Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1 Num. 97

("Quid coniuratio est?")

TERRY REED / JOHN CUMMINGS INTERVIEW

[...continued...]

TERRY REED [continues]:
But yeah, I was in intelligence, in support of Air America's operations over in Thailand. And that's where I met several of the key players that would later surface in the Iran-Contra scandal, you know, years later, in 1986.

But after becoming disillusioned with peacetime military, I got out, honorably, and went into a field, a very technical field, which just by accident... I mean, I chose it, I was attracted to it, then found out once I was in it that it was full of KGB and all kinds of espionage activity. So I was "resurrected" and recruited to work undercover for both the FBI and CIA, monitoring the pilfering of defense department secrets to Moscow by both Hungarian firms as well as the Japanese.

And in the course of doing that, I met an undercover agent who was using the code name John Cathey, in Oklahoma in 1982.

DONAHUE

Let me stop you right there. We've gotta take our break. When we come back, we want the rest of the story.

Terry Reed. John Cummings. The book is Compromised.

[...commercial break...]

DONAHUE

We're back. Tom Donahue, "America's Town Forum", patriotism in action.

In order to have a better phone sounding quality, we're gonna have Terry out of the mix for just a few minutes here, and we're gonna stay with... Uh, actually, we're gonna stay with Terry [Reed] and come back to John Cummings in just a minute or two.

Um, Terry, let's talk about this [John] Cathey figure. Who was that?

REED

Well I was up to 1982. And through the result of working for a little over a year and a half with the FBI in Oklahoma City, this operation I was working on expanded overseas. And they had to bring in the CIA and I was introduced to this guy, John Cathey, who subsequently becomes Oliver North, the man reporting to the National Security Council on the famous Toshiba case, the case in which Toshiba Machine Tool was stealing American propeller technologies. The Soviets wanted quiet-running propellers for their nuclear submarines. And we had invented that and they were using this Japanese machine-tool company to gain access to that technology. That's how I came into play with Oliver North in 1982.

DONAHUE

How long-standing was your relationship with Oliver North?

REED

Well, for quite a while. It went on through, I must say, mid-to- late '85, when I moved to Mexico. I was sort of handed off into another operation that had found its genesis in western Arkansas. But North and I, being veterans, hit it right off. And philosophically we agree. I think if you read the book you know (as I believe you have) right in the beginning, we start off with an Oliver North conversation and our mutual disdain for...

DONAHUE

...Nixon and Kissinger.

REED

Nixon and Kissinger. Yeah.

DONAHUE

Um-hmm [understands].

REED

But our attraction came primarily not only through our philosophical alignment but our shared war stories and what not.

But it put me in a perfect position in 1983, late 1983, to be introduced to a man by the name of Barry Seal, Adler Berriman Seal, who was also a CIA operative working out of a little town called Mena, Arkansas, in western Arkansas. So that's where the story sort of launches off into I think what is probably the most explosive element of the book.

DONAHUE

Absolutely. And we have Oliver North running for the United States senate.

REED

Um-hmm [understands].

DONAHUE

Many feel he was set up and betrayed in the Iran-Contra affair. But so many don't know his role in this {1}... And I'll let you spell it out. What was Oliver North's role in Mena, Arkansas?

REED

Well I consider this, him, the oversight agent. Certainly reporting directly either to CIA director Casey or to someone very close to him. The support that we received and the materiel we had access to was just phenomenal. This was not a real low key operation, even though it was in a very remote region of western Arkansas.

But the Oliver North that I knew was sort of a very loose, business manager type that didn't micro-manage anything but let [Barry] Seal pretty much run the operation. And I was just, of course, subordinate to Seal. And primarily my job, initially -- I'm a 3,000-hour plus flight instructor -- my job was to train Nicaraguan nationals to fly aerial delivery aircraft, the very same type of aircraft that was shot down, that exposed, the whole Iran-Contra affair. That C-123 aircraft was the type of aircraft that, ultimately, my students would be upgraded to down in Nicaragua -- down in Honduras, actually -- once they graduated from the basic program we had set up in Arkansas.

DONAHUE

And was Mena, Arkansas, chosen for its topography and also Governor Clinton, and they felt he would cooperate in paramilitary operations?

REED

The way I answer that, Tom, is I grew up in southwest Missouri. And there was a phenomenal difference between the economy of Missouri and Arkansas [when] I was a child. In fact, I've lived along the border of Mexico and the U.S., and it was almost the same radical difference when you crossed that state line back when I was a younger man. You were in beautiful country, but very impoverished. Something was holding the state back economically. I, as a young man, didn't know what that was. But I later came to understand its archaic banking laws, and a thing called the Arkansas Usury Law that prevented banks in the state from lending out money that exceeded 10 percent interest, and a law that prevented their banks from having linkage to banks outside the state, pretty much kept a ruling elite in power in Little Rock and elsewhere. And kept the majority of the populace impoverished.

DONAHUE

You call it a Banana Republic.

REED

We make a term that, certainly the political environment that existed in Arkansas, even in the '80s, the early '80s, was very comparable to a third world government environment in that you had a very small, ruling elite.

DONAHUE

L.J. Davis says the same...

REED

Yeah.

DONAHUE

...after his investigation.

REED

I think he stole that from our book. But...

DONAHUE

O.K. But he gave a lot of credit and attribution to both of you during his interview with us.

REED

O.K. That's good. I would sure have liked to have had honorable mention in his article, since he did, in fact, use our book as one of his research guides. But I guess that's journalism, if John Cummings agrees with me.

DONAHUE

Well, at least he's giving you credit throughout interviews he's doing...

REED

Great.

DONAHUE

...coast to coast. So I feel very much... Well, we'll talk more about that when we come back.

Our special guests, John Cummings and Terry Reed.

[...to be continued...]

---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------- {1} "But so many don't know his [Oliver North's] role in this..." But after all, every damn fart in the O.J. Simpson trial is just so much more important, so much more newsworthy, that of course "many don't know North's role in this". After all, really important news must take precedence.

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

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

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