Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 19

("Quid coniuratio est?")

CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE DEATH OF COLONEL JIMMY SABO

Tom Valentine's guest on Radio Free America (Shortwave, 5.065 MHz, mon-fri, 9 pm cst) on November 14, 1994 was private investigator Gene Wheaton. Mr. Wheaton has been looking into the suspicious death of the late Colonel Jimmy Sabo. Following is my transcription of that interview.

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TOM VALENTINE:
Well I understand that.

Now, when you began investigating the Iran-Contra affair, then you ran into Ollie North right off the bat.

GENE WHEATON:
That's right. In the actual beginning, '85, you know I didn't have any objection to covert operations, as long as they were in the interest of national security and were legal and congressionally approved and conformed to the Constitution. But within several months, the folks I mentioned who asked me to help 'em started feeding me information about renegade operations, about the theft of billions of dollars worth of taxpayer paid-for weapons out of U.S. military stockpiles and NATO stockpiles being sold, and the money being stashed in off-shore bank accounts: the weapons going to both our friends and our enemies, just to keep turmoil going in the world; and laundered drug money being used for covert operations.

In the beginning, I thought the contractor pilots were cheating on the National Security Council and Ollie North's people, and I briefed CIA director Bill Casey and Ollie North's staff and the Pentagon people, in early '86.

VALENTINE

I'll bet they were really surprised that somebody was tellin' 'em what they were doin'!

WHEATON

Yeah! [laughs] I was a little naive. They said, "Oh, really?" And then they all denied being involved. And thinking that I was only one guy out there, they told me if I thought I could expose it, to go ahead. So [they] sorta "threw down the gauntlet". But it wasn't just me. It was a large group of patriotic people that were helping me, and we...

VALENTINE

A lot of those folks ended up in jail, did they not?

WHEATON

Well... The wrong, not many of the right people ended up in jail! There was...

VALENTINE

Well I thought some of these guys who blew the whistle and ended up in jail were pretty much on the right side.

WHEATON

There were some people who ended up dead; some ended up in jail. But the ones who should have been in jail are the ones walkin' free today. [CN -- i.e., many of Wheaton's informants, the "whistleblowers", were either murdered or imprisoned. But the actual guilty parties avoided justice.]

VALENTINE

Isn't that how it works.

No, I was thinking of... There was a fellow, named Martin, who called me from jail in the south side. There's a Customs agent named "Ayers(sp?)" who went to jail trying to put the figure of the drug operations and the drugs and guns operations of the Iran-Contra...

WHEATON

He was a former special forces officer who was working under the south Florida "task force" of narcotics. That's Brad Ayers.

VALENTINE

Yes! Brad Ayers, yeah!

WHEATON

His credibility was destroyed by disinformation, much like they tried to do mine. The only thing [that] saved me is my strong family background, my friends, and my military and police reputation. But Brad really had a rough time, and is still having a rough time.

VALENTINE

Yes. In fact, I've known about Brad for many years, and we were neighbors up in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I will be... I've never brought him on as a guest! One of these days I may let him tell his whole story. It's a hair-raiser.

WHEATON

It certainly is. He's got a major, major... He had to fight through the legal system in a lawsuit to try to obtain records out of the CIA and Customs and U.S. Marshalls Office about bad stories that were spread about him. He's got the documentation now. I think he's taking some legal action.

VALENTINE

Yes, he's tryin'. That's why I'm sayin' I'd like to get him back on the show.

Now we had a character that came on this show; his wife came on this show many times. He is said to be still in prison, over in Austria, but I believe he's sittin' there, countin' his money -- and that is Gunther Russbacher(sp?).

WHEATON

Yes... I've avoided getting involved in that thing because I know very little about him. Plus, I don't... The problem with Gunther Russbacher that I see -- he's called me 2 or 3 times, while he was in jail, but I've never met him...

VALENTINE

Uh-huh [understands].

WHEATON

...and I would try to pin him down on things. But like a lot of guys involved in the covert operations community, these guys, as part of their trade, are pathological liars, and they will intermix the truth with fiction. When the truth would help 'em, they will still tell you a lie. And he had so many conflicting stories that he was saying to me that I couldn't determine whether he was real or a phony. So I...

VALENTINE

It drove ya nuts, didn't it!?

Yeah, he even... Uh, Ross Perot tried to get some facts out of him and couldn't do it.

WHEATON

I understand that. Yes.

VALENTINE

Yeah. O.K. Now. I'm gonna ask your opinion on one of 'em. I believe that Inslaw, [the] theft of that software, is one of the biggest crimes in the history of American government. Right up there... Iran-Contra are all part of it. And I'm just wondering if you've had any, run across anything of that Inslaw case.

WHEATON

Well, I have. Early on, Bill Hamilton contacted me. And I've had several meetings with him, back in Washington, and gave him a little advice. It's a very convoluted thing, but it was one of the biggest rip-offs by the U.S. Justice Department and the intelligence community [that] I have ever seen in my life. Every time a judge ruled in his favor, that judge lost his job.

I know the people who actually sold his software overseas. And I've given that information to him (I don't want to discuss it over the air). But...

VALENTINE

Yes. I understand.

I'm still following the Inslaw case. And of course, I've had another one, just like Gunther Russbacher, in Michael Riconosciuto!

WHEATON

Some of them, I think, may be covert operators that just can't distinguish the truth from fiction. And some of 'em are "ringers" that they send in on you just as confusion people, so that you don't know which way to go.

VALENTINE

Aren't they good at that.

All right. My guest is Gene Wheaton. Subject: investigating the kind of corruption that goes on in our government. If you'd like to join us, 1-800-878-8255. I'm Tom Valentine. This is Radio Free America.

[...commercial break...]

All right, we are back, live. My guest is Gene Wheaton.

You know, Gene, I'm sitting here as a journalist and a co-author for many, many people; I'm saying, "Have you arranged for your book yet?"

WHEATON

[laughs] No. I'd have to write it as fiction. Nobody'd believe it as the truth!

VALENTINE

I think maybe you and I'd better talk. Because I have worked with people before on this kind of book, and yes, we should talk. You're not fiction. And I think people who listen can tell there's credibility here.

Fred. Picayune, Mississippi. You're on with Gene Wheaton.

FRED

Hello, Tom! Nice to talk with ya. And good afternoon... Colonel, Colonel Wheaton, is it?

WHEATON

Chief warrant officer.

VALENTINE

Chief warrant officer.

FRED

O.K. I helped pull a whole bunch of marines [unclear] the 10th Corps on the beach at [unclear] back in December of 1950, and so consider myself a friend of the armed forces, since I was a member of the United States Navy.

But a question I have for you is, I happened to read a piece in the Louisville Courier-Journal, on the front page, about -- I guess it was the third week of January, 1987 -- in which a pilot who had been caught hauling weapons down to, I think it was... uh, Honduras -- I think it was Honduras -- and was bringing back loads of drugs!! He said it happened every trip! And he said that he would normally land on some deserted strip in Florida, in the middle of the night -- which he was on his way to doing, and he got word to go to Opalanca(?) [CN -- apparently a military airbase of some sort]. And he said, "Opalanca! You know what I'm carrying?!" And they said, "Don't worry. It's all taken care of."

And this was brought up during Oliver North's appearance, shortly after in, I forget... February, when he first appeared. There were a group who came into the hearing room with a huge banner. They unrolled this thing mentioning the drugs, so that the congressmen could see it. And they were dragged out of the building right away!

Do you know anything... I was wonderin', could you tell us anything about that or...

WHEATON

I was in Washington, D.C. when that banner was disclosed. It was flown, in the room there.

VALENTINE

Yeah. Unfurled it, huh? [chuckles]

FRED

...I saw it [unclear]. I was watching the hearings. It was the House hearings and they, these people walked in. And all of a sudden you've got this banner stretched out across the room...

VALENTINE

Well Gene saw it! Go ahead, Gene. Tell us what happened.

FRED

...and I will hang up and listen.

WHEATON

Well, there was a... This is just one of several. We have several pilots, who are former covert operations pilots, that are coming forward now because of the Sabo case and because of the 32 C- 130s. Some of them flew those C-130s. They're just now hearing about our investigation and it's starting to come out of the closet.

These guys were patriots, former military and Air America, CIA pilots, who were told that flying weapons down was covert operations, and flying drugs back would be "DEA stings". But they flew many, many missions and no sting operations ever happened. And then many of them became whistle blowers. Some of them were put in prison... uh, falsely, with evidence withheld at their trial, to shut them up.

But we do have, we do have a few of 'em that have come out of the woodwork.

[...to be continued...]

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."

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

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