El Toro's Contaminated Sites

El Toro's Contaminated Sites
EPA Superfund Site

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Coup d'Etat by the Shadow Government

There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.
 
Senator Daniel K. Inouye
 

(WASHINGTON, DC) -  There are no reports of an overthrow of the US government by a small group of people; the very idea that a coup d'etat took place would be dismissed as nonsense by most Americans.  Call it what you want but the illegal cocaine trafficking into US military bases in violation of the law to support of the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government specifically prohibited by Congress; the murder of officers and enlisted men by the government who were a threat to disclose the illegal narcotrafficking; the addictions, deaths and imprisonment of thousands of Americans from crack cocaine; and the last minute pardon of senior civilian leaders from felonies associated with Iran/Contra whose impending trials were a threat to the sitting president are the ways of doing business in a totalitarian state.
     The allegations of intelligence abuse are not the tirades of some left-wing fanatics, but the confessions of the CIA as reported by CIA Director Michael Hayden and others.  In June 2007, Hayden admitted that the agency violated its charter for 25 years by conducting illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation. In this world, our government needs information and intelligence for law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives.   
Vice President George H. Bush claimed that he was “out of the loop,” on Iran-Contra but his diaries were not released to investigators until after the 1988 Presidential election; they revealed that he was aware of many if not all of the details. Donald Gregg, Bush’s national security advisor, was a career CIA officer who recruited Felix Rodriquez, another CIA operative, in February 1985 to honcho the Contra resupply operation at the Ilopango air base in San Salvador. The Contras used Hangars 4 and 5 at Ilopango. Both hangers “were owned and operated by the CIA and the NSC. Weapons and supplies for the Nicaraguan Contras were stored in these hangars as well as cocaine for shipment to the US. 
Felix Rodriguez, "a.k.a." Max Gomez.”[1] Rodriquez was an active participant in the CIA Phoenix Program whose mission was to infiltrate, capture and/or assassinate the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong).  Gregg supervised Rodriquez during the Vietnam War and introduced Rodriquez to Vice President Bush, according to the Walsh Report (Chapter 29): "Gregg introduced Rodriguez to Vice President Bush in January 1985, and Rodriguez met with the Vice President again in Washington, D.C., in May 1986. He also met Vice President Bush briefly in Miami on May 20, 1986.” It’s not a stretch to believe that Bush had knowledge of the Contra resupply operations and cocaine trafficking, notwithstanding his official position that he was “out of the loop.” 
The Walsh Report (Chapter 28) noted that Bush acknowledged to the FBI that he was “regularly informed” of Iran arms sales.  However, he denied knowledge of the diversion of proceeds from the arms sales to assist the Contras and knowledge of the resupply operation at Ilopango.  Lawrence Walsh concluded that, “The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete (Walsh Report, Chapter 28).”
Profits from the sales of arms to the Iranians were used to purchase weapons and supplies for the Contras. Even though it was a violation of law to sell arms to the Iranians, many Americans at the time would not have objected to the excessive mark-up of sales of TOWs and Hawk missiles to Iran.  The sale of weapons to the Iranians was a violation of the Congressional embargo to sell arms to the Iranians.  After the taking of hostages from the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, very few Americans held fond memories of this strategic Middle Eastern country and the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. The mark-up and diversion of funds from the sales of weapons to support the Contra War in Nicaragua and the prospect of the US entanglement in a war in Central America were illegal and, even if it were not, had no chance of approval by Congress and the American public.
The Reagan administration painted the picture of Contras as “freedom fighters,” good guys riding into town with their white hats taking on the gang of Communists that had forcefully taking over Nicaragua and threaten the US. 
The amount of funds raised from the sales of TOWs and Hawk missiles to Iran was miniscule in comparison to the billions of dollars generated from the sales of cocaine in the US. There were no Congressional investigations of the cocaine trafficking by the Reagan and Bush administrations; media and Congressional attention was on the sales of weapons to the Iranians. 
Senator John Kerry (the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations) reported in 1989 that “individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking ... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.” But, Senator Kerry had not reported that the Contras were using US military bases to ferry the white powder into the US. 
After the Boland Amendments prohibited the use of appropriated funds to support the Contras, briefings were used by Lt. Colonel North to solicit funds from right wing millionaires willing to write checks to fund the ‘cause.’ Had they known about the sale of cocaine to fund the Contras and the use of CIA proprietary airlines to transport the weapons from the US to Central America and the cocaine into the US, private donations for ‘the cause’ would have dried up quickly.
Those in the administration who knowingly turned the other eye to the cocaine shipments into the US would have faced serious jail terms. The revelation that US military bases and personnel were used to support the Contras’ supply of weapons and cocaine is not widely known and would be disputed by those in the know, but that’s not unexpected since no one wants to acknowledge committing a felony, even if the statute of limitations ran out. 
The investigations and subsequent report of Senator John Kerry’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Relations described the operations of a series of airstrips constructed by John Hull, an American who purchased thousands of acres in Costa Rica in the mid-1970s, who was a key refueling hub for aircraft in the Contra supply network.[2]
Gene Wheaton, an experienced a criminal investigator for the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) with contacts in the CIA and extensive experience in the Middle East, was a good cop with a nose for digging out information on criminal activity.  He served on active duty with Marines, Air Force and Army from 1953 to 1975. His special assignments included homicide and fraud investigator and narcotics agent.   He is a Farsi linguist and traveled extensively over a 30 year period in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. [3]
After retiring from the Army, Wheaton was executive assistant and director of security for the Rockwell Corporation, supervising the design of security systems used by the Iranian Air Force in the IBEX airborne electronic intelligence program.  Wheaton said that IBEX was a CIA program to give the Iranian government “the equivalent of a small NSA or National Security Agency.”[4]
In a deposition given to Daniel Sheehan, Christie Institute, in March 1988, Wheaton said in 1985-1986, he was the Vice President of National Air Cargo, an airline operating a fleet of 23 twin-engine Spanish Casa 212 turbo-prop cargo planes, operating out of the UPS hub at Louisville airport.  In the summer of 1985, Wheaton on a trip to Washington looking for more business for the airline, Wheaton was recruited to fly weapons to the Contras and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.  Wheaton had no problem with a legitimate covert operation but backed away when he learned that retired Air Force Major General Secord was involved and the covert operation involved laundered drug money and the mark-up of prices to enrich those involved in illegal activities.[5]   Wheaton had not been an intelligence agent; he was foremost an investigator, a good cop. The CIA operatives had contacted the wrong man. Wheaton subsequently briefed the staffs of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, the House/Senate Select Committee, and Pentagon officials on his personal knowledge of the Iran-Contra Affair (1985-1989).
 
  
The sales of weapons to the Iranians had deadly consequences for US military personnel.  Arrow Air was one of the CIA proprietary airlines used by Ollie North for Iran-Contra shipments.  An Arrow Air DC-8 crashed on takeoff after refueling in December1985 from Gander, Newfoundland. In total 256 persons on board the DC-8 were killed in the crash. The flight had originated in Cairo, Egypt and was destined for Fort Campbell, KY, the home of the 101st Airborne.  Wheaton served as a consulting investigator from 1989 to 1992 to “Families for Truth about Gander,” representing the families of 248 101st Airborne Division soldiers killed on their way home from a peace keeping mission in the Sinai.  The majority member report from Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB) determined wing icing as the cause of the crash; a CASB minority opinion stated that the crash may have been caused by an onboard explosion. 
Wheaton reported, “…investigations to date have found proof that the Canadian Air Safety Board (CASB) wrote a fraudulent report stating that wing icing was the cause of the crash. Four years after the crash, [I have] uncovered positive evidence that the aircraft had an on-board explosion.”[6] 
Wheaton had evidence that terrorists were responsible for an in-flight explosion and the resulting crash; a thorough investigation by the FBI would have revealed that illegal weapons were carried in the “belly of the aircraft,” part of the Iran-Contra scandal.[7] Wheaton said that a bomb may have been planted in the aircraft at Cairo; Islamic Jihad terrorists claimed responsibility. 
Wheaton was actively involved in the investigation of Colonel Sabow’s death at El Toro in January 1991 and provided information to the DOD IG about the connection between the murder (officially a suicide) of Colonel Sabow, Iran-Contra, and cocaine trafficking into the US.  Wheaton told Dr. David Sabow in 1994 about an extremist intelligence assassination cell:
There is an extremist intelligence related assassination cell concealed within the Pentagon/DOD which murders NOT enemy agents but rather loyal US Government officers who threaten to expose illegal covert operations by their renegade superiors…I first crossed paths with this network while investigating the “Gander Crash” of 12 Dec 85, which resulted in the death of 248 US soldiers and 8 civilian crew members.  This crash threatened to expose “Iran-Contra” one full year before it was officially brought light (Nov 1986).  I was specifically cautioned that if I successfully exposed the Gander cover-up I would be murdered by this assassination network.  This warning was given to me by one of the US military’s highest ranking and highly respected General officers. I have again crossed paths with this network during my investigation of the 21 Jan 1991 murder of USMC Col Jimmy Sabow at USMC Air Station El Toro, CA…while working as a USAF O.S.I. special agent, I was personally approached to be a member of a secret assassination sub-culture within the US Government.  The code name within the military for this assassination underground was “the Z-D program, Z-D being the abbreviation for “Zeta-Diogenes”.  This operation arose out of the intelligence failure at the Bay-of-Pigs invasion of Cuba.  I feel we should do everything possible to expose this psycho-lunatic fringe sub-culture ASAP.
The DOD IG interviewed Wheaton in 1994 as part of their investigation of the death of Colonel Sabow. Wheaton provided information on the smuggling of money and narcotics into the country. Wheaton told the DOD IG that Colonel Sabow was murdered to prevent him from disclosing a covert operation that had gone rogue at MCAS El Toro, involving the use of civilian C-130s to transport weapons to Central and South America and illegal drugs on the return trips north.  Wheaton said that El Toro and remote locations on military installations in the “western part of the United States” were used for these illegal activities. As part of his investigation, “he had identified and interviewed two pilots who had been engaged in this operation.” 
The operations were ended with the death of Colonel Sabow and then moved to “Libya as a training mission in support of Muammar Gaddafi” in return for oil.  The covert operations at El Toro were under the control of Colonel Joseph Underwood, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s Chief of Staff.” [8]
The C-130s were “unmarked or marked with logos of civilian companies” and “flown by nonmilitary type crews, i.e., long hair and blue jeans.”  Wheaton’s witnesses told him that these aircraft would taxi to “Spook Corner,” in the Southwest quadrant of the El Toro “where unidentified material and equipment was loaded or unloaded as part of the illegal covert operation or for some sort of servicing of the aircraft. The aircraft would then depart El Toro.”  Wheaton had MP witnesses who had provided testimony to this effect but refused to provide their names to the IG with the exception of Staff Sergeant Randy Robinson, who had already gone on record describing the unmarked C-130s.[9]
Wheaton provided more details to the DOD IG.  Wheaton told the IG that a covert operation under the cover of a US Department of Agriculture program named 'Screw Worm,' provided weapons, ammunition and other material to the Government of Peru in their struggle against guerrilla forces known as the “Shining Path.”  Wheaton said that a number of individuals involved in this covert operation were concurrently conducting an illegal covert operation whereby they were smuggling additional weapons, ammunition and material to Peru. The individuals were selling the weapons, ammunition and material to the Shining Path as well as to the Government of Peru, for money and narcotics. The money and narcotics were then smuggled back into the United States and air dropped at remote locations on military installations in the western part of the United States.
Wheaton told the DOD IG that Tom Clines and Ted Shackley, two former CIA operatives, “had run a top-secret assassination program since the 1960s.”[10]
The DOD IG interviewed Pentagon officials knowledgeable about military flights into Central and South America.  Their search of Pentagon records provided no confirmation of Wheaton’s allegations. But, the unmarked C-130s were no longer military aircraft; they were not under the control of DOD. Top secret flights of weapons and drugs were covert operations under the control of the CIA or the NSC. The DOD IG, even if they were serious about checking Wheaton’s story, were looking in the wrong places. 
The DOD IG noted that agents interviewed “21 individuals regarding allegations by Mr. Wheaton and Dr. Sabow of illegal covert operations at MCAS El Toro and the alleged knowledge of these activities by Cols Underwood and Sabow.”  With the exception of Randy Robinson, “no one else could confirm the existence of illegal covert operations taking place at MCAS El Toro.”
Subpoenas of records from CIA proprietary airlines may have revealed more information, but the DOD IG didn’t have broad subpoena authority to walk into companies and demand to see their records, even if their investigation was not bias. There’s no indication that the DOD IG made any effort to review El Toro’s database files on the refueling and servicing of civilian aircraft in the 1980s. 
El Toro was not closed when the DOD IG conducted their review in 1994.  Data files would have been available for review. The DOD IG had access to Lieutenant General Hollis Davidson, the Marine Corps Inspector General, who flew into El Toro in January 1991.  General Davidson could have been interviewed.  If done, he could have confirmed his inspection team found El Toro’s MWR data files on the refueling and servicing of civilian C-130s purged. And, if the investigators were timely, they may have interviewed SSgt Tom Wade, a computer guru who may have been ordered to purge the data files, before he was pulled from his car on Christmas Eve in 1994 and shot two times in the back of the head.  General Davidson’s inspection team could have done the same thing in 1991, gotten the young Marine to admit that he purged the data files on orders of senior Marine officer and prevented his murder.   
Gene Wheaton accompanied Nick Schou, writing for the Orange County Weekly in September 2006, to a meeting in the desert with a mysterious source who claimed to have top secret documentation showing the use of US military bases to fly drugs in the country in the 1980s.  Schou wrote:
…the man pulled a folder from his pocket and handed it to me. Inside was a piece of paper stamped with the logo of the US Department of Defense. It looked like an uncensored version of what had been faxed to my office a week or so earlier: instructions from the Pentagon to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and March Air Force Base not to record landings or takeoffs by two civilian airlines.  This time, the names of the airlines weren't blacked out: Southern Air Transport and Evergreen International Airlines. The man with the walkie-talkie didn't demand anything—except that I take the paper from his hands. But the document wasn't stamped "declassified." It could be stolen, Wheaton warned, and if I accepted it, I could go to federal prison for violating national security laws.”[11]
To his regret, Schou decided not to accept the document; asked the source to mail it to him, but never heard from him again.
The Iran-Contra hearings showed what can happen when one branch of the government decides it can operate outside of the rule of law. 
[1] Both hangers “were owned and operated by the CIA and the National Security Agency:  Written Statement of Celerino Castillo III, (D.E.A., retired) for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, April 27, 1998, http://www.akha.org/content/drugwar/ciacocaineelsalvador.html
[2] US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, “Drug, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy Report,” December 1988, pg. 53-55.
[3] Wheaton is a good cop:  Gene Wheaton’s C.V. obtained from Dr. David Sabow. Address and telephone numbers redacted.
[4] IBEX was a CIA program:  Transcript of Wheaton interview from Declassified on the “Gander Crash Program, Public Radio Satellite System, 8/22/2001, http://publicrecordmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/documentaries/GC_2001_pd.pdf.
[5] Deposition given to Daniel Sheehan: Summaries of Wheaton’s deposition to Daniel Sheehan provided to us by Dr. David Sabow.
[6] Families for Truth about Gander:  Information taken from Gene Wheaton’s C.V. provided by Dr. David Sabow.
[7] Illegal weapons were carried in the belly of the aircraft:  Transcript of Wheaton’s interview from Public Radio Satellite System, op. cit. 
[8] Wheaton alleged that MCAS El Toro was being used for narcotrafficking: Wheaton provided extensive testimony to the DOD Inspector General investigation into the death of Colonel James E Sabow in 1996. A redacted copy of the DOD report of the investigation was forwarded to Dr. David Sabow pursuant to the provisions of Section 1185(b) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994, Title 10, United States Code, Section 113, note, "Investigations of Deaths of Members of the Armed Forces from Self-Inflicted Causes." DOD Inspector General, “Review of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service Investigation into the Death of Colonel James E. Sabow, United States Marine Corps, June 5, 1996.   
[9] The C-130s would go to a remote part of the airfield, described as "Spook Corner," where unidentified material and equipment was loaded or unloaded as part of the illegal covert operation: Ibid, p. 31.  
[10] Top-secret assassination program:  Gene Wheaton’s memo to Dr. Sabow, op.cit.
[11] Nick Schou,” Cocaine Airways”, Orange County Weekly, September 14, 2006, http://www.ocweekly.com/2006-09-14/news/cocaine-airways/
 

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