Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 66

("Quid coniuratio est?")

THE PHONY WAR
An Interview with DEA Veteran Celerino Castillo

[...continued...]

-+- 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.

[...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."