TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Monday, January 26, 2004

From The Boston Globe 2003 06 20:

The Democratic leadership gave Kerry chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations and a charter to dig into the contra-drug connection. . . . The subcommittee published a report in 1989 that concluded the CIA and other US agencies had turned a blind eye to drug trafficking occurring on the fringes of the contra network. In many cases, traffickers were using the same airplanes, airfields, and other resources that the contras were using.

During the investigation, an Oregon businessman claiming CIA ties, Richard Brenneke, whose testimony was taken by Kerry's committee [charged] that Vice President George H. W. Bush's office had sanctioned a contra-drug smuggling operation.
[...]
The committee dropped the Brenneke angle.

Fromer Air Force intelligence officer Terry Reed says in his book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA, that he saw Brenneke at the Mena airport in Arkansas, describing him as "the person responsible for the skid-mounted cargo that was off-loaded into another Rich Mountain [Aviation] hangar." [p. 87]. Reed cites a deposition given by Brennake to the Arkansas Attorney General's office on June 21, 1991 in detailing Brennake's charges re: G. H. W. Bush:

Brenneke would later testify that most of the crates contained weapons and other gear to be used in the training program. He would also say that he found cocaine in some of the crates and while on the ground at Mena, called Donald Gregg, then-Vice President George Bush's chief of staff, and complained about the drugs. He quoted Gregg later as saying that it was none of his business. Brenneke later claimed his role in this affair was that of a money launderer for the Agency, that he worked out of Panama where the flight had originated, and that he had just thumbed a ride on the flight.' [p. 87]

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote about Reed's book for London's Sunday Telegraph 1995 03 26:

Larry Patterson, an Arkansas State Trooper, testified under oath this
month that there were "large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena Airport."
[...]
The plaintiffs in the suit are Terry and Janis Reed, who claim that they were embroiled in a US covert operation to assist the Nicaraguan Contras between 1983 and 1986. They say that the mission was based in Arkansas, with the alleged active involvement of Governor Clinton.
[...]
In a book published last year, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA, Terry Reed alleged that he was recruited by Oliver North to help train Contra pilots in aerial supply skills, and to put his machine tool expertise to use developing a clandestine network for the manufacture of untraceable weapons parts.

Reed also claimed to have been present in an ammunition storage bunker outside Little Rock in 1986 when North and other Reagan Administration envoys allegedly met Clinton to discuss the covert operation - and to reprimand the Governor for members of his entourage skimming off money earmarked for national security purposes.

Reed told Kerry Committee staffers about his relations with North, Clinton and Rodrieguez, and Rodrieguez's dealings with Bush:

To no avail, [Reed] had spent three days the previous month [September 1988] in Washington with an attorney for Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations.



There seemed to have been plenty of interest in Washington in the Reeds' story. "It all fits," they were told by subcommittee investigator Jack Blum. "It confirms our suspicions about Felix Rodriguez and what we suspected was really going on. Go back and tell your attorney to draft a proffer (a formal statement). I'm sure that either (Independent Counsel Lawrence) Walsh or Senator Kerry will want to question you under oath.

You'll be hearing from us soon." Trubey drafted the proffer, but there was never a call from Blum, Kerry, Walsh or anyone else. [p. 504]

The eventual Kerry Committee report did get into some connections between the Contras and drug-running. It even mentioned North and Rodrieguez. But no fingers were pointed at Bush or Clinton. The still-important report was buried almost as soon as it was released, and Kerry vocalized no serious objections to the hush-hushing.

Gee, do you think Kerry was covering for fellow Bonesman Poppy Bush?

Gregory Behar of Bones-founded (Henry "Baal" Luce, 1920) Time magazine thought it was a possibility. Until he was told not to, anyway. Again, from Reed's Compromised:

Behar stated that he felt there was strong evidence to prove that Senator John Kerry's investigator, Jack Blum, had actually helped to stymie the Mena investigation.

Blum's job as special counsel to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations was to provide investigative services to Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations and to funnel off pertinent leads he developed during the course of his investigation to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's office, which was seeking indictments involving the Iran-Contra affair. Blum had interviewed the Reeds extensively in Washington in 1988.

Behar had confided to Reed that he felt Walsh, probably in concert with Blum, was indeed part of the Iran-Contra cover-up, since Walsh's office had taken no action on Mena. Behar earlier stated that his suspicions stemmed from Walsh's lack of action on the preponderance of credible evidence provided directly to his office by federal, state and county law enforcement agencies, as well as the materials provided him by Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant and U.S. Congressman William Alexander concerning the activities at Mena.

Behar, completely reversing his earlier position on the Mena affair, responded, "I'm not convinced there is a cover-up."[p. 629]

Behar's eventual story on Mena was nothing more than a smear job Reed. (Another major report on Mena, prepared for the Washington Post, was killed at the last minute. (Note: I believe Rivero's information that the editor in question was S&B is incorrect, though he was Yale grad and the Post is heavily tied in with the intelligence community.))

And Reed isn't the only player accusing the Kerry Committee investigation of being less than serious. From Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, we learn the DEA agent Celerino Castillo was all over the activities of Rodrieguez. But Kerry didn't want to know about it:

Castillo was still in the DEA in Central America when Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts launched his probe into allegations of the ClA's involvement in drug running. Despite a parade of witnesses, including convicted drug dealers and associates of Eden Pastora and Manuel Noriega, the Kerry hearings received little attention in the mainstream press. Castillo said in 1997 that he believes it was easy for CIA defenders in the press to discount the Kerry probe because so many of its sources were compromised by their criminal records. "They never brought people like me in to testify. I was the special agent in charge of El Salvador. I did all the investigation, and they never contacted me."[p. 299]

| Posted at 11:50 | PERMA-LINK |

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