THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo

The following is an interview with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) veteran agent Celerino Castillo, first published in The New Federalist, October 24, 1994.

Before beginning, by way of a preface, let me state a few things.

Officer Jack McLamb (retired) of the Phoenix Police Department, in a speech given to his fellow police officers, had this to say:

...there's been much research, much research, and much documentation to the fact -- and I say fact, fellow police officers (We've got some female police officers here too. Thank you for coming.), -- but I'm telling you, I want you to hear this, I'm talking about fact that we can prove, we've got the evidence -- an evidentiary foundation that would stack as high as I am, the evidence, I've seen it -- that the U.S. government, certain factions of the U.S. government, have been involved in importing the majority of drugs in the United States since the '60s. Since 1960....

We have, folks, in the United States, a phony war on drugs.

Then there's former DEA agent Mike Levine, author of Deep Cover and The Big White Lie, speaking at Northern Illinois University in 1991:

The drug war's a sham. I threw my life to the winds believing in the war against drugs. If I died, I believed I was dying for a just cause....

I realized the reality of what I was doing never quite matched what the public was seeing. DEA was designed to put itself out of business but that doesn't happen. The opposite happens. It's always, "We need more."

...It's all a show... The drug war is the laughing stock of South America.

My guess is that there is a moment of truth that comes to our soldiers in the "War Against Drugs"; a moment when they realize it's all a crock. It seems that most choose to lay low and hang onto their jobs when that moment of decision arrives. A few, though, have got something that you could call "honor". When their moment of truth arrives, they are unable to rationalize themselves into a "go along to get along" lifestyle.

But this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. A thousand little compromises, a thousand little rationalizations, and we have got a world of trouble. Thank God that not all of our soldiers in this "War Against Drugs" have turned out to have the souls of petty bourgeois shopkeepers. Thank God there have been some great souls among them.

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[September 27, 1994]

WEBSTER TARPLEY:
I'd like to go immediately to the very interesting book that you've put together [Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War]. On page 132 of that book, you describe a kind of cameo appearance by Vice President George Bush. I believe this was in Guatemala City in January of 1986, and that would have been shortly after the inauguration of the new Guatemalan President Cerezo. I'd just like to acquaint our viewers with that conversation, the events that led up to it, that followed it, and revolved around it, because this seems to sum up the heart of the matter.

CELERINO CASTILLO:
Basically, what happened there, was that at that time, Jan. 14, 1986, to be exact, George Bush was in Guatemala City. At the same time that George Bush was there, I also saw Calero, head of the Contras, and Oliver North. And I met George Bush at the cocktail party at the ambassador's residence, and basically, what he was doing, was walking around, shaking hands with everybody. And he came up to me, and asked me what my job description was as DEA agent. And I told him that I conducted international narcotics investigations on traffickers down in Central America. I also advised him that I was the agent in charge of reporting for El Salvador, and I forewarned him that there were some funny things going on at Ilopango Airport, with the Contras. He shook my hand, he smiled, and he just walked away from me, without saying another word. From that moment, I knew he knew something about the Contras.

TARPLEY
That's what you write: "He simply smiled and walked away, seeking another hand to shake. After that exchange, I knew that he knew."
CASTILLO
That's correct.
TARPLEY
What did George Bush know, and when did he know it?
CASTILLO
Before my arrival in Guatemala, we had received intelligence that the Contras were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. Basically, I was forewarned by the country attache' in Guatemala, Bob Stia, upon my arrival, that there was a covert operation being conducted by the White House, and run by Oliver North at Ilopango in El Salvador.
TARPLEY
So this was your official superior in the DEA?
CASTILLO
That's correct.
TARPLEY
And the first thing he did when you arrived in the country was to tell you: Look, this is now the scene of a covert operation with Oliver North, and they're running drugs. [CN -- See, kiddies? Run drugs, and you too can grow up to be a U.S. Senator.]
CASTILLO
That's correct, and since we had obtained intelligence already about the Contras being heavily involved in narcotics trafficking, he advised me to stay away from it and not to get involved in the investigation, because that would mean that if I started reporting that information to Washington, I would be kicked out of El Salvador and Guatemala very quickly.

-+- The Ilopango Connection -+-

TARPLEY
Now, when you say the "Contras," does that mean all the Contras? Were there groups that were more into it, that were less into it? Was there Calero, were there others in that group? Was it a universal thing, that all the Contras were into drugs?
CASTILLO
It was a universal thing. The DEA refused to accept that answer, but we had intelligence gathered from all parts of Central and South America in regard to the narcotics trafficking going on. We had cables from the country attache', Bobby Nieves in Costa Rica, advising us to look into Hangars 4 and 5 at Ilopango. And of course, Hangars 4 and 5 were bought and paid for by the U.S. government -- the CIA and the National Security Council.
TARPLEY
Ilopango Airport: What is that? Is that a large commercial airport?
CASTILLO
No. Ilopango Airport is the military airport with civilian small planes that arrive at Ilopango. And it's a military base, but most international pilots who fly small planes get to arrive at Ilopango.
TARPLEY
Tell us what the atmosphere was at Ilopango in the middle of this Contra dirty war, 1985, '86, '87.
CASTILLO
We had major narcotics trafficking going through Ilopango from Costa Rica, which is further south. We had obtained a lot of intelligence. We had an informant placed at Ilopango who actually did the flight plans for the Contra pilots, and everybody spoke freely about the loads that they carried, the monies that they took to the Bahamas and to Panama for laundering.

All this was reported to the U.S. Embassy, to the CIA, to Washington, DEA headquarters; and nobody wanted to do anything about it.

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.

TARPLEY
So that's now the second time you got official testimony and corroboration that Oliver North was running these activities, first from Mr. Stia, and then from Ambassador Corr. Two different agencies.
CASTILLO
That's right. Then I went to Jack McCavett and Jack McCavett's answer to me was the fact that they were being ordered to support the Oliver North Contra operation, to go above and beyond to support them; and also Col. Steele with the U.S. Military Group. He, of course, was the liaison officer from the U.S. embassy into the Salvadoran military.
TARPLEY
Mr. Stia, your immediate superior: did he have the option of rejecting your reports, telling you to tear them up, or file them, or rewrite them? Or did he have to sign off on them and send them to Washington?
CASTILLO
One of the things a lot of people don't understand is the fact that every time I wrote a report, or sent a cable off to Washington, it had to be approved by my supervisor (who was Bob Stia) and signed off by the ambassador of whatever country I was sending the cable out to. So, everything was approved. Whether DEA Washington did anything with it was a different story. And we had a place up there they called the "Black Hole"; all these reports went in there, and they were never distributed to the right people.

-+- Laundering the Profits -+-

TARPLEY
Can you remember the date of your first dispatch to Washington that basically stated these facts?
CASTILLO
We go back to early 1986. The cable came in from Costa Rica in April, so we continued to follow up on the request to conduct an extensive investigation into Hangars 4 and 5, and cables started coming and going.

Costa Rica was giving us the information that narcotics were leaving from Aranchez airstrip in Costa Rica into Ilopango. Of course, our informant at Ilopango was being told, by the pilots when they were leaving, how much dope they were taking, how much money they were flying into the Bahamas or Panama.

At one point, he saw $4.5 million cash taken from Ilopango into Panama, to launder. These were incidents that were reported. We have a time and date for one of the pilots, Chica Guirola, departing El Salvador to the Bahamas where he was airdropping monies on the Contras -- the profits of narcotrafficking.

TARPLEY
Do you get the impression that the narcotics ultimately came from people like the Medellin cartel, or the Cali cartel, or people like this?
CASTILLO
I had a CIA agent in El Salvador who actually came up and asked me: How do you expect us to support the Contras when Congress cut aid to the Contras? How are they going to support themselves? Which means that we have to sleep with the cartels.

And basically, during the Kerry Committee [i.e., Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations] hearings we had a lot of informants, a lot of individuals who flew for the Contras, who gave testimony; but their credibility was not that good, because they were known traffickers, and so forth. But there was a lot of testimony, a lot of evidence to the fact that there was a lot of narcotics trafficking.

TARPLEY
O.K. You've mentioned the Kerry Committee. I guess that's Sen. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Senate Investigating Committee '85, '86, '87?

You tried to tell part of your story to them. Am I right? You tried to inform them of what you knew?

CASTILLO
No, not the Kerry Committee. As a matter of fact, on Oct. 22, in 1987, I got a call from Washington requesting for me not to close the files on the Contras because the Kerry Committee wanted copies of my reports, and under the Freedom of Information Act, if it's a closed case they cannot have access to it.

During the Kerry Committee, we had Mark Richards, who is an assistant U.S. attorney... He was involved in a meeting with 25 individuals from the DEA and the Department of Justice who refused to give this information to the Kerry Committee.

TARPLEY
This was the committee that investigated this "frogman" operation?
CASTILLO
Yes. We had the "Frogman Case" going back to 1985. A couple of Columbians and Nicaraguans were trafficking in large quantities of cocaine into San Francisco. It was called the "Frogman Case" because they were bringing ships into the San Francisco area, and a couple of frogmen would go out there and take the coke.

As it turns out, on their own testimony, testifying before the committee, they reported that the profits from those sales of narcotics were going to the Contras. So, we start there. In December of 1985, a CNN reporter broke the story on the Contras' involvement in narcotics trafficking.

So, the investigation into it started; but at no time did the Kerry Committee ever contact the agents down in El Salvador who actually conducted the investigation. I sat there and I waited for the phone to ring, and nobody ever called so that I could testify before that committee to advise them that large quantities of drugs were being trafficked by the Oliver North Contra operation.

TARPLEY
You later also tried to get in touch with the special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, in order to look into this entire matter.
CASTILLO
That's correct. Right before I left the agency in 1991, I secretly met with Mike Foster, the FBI agent assigned to the Iran-Contra committee, Walsh's committee, with my attorney present. He came, and he was just stunned when he saw copies of my reports, cables, etc.

His thing was the fact that he had asked the DEA, that Walsh's committee had asked and requested all this information from DEA, and DEA denied the fact that there were such reports. Basically, he was just stunned by what I showed him there. He said, "You know, if we can prove that the Contras and Oliver North were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking, it would be like a grand-slam home run."

We left it that I would try to get this girl named Sandrita from Salvador into the U.S. so that she could be debriefed by Walsh's committee with regard to her personal knowledge of narcotics use by some of the Contra pilots and some NSC individuals.

TARPLEY
Well, it looks like you attempted, at one point or another, to bring your revelations, these charges, to the attention of the State Department, the Special Prosecutor, the FBI, the CIA. Did you ever talk to Customs?
CASTILLO
Yes, I sure did.

One of the things is that the DEA has not acknowledged the fact that there are such reports. Yet, on the Kerry Committee and its report, we have the DEA assistant administrator, Dave West, in talking about the Nicaraguan war, saying that it is true that people on both sides of the equation in the Nicaraguan war were drug traffickers, and a couple of them were pretty significant.

Well if the DEA denies that, why is this man saying this?

We have the CIA chief of Latin American countries down there stating, in the Kerry Report: We suspected drug trafficking by the resistance forces. This is not a couple of people, it's a lot of people.

So, we have contradictory statements from both the State Department and the DEA, to the fact that the Contras were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking.

TARPLEY
When you sent these reports into Washington, who in the DEA would get those on his desk?
CASTILLO
Well, first of all, the chief of Latin American countries was John Marsh, who now, I understand, is the third-ranking DEA official.
TARPLEY
He's moving up the ladder.
CASTILLO
He's moving up the ladder. He is the individual who is responsible for the cover-up of the Contras involving narcotics trafficking. He gave me a letter of "reprimand", I guess you could say, when I refused to stop reporting on the Contras' involvement in narcotics trafficking. He actually wanted me to use the word "alleged". I explained to him: How can I use the word "alleged" when I'm seeing all this that's happening in Ilopango? We have reliable informants in there. And he went back, and he stated the same thing, that it would mean the end of my career in Latin America if I kept reporting this.

-+- Assassination Threat -+-

TARPLEY
And I understand that then the DEA actually investigated you, that is, they sent some people to check up on what you were doing?
CASTILLO
That's correct. The pressure was on, "the hammer dropped", as they say. They came down gunning for me.

When Kiki Camarena got killed in 1985, the administrator for the DEA came out with a memo stating that no DEA agent is to travel by himself in a foreign country; yet, that did not apply to me, because I was one of two agents to cover four countries in Latin America, which were Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

TARPLEY
Two agents for four countries? That was called the "war on drugs"?
CASTILLO
That's correct. That was called the "war on drugs in Central America", and I was being forced to travel by land, mind you, through guerrilla territory.
TARPLEY
"By land" means in a car, on a country road, where guerrillas are operating?
CASTILLO
That's correct. It's a three to four hour drive.
TARPLEY
Did you have an armed escort?
CASTILLO
No, sir, I drove by myself, and most of the time my only back-up was my informant, who travelled with me. And of course, the DEA manual states that you cannot be with an informant by yourself; yet, DEA refused to give out any back-up agents. That's what happened to Kiki Camarena. Kiki had to work by himself. [CN -- Kiki Camarena was a DEA agent slain in the line of duty in Mexico in 1985.]

We had Victor Cortez meeting with an informant in a restaurant, he gets grabbed. Why? Because there was nobody to back him up. And while our lives were being put on the line out there, carelessly, by the DEA, the DEA refused to do anything about it.

TARPLEY
So the resources are totally inadequate.
CASTILLO
Totally inadequate, and unsafe.
TARPLEY
Worse than that, though, it sounds like somebody was trying to get you bumped off, or would have been glad to see you bumped off.
CASTILLO
That was at the very end of my career, where there was an OPR investigator, Tony Ricevuto. We have a Guatemalan colonel who puts a contract on me [i.e., offers to pay money in return for the murder of Castillo], who's going to assassinate me. We had tape recordings on him, on how he's going to assassinate me in El Salvador and blame it on the guerrillas. And Tony Ricevuto, a senior inspector, goes into Guatemala and speaks to the U.S. ambassador there, requesting a U.S. visa for this colonel so that he can testify before the BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International] investigation in Miami.

In other words, telling them that it's o.k. that he's going to assassinate me, but they want him to testify in a trial in Miami! That's when I knew that I was going to get hurt sooner or later.

TARPLEY
This would have fit into a kind of general liquidation of all sorts of people in 1986, 1987, 1988, who were very knowledgeable about different sides of Iran-Contra. You can think of Olof Palme, you can think of people in Germany...
CASTILLO
There were people being taken out [i.e., murdered].
TARPLEY
Eyewitnesses were disappearing, they were dropping left and right in those years. [CN -- They're "dropping left and right" in these years also, e.g. see "The Clinton Body Count" by Linda Thompson.]
CASTILLO
That's correct, and I was one of them who was going to be taken out by the DEA, because they could not justify the fact that this individual was going to assassinate me. There was a case out of Houston, Texas, that was conducting the investigation; yet, my own people at DEA wanted to get him to the U.S. to testify. It was more important to them that he testify before the BCCI investigation, than my security.

Mind you, while I was down in Central America, during my career with the DEA, I kept a daily journal of everything. Case file numbers, individuals I talked to, people who called me to tell me to close the files, everything that the DEA had conducted illegally, condoning murders that the DEA knew about, down in Central America, killings and assassinations of Columbian traffickers; the massacre of them. I have passports to prove my allegations, and this was done with the knowledge of the DEA.

TARPLEY
To the bottom line: The net result of everything you sent in to DEA headquarters in Washington, was what?
CASTILLO
Was suppressed, I guess the word is... To this day, they continue to cover up the fact that there was a lot of intelligence involving the CIA, involving Oliver North's Contra operation.

I have pictures, I have photos, I have documents. I have everything that can justify what I'm saying. It's just that people refuse to acknowledge the fact that this was going on. There was a cover-up being conducted by the DEA on orders from the White House.

TARPLEY
Now, if you had to formulate charges against Oliver North, what would you charge him with?
CASTILLO
First of all, the violation of the Federal Narcotics Law, which states, in general, the fact that if you have knowledge that narcotics trafficking is being conducted, and you don't do anything about it, you can go to jail for that.
TARPLEY
Now, Oliver North says he's "the most investigated man on the planet". He says, well, this is all done to death. We've been over this terrain a million times. Nothing has ever been found.

Do you think that the investigations up to now have been adequate on precisely this key topic?

CASTILLO
No, sir, not at all. To start off with, it was inadequate investigation. "The most investigated man on the planet" -- they should have contacted the agents in Salvador, the people who actually conducted the investigation on the Contras...
TARPLEY
Have you found, I guess you've mentioned this now in the course of our talk, but corroboration: have you found other people, other sources, who also can document what you saw?
CASTILLO
I want to go back a little bit. In September of 1986, we had an individual who was an American, who was Oliver North's right-hand man down in El Salvador. He was a civilian. He worked out of Ilopango Hangars 4 and 5. He was a documented narcotics trafficker, all the way from Panama. We call him, in the book, "Brasher", and we hit his house. I built up a unit there, and they hit the house. At his residence, we found what was a Contra supply operation. We found U.S. military munitions, heavy guns, cases of explosives, C4.
TARPLEY
In a private home of a friend of Ollie North?
CASTILLO
Yes, in a private home. Cases of grenades, sniper rifles, uniforms, military equipment; and it was all U.S. military issue, brand new, some of it.

Before I hit his house, I went to the U.S. ambassador, who denied the fact that ["Brasher"] worked for the U.S. embassy; I went to the U.S. Military Group commander, who denied that ["Brasher"] worked for them. I went to the CIA, who denied. All three of those people told me that ["Brasher"] was working for the Oliver North Contra operation.

At the residence, all his vehicles had license plates for the U.S. embassy. We found radios belonging to the U.S. embassy. We found weapons belonging to the U.S. embassy. Yet, this individual was a documented narcotics trafficker working for the Oliver North Contra operation.

-+- Planeloads of Cocaine -+-

TARPLEY
If you had to go back and estimate, could you give some kind of a ballpark figure of how much drugs, I guess in this case it means cocaine pretty much, how much cocaine, crack cocaine and other kinds of cocaine, came into the United States as a result of these operations?
CASTILLO
We had thousands of kilos that came in. We had surveillance set up up there. We saw the planes coming in. We had reports where they came in, they dropped it off at Hangars 4 and 5; yet, we were not allowed to touch it.
TARPLEY
Could you just estimate, if at all possible, what percentage that might have been of the total drug-trafficking flow into the United States?
CASTILLO
Maybe one percent -- and that's a lot. One percent is a lot.

Now, you're asking me about monies? Millions of dollars...

We have a guy who was an honorary ambassador to Panama, who flew four-and-a-half million dollars from Ilopango into Panama. This was reported to the DEA Washington...

TARPLEY
Later on, toward the end of his term in office, George Bush came along and pardoned quite a number of the top figures in this, and I guess that had the effect of shutting down most of what was left of the official investigation.

What do you think of George Bush pardoning these people?

CASTILLO
George Bush was trying to save himself, and pardoning these people who were known traffickers was a slap in the face to us, the DEA agents who were out there putting our lives on the line, going undercover in Third World countries.
TARPLEY
And you've done undercover operations in Central America yourself.
CASTILLO
That's correct. So the fact that we could have another branch of our government heavily involved in narcotics trafficking was just devastating to me. And a lot of people go into the government and spend twenty years and then retire; it didn't take me twenty years to figure out that my own government was heavily involved in narcotics trafficking, and putting our lives on the line.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we lost five agents in Peru. We cannot work with Third World countries that are heavily involved in narcotics trafficking.

We had documented reports on Third World countries. For example, Guatemala. Guatemala is heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. The Cerezo government was heavily involved, sleeping with the cartels. Yet, it was a democracy, and the U.S. government did not want to do anything about it.

I went undercover on a Congressman down there. He was going to sell me 200 kilos of cocaine. When they came down to arrest them, I was told by the U.S. embassy not to arrest him, because we were not there to embarrass the Guatemalan government, but we were there to help it.

The same thing happened in El Salvador. All the weapons that were being seized by the guerrillas were being sold to the cartels.

So, we spent $1.5 million a day in El Salvador for the past 10 years, and they couldn't win the war.

TARPLEY
Well, let's sum up now. We have a few minutes left. Do you think that Oliver North is qualified to be a United States Senator?
CASTILLO
No. He is a convicted felon. He lied to Congress, he is a chronic liar. He lies to everybody. A lot of people feel that he can be forgiven for what he did, but what I don't think they realize is the fact that he cannot justify the narcotics trafficking that his organization conducted in the 1980s. And he cannot guarantee to me the fact that nobody, or none of those drugs that were being smuggled into the U.S., that people died of, was not Contra cocaine. So, he's got to take responsibility for what is happening on our streets today, the cocaine epidemic that we have.

We have more cocaine on the U.S. streets now than we did ten years ago; yet, we spend billions of dollars in Third World countries trying to combat this trafficking.

But Oliver North should be in jail, and not be running for the U.S. Senate...

TARPLEY
Would you think that the Virginia voters ought to have the right to see Oliver North's DEA file?
CASTILLO
Absolutely. It's there. Whether the DEA wants to continue the conspiracy to cover it up is a different story...
TARPLEY
You tried to tell your story inside the federal agencies for quite a number of years, we've seen, with very limited results, and then you turned to your book, Powderburns.

What made you decide to get into writing books?

CASTILLO
I was sick to my stomach when I saw Oliver North up there. Everybody looked up to him as a hero, "Oliver North for President", and so forth.

I had to tell my story...

I can live with myself now. North has to hide. What conscience does he or his family have, that they know that his organization is responsible for a lot of deaths in the U.S.? For the epidemic cocaine addiction that we have? What does his family think about it?

TARPLEY
Well, I understand you're going out on the stump in Virginia now, in the closing days of the election campaign?
CASTILLO
Yes, that's correct. I've always made the assumption that I'm going to go out there and try. I'll never quit. I'll go out there, tell them what I know. If people want to listen to me, I'm there. If they don't, it's their prerogative. It's a free country. If they want to elect an official who is a documented trafficker and a convicted felon, then that's their prerogative.

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

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