Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 03

("Quid coniuratio est?")

TERRY REED / JOHN CUMMINGS INTERVIEW

[...continued...]

JOHN CUMMINGS [continues]:
I was following Adler Berriman Seal, Barry Seal, whom Terry mentioned. Now I knew him basically as a drug trafficker. I believed him to be a drug trafficker who was a CIA asset, of which there are many -- they use smugglers for many reasons -- but it turned out that he was really a CIA asset whose cover was being a drug trafficker. And when I got to Arkansas -- and I followed him up to Arkansas -- I began to see telltale signs of an intelligence operation: an airfield out in the middle of the woods, that nobody knew anything about.

And the more I dug, the more convinced I became that, obviously, this was an intelligence operation. It was being protected, certainly, by the federal government. But when you operate in any area, you have to make sure that the state understands, and co- operates with you. And I was really curious about that. And to cut it short, I came across Terry [Reed], who at that time was under indictment in Wichita, Kansas. And I approached him and we began to talk. And I began to see, you know. He showed me the connection between Oliver North, Barry Seal, and the whole operation. At first, he did not talk to me about Bill Clinton; it was much later on. And then I came to realize -- I had seen both [political] parties "in bed with each other" in Florida, and here, once more, was yet another local official, or a Governor, who made a pact with the Devil.

Um, you mentioned before, the "virus" that bit Nixon. I call it a power trip. And once somebody gets on that track...

TOM DONAHUE:
An aphrodisiac. Yeah.

CUMMINGS

...Yeah, yeah... they want power and they do what they have to to achieve it. And he made his Faustian deal with the CIA. Which he probably felt was good for his state.

DONAHUE

George Bush was a former director of the CIA. And George Bush... I guess you never leave the CIA. You always have ties or connections in some way unless you really t'eed them off and you're running for your life.

CUMMINGS

Well, there's an old saying. There's an old saying, "When does a CIA asset cease to be a CIA asset?" And the answer is, "When he's arrested." {1}.

And uh, but Terry, when I met Terry, he was not like the other CIA, uh many of the CIA assets I had met. And it was very clear to me that there was much more to this story. And of course Terry eventually was acquitted of this charge, which was one of the reasons I came to believe him. Because when I first heard his story I greeted it with the same skepticism I would use with anyone. But Terry's story checked out and the things he told me were true. He was in the places he said he was. And I came to see him as a kind of a "Rosetta Stone" {2} for me, as someone who's been searching along this path for many years.

DONAHUE

Hmm, I see. Now how... What are Bush's ties here? Is CIA background and the fact that he was vice-President at this time... How much "hands on" do you think Bush had with the Mena, Arkansas operation?

CUMMINGS

Lawrence Walsh says in his final report that George Bush was knowledgeable and involved...

DONAHUE

In the loop.

CUMMINGS

I'm sorry?

DONAHUE

He was in the loop, right?

CUMMINGS

He was not only in the loop. I think, from what I can see, he was in day-to-day charge of the operation.

DONAHUE

That was my impression: the loop master.

CUMMINGS

Yeah! And certainly (and Terry will get to this in a few moments), at this meeting at this army base outside Little Rock, where Bill Clinton attended, there was a CIA man, sent from Washington, who turns out to be none other than William Barr, who became George Bush's attorney general! And here was the man, sittin' here, tellin' Bill Clinton the way things were gonna be!

Now Terry was a witness to that, and he can tell it much better than I can. But there you have it all, right there.

DONAHUE

Amazing. Amazing.

But you feel both of, vice-President Bush (and later, President Bush), and Bill Clinton, were in on this? They were privy to what the operation was to accomplish?

CUMMINGS

Certainly. As was Ronald Reagan, in my opinion.

DONAHUE

Ronald Reagan, if... I would believe he might have been out of the loop. I suspect he may have been.

CUMMINGS

Well, whether he had daily briefings or not I don't know. He certainly... If he was out of the loop it was because -- It's like I heard on a television show recently, in a drama, he said, the President was sitting there with the CIA director and he said, "There are times when there are certain things a President just doesn't want to know." And he said, "And this is one of them." And this could be one of those situations.

DONAHUE

Well the contra effort, there was an obsession there with Reagan, and he was still wanting to fight communism. And so if he was told this was an operation that would benefit him, I'm sure he would have given total acceptance and approval.

CUMMINGS

Well Reagan was obsessed with this policy and he was determined to see it succeed. I mean, he wore a t-shirt that says, "I am a contra." I mean, the message was pretty clear.

DONAHUE

Why was Barry Seal selected? Why was he put in charge of the operation?

CUMMINGS

Well, I can give you my answer. (I think Terry probably knows much better.) He was a businessman, an expert with airplanes -- there probably wasn't a better pilot around. And he had been recruited way back in the early '70s, early on, by the agency. And he's a man who had worked his way into the confidence of the very top level of the Medellin cartel. I mean, he was an ideal man. Plus he was, from the way I learned of Barry Seal, from what Terry tells me, he was just a natural born leader and a very intelligent man.

DONAHUE

What about the Bush brothers? Bush's sons. Didn't they have connections to the Medellin cartel?

CUMMINGS

Well, Barry Seal alludes to that in our book. We... Terry didn't go into that in great detail. I can tell you that when... Before Seal died, he made some audio tapes of some meetings...

DONAHUE

How did he die?

CUMMINGS

He was assassinated, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1926 [sic] by the, uh the assassins were Columbians...

DONAHUE

You said "'26". Uh, you meant 19-what?

CUMMINGS

Did I say "'26"?

DONAHUE

Yeah.

CUMMINGS

1986.

DONAHUE

1986. O.K.

CUMMINGS

I beg your pardon. And he was assassinated. And I think he was assassinated because he became a major liability for both George Bush and Bill Clinton -- just as Terry became. And one of the reasons that Terry, as he mentioned, did this book, was to get this story out so that he didn't end up in an alley like Barry Seal.

DONAHUE

This book is his "insurance policy".

CUMMINGS

In a way. That's one of the arguments I used with Terry: to tell him that he would be safer with this story out than keeping it to himself.

DONAHUE

Um-hmm [understands].

We're gonna take our break. We'll come back. We're gonna continue our discussion, our interview. Both gentlemen will be with us the rest of this hour and next on many of these fine stations. Listen up. And we'll be right back.

[...to be continued...]

-------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------- {1} "When does a CIA asset cease to be a CIA asset? When he's arrested." From the old TV series, Mission: Impossible, "As always, if you are caught or captured, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

{2} "Rosetta Stone" -- A key that unlocks a mystery. The original "Rosetta Stone" was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's army. For ages, a way to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs had been sought, without success. The Rosetta stone had chiselled into it a message written both in ancient Greek and in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This was the key that unlocked the hieroglyphs.

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

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

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