: that I was too close to an informant; I was using an M16 that I was unqualified to use. I'm a Vietnam veteran - how could I not be qualified to use an M16? Little things like that� So then, the reason I left the Agency in 1992, was the fact that I went in an undercover operation and they tried to set me up. It was an operation where some Mexican cartel individuals were going to sell me some heroin and cocaine - large quantities. I went up there, I was wired, it was an undercover operation. Then I gave the buzz signal for them to come take me out and I said the word: �excellente�. And if I said the word �excellente�, it means: �he's got the dope come arrest him�. So I said �excellente� and nobody came. And I could see the agent sitting around and just looking at me. And I thought: �Well, if I pop the trunk, you know, that�s a visual signal in case my wire went down that they�ve got the dope and for them to be arrested. So I popped the trunk and nobody came. I kind of felt like Frank Serpico when he goes through the door - his face is caught in the door and his partner is not there and there's nobody there to help him. In other words, he was being set up to get killed and have it blamed on the bad guys and that�s how I felt. I didn�t have the money to buy the dope and they knew it. They had guns with them and they were gonna kill me. I was being set up to be assassinated so they could blame it on the bad guys and that�s the day that I decided to quit the Agency. I went into the office, put everything in a cardboard box and I left the Agency. And once I left the Agency, what I did was my last duty for my government - I thought - was that I secretly met with Lawrence Walsh and his people from the Iran Contra investigation to advise him of what I had had and to show them what I had of the government's involvement in drug trafficking and I gave that to them. Needless to say, when I left the Agency, the first thing that the government did was they sent the IRS after me. And by that time I was going through a divorce, I lost my family and I was paying bills and they took all the savings I had on CDs and so forth and they took a penalty on it and up to this day, I owe the government 15,000 dollars. And that�s one of the tools that they use to come after you. And then, of course, they start conducting some kind of investigation. The problem they had with me is the fact that I kept pictures. Pictures don�t lie. I kept documentation. Documentation doesn�t lie when it�s signed by my supervisor. And I got my journals. The only thing - and I feel - I strongly believe that because I am telling the truth and I'm here educating the students of this country then I will not be around for long because they cannot let this happen. Because students are always taught that we live in the best country in the world, when in reality we don�t. In reality that�s not what's happening. I have a son who I would never ever let him go into the military or work for the U.S. government because that�s just like selling him into the same thing that I was doing. And I've taught my son what's right and what's wrong. I taught my daughter what's right and what's wrong. Because they ask me, "Dad how do you feel? How do you feel that all of your life you wanted to be a drug agent and all of a sudden you're not? How do you feel about your government and how does your government feel about you?" You know, and I say - you know it's the same thing. Now I have the burden of my dreams that I always wanted to retire as a drug agent and in reality, I became controversial instead of fighting for what I believe in - I mean being what I wanted to do. And it was a sacrifice. I gave up my dream to get involved in the movement - to be an activist - to fight for other people's battles that won't fight for themselves. But don�t you think that you are actually pursuing your dream? Exactly but not a day goes by - not one day or one night goes by that I don�t dream about what I used to do for a living. This was my job. I loved it. But that�s why when I speak out and I talk to people, I talk from the heart. Because what I'm doing now it's much stronger than what I was dreaming of doing because now I am actually saving people. If I can save students from the drug problem that they are having and if I can save then from doing things or believing in things that they don�t really know anything about. Like when I teach criminal justice, I teach them about corruption - I teach them about police corruption, which is called a tarnished badge. I tell them about the suicide rate in law enforcement. You know the corruption, the stress, the post-traumatic stress that they go through. The high rate of divorce for law enforcement. If I would have known all that before I went into law enforcement, there was no way I would have gone into law enforcement. Not to say that everybody - we got good police officers in there. So you know it�s a good thing. It's just up to you - for me, I got a bitter taste from it all. What can we do? Well the first thing you can do is to educate yourselves. Education is powerful, man. And I've always said that in any aspect of life, you have to read and educate yourself. A lot of people say, �believe what you read� and so forth. But you have to question what you read. When you listen to people that were actually there - they have nothing to win by going up there and putting their lives on the line because of what they believe in. A lot of students are scared. They don�t want to know the truth. They are in denial. Why? Because they live in their own little world - it's very comfortable and they don�t want to make any waves, they have an agenda. I have a lot of friends that are still with the Agency that I get calls from - from the DEA, telling me that I am doing a good job and so forth - but they will not come forth and do anything because they have a mortgage to pay, they have a career to save and they gotta save money to send their kids to school. So basically, that�s what it is - you got two different kinds of individuals: people that will actually fight for the rights of the people and the other ones that just sit back and let it ride. So what is the character of a government that is involved in this kind of drug exchange and at the same time has systematically imprisoned an entire generation of young black and Latino men? Well first of all, you know, as a patriotic Latino family where I came from, you know, my father taught me that American people are decent people � they�ve got integrity. It�s a good government, the best government in the world. And when I went up there and worked for the government I realized that it wasn�t true. And it's not that those third world countries are bad - it's that the U.S. government has destroyed those countries. They have let them sleep with the cartels in the name of democracy and in reality that�s what really hurts. I went out there and I saw, for example, the civil wars in San Salvador and Guatemala. It was their own people killing their own people. The same indigenous people in the Guatemalan military were killing their own race - their own culture - and this was how the U.S. government was working in doing all that stuff. And to me, I felt that we are the worst human rights violators in the face of the world because we were down there training the death squads. I thought, �this cannot be - not the United States government!� We've always been taught that we are the best country in the world and there was no way � and it dawned on me that we were not. They were not letting us win that War On Drugs down there or help anybody because that�s business as usual for the US government in those third world countries. And I was devastated because I was, first of all, trying to justify what they were doing. I said, �there's got to be a catch to this - there is something here that�s not right. Maybe it�s a real deep cover operation. I don�t know what it is or maybe there is just something else to it.� And in reality - no! It was just that they were lining their own pockets. They were making money for their covert operations and I came to learn that this is the history of the United States government working in those third world countries. So as more developing countries become savvy to what's going on and become self-aware and start looking at their populations and realizing that they�ve in fact shrunk their own populations with wars that were manufactured by the United States to facilitate the flow of drugs into the US so that they could control those markets, aren't those countries going to wise up and eventually band together - what fate does the U.S. face? The leaders of these countries - they all have their own agendas and it's always about money. Every third world country�s President that helped the U.S. government is now retired in the U.S.. They are up here sending their kids to Ivy League schools and so forth. They're all working. Nobody cares about their governments. They leave office and they're gone. We saw with Carlos Salina, the President of Mexico - he's gone, he left. We saw with Alan Garcia in Peru - he left. They all leave and they really don't care because corruption is the number one thing in those Latin world countries. It always has been and always will be. I remember a colonel I was telling, "why are you taking the money from the traffickers?" He said, "Cele how can you as an American come down here and tell me not to be corrupt when this is all we have learned all our lives? Either we do it or we don�t do it. We want to be the right people - nice people and be the clean people but it's never gonna happen because they're never gonna let us do it! The American government is not going to let us do it and our own people in our government are not going to let us do it. Corruption is the way of life in this world. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. There's no middle class in Latin America. So that�s exactly what it is." You know there was a story about - will we come out of this OK? Will we survive? I don�t think we'll survive - I think we're too late for this. Unless we educate our students and let them know what our government is really all about. Unless we go back to the history books and find that the history books lied to us about just about everything that the government did. And, in reality, the government is still lying to the American people. They are not coming forward with their investigations. Iran Contra missed a lot of details - why? Because the Special Counsel had an agreement with the government not to pursue the drug issue. OK? And the House Select Committee on Intelligence that just now finished their report - they are saying that they did a thorough investigation. Well, how could they have done a thorough investigation when they don�t even investigate the agents who were down there conducting these investigations? The documentation is there - all you gotta do is look for it. Now, of course the government will abuse it by using the National Security Act so that you won't have access to the files. Or they sign the Privacy Act Law, which says you're not accessed to it because of National Security. They abuse that National Security Act by not giving you those documentations. So is there something we can do to change that? Yes there's something we can do - it's called the Open Records Act. If Congress can pass this, what we'll have is an act of Congress and the Senate that enables us to have access to those reports that are filed by the government. That�s the only way you're going to be able to make people accountable for their actions. Then we can see it in black and white that we know who is behind the massive cover-ups and so forth, and they will be punished for that. We don�t want it to take 30 years to find out who killed JFK or who was involved in all kinds of assassinations. Look at the history on the Central Intelligence Agency. Just last week there was an allegation that the CIA was instrumental in the murder of a diplomat here in the US - a Chilean diplomat and so forth. The Central Intelligence Agency has been very much involved in atrocities� the patchwork they did down in Central America, you know, dealing with drug traffickers, assassins, murder - it's just business as usual for the government - the U.S. government. Who benefits from this system of control like this? Well, it�s the U.S. government that benefits. First of all, corporate America, Wall Street. All the money that comes in from the drug trade goes through Wall Street. And, like I said before - we got more banks in South Texas than we do 7-11�s. And we got people from Mexico coming in and depositing $9,999.99 (because if you go with $10,000, you gotta report it to the IRS). And we got hundreds of people coming in with money - laundering money. Talk about the Prison Industrial Complex. Well the theory is this: they are building more prisoners instead of more universities or more schools now and what it is is a control of the minority groups. For example, we�ve got a couple of million people - African Americans - that are in prison that are not able to vote anymore. So we have large minorities - the Latinos for example are the biggest minority going up in this country - there's several million. Well a couple million are not going to be able to vote because they are on parole. And no matter what it is, you know, they're putting the minorities away - we had the federal laws on mandatory minimums for coke and crack� the differences between the sentences for crack and coke are totally imbalanced. Who uses crack? Well minorities do. Who uses coke? Well, middle class and upper class people. And what happens is you have people who are in there doing 25 years for a couple of hundred dollars of crack. Do you think this is an intentional, systemic agenda? That the government is in some way controlling the drug flow and, at the same time, enacting very tough legislation that directly targets minorities and the poor? Is it racist? I think it is. It is obvious that it was established that way. I think that it�s a racist development within the crack and the cocaine laws especially. Because if you look at the numbers that the government gives us - we got more Blacks and Latinos in jail for drug offenses that anybody else and their sentences are way higher compared to cocaine; and that was developed to put them away because the government knew that the minorities were coming up into this country. So by imprisoning young Black and Latinos, they are preventing them from being able to vote. Exactly and it destroys the family values. I've always said to students: �you know when your father or your mother gets involved in drugs - when he goes to jail or when she goes to jail, it doesn�t only destroy him - it destroys the brother, the sister, the siblings - everybody.� And it goes down the tubes and it's the family that is destroyed. And the problem is, there's so much money to be made. We have teachers, we have lawyers, we have doctors that are involved in drugs now. Why? Because this generation that�s coming up, we've always talked to them about materialistic things - money - what's in it for me? Nobody wants to do anything unless there's money involved. And that�s what we teach them - money, money, money. Without money you ain't gonna have anything. Forget your morals, forget your values, forget everything else. If you don�t have money, you are not going to go anywhere. I see it in school. You know, I have a guy - a football player who has a bankroll of money in his pocket. We have another guy who works at Burger King after school and then has another job and goes home and says it's not fair that I have to work after school, then do my homework while this guy has money, drives the best cars, and has all the girls around. Who's the winner and who's the loser, here? So how do we make it so that something else becomes attractive other than money? What are some of the values that we can endorse and how can we ingrain within the system a sense of respect and heroism around people like you? One of the things is education. I keep going back to education because you gotta teach them. Show them the picture before it happens. Show them what's gonna happen if this happens. Not after it happens, you know? Let them know, �well, you should have done this�� Let them know what it is that they're gonna be going through. They have no concept of what is gonna happen. That�s the education part but you know, going back to being patriotic� I am a Vietnam veteran. I go to parades on Veteran's Day and I go out and I lecture to kids and everybody's wearing the American flag. They�re waving these little American flags around, and right after the presentations, when the students are gone, all you see on the ground are small little American flags. Because they have no concept of what being a patriot is. And needless to say, you need to have a war to find out what patriotism is and if you don't have one, you're not going to know. Because you can't feel it. You can't feel the pain when you�ve lost a brother or a sister in a war� and what that person was doing out there - fighting for your wars, for your causes, and he paid the ultimate price by giving his life to what? Whether he believed in it, or did not believe in it, he went ahead and paid the ultimate price. There's an individual here named Peter Dale Scott who wrote a book called The War Conspiracy, where he talks about the fact that war is in fact manufactured. Most people think that war emerges from passion - from different factions fighting against each other because they disagree over a moral principle or something else. Is that the case? Are wars manufactured? Wars are manufactured. And the reason I know that for a fact is because I was in that civil war in El Salvador - where we spent 1.5 million dollars a day. We could have won that war in the second year. But it went on for ten years - why? Because we had vendors - for example, vendors that were involved in night vision equipment that they were selling to the guerrillas. They were making money - night vision equipment companies. Helicopters - Bell Company was making money. And the U.S. military was using the war for its own purposes. See, we had a company of ranger units that came in there to find out if they had what it takes to be a good soldier. To have a good soldier, you have to have a good war. If you don�t have a war, you don�t have any good soldiers because you don�t know what it is. So the US government had to send them in there covertly to get involved in fire fights to find out how they would be able to survive. And that�s why they were manufacturing this civil war in El Salvador, where it could have been won easily. But we let it - I remember a no-good commander came up to me and told me, "This is how we find out. This is what we need. If we don�t have this, then we don�t know what kind of soldiers we got. This is what we do - we come out here and we buy these third world countries." I had a CIA operative that came up to me and said, "Cele, what are you doing reporting this to Washington about the drug trafficking with the Contras and so forth? These are our countries - we buy 'em - we elect the Presidents - we do all this because this is known as our training grounds. This is what we use to find out if we have, or if the soldier has the guts to go out there and torture people and kill people. That�s the only way we're gonna find out, so we need these civil wars." Is there something that you'd like to say to the CIA? You know, what I would have to say to the Central Intelligence Agency is exactly what I told Randy Capister, this CIA agent that was down there in Central America training the death squads, getting involved in drug trafficking and all this. I said, "Randy, one day, all this is gonna come back and bite you in the ass." He says, "Cele, this is what we've been doing all of our lives. Nobody's going to do anything to us because we are who we are." But as we now know, there are talks about dismantling the CIA because of these atrocities that they have been involved with for so many years. And accountability - accountability - like Jack McCavet, who was Chief of Station in El Salvador and Guatemala all these years was forewarned - that it was going to come back and bite him in the butt and he didn�t believe that. And now it's gotten back to him. The ball's in his court and now he's gonna have problems trying to justify his actions. Because now the problem is not from whistleblowers like me, but from his own people - a different generation - they are not gonna put up with these atrocities. And that�s why they are having problems trying to recruit CIA agents into the Central Intelligence Agency - because nobody wants to see these atrocities happen anymore. Speaking of the CIA � we have seen a picture of you with George Bush Senior. Can you tell us about it? On January 14, 1986, I was assigned to Guatemala City in Guatemala as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. And that certain date, then Vice-President George Bush arrived at the Ambassador's residence. He was there to welcome the new so-called democracy that had come into power in Guatemala. In reality, it wasn�t a democracy - it was still the military running the country. Anyway what happened was George Bush came in as a representative of the United States to congratulate the new government, and there was a cocktail party at the residence - Ambassador Piedra's residence - who was a Cuban American. So basically I saw George Bush and he comes up to me and asks me what my job description was and I said, "Well, I do narcotics investigation, international narcotics investigation for the Drug Enforcement Administration and I'm also the agent that covers El Salvador." And I said, "Well you know we have some information that there's something funny going on with the Contras at Ilopango airport." At that time, he just smiled and looked at me and shook my hand and walked away without saying a word. I knew then and there that he knew what the Contras were doing at Ilopango airport. Ironically, that same afternoon, he met with Adolpho Collero, who was head of the Contras. He met with Oliver North, and a whole bunch of other people on the third floor of the US embassy, which is known as the Bubble - it's a CIA floor. So I knew right then and there that he knew that the Contras were involved in this drug trafficking. Was there any follow up to that event? No. What happened there in '86 - it was January 14 - the follow-up on the event was that he continued to meet during that time period with different people - traveling to different parts of the country of Central America and meeting with people that were stationed in Central America and going to Washington to discuss the Contra operation. That's very well established in the Iran Contra investigation and John Kerry's report - Senator Kerry's report on the Contra operations. How can he run around with a straight face and talk to people that he knows he's employing to do something that he knows he doesn�t really want them to succeed at doing? Well that was his baby. That was his project. You've got to understand that the Contra operation was his baby and he was going to take care of that baby any way he could. What happened was he knew it was happening but it was OK. He knew that the Contras were involved in drug trafficking but it was OK because we were fighting communism in Central America and they were making all kinds of money for the covert operation. And being an ex-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he knew that these things happened. It was no shock to him. He knew from the get-go what the Contras were doing, and how the CIA was running the operation out of Ilopango. He also knew that pilots that were flying for the Contras were all documented traffickers in DEA files. And I remember that DEA Washington came down and spoke to me and said, "Look you�ve got to use the work allege on your reports." And I said, "Well how can I use the word allege when I actually see these people and they're getting arrested in South Texas!" For example, Francisco "Chico" Guirola-Beech got arrested in South Texas with 5.5 million dollars cash! He was known at Ilopango as the 6 million dollar man! Now that was just one load of money that was taken down in South Texas that belonged to the Contras and to the CIA and he flew around all over Central and South America with credentials from the Central Intelligence Agency, from the President of El Salvador and so forth and he was able to come and go as he pleased! And he was the right hand man for Major Roberto D'Aubuisson� and the money issue - they were also - the far right was also very much involved in drug trafficking. It�s very well documented in the DEA files because I documented it and other people in Costa Rica documented it, so it�s no question that these things occurred and there�s no question that the White House knew about it. You gotta remember with that operation at Ilopango, the Ambassador�s own words were, "It�s a covert operation being run by the White House. Cele, stay away from it," you know? And I told him, "I�m gonna do what I have to do�" and I strongly feel that the Ambassador didn�t like it either but he had no choice � he was the Ambassador, he was given instructions to play ball� and that he did. Can you just talk to me briefly about your experience with the media - we talked about ABC News before, about 60 Minutes - talk about some of the experiences you�ve had and how information has managed to be suppressed. The media is good to a point and you gotta remember why they are out there - there are numbers to be made and so forth. But the problem is that they have their own orders like everybody else. If it touches into something that - for example ABC - I did an exclusive with Prime Time Live on the atrocities in Guatemala and they did a perfect job. They showed the pictures, the viewers saw the people that were murdered and killed. But what they failed to do was mention the Central Intelligence Agency. They failed to mention the names of the agents that were involved in these murders for accountability. Why? Because they are not going to get involved in a dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency. They are not going to go that far. Any major news media will go to a point but you will never find them naming names or pictures because then it's too close to home� and that�s reality. I just did a story with ABC. They came down, they filmed for two hours. I told them about how the drug money was coming into the Republicans for George W. and so forth and a guy who's documented in the FBI files was doing the fundraisers. They are probably not going to do that story because it's an election year and so forth and whatever happens, happens. Any other stories where you�ve been suppressed or there were threats� I've done approximately two and a half hours or maybe three hours of exclusives from Discovery to CNN to Dateline to Prime Time Live to Current Affair - I've done just about everybody and it gets to a point where they will, you know, they�ll film you for three hours for an eight minute segment. It gives you no justification. It gives you nothing. I mean you're out there talking your heart out � and for what? So they can put maybe a four minute thing on your story? And that�s it? So how can you justify the story with eight minutes - you can't. I mean you can touch the tip of the iceberg and that�s it. You can't go any further than that. I mean, when have you ever seen ABC, NBC or CBS do an exclusive on the War On Drugs? Where they actually went out there and interviewed the people that were involved in it? They didn't. Why? Any major investigation on the House Select Committee on Intelligence - the same thing. They're not going to cover it. Iran Contra -the same thing. One of the first questions I asked was, "why didn�t you send somebody to Guatemala or El Salvador to interview the drug agents about the drug issue?" And they never did it. Why? Because they had an agreement with the government not to pursue the drug issue. You are familiar with Mike Ruppert�s showdown with CIA Director John Deutch in California. Did his public questioning of Deutch have any effect on the people? Well ignorance to a liar is an excuse, as they say. Deutch knew exactly what was going on. What he didn�t realize was the fact that that so many people were gonna show up. I was here. I refused to go up there because I knew it was going to be an Intelligence gathering for the Central Intelligence Agency to find out who had what on who� And Mike Ruppert went up there and said, "Well, you know, they've been involved for many years in drug trafficking in the Central Intelligence Agency in South Central" and so forth. We knew that. Deutch says, "How many directors have ever come down here and sat here and talked to you about it?" Well none. But he came down here and he lied to us! So what was the big deal? He came up here, he sat there, and he lied to the American people. And his famous words were "If we find any wrongdoing, we will prosecute�" Well, he came, he went, and nothing ever happened. And I knew exactly that that was what was going to happen - and nothing happened. So it seems like that too was a strategy of containment. Exactly. They came up here and tried to quiet the troops down. Calm them down. You know, �we're here and we're listening and we're doing this and we're doing that.� And they did calm down. And then nothing happened. And that�s the MO. That�s exactly what happens. They come up here and they try to justify it. Maxine Waters came here - the Congresswoman. Juanita Macdonald came down here and tried to talk to the people and nothing happened. Nothing happened. Where is Maxine Waters now? Why is she not around to help us support the latest thing in the Ninth Circuit that came out under Renaldo Pena? What happened? Why is there no news release from her? Why? Because there's an agreement. There's an agreement between the Republicans and the Democrats and that is: not to bring up the drug issue on the candidates. George W. using the money from Mexico from a guy who�s documented in the FBI files - will probably not be released because of the Republicans, and that�s what the Democrats are doing. They went after Gore in the Buddhist temple money fundraiser. Well, why can't they get on Bush with all this illegal money coming in from Mexico into his campaign? Why? Because there is an agreement. So is Maxine Waters being suppressed by the Democrats internally? Yes. I think Maxine has compromised herself. I hate to say that but time and time again, she is being contacted to support us on this issue. She came in very strong and then all of a sudden, she pulled back and she's out of the picture. You gotta remember her husband is Ambassador to the Bahamas, or was. So take it for what it's worth. You know, why is she not here helping us? Define the term �cocaine politics� and how it applies to Colombia. Cocaine Politics is another word for cocaine democracy. Cocaine democracy, as I said before, the politics of cocaine is to make the money - and that's what they're gonna be doing in Colombia. They're gonna be taking large amounts of money and they're gonna put on a show. They're gonna bust some people, they're gonna take down the major drug traffickers, the major cartels and, as you know, they took Pablo Escobar out and somebody else popped up. The Cali cartel - they are using drug traffickers to work against those people. For example, Carlos Leder - he testified against Noriega - he never met Noriega in his life - but yet he testified. This is a guy who was head of the cartels - founder of one of the cartels. This is the guy that threatened to kill DEA agents and that blew up some DEA offices and so forth. He now works for the US government. He is now out of prison! He got life without parole � without the possibility of parole. He went under the Witness Protection Program. He is now out and he's working for the US government. By his wife's own words, he is out selling cocaine to the Russians. He is doing all kinds of illegal activity for the U.S. government and this is what our government is about? You know, this guy who wants to murder and kill federal U.S. drug agents, who has mass murdered people in Colombia, who is now working for the US government? Thank you� anything else you�d like to say? One more thing... As you�re growing up as a student, you come to that fork in the road and that�s when you do what your heart feels and you do it at all costs. And if you don�t, then you�re just gonna go with the flow and make no waves and do whatever. But if you go and do the right thing, it�s gonna cost you a lot. In the end it might even cost you your family � it cost me mine. But I could sleep easily every night because I knew I was making a difference. Like my little daughter said, "Dad what do we care what�s going on in Colombia or what�s going on anywhere in the world?" Well you should care because it�s going to hit home sooner or later. The atrocities are gonna hit home and it's hitting home right now with the civil liberties violations - the civil rights problems we are having in our country. And that�s because of what�s going on all over Central and South America and how the government works in suppressing those people. The oppression of the indigenous people is very important. They are using their own people to destroy them and I think it�s important for you to educate yourself � not for anything else but just for your own mind, to know exactly how our government works, and how it�s gonna come back. You saw the history � all the history�s been written but it�s not right. Everybody knew that there was a fight at the Alamo but nobody knows why. They don�t teach you why. And we talked about how the United States stole the southwest part of the United States. They literally took it away from Mexico. So those are things that are important that I don�t want you to learn twenty years from now - you know? You should learn this right now as you go through life, because you need to make a difference. You need to get involved. It seems like � you know, maybe this is obvious to you but it�s something that I just put together� From opium to marijuana to cocaine to heroin, the pattern that we�ve seen is consistently the same. The elites, or whoever is in power and fears the masses, use these substances to ensure and maintain their own power. They pique the public�s curiosity about these drugs, get them addicted to them, and then prohibit their use� Exactly. So can you just say that in your own words? OK, number one, what happens is that the U.S. government has been instrumental in bringing drugs into this country - whether it was heroin, whether it was cocaine, and then the crack epidemic. And it came and it captured the youth of our country and it basically almost destroyed this generation that we have coming up. You know, we remember that at one time cocaine was only for the rich and the people who were able to afford it and so forth. Then crack came down and the lower income and middle class minorities started to use it. But then it turned around and� cocaine does not discriminate. Heroin does not discriminate. Look in Dallas - in Plano, Texas, where we have a lot of rich families living there. You know, where have you ever heard of a teenager being hooked on heroin? And we had a whole bunch of young kids overdosing, dying of heroin that was being brought in by the Mexican government with the U.S. government�s knowledge. We have the best intelligence in the world. We could stop anything we want to stop but because of economic reasons, it�s not gonna stop. And now� we have captured you, we got you hooked on drugs, and now you�re gonna do what we tell you to do. We�re gonna brainwash you and we�re gonna do what we have to do to suppress you� It�s not that they want us to not do drugs because they are bad for us. It couldn�t be further from the truth! They know that tobacco is bad for us � it�s addictive. Alcohol is bad for us, it�s sold in stores. So they�re not prohibiting drugs because they�re harmful to us � they are prohibiting drugs because that way they can control the competing drug cartels through the DEA and FBI and CIA. Whether those agencies are consciously aware of it or not. And they are able to use the laws to control the population through imprisonment and addiction. Is that too wild an interpretation? No. It�s exactly right. Look, we have more drugs today than ever before. I mean every major drug is back. LSD is back. Heroin is back. Black tar heroin is back. China white heroin is back. Cocaine - massive amounts of cocaine are coming in from South America - it�s never been cheaper! There was a time period when heroin was only coming in from European countries or from China or the Triangle. But now it�s coming from Mexico, it�s coming in from Colombia� I remember flying over the opium poppies in Guatemala - between Mexico and Guatemala. I couldn�t believe that they were still producing heroin out of Guatemala and Mexico City. So it�s getting in our backyard now as they say, and it�s gonna be accessible to anybody. But you know one of the things that some students ask is, why don�t we legalize marijuana? That�s never gonna happen. Not because it�s morally wrong but because there is too much money to be made on it. And that's why you need to learn to stay away from drugs because drugs will destroy you. Cocaine, once it gets a hold of you, it�s not gonna release you. You gotta have a lot of will power to let go of it and it will not only destroy you. Anybody around you that loves you is gonna be destroyed. I promise you that. And if you don�t believe me, you just look around. There�s a brother or sister in the immediate family, that�s gonna be destroyed by that. Can you just say� My name is Celerino Castillo the III, I'm a former Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agent and I'm here for Guerrilla News Network. Right on� thank you __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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