The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Some-times they brought guns, sometimes they took U.S. products such as washing ma-chines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia. Each time, Ochoa said, they took back drugs." In her 1987 sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Senate Subcom-mittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism, Palacio acknowledged that she could not confirm the operation was being conducted by the CIA. But, she added, "Obviously, what I saw raised many questions about the source of the U.S. weapons which I know Ochoa has obtained."   

Wars Go Better With Coke  
That was not the only time such an exchange was witnessed by the Puerto Rican born Palacio, a former airline employee who married an upper-class Colombian whose social circle included "people deeply involved in the drug trade." Concerned for the safety of her daughter, she eventually volunteered to work with the FBI because, she said, "I was angry about what drugs were doing to the people I knew and to the United States Government itself."   

As an FBI operative, Palacio would later realize the extent of the damage done to the United States Government by the guns-for-drugs exchanges that permeated the hemisphere during the early-to-mid-1980s. "To my great regret," she testified, "the Bureau has told me that some of the people I identified as being involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency." And, according to Palacio's deposi-tion, it was not only the CIA that was involved with drug smugglers. Palacio told Senator Kerry that she spoke to the FBI about many individuals with the U.S. government that were involved in illegal drug operations. "We have extensively discussed drug-related corruption in the United States, including a regional director of U.S. customs, a federal judge, air traffic controllers in the FAA, a regional director of immigration, and other government officials." Wanda Palacio is only one of scores of people to come forward with first-hand evidence of officially sanctioned transfers of drugs for covert policy ob-jectives, and Baranquilla is but one of many transshipment points in the hemi-sphere whose operations would be mir-rored by the unloading of drugs from secret flights into private and military airfields for delivery into the streets and suburbs of America.   

George Bush: "The Man Who Knew Too Little"  
Celerino Castillo III is a 15-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Agen-cy who observed first-hand such an operation at Ilopango airport, where drugs were smuggled in a military facil-ity under the direct control of the CIA and Lt. Col. Oliver North during his heady days at the National Security Council. Castillo saw the light ten years ago, on January 14, 1986, the day he met then-Vice President George Bush at a Guatemalan embassy reception. The lead DEA agent in Central America tried to tell Bush that "something funny" was going on at Ilopango. "But he just shook my hand, smiled and walked away from me," Castillo recently recalled. Later that same day, he says, Bush met with Oliver North and contra leader Adolfo Calero.   

Castillo went on to gather evidence that was documented in a Feb. 14, 1989 memo to his Guatemala-based DEA supervisor. He detailed how known traffickers with multiple DEA files used Hangars Four and Five for drug smug-gling and obtained U.S. visas, despite their backgrounds. According to Cas-tillo, "the CIA owned one hangar and the National Security Council ran the other."   

"There is no doubt that they were running large quantities of cocaine into the U.S. to support the contras," Castillo said in a 1994 interview with the authors.  

"We saw the cocaine and we saw boxes full of money. We're talking about very large quantities of cocaine and millions of dollars." According to Castillo, "my reports contain not only the names of traffickers, but their desti-nations, flight paths, tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight."   

Further evidence of the contra-cocaine connection supporting Castillo's accounts was obtained by the authors nearly ten years ago, in the form of an internal document of the since-dis-banded House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. In a syn-dicated Newsday article on March 31, 1987, we revealed the contents of the eight-page June 26, 1987 memorandum which stated clearly that "a number of individuals who supported the contras and who participated in contra activity in Texas, Louisiana, California, and Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicara-gua, and Costa Rica, have suggested that cocaine is being smuggled in the U.S. through the same infrastructure which is procuring, storing, and trans-porting weapons, explosives, ammuni-tion, and military equipment for the contras from the United States."   

Send Money, Guns and Cocaine  
Drugs, weapons and money launder-ing have always been tools of the trade for U.S. clandestine operations abroad. But never in United States history has the importation of cocaine risen so dra-matically as it did during the Reagan Administration's clandestine war against the government of Nicaragua, spear-headed by the "contras," a group of right-wing expatriate rebels pieced together by the CIA.   

The window of opportunity for the CIA-brokered contra-drug alliance came in 1984, when Congress passed the Bo-land Amendment of the War Powers Act. This watershed legislation cut off direct intelligence and financial aid to the Contras. But the Reagan Administration continued the clandestine war (which began with a 1981 Executive Order) through the auspices of the National Security Council, which, by a legal technicality, was not considered an "intelligence" agency. Enter the Colonel, Oliver North, who directed NSC opera-tions from the basement of the Execu-tive Office Building.   

Under North's stewardship, the $30 million in aid cut off by legal means was made up through covert means, namely, the sale of weapons to Iran and the exchange of CIA allies' drug profits for clandestine sanctions which allowed co-caine to be imported and sold up north, often using the very same planes which flew weapons south to the contras.   

The combination of contras and drug dealers was a marriage made in heaven, former Narcotics Committee counsel Jack Blum recalled recently during Con-gressional hearings. "There were facili-ties that were needed for running the war, clandestine air strips, cowboy pilots who would fly junker airplanes, people who would make arrangements for the clandestine movement of money." 

"Every one of those facilities was a perfect facility for someone in the drug business. So there were people who were connected very directly to the CIA who had those facilities, and allowed them to be used, and indeed, personally profited from their use."   

Blum's dramatic charges are supported by a former high-level supervisory CIA officer. Alan Fiers, the former chief of the CIA Central American Task Force, stated in a sworn deposition to the Congressional Iran-Contra committees that "we knew everybody around [Southern Front contra leader Eden] Pastora was involved in cocaine...His staff and friends...were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling."   

According to Miami-based John Mattes, a former federal public defender and Iran-Contra investigator for Senator Kerry, "what we investigated, which is on the record as part of the Kerry Committee Report, is evidence that narcotics traffickers associated with the contra leaders were allowed to smuggle over a ton of cocaine into the United States. Those same contra lead-ers admitted under oath their associa-tion and affiliation with the CIA."  

The North Connection  
During his recent testimony, Blum also raised the issue of Oliver North's notebooks, kept contemporaneously with his contra resupply effort. Even after North's lawyers were allowed to expurgate the notebooks, many of the pages made available to investigators still contain numerous references to contra drug trafficking. For instance, on July 9, 1984, North wrote that he "went and talked to [contra leader Frederico] Vaughn, [who] wanted to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, wanted aircraft to pick up 1500 kilos." In another notebook entry on July 12, 1985, North writes, "$14 million to finance [arms] came from drugs."   

In a December 1986 interview with the authors, Jesus Garcia, a Miami-based North network operative said "it is common knowledge here in Miami that this whole contra operation was paid for by cocaine...I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together un-der one roof, weapons that I [later] helped ship to Costa Rica."   

A September 26, 1984 Miami police intelligence report stated that money supporting the illegal Contra training effort in Florida "comes from narcotics transactions." This memorandum, written at a time when Attorney General Janet Reno was the chief state prosecu-tor in Florida, has every page stamped "record furnished to George Kosinsky, FBI."   

On March 16, 1987, U.S. Customs seized a plane from a narcotics trafficker who was involved with the contras. On that plane they discovered the address book of Robert Owen, Oliver North's eyes and ears in Central America. Owen, a former aide to Dan Quayle, met with Costa Rican-based CIA asset John Hull and Oliver North on many occasions.   

In March of 1989, Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias barred Oliver North, John Poindexter, Major Gen. Richard Secord, former U.S. Ambassador Louis Tambs, and former CIA Costa Rican Station Chief Jose Hernandez from entry into Costa Rica.   

Arias was acting on recommenda-tions by a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The Costa Rican investigation was triggered by "the quantity and frequency of the shipment of drugs that passed through" land and secret airstrips con-trolled by "southern front" CIA point man John Hull. Hull worked extensively with North in setting up the "Contra &" front in Costa Rica.   

In his notebooks, North talked about "the necessity of giving Mr. Hull protection." According to the Costa Rican investigation, and bolstered by other North entries and Blum's testimony, more than a half dozen drug pilots were provided by General Manuel Noriega, based on requests from North. Accord-ing to the Costa Rican congressional commission, "these requests for contra help were initiated by Col. North to Gen. Noriega. They opened a gate so their henchmen could utilize Costa Rica for trafficking in arms and drugs." Hull would be later indicted by the Costa Rican Attorney General on drug trafficking charges and ultimately smuggled out of the country by a U.S. DEA agent.   

According to North's notebooks, he met with Noriega twice during a time when the U.S. government had documented evidence that Gen. Noriega was involved in the Columbian drug trade.   

Echoes of an Error  
Testifying in the same room where Wanda Palacio testified before the Kerry committee nearly a decade ago, Blum echoed her observation about the way law enforcement and other officials looked the other way when the CIA-backed contras were involved in drug operations.   

"What is true is the policy makers absolutely closed their eyes to the criminal behavior of our allies and support-ers in that war. The policy makers ignored their drug dealing, their stealing, and their human rights violations," said Blum. "The policy makers, and I stress policy makers, allowed them to compen-sate themselves for helping us in that war, by remaining silent in the face of their impropriety, and by quietly under-cutting law enforcement and human rights agencies that might have caused them difficulty."   

During the heyday of the CIA-contra-cocaine connection, between the passage and repeal of the Boland Amendment, in 1986, every market indicator of the cocaine glut in America went off-scale. As Wanda Palacio as-tutely observed in 1987, "Three years ago (before Boland), the price of co-caine was $50,000 per kilo. Today it is $20,000 and sometimes you can get it for $15,000 to $18,000. The market for the cocaine isn't smaller -- so the lower price is a result of having supply in-crease even more than demand has."   

U.S. Invaded By Contras  
Something happened during the "contra" period in the Americas, specifically during the Boland period from 1984-86, and the evidence of a clandes-tine program which imported drugs to further political agendas is overwhelm-ing, officially, medically and statistically. Today the CIA is being called on to answer the questions raised by the recent "Dark Alliance" investigative series in the San Jose Mercury News. But the true CIA-contra-crack connection did not really begin in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles or New York, nor does it end with the CIA.   

The Central Intelligence Agency was only the tactical arm of an even larger global "contra" operation that was directed through the National Security Council, coordinated by Oliver North, conceived by the Reagan administration, executed by intelligence privateers and drug dealers, sanctioned by the CIA, and supported in principle by some members of the Democratic party, as well as Republicans.   
 
In their antidemocratic rush to overthrow Nicaragua's elected governor, a wide range of U.S. policy planners and their "contras" inflicted more than 50,000 casualties in Nicaragua. But in the United States, an entire generation of Americans has been destabilized, ma-jor elements of our government were diverted from ethical and legal behavior, and it will probably take the United States longer to recover from echoes of the crack epidemic than for Nicaragua to recover from the contra war. With the CIA-contra-cocaine operation we have, in effect, overthrown legal government and destabilized our own country.  

(Robert Knight was a founding producer, along with Dennis Bernstein, of the nationally syndicated Contragate/Undercurrents investigative news program which first reported on the CIA-contra-coke connection in 1986. Knight, now the host of "Earthwatch" on WBAI-FM, radio,New York, won the George R. Polk Award for Radio Reporting for his investigative work on Undercurrents. Bernstein is the host-producer of "Flashpoints," a daily public radio news magazine in the San Francisco area. Knight and Bernstein won the Jesse Meriton White Award for In-ternational Reporting and the National Fed-eration of Community Broadcasting award for the reporting of the Iran-Contra affair. Articles by the authors have appeared in Newsday, The San Francisco Examiner, The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Covert Action Quarterly, The Village Voice, Essence, Spin Magazine, and many other publications.)