SECRET TEAM OF WEAPONS DEALERS by Vince Bielski
A "secret team" of former CIA and military officials and arms dealers are responsible for the covert weapons shipments to Iran and the contras under the direction of fired White House aide Lt. Col. Oliver North.
Members of the "secret team" came together in the secret war against Cuba in 1961, and have since been involved in "political assassination" programs in Laos, Vietnam, Chile and now Nicaragua.
The "secret team," through an association with known Mafia leaders, has resorted to opium and cocaine trafficking to finance their operations.
Edwin Wilson, the ex-CIA operative convicted for selling explosives to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, was an active member.
These allegations are part of a lengthy affidavit filed this week in a Miami federal court in support of a law suit brought by Dan Sheehan, an attorney with the Christic Institute in Washington. The suit names 29 alledged operatives in the contras arms network as defendants.
The suit alleges that the defendants supplied the C-4 explosives which were used in the May 1984 assassination attempt against contra leader Eden Pastora in Nicaragua in which eight people were killed and Pastora injured. The plaintiffs, Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, are American journalists who are sueing for personal injuries they suffered from the bombing.
The Christic Institute, a church funded public interest law firm, has taken on controversial cases in the past, such as the suit against Kerr McGree Nuclear Corporation on behalf of Karen Silkwood. And it was while Sheehan was defending a sanctuary worker that he received information which led him into the investigation of the contra arms supply opertation.
In March 1984, he learned from a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that FEMA had a highly secret plan to "deputize" government and State National Guard personnel for the purpose of interning 400000 undocumented Central Americans in detention centers in the event that President Reagan launched "Operation Night-train"--a military invasion into Central America.
The plan also called for the distribution from U.S. military bases of hundreds of tons of weapons to be used by newly created State Defense Forces, composed of civilians, who would help enforce the "State of Domestic National Emergency" during the invasion. Sheehan learned from a Louisiana State National Guard Colonel that a State Defense Force in Louisiana planned to give half of the weapons it received to the contras.
In Miami, former U.S. military personnel and active National Guard units had organized a para-military organization, called Civilian Military Assistance, to arm, train and fight with the contras. The group, headed by Tom Posey, obtained "surplus" military equipment from the 20th Special Forces Unit of the U.S. Army in Alabama, Sheehan learned from a member of the group.
In June 1984, Sheehan was informed a man who working with the para-military organization in helping arm the contras also claimed to be a "personal representative to the Contras of...Lt. Col. Oliver North." His name is Robert Owen.
One year later, Sheehan began putting this information into a law suit when he learned that Posey, Owen and others were allegedly involved in the bombing of the Pastora press conference which caused physical and personal injury to the two American reporters.
Sheehans investigation also led him to the discovery of a "secret team" of former high ranking U.S. officials and officers who oversaw the procurement and shipment of weapons to the contras to to Iran. Through Posey, Owen and other they allegedly supplied the explosives for the press conference bombing. The "secret team" includes former high-ranking CIA officials Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, ret. Air Force Gen. Richard Secord, ex-CIA operative Edwin Wilson, and two arms dealers, Albert Hakim (of Los Gatos) and Rafael Quintero, both of whom are U.S. citizens.
In the affidavit, which cites 79 seperate sources, Sheehan said he learned of the "secret team" from a former U.S. intelligence officer who worked in Iran, a retired CIA officer, and a former Air Force officer.
The intelligence officer discussed "the existence of a 'secret team' of former high-ranking American CIA officials, former high-ranking U.S. military officials and Middle Eastern arms merchants--who also specialized in the performance of covert political assassinations of communists...(and) which carried on its own, independent, American foreign policy--regardless of the will of Congress,...the President,...or the (CIA)," the affidavit reads.
The source said the "secret team" was set up in 1977 under the supervision of Shackley and Cline, who were then with the CIA. Wilson worked with Gadhafi "to secretly train Libyan anti-Shah of Iran terrorists in the use of deadly C-4 explosives," the affidavit reads. Wilson's real purpose was to gather intelligence on the anti-Shah terrorist missions, and then pass the information to Quintero, "who was responsible for the assassination of these Libyan terrorists,"
Wilson was convicted for his dealings with Gadhafi, and Shackley and Clines resigned under pressure from then-CIA director Stansfield Turner. Shackley and Clines then join with Secord and Hakim and "went private" continuing to run their "secret team," the affidavit reads.
This group--initially through the Egyptian-American Transport and Service Company--was "responsible for the entire supply of weapons...to the Contras," when the CIA wasn't directly providing them. They began arming the contras in August 1979, after entering "into a formal contractual agreement with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza" despite President Carter's order banning the sending of weapons to Somoza, the affidavit reads.
The CIA took over in 1981, but when the 1984 ban on U.S. support went into effect, North reactivated the private merchants. Quintero, operating through a Florida based corporation named Orca Supply Company--a company earlier set up by Edwin Wilson--saw to it that the supplies were delivered to the contras through John Hull, a U.S. citizen, who reportedly operates a contra base in northern Costa Rica on land he owns. Among the delivered weapons were the explosives used in the Pastor bombing, the CIA source said.
To fund the contras, the "secret team" resorted to the foreign military sales scheme used in Iran in which military equipment is bought from the U.S. government at the manufacturer's cost and sold to Iran at replacement cost. The profits are then laundered through front companies.
The Examiner reported in July that Secord, partners with Hakim in Standford Technology Trading Group International, was involved in the 1981 sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia, in which money from that sale financed the contra operation.
In another report, the Examiner said the weapons were also financed by an elaborate cocaine ring involing Columbia's largest cocaine dealers in which the drug moves from Columbia, through Hull's land, into the U.S at a level of one ton each week.
When the Reagan Administration decided to undertake the secret sales of arms to Iran in 1985, it was Shackley, Clines, Hakim and Secord whom they used to carry out the mission, the affidavit reads.
BACKGROUND
In 1961, Shackley, a CIA station chief in Miami, and his deputy Clines, directed the covert war against Cuba. A special unit formed to assassinate Castro, supervised by the "Mafia Lieutenant Santo Trafficante," included Quintero--and Felix Rodreguez and Luis Pasada Carillo--two ex-CIA agent who reportedly operate the contras arms network at an El Salvador air base. Pasada was involved in the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner.
After the covert war activists were caught smuggling narcotics into the U.S. from Cuba, the operation was shut down, and Shackley and Clines were transfered to Laos, where Shackley was made CIA Deputy Chief of Station and Clines continued as his deputy.
According to the affidavit, Shackley and Clines directed a secret program which trained and used Meo tribesmen "to secretly assassinated over 100000 non-combatant village mayors, book-keepers, clerks and other civilian bureaucrats in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand." The operation was funded by profits from an illegal opium trade.
A commander the political assassination program was ret. Army General John Singlaub, who has said publicly that he is helping arm the contras. North, a Marine Corps Major at the time, was one of Singlaub's deputies. Also involved with Shackley in Laos was Secord, then an Air Force General, the affidavit reads.
In 1971, Shackley and Clines, from their post the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations, directed the "Track II" operation in Chile which played a role in the assassination of Chilean President Salvador Allende, the affidavit reads.
In 1974, the two directed the Phoenix project in Vietnam, which carried out the political assassination of some 60000 non-Viet Cong civilians in an attempt to cripple Vietnam's political institutions.
"With their secret CIA anti-communist extermination program coming to a end,...(they) started their own private assassination business..."
) started their own private assassination business..."