Paul didn’t come back to Lubbock then. He stayed in Tegucigalpa and met with Lillian and recuperated from his wound.
It was late summer before I got the call to pick Paul up at the airport in Lubbock, and that fact leads us to the final part of this story.
Chapter Seven
When I picked Paul up at the airport, he had two duffel bags. One was black, and one was OD green. This was long before 9/11, so security protocols were different back then, but even by 1986 standards, what happened at the airport was odd.
Back then you could meet arriving passengers at the gate, but people arriving from overseas still had to go through customs. Paul had met his connecting flight to Lubbock in Mexico City, but the flight from Mexico to Lubbock had been a direct flight, so Paul joined everyone else on his flight going through customs. There, his bags should have been inspected, and he should have had to claim any items he’d bought or procured while outside the country. But that’s not what happened.
Paul carried both bags, and I could see him through the security lanes as he arrived in line. And as he waited, a curious thing happened. Two security agents in suits met Paul, and without saying a word, they picked up his two duffel bags. I watched as they walked past the agents who were searching luggage, walked around the whole security cordon, and placed Paul’s bags on a rolling cart. They pushed the cart past me and left it by the revolving exit doors. And then they just walked away.
Paul himself passed through customs with no problems, and as we chatted about how his wound was healing and how the weather had been in Lubbock, we just picked up his bags from the rolling carts and walked out of the airport and to my car. Easy as you please.
That was it. That’s the kind of thing the Octopus can do, and most people don’t even know it.
So what was in the bags? At that point, I didn’t know, and Paul didn’t say. But what was in them would lead to me severing my relationship with both Paul and the Octopus he served.
* * *
“We need to go to Arkansas,” Paul told me on our way to my truck.
I was used to him making strange requests, and I wasn’t at all surprised that he still had some work to do, but I was very surprised by his choice of destinations.
“Arkansas?” I asked. “What in the hell is in Arkansas?”
“We have to meet a plane.”
I put the truck in gear and joined the line of other vehicles exiting airport parking.
“Yeah, but why Arkansas?”
“Lots of reasons,” Paul said without looking at me. “But why ask? It’s above my pay grade.”
So in half an hour we were on a two-lane highway, heading east out of Lubbock. Seven hours later we got a cheap motel room in Texarkana and found an open liquor store that sold us a bottle of spiced rum. We drank and played cards until the wee hours of the morning.
* * *
Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport is just about one hundred miles due north of Texarkana in the backwoods of rural Arkansas, and not far from the Oklahoma border, which is off to the west of there.
I didn’t know the significance of Mena at the time, and wouldn’t for several years. At that time I didn’t know who the governor of Arkansas was, and I really couldn’t care less. As far as I knew, Mena was just a little town in the middle of nowhere, and for some reason, the powers that be who were financing the Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua, fighters I now considered to be my brothers-in-arms, were able to fly things in and out of Mena—and that was all I needed to know. Remember, the idea that Paul or anyone else associated with supporting the Contras might be involved in drug dealing was the farthest thing from my mind.
We arrived at the small airport just after noon. It was a Thursday, and it was summer and I didn’t have anything else to do. After the drop-off, Paul and I were planning on driving back to Dallas to party a little in the West End. Just as I’d found myself blending in with the Contras and the Nicaraguan villagers so easily, upon my return home I’d surprised myself by how fast I’d blended back into my old routine.
My boss held my job at the moving company for me; he was used to “college kids” taking summer trips, and he never had a problem with me taking time off. My other jobs—as a bouncer and an occasional bartender at a restaurant bar called The Copper Caboose—were just part-time anyway. My schedule was flexible, so spending time with Paul and partying over the weekend in Dallas seemed like a good idea to me.
I was surprised by the heavy security outside such a small and inconsequential airport. We were met at a gate by armed guards outfitted in army green. The truck was inspected and Paul vouched for me, and before long we were through the gates and heading toward a hangar just off the runway.
We were met there by a heavyset man who never said a word to us. He directed us into the hangar, and once we were inside he went straight to the bed of the truck, dropped the tailgate, and pulled the bags toward himself so he could inspect them. Paul and I got out and walked to the back of the truck. I noticed that men with guns were stationed throughout the hangar, and there were piles of similar duffel bags on rolling carts lined up in rows near the entrance to an office.
The fat man opened the black bag, and that’s when I first realized what we were doing.
He pulled out kilo after kilo of what looked to be cocaine (it was), and randomly tested some of the kilos before taping them back closed and placing them back in the bag.
The fat man then handed Paul a soft-sided briefcase, which Paul stuffed in the green bag. And that was it. Paul waved me back into the truck, and in minutes we were back through the gates and heading south toward Texarkana.
* * *
“I told you I didn’t want anything to do with drugs,” I said as we headed south.
Paul didn’t answer immediately. He pulled out a cigarette pack and popped a smoke into his mouth. He lit it and took several puffs before he spoke to me.
“You’re safer doing this than just about anything else you do in your life,” Paul said.
“Dealing drugs?”
“We’re not dealing drugs, Matt. Don’t be hysterical.”
“We’re—you’re—importing cocaine into America, Paul. And you just got me involved with it!”
“Calm down, man,” Paul said. “You’re a thousand times more likely to be arrested at that bar, serving drinks to minors or drunks, than you are to be arrested doing this. The government is in on it.”
That.
It was more than I really wanted to think about. More than I could handle at the time. Looking at the big picture didn’t make things better for me at that moment. I had to look at my own involvement. I needed to think about what it meant for me.
Years later, as an intake officer in a juvenile lock-up, I’d look into the eyes of crack-addicted children and I’d deal with gangbangers who sold crack and made more money than I did. But I didn’t know about crack cocaine or its impacts back then, not sitting in that truck that day after leaving the Mena airport with Paul. I just knew I didn’t want anything to do with it.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “And I don’t care what the drugs are for.”
“You should.”
“But I don’t. I don’t, Paul. What if we’d been pulled over on our way here? What if a DPS trooper had pulled me over?”
“We’d have been arrested.”
“Exactly!”
Paul blew a puff of smoke into the air. “Then we’d have been released.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
I drove on for another few miles before I spoke again.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I just don’t care. I told you I didn’t want to be involved with drugs, and I still don’t.”
“Okay, so don’t be involved with that part. No worries. Act like it never happened. I just thought you might want to tag along and see more of what goes on. This is a big operation. Lots of moving parts.”
I looked at Paul, glared at him. I was angry, and in some w
ays, I still am.
“You were wrong, man. I don’t… I don’t want to be involved.”
“What’re you saying?”
“Count me out. I’m out of all of it.”
Paul nodded, but he didn’t speak. Not for a long time.
* * *
I didn’t stop in Dallas, and I didn’t say a word to Paul about why. I just kept driving. We hit the interstate and turned west onto it, pointing the truck toward West Texas and home.
Just outside of Weatherford, Paul finally spoke again.
“We need to stop and get some food.”
“Okay.”
“I thought you were one of us.”
I didn’t want to hear that. Not at all. I’d lost friends in that attack too, but not for drugs. No way.
“I thought I was too, Paul. But it’s… it’s just too much. I’m a college kid, and I can’t be responsible for bringing drugs into the country. I don’t believe in that. Everything else we did… I thought… I still think it was good. But I can’t be involved in any enterprise where drugs are involved. I just can’t.”
“Then forget that part,” Paul said. “I told you that.”
“I can’t.”
“A lot of people are going to be disappointed if you quit.”
Paul looked over at me. There was no threat in his eyes at all. Just sadness, maybe.
“So?” It was all I could think to say.
Paul pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“I know you people, Americans, you are all coincidence theorists. You think everything is a coincidence. Like you just happened to meet Lillian at that pool party. And like someone just happened to hit you with a chair, ending your basketball fantasies. And then you just happened to see me talking to Lillian in the University Center. Then I just happened to invite you to a Pike party. Like all of this has just happened to you and no one has been directing the whole thing. Recruiting you took a lot of work, Matt. It’s just disappointing that you want to throw it all away.”
That whole litany of coincidences kind of barraged me, like I was in an avalanche. Then I thought about what he might really be implying.
“What’re you saying? Huh? I could be killed or something?”
Paul looked at me. He actually looked sad. Like he knew we couldn’t be friends anymore.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Matt. We’re not the Mafia.”
“It’s the drug business. People get killed.”
Paul sighed. “Just… just forget it. Nothing like that is ever going to happen. And this is not the drug business. It’s the freedom business.”
“But I know too much.”
Paul laughed then. He laughed like I’d never seen him laugh before. When he stopped, I thought he was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
“You know too much, eh?” Paul said. “You know just enough to make you sound crazy to anyone you’d ever tell!” And that set him off again, laughing like a hyena.
We drove on in darkness. Every once in a while Paul would break out in giggles. I didn’t find the situation as humorous.
* * *
Paul was killed a month later in Nicaragua. He and a group of Contras were ambushed as they tried to blow up a bridge.
I only found out about it because I received a card in the mail that told me what had happened. There was no name on the card. No return address. But Lillian sent it. I know this, because inside the card, instead of my name it said:
Dearest Lone Wolf
I never sought Lillian out, though I surely thought about it. I had a girlfriend then, and we were even living together. Besides, Lillian was part of that other world. That other planet. She was right: maybe in another life it could have worked out, but not in this one.
I also never went back to the Pike house. Never hung out with my old frat friends or went to parties with them. I tried to get back to a “normal life,” but something told me that I’d never see the world the same way again.
I was right.
* * *
Through all the years… through the Iran-Contra scandal, through the Clinton years, through Waco and all the things I’ve learned since then, the thing I take away from my glimpse of the Octopus is this:
The little tiny bit of action I saw was amazing and frightening in its scope. It affected every human on the planet, and the world we live in is fundamentally different, and harsher, because of it.
The “conspiracy” involved six different presidential administrations, including presidents from each major party. At some level, the administrations of Carter, Ford, Reagan, Clinton, and both of the Bush men were involved. It didn’t matter whether they were reportedly liberal or conservative. They were all in on it at some level, and they were all in it together. Bush Sr. worked with then-Governor Clinton to make use of the Mena airfield. Carter’s CIA chief, Stansfield Turner, fired 820 field agents to make sure that those agents would be available to George H. W. Bush and his shadow CIA. Democrat. Republican. Didn’t matter. Still doesn’t. It’s all one beast.
I learned that it truly is all one, and that the false left/right dialectic is just a tool used by the Octopus to get what it wants and to hide itself in plain sight. I learned that conspiracies are fascinating because they exist. And that calling something a conspiracy is the easiest way for the Octopus to occlude reality with a big cloud of ink.
I learned that the drug war is as phony as most of our other wars, and that the “war on terror” is no different. All of these wars are just tools used to manipulate people into accepting things they wouldn’t accept otherwise.
Through my very short time in law enforcement, five years after my time in Nicaragua, I learned that decisions made by people in power have very real impacts on the lives of very real people.
Maybe I’m more cynical now than I would have been otherwise—in fact I know I am—but I’m glad to not be blinded by the ink anymore.
I know the Octopus exists, and now you do too.
About the Conspiracy Theory:
The Octopus
The term “conspiracy theory” itself is somewhat of a conspiracy. It’s a term used to dismiss an idea, philosophy, or story without any real attempt to embrace or refute it. Even if upwards of 85 percent of the public believes that a conspiracy did indeed take place (take the Kennedy assassination, for example), the term “conspiracy theory” forever hangs over the event, obscuring even scholarly attempts to examine and explain exactly what happened. This is because professional scoffers, usually mind-numbed automatons who are handed propaganda declarations by whoever happens to be in power at the time, have succeeded in convincing a goodly part of the world’s population that conspiracies are always crazy and that our lives are ruled by coincidences, however farfetched.
If you ever hear anyone say “no secret can stay a secret for very long,” you’ve found yourself a coincidence theorist. Be careful around them.
The fact is that whether secrets are revealed or not has very little to do with whether a conspiracy itself is ultimately revealed and accepted as the probable truth. Before his death, E. Howard Hunt—CIA officer, Nixon administration employee, and notorious Watergate “plumber” (part of a secret group Nixon hired to silence leaks about his administration)—admitted on tape to participating in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy (something that had long been suspected), but the same scoffers still throw up their hands and say, “Listen, if there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, someone would have talked by now.” In fact, there are hundreds of hours of interviews, confessions, et cetera concerning the Kennedy assassination—but coincidence theorists still claim that it can’t have been a conspiracy or someone would have blabbed.
I’ve only met a handful of people in my life who didn’t believe in any conspiracy theories at all, and as a rule they are, without exception, joyless robotic dullards who blindly follow and believe any authority whatsoever so long as what they’ve said lines up with whatever the person already wanted to believe. You definitely don’t
ever want to have a drink with anyone so unwilling to believe that intelligent humans, working in their own self-interests, often do things that are wrong and try to keep them a secret.
Conspiracies—even big conspiracies—have existed for a very long time, and they always will exist so long as humans desire to wield power and influence over other humans. Anyone who doesn’t think so is naïve.
The conspiracy to arm and equip the FDN (the Nicaraguan Contras) has long since passed into the collective consciousness as established fact. The conspiracy (despite the denials of coincidence theorists that conspiracies exist) has been exposed. People were arrested. Some lost their jobs. A few did prison time, while others got off on technicalities. Drug dealers, men and women operating front businesses, politicians both in Nicaragua and the U.S., and military advisors have all publicly told the story of what was going on.
The only part of the conspiracy that has remained cast in shadows (under the umbrella of confusion called “conspiracy”) is the part played by the CIA and major political leaders. The existence of the Octopus, the “shadow CIA” that operates on behalf of the U.S. intelligence infrastructure while giving it cover and plausible deniability, is the story I’m sharing with you. It’s the part you can choose to believe or deny—whatever suits you. The rest of this… the war in Nicaragua, the creation of the Contras by agents working for U.S. intelligence, the recruitment of college students and ex-military members as soldiers and mules, the importation of drugs into the United States by criminals being shielded and protected by agents working on behalf of American intelligence and law enforcement… these are established facts. For more details, I highly recommend the book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, by Gary Webb. Gary worked hard to expose the U.S. government’s involvement and complicity in the crack cocaine explosion. In 2004, he committed “suicide.” He apparently, according to official sources, shot himself twice in the head with a pistol. But his book is still out there, so if you’re interested, go read it. I think you’ll find it educational.
Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy Page 25