Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 64

("Quid coniuratio est?")

THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo

[...continued...]

TARPLEY

Tell me just briefly: what kinds of planes were these, where were they coming from, where were they going?

CASTILLO

The cable that we received from Costa Rica in April of 1986 came in from the country attache', Bobby Nieves, like I stated before, and was for us to check Hangars 4 and 5, that they had very reliable information pertaining to the trafficking from around Central and South America into those two hangars.

It turned out that of those two hangars, one was run by the CIA, and the other one was run by Felix Rodriguez,

[CN -- This man, Felix Rodriguez, also shows up in connection with activities surrounding Terry Reed and the Mena Airport operation. Rodriguez is also reportedly the man who killed Che Guevara.]

who ran the Contra operation at Ilopango.

TARPLEY

These, then, were not jets that you would see at an American airfield, but these were smaller planes?

CASTILLO

Yes, smaller planes, like Caravans, Pipers, Cessnas. They were coming in without being inspected by the Customs officials, or anybody else.

As it turned out, the informant who did the flight plans actually gave us copies of all the flight plans of all these Contra pilots, and when we ran checks on the names of all these pilots, they were all documented in DEA files as narco-traffickers. Yet they were being hired by the CIA, Felix Rodriguez, and everybody else, who were trying to obtain U.S. visas for them to go to the U.S. -- even though they were documented traffickers.

TARPLEY

So, these planes would then fly north. Could they make it all the way to Miami?

CASTILLO

They would go to Miami, they would go to Texas. They were going to California; anywhere that they were able.

For example, a Contra pilot was arrested in late '85 in south Texas with five-and-a-half million dollars cash. It was Contra money. You know, you carry credentials from the President of El Salvador, from the Chief of Staffs in El Salvador, the Chief of the Air Force and so forth; they were all very well protected, and every single pilot talked about how they had permission to run narcotics, because they were working for the Oliver North Contra operation.

-+- The Rodriguez Dossier -+-

TARPLEY

Now, you've mentioned Felix Rodriguez, Max Gomez. I happen to have read his autobiography, and he's somebody who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion back in the early 1960s, and it's speculated that George Bush was involved in that.

[CN -- According to Brigadier General (retired) Russell S. Bowen (The Immaculate Deception), "The truth is that Bush has been a top CIA agent since before the 1961 invasion of Cuba, working with Felix Rodriguez and other anti-Castro Cubans."]

Certainly, Felix Rodriguez has been with George Bush for a very, very long time, and what you can see in that book is, he's got a signed photograph from George Bush telling him what a great patriot he is.

Would you agree with that judgement on Felix Rodriguez/Max Gomez?

CASTILLO

No, sir. If you go back to the Vietnam War, we have intelligence where the CIA and those individuals were heavily involved in trafficking heroin into the U.S. in bodybags and so forth.

So, Felix Rodriguez was documented, in our DEA files, as a trafficker. He was a retired CIA agent, and they brought all these people who were heavily involved. If you go back, most of these Bay of Pigs operatives were all documented traffickers, who all served time for narcotics trafficking, for gun-running. They were all criminals; yet, they were being hired by the Oliver North Contra operation to run the illegal narcotics trafficking out of Ilopango [Airport].

TARPLEY

Now, Felix Rodriguez has a DEA file.

CASTILLO

That's correct, sir. I myself documented him involved in trafficking with the Contras, and so forth.

TARPLEY

Does Oliver North have a DEA file?

CASTILLO

That's correct, sir. As a matter of fact, there's a 1991 file on Oliver North for smuggling weapons from the U.S. into the Philippines with known narcotics traffickers, and I'm talking about a 1991 case. I'm not going back to the Contra issue.

TARPLEY

This is after the television appearance, after the great 1987 celebrity parade?

CASTILLO

That's correct, sir. Absolutely.

TARPLEY

Can you make a Freedom of Information Act request, to get hold of Oliver North's DEA file?

CASTILLO

I tried that already, and they cited the privacy act. I asked for my own files, that I wrote on the Contras and different individuals, and these requests were denied.

TARPLEY

So, I can imagine that there would be a lot of voters around Virginia and elsewhere who would like to have a look at Oliver North's DEA file again, with an incident from 1991?

CASTILLO

That's correct. One of the questions I've always been asked is, Why can't the White House get that?

Somebody else has to answer that. I don't know. It's there. They just need to get that. That file is out of the Washington office here in Washington, D.C.

TARPLEY

That certainly makes you think twice.

Now, did you ever see Felix Rodriguez running around Ilopango?

CASTILLO

Yes, sir. I saw him running around Ilopango. I used to see him around the U.S. Embassy, having lunch with the ambassador and others. Col. Steele from the U.S. Military Group [was] down there. I saw him everywhere.

-+- Coverup -+-

TARPLEY

And how about Oliver North? Did you ever see him there?

CASTILLO

I saw Oliver North in Guatemala, not in Salvador.

TARPLEY

And what were the circumstances where you saw Oliver North?

CASTILLO

Well, that's when I met George Bush, on Jan. 14, 1986...

TARPLEY

Could you just give us an idea of what kinds of people were telling you about these activities, and what they were telling you?

CASTILLO

Well, go back to Ilopango. We had an informant who had worked there, at Ilopango, for many years. He had given reliable information to the Consulate General there, Robert Chavez, at the U.S. Embassy, and some cocaine had been seized before. So, this guy was very reliable. He had been reporting all this activity on the Contras.

We had another informant who was also placed to work at Ilopango, Salvador, and Guatemala, who was a documented informer going back to 1981, who gave us a lot of the intelligence that we had on this Contra operation.

TARPLEY

Let's now turn to what you did with the information that you got, and how you reported it. I understand from your book that one of the first people you tried to tell about this was the U.S. ambassador to Salvador, Edwin Corr.

CASTILLO

That's correct. Once we obtained a lot of the intelligence and we started writing reports, we went to the U.S. ambassador, we went to the CIA Chief of Station, Jack McCavett, in Salvador, and Col. Steele, who was a U.S. Military Group commander.

There was an individual, an American, who lived in El Salvador, who was a civilian, and as it turns out, he was working for the Oliver North Contra operation. And when we received all this information, we reported it. I personally reported it to my boss, first of all, Bob Stia, who kept forewarning me about my reporting on the Contras because it was going to come back and hurt us in Guatemala.

TARPLEY

Did he suggest it was going to be bad for your career?

CASTILLO

It was going to be bad for my career and his career, and he had a couple of years left to retire, and not to make any waves. I told him that if I actually found any evidence, that I would continue to report the allegations that the Contras were involved in trafficking.

I went to the U.S. ambassador, Edwin Corr. He told me right off that it was a White House covert operation run by Col. Oliver North, and for me to stay away from it.

[...to be continued...]

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."