Whiteout

by Alexander Cockburn

  Like Clinton, the CIA kept a low profile during the decade of controversy over Mena. The Agency repeatedly denied any activities at Mena, claiming at most that it was “a Rouge operation of the DEA.” Then, in 1995, with the Republicans newly in charge of Congress, Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa used his position as chairman of the House Banking Committee to launch a new investigation into money laundering, drug-running and intelligence operations at Mena. One of Leach’s first orders of business was to request that the CIA’s Inspector General, Frederick Hitz, review the agency’s files and prepare a report on Mena.

  The report was completed in November 1996. It remains classified, but a summary of the report was released by Leach. Though still a whitewash, the IG report for the first time admitted that the CIA did have a sustained presence at Mena through the 1980s and early 1990s. According to Hitz’s report, the CIA conducted “authorized and legal activities at the airport.” These activities included contracts for “routine aviation-related services.” They also involved a still top-secret “joint training operation with another federal agency.” The other federal agency is almost certainly the National Security Council, which the Inspector General’s report claims handled the “interface with local officials.” The investigation also confirmed L. D. Brown’s claim that he applied for a position with the Agency in 1984.

  The confession that Leach finally extracted from the CIA regarding its operations at Mena received scant notice from the press, with only the Wall Street Journal covering the report in any detail. The Post’s Walter Pincus wrote a short item on the report, faithfully echoing the CIA’s line that it had no involvement in “money laundering, narcotics trafficking, [or] arms smuggling.”

  Christopher Reed, a reporter with the Guardian, recalls asking a senior news executive at the Los Angeles Times if the paper had investigated the allegations of drugs and arms smuggling at Mena. “Yes,” the executive told Reed. “But nobody in authority would confirm it.”

  Such passivity on the part of the press allowed the CIA and Bill Clinton to portray the Mena scandal as, in the words of White House spin doctor Mark Fabiani, “the darkest backwater of right-wing conspiracy theories.”

  Sources

  The background for this chapter comes largely from a series of interviews by the authors and their colleagues Bryce Hoffman and JoAnn Wypijewski. The interviewees included Bill Duncan, Larry Nichols, Russell Welch, Terry Reed, Michael Riconosciuto, Mark Swaney, Skeeter Ward, Charles Black, Joe Hardagree, Tommy Goodwin, Rep. Bill Alexander and David Orr. Most of the background for Seal’s history as a smuggler and DEA/CIA agent during the 1980s comes from a chronology of Seal’s movements prepared by the DEA for Rep. William Hughes’s hearings on Seal. The story of how Seal was hired as an informant comes from testimony to the Hughes committee by his DEA handlers. Roger Morris and Sally Denton’s story, and Morris’s book, provided a key source for Seal’s life and his adventures in Arkansas. Their Penthouse article also details their encounters with the New York Times and the Washington Post. Jonathan Kwitny’s early story in the Wall Street Journal effectively dismantled the Reagan administration’s attempt to use Seal to link the Sandinistas to the drug trade. Bill Duncan’s tumultuous career at the IRS is recounted in congressional hearings investigating the retaliatory actions by senior officers at the agency.

  Allen, Charles F., and Jonathan Portis. Bill Clinton: Comeback Kid. Carol, 1992.

  Anderson, Jack, and Dale Van Atta. “Intrigue in the Ozarks.” Washington Post, March 1, 1989.

  ——. “Legacy of a Slain Drug Informer.” Washington Post, Feb. 28, 1989.

  ——. “Medellín Cartel Targets DEA Agents.” Washington Post, Sept. 16, 1988.

  ——. “Kings of the Medellín Cartel.” Washington Post, August 24, 1988.

  Arbanas, Michael. “Hutchinson Knew in ’83 of Seal Probe, Ex-IRS Agent Says.” Arkansas Gazette, Sept. 19, 1990.

  ——. “Truth on Mena, Seal Shrouded in Shady Allegations.” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 22, 1990.

  ——. “FBI Apparently Investigating Mena, Seal.” Arkansas Gazette, May 24, 1991.

  Bowers, Rodney. “Slain Smuggler Used Airport.” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 14, 1987.

  ——. “House Investigators Open Mena Probe.” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 17, 1987.

  Byrd, Joann. “Put on Hold.” Washington Post, Feb. 12, 1995.

  Cockburn, Alexander. “Say It with Flowers.” Nation, Feb. 10, 1992.

  ——. “Chapters in the Recent History of Arkansas.” Nation, Feb., 24, 1992.

  ——. “The Secret Life of a Parking Meter Manufacturer.” Nation, April 6, 1992.

  ——. “Clinton Cocaine Scares.” Nation, April 20, 1992.

  ——. “Time’s Attack on Nation” May 4, 1992.

  Cockburn, Leslie. Out of Control. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.

  Crudele, John. “Drugs and the CIA – A Scandal Unravels in Arkansas.” New York Post, April 21, 1995.

  ——. “Bombshell in Arkansas Investigations Brings Both Parties the Jitters.” New York Post, August 14, 1995.

  Eddy, Paul, Hugo Sabogal and Sara Walden. The Cocaine Wars. Norton, 1988.

  Epstein, Edward Jay. “On the Mena Trail.” The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 1994.

  Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. “Airport Scandal Set to Crash into White House.” Daily Telegraph. March 27, 1995.

  Gutman, Roy. “The World That Made Cocaine.” Washington Post, May 21, 1989.

  Haddigan, Michael. “ ‘Tat Man’ Key to Mystery.” Arkansas Gazette, June 26, 1988.

  ——. “The Kingpin and His Many Connections.” Arkansas Gazette, June 27, 1988.

  Henson, Maria. “Testimony Reveals Leak in Drug Probe: Cost Seal His Life Witness Says.” Arkansas Gazette, July 29, 1988.

  Isikoff, Michael. “Noriega Lawyer Scores Prosecution.” Washington Post, April 12, 1992.

  ——. “Dispatches from the Drug Front.” Washington Post, July 1, 1990.

  Kwitny, Jonathan. “Dope Story: Doubts Rise on Report Reagan Cited in Tying Sandinistas to Cocaine.” Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1987.

  Lardner, George. “Ex-CIA Airline Tied to Cocaine.” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 1987.

  Lewis, Charles, Alejandro Benes and Meredith O’Brien. The Buying of the President. Avon Books, 1996.

  Maranis, David. First in His Class: The Biography of Bill Clinton. Simon and Schuster, 1995.

  Mermelstein, Max. The Man Who Made It Snow. Simon and Schuster, 1990.

  Morris, Roger. Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America. Henry Holt, 1996.

  Morris, Roger, and Sally Denton, “The Crimes of Mena.” Penthouse, Feb. 1995.

  Morris, Scott. “Clinton: State Did All It Could in Mena Case.” Arkansas Gazette, Sept. 11, 1991.

  Morrison, Micah. “Mena Coverup? Razorback Columbo to Retire.” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 1995.

  ——. “Mysterious Mena.” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 1994.

  ——. “Mysterious Mena: CIA Discloses, Leach Disposes.” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 29, 1997.

  Nabbefeld, Joe. “Evidence on Mena/CIA Ties to Go to Walsh.” Arkansas Gazette, Sept. 10, 1991.

  Norman, Jane. “Arkansas Airstrip Under Investigation.” Des Moines Register, Jan. 26, 1996.

  North, Oliver, and William Novak. Under Fire: An American Story. HarperCollins, 1991.

  Parry, Robert. Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom. Morrow, 1992.

  Pincus, Walter. “Hitz Says Arkansas Town Not a Secret CIA Base.” Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1996.

  Reed, Terry, and John Cummings. Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. Shapolsky Publishers, 1994.

  Robinson, Deborah. “Unsolved Mysteries in Clinton Country.” In These Times, Feb. 12–18, 1992.

  Sharkey, Jacqueline. “True North.” Nation, June 13, 1994.

  Snepp, Frank. “Clinton and the Smuggler’s Airport.” Village Voice, April 14, 1992.

  Starr, John Robert. Yellow Dogs and D
ark Horses: Thirty Years on the Campaign Beat. August House Books, 1987.

  Tyrell, R. Emmett Jr. “The Arkansas Drug Shuttle.” American Spectator, August 1995.

  US Central Intelligence Agency. Inspector General’s Report on CIA Activities at Mena, Arkansas (Declassified Summary). Central Intelligence Agency, Nov. 1996.

  US Congress. House. Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary (Hughes Committee). Enforcement of Narcotics, Firearms, and Money Laundering Laws. Appendix I. – Chronology of Seal’s Role as Drug Trafficker and Confidential Informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Government Printing Office, 1989.

  ——. Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary (Hughes Committee). Enforcement of Narcotics, Firearms, and Money Laundering Laws. Testimony of Ernst Jacobsen, Drug Enforcement Field Agent. Ron Caffery, Chief of the Cocaine Desk in 1984, DEA; Frank Monastero, Former Assistant Administrator DEA; and Dave Westrate, Assistant Administrator DEA. Government Printing Office, 1989.

  ——. House. Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations. Continued Investigations of Senior-Level Employee Misconduct and Mismanagement at the Internal Revenue Service. Government Printing Office, 1991.

  US Executive Office of the President. “Transcript of Questions Asked of President William J. Clinton.” White House Press Office, Oct. 7, 1994.

  14

  The Hidden Life of Free Trade: Mexico

  The bulk of this book has addressed the collusion between the CIA and drug producers and traffickers. We have described how the political imperative of the Agency has guided it from the very moment of its inception into criminal associations. But as we have stressed earlier, it is always a mistake to regard the CIA as somehow a “rogue agency”: whether in recruiting Nazi scientists, in saving war criminals like Klaus Barbie, in nourishing the Southeast Asia drug crops, in protecting the transfer of drugs from Latin America northward, the Agency has always been following national security policy as determined by the US government. The Mexican saga and the role of the US banks display not just the collusion of a spy agency in narco-trafficking, but of the US banking industry as well. The looting of Mexico, the corruption of its institutions, was no distant affair, something mysterious like political corruption in Bangkok. Even as the Mexican state was on display as an entity as lawless as Chicago in 1928, even as a tsunami of drugs and drug money was coming north, the US government, backed by almost the whole of the US press, was loudly praising the Mexican kleptocracy run by the Salinas family as “reform-minded” and urging even closer ties.

  So though this book is mostly about the CIA, it would be unfair to the Agency not to stress that the patrons, facilitators and benefactors of the drug trade extend far into those US institutions in whose interest – to take the long view – the CIA toils so diligently. On the other side of the coin, the US government that has been bolstering the drug billionaires has also been assisting diligently in repressing popular movements of resistance, as we describe below.

  Around noon on February 7, 1985, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, one of the DEA’s top agents in Mexico, locked his badge and his service revolver in his desk drawer, left his office in the US consulate and headed out for a lunch appointment with his wife, Geneva. His wife waited at the restaurant for two hours, but Camarena never showed. She didn’t report his absence until the following morning, thinking he had been detained at work. Later the next day the DEA office in Guadalajara got a call from an anonymous tipster saying that Camarena had been kidnapped by a drug cartel headed by Miguel Felix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero. These were the same narco-traffickers whom Camarena had been investigating for the previous two years.

  Two witnesses were rounded up who reported that as he left the consulate Camarena was surrounded by five gunmen and shoved into the back seat of a waiting car. The witnesses said the gunmen appeared to be members of the Mexican secret police, the DFS. Another informant told the DEA that he had heard talk that the Gallardo-Quintero cartel was planning to kill “a lawman.”

  Two days later, the DEA learned that Rafael Caro Quintero was at the Guadalajara airport ready to board a private plane bound for Mexico City. The agents contacted the Mexican Federal Judicial Police and converged on the airport. The jet was surrounded by ten men carrying AK-47s, and Caro Quintero was approached by police Commandante Armando Pavón. To the astonishment of the DEA agents, Pavón and Caro Quintero shook hands, talked warmly and the plane was permitted to depart. Pavón told the American agents that everything was under control, because the armed guards were actually DFS agents who had been assigned to Caro Quintero by the secretary of the interior. The DEA later learned that Caro Quintero had offered Pavon $300,000 to permit his plane to take off.

  As the DEA later reconstructed the events, Camarena and his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelares, who had also been captured, were driven to a remote ranch owned by Félix Gallardo. Over the next thirty hours both men were subjected to savage beatings as the drug lords attempted to learn how much the DEA agent knew about their enterprise. Camarena was given repeated injections of amphetamines to keep him conscious throughout the session. The interrogation and the torture were tape-recorded by the drug gang and their associates in the DFS.

  Camarena, who was scheduled to be reassigned in March of that year, had become a major threat to the Guadalajara cartel. In the previous months he had directed stunning raids on two of their largest marijuana plantations. But more troubling, Camarena had also begun to unravel the ties between the cartel, the Mexican secret police and ranking politicians in the PRI.

  Finally, sometime on February 9, Camarena and Zavala were killed. Camarena apparently died when a Phillips-head screwdriver was shoved through his skull. Their corpses were discovered a month later in a shallow pit on a ranch in Michoacán state. The bodies were wrapped in plastic, the hands and feet bound. The DEA later determined that the two bodies had been dumped on the ranch after a bizarre raid by the DFS in which four rival drug lords where killed. They speculated that Camarena’s corpse had been left in Michoacán to implicate leftist politician Cuauhtémoc Cardenas in the murders.

  The Guadalajara cartel controlled Mexico’s largest marijuana operation and dabbled in opium production. But the cartel’s most profitable venture was its direct pipeline to Colombian cocaine. After stepped up interdiction efforts in south Florida in the early 1980s, the Colombians turned to Mexico as a transshipment point for their cocaine destined for US markets. Instead of merely taking a fee for hauling the cocaine across the border, the Guadalajara cartel took a share of the cocaine, often as much as 50 percent. This swiftly made them big players in the cocaine business and brought in a torrent of money. By some counts, the Felix Gallardo/Fonseca/Caro Quintero network was making $5 billion a year. In 1982, the DEA learned that Félix Gallardo himself was moving $20 million a month through a single account at the Bank of America in San Diego. The drug agency asked for the CIA’s help in investigating the money-laundering scheme, but the Agency refused.

  Indeed, the DEA was soon convinced that the forces behind the Camarena murder went far beyond the drug traffickers and corrupt Mexican police to include the CIA itself. Some agents at the DEA continue to believe that the CIA may have actually eavesdropped on the torture of Camarena.

  The first clues to a wider involvement came when investigators found two witnesses who said they had been present at meetings during which Camarena’s kidnapping and murder had been planned by cartel leaders and members of the Mexican security apparatus, the DFS. Also present at these sessions was Juan Matta Ballesteros, the Honduran drug king with ties to the CIA whom we encountered in a previous chapter.

  One witness, Hector Cervantes Santos, was at an October 1984 meeting when cartel leaders discussed how to deal with Camarena. Cervantes said it was clear to him that the cartel had fairly detailed knowledge of Camarena’s goings and comings and his key contacts. The DEA concluded that the cartel eithe
r had a mole inside the Guadalajara office or that the office had been bugged. Cervantes recalled that at one point during the meeting Matta suggested that Camarena should be captured and killed. “Silence is golden,” Matta said.

  Matta was the cartel’s principal contact with the cocaine barons of Colombia. He had introduced Félix Gallardo’s predecessor, Alberto Sicilia-Falcon, to Colombia’s largest cocaine wholesaler, Santiago Ocampo. Ocampo, was a progenitor of the Calí cartel, and was said by the DEA to be the mastermind of the “biggest cocaine ring in US history.” Matta, a Honduran chemist and transportation whiz, oversaw Ocampo’s logistics network and arranged political pay-offs in Panama, Honduras, Mexico and the United States. A DEA agent described Matta as being “at the same level as the rulers of the Medellín cartel.”

  As we described in a previous chapter, at the very moment when Matta was plotting the abduction and murder of Camarena, his company, SETCO Inc., was one of the key Contra transport companies. SETCO was hired by the Contras using CIA money to ferry weapons, soldiers and supplies to camps in Honduras and Costa Rica. Even after Matta had been fingered in the Camarena case, his companies continued to receive funding from the US State Department, taking in $186,000 for carrying “humanitarian” assistance to the Contras.

  Another DEA witness, Enrique Plascencia Aquila, says he saw Matta at a meeting at Ernesto Fonseca’s house in December 1984, where Camarena’s photograph passed around the room. Plascencia says the drug lords also reviewed a file on Camarena compiled by the DFS. According to Plascencia, the details of Camarena’s kidnapping were planned at this meeting.