The Marine Corps supported cocaine trafficking, officers were murdered who were a threat to blow the whistle, George H. W. Bush named as “drug kingpin” by DEA agent.
(SALEM, OR) - The Marine Corps, the nation’s premier fighting force, was an active participant in a covert operation to support CIA proprietary airlines transporting cocaine in the US in the 1980s and early 1990s. This operation was the fuel for the crack cocaine epidemic in the US. Billions of dollars were made from the sales of crack cocaine to Americans; thousands of mainly Black Americans became addicted to crack; others died of overdoses; and the prisons are full of those pushing the drug and users.
The Reagan and Bush administrations used the profits from the sales of cocaine to fund an undeclared war in Nicaragua, disregarded the Boland Amendment, which prevented the use of appropriated funds to support the Contra War, and manufactured the hoax the Marine Lt. Colonel Ollie North, a member of the National Security Council (NSC), as responsible for the diversion of funds from illegal sales of arms to Iran to support the Contra War.
The main stream media focused on North, missing the bigger story of the operations run by George H. W. Bush, including a myriad of covert operations, spying on US citizens, running guns all over the world and flooding the US with 'white power'.
In 1985, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, DEA agent stationed in Mexico, paid the ultimate price for getting too close to the US government's involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Enrique Kiki Camarena, DEA agent and former Marine, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mexico in February 1985. The official Mexican and US government version is that Rafael Caro Quintero, a Mexican drug cartel leader, was responsible for his torture and death. Quintero was convicted of Kiki’s murder but freed from a Mexican prison in August 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40 year sentence.
In October 2013, the Borderland Beat reported that Camarena was murdered on orders of the CIA because he had discovered the connection of drug trafficking and its profits to support the “counterrevolution” (the Contras).
The motive for the murder was to prevent him from blowing the whistle on narcotrafficking of cocaine into the US to fund the Contra War in Nicaragua, according to El Diario de Coahuila and Proceso, the two Mexican newspapers who first broke the story.
The story attracted media attention in South America, Europe, and on FOX in the US. Except for FOX, the US major media did not report the breaking news story—the involvement of the CIA in Kiki’s torture and murder.
William La Jeunesse and Lee Ross, correspondents for FOX News.com, reported on October 10, 2013 in a news story on the internet “US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent” that CIA operatives were present during the brutal murder of Kiki Camarena.
According to the La Jeunesse and Ross news story, Phil Jordan, former director of DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center said, "In [Camarena’s] the interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities, that CIA operatives were in there. Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki."
“The Kelly File” on FOX followed-up on the news story in a video report by La Jeunesse, “A look at DEA agent ‘Kiki’ Camarena’s murder.” William La Jeunesse reported the story on Megyn Kelly’s program on October 10, 2013, but the alleged involvement of the CIA in Kiki’s torture and murder was left out of the video report.
According to La Jeunesse and Ross, Hector Berrellez, Kiki’s DEA supervisor who headed up the DEA’s investigation of the murder said:
Obviously, they [the CIA] were there. Or at least some of their contract workers were there. It was I who directed the investigation into the death of Camarena. During this investigation, we discovered that some members of a US intelligence agency, who had infiltrated the DFS (the Mexican Federal Security Directorate), also participated in the kidnapping of Camarena. Two witnesses identified Felix Ismael Rodriguez. They (witnesses) were with the DFS and they told us that, in addition, he (Rodriguez) had identified himself as "US intelligence.
Operation Legend was a DEA investigation into the murder of DEA agent Camarena (July 26, 1947 – February 9, 1985), an American undercover agent for the DEA who was abducted on February 7, 1985, and then tortured and murdered, while on assignment in Mexico. The utube video in Spanish with English subtitles provides testimony from retired DEA agents on the murder of Camarena and the involvement of the CIA.
The official Mexican and US government version is that Rafael Caro Quintero, a Mexican drug cartel leader, was responsible for the torture and death of Kiki Camarena. Quintero was convicted of Kiki’s murder but freed from a Mexican prison in August 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40 year sentence.
In October 2013, the Borderland Beat reported that Camarena was murdered on orders of the CIA because he had discovered the connection of drug trafficking and its profits to support the Contras. Two retired DEA agents accused the CIA of complicity in the torture and murder of Kiki Camarena. Mexican news reports in 2013 said that CIA operatives were present during the inhuman torture of Camarena. Tapes of the interrogation were provided to Camarena’s DEA supervisor who questioned how the CIA got the tapes.
The threat of public disclosure of cocaine trafficking by the Marines and the Air Force during Iran/Contra could have brought down the Bush administration, lead to the president’s impeachment, and the imprisonment of senior military and civilian officials.
Congress and the Special Prosecutor knew about cocaine trafficking into US military bases but took no action. The news of cocaine trafficking into military bases was briefed to the Iran/Contra and Lawrence Walsh, the Special Prosecutor, staffers by Gene Wheaton, a retired Army warrant officer and former Marine, with years of military criminal investigation experience and many CIA contacts. Wheaton, a loyal America and good cop, blew the whistle but no one was listening.
Wheaton correctly called the government assassination group within the DOD/Pentagon treasonous. The mission of the group was to murder loyal military officers who were a threat to blow the whistle on covert activities. No courts martials; just a bullet in the head.
Gene Wheaton provided testimony to the DOD Inspector General of cocaine flights into El Toro and gave the US Attorney General copies of 50 aircraft tail numbers of C-130 aircraft illegally transferred to CIA proprietary airlines. Wheaton never received a response to his ‘heads-up’.
No one was questioned about cocaine trafficking during the Iran/Contra hearings; no indictments were made by Lawrence Walsh, the Iran/Contra special prosecutor for cocaine trafficking. The government’s kneejerk response was to murder officers who were a threat to blow the whistle.
One prominent casualty was Marine Colonel James E. Sabow at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, CA. El Toro—together with March AFB, Homestead AFB and other airfields—was used to refuel C-130A/E aircraft operated by CIA proprietary airlines and civilian crews to ship weapons to Central American and to offload tons of cocaine on the return flights for distribution into the nation’s drug network.
This was a billion dollar operation and a major threat to the Corps’ outstanding record of service to the country.
Someone had alleged that Colonel Sabow had been guilty of misuse of military aircraft. But, he was not certified to fly the planes, had been in a training status on the, the Kingair and Saberliner aircraft for weeks. The flight logs and per diem travel reports were unblemished. He was clean.
This Marine officer’s record of 28 years of loyal service was disregarded by no other than the Marine Corps Inspector General—a three star general grade officer—who made a surprise visit to El Toro only days before the start of the Gulf Air War.
Colonel Joseph Underwood, El Toro’s Chief of Staff, was relieved of his duties and subsequently reduced in rank to major, fined and forced to retire.
Several days later, Colonel Sabow, the Assistant Chief of Staff, was relieved of his duties on alleged charges of misuse of government aircraft.
The Marine Corps IG and his staff had access to all records to quickly clear Sabow but left El Toro, leaving the colonel in ‘military limbo’.
No formal charges were filed and he was bewildered until Colonel Underwood told him that he had to accept the false charges and retire since the CIA aircraft were flying cocaine into the base.
Colonel Sabow learned of the misuse of El Toro to run drugs the night before he was killed.
He refused to kotow and told Colonel Underwood and others that he would blow the whistle at a courts martial. The next morning he was murdered; the death called a suicide by the government.
EVIDENCE SUPPORTS MURDER
The forensic evidence supports homicide: No fingerprints on the shotgun; the swelling on the back of his head and the depressed skull fracture are characteristic of an external blunt force; x-rays taken at the Orange County Medical Examiner's facility show a large depressed occipital skull fracture; estimated blood loss at the crime scene of 50 cc means that the victim was dead without any circulating blood when he was shot; absence of blood on front of body means victim could not have shot himself sitting upright in a patio chair; the shotgun was tested by two independent forensic laboratories and both determined that this shotgun leaks gunshot residue (GSR) from its breech and trigger housing, the bathrobe and pajama bottom that Colonel Sabow was wearing at the time of death were analyzed by automated scanning electron microscopy. These results show that the victim’s pajama bottom was in the environment of a discharged firearm. However, there were no focal concentrations of GSR or backspatter residue (BSR) on any of these samplers that would support a suicide scenario.
The Sabow family fought the false suicide verdict and threatened to go to the media.
The Marine Corps’ answer was to call Colonel Wayne Rich, a DOJ lawyer and Marine reservist, to active duty.
PLOT TO DISCREDIT DEAD MARINE
Copies of personal notes taken during a telecom between Colonel Rich and Colonel George Lang, III, Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, HQMC show the extent to which the Corps would go to discredit a good Marine.
The notes show the intention of dictating a “script” stating a plan to convince Dr. David Sabow in a March 1991 meeting at El Toro that his brother was a “crook” and committed suicide to avoid the shame of public disclosure.
Copy of Colonel Wayne Rich's notes
The call was made on March 8, l99l, the day before Dr. Sabow was to meet with BG Adams, the Commanding General of El Toro.
The plan was to have Colonel Rich run the meeting, convincing Dr. Sabow that Colonel Sabow was a "crook" and took his own life.
COLONEL RON FIX TARGETED
Col Rich’s notes also indicate that Colonel Ron Fix, who was in charge of the MWR at El Toro, "had a girlfriend in DC and made repeated travel to DC." Col Fix was commissioned in '63 and retired in June '91.
It’s possible that Rich visited Fix while he was at El Toro and ‘suggested that he retire early’. Colonel Fix was commissioned in 1963 and would have completed 30 years of military service in 1993. He retired in June 1991, three years early.
The next colonel in charge of El Toro's MWR was not so lucky.
ANOTHER MARINE COLONEL DEAD
On February 24, l995, five days after 60 Minutes did a story on illegal C-130 acquisitions and drug flights, Colonel Jerry Agenbroad was found hanged in the BOQ at El Toro.
Colonel Agenbroad was in charge of Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR). This job included responsibility for contracts with civilian air carriers. At one time, Agenbroad headed the El Toro air museum [one aspect of Iran-Contra was the illegal exchange of working C-130 and Navy P-3A aircraft from air museums for obsolete C-119 aircraft to CIA proprietary airlines].
The information that the Corps was supporting CIA proprietary flights of cocaine into El Toro could have brought down the Bush administration and sent more than one person to prison. People have been killed for less. Still unconvinced.
MEETING IN THE DESERT
Nick Schou, writing for the Orange County Weekly in September 2006, reported 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 into 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.”[1]To his regret, Schou decided not to accept the document; asked the source to mail it to him, but never heard from him again.
[1] Nick Schou,” Cocaine Airways”, Orange County Weekly, September 14, 2006, http://www.ocweekly.com/2006-09-14/news/cocaine-airways/
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