from "60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME" The World According to Daniel Sheehan [cont'd] "... Nixon was responsible for establishing, inside the National Security Council, a secret committee to mount a contra-like war against Cuba. It was going to secretly recruit ultra-right-wing supporters of dictator Batista and train them at a military base in Southern Florida and at another in Guatemala. These people were to become a guerrilla force for undertaking attacks into Cuba, riding on Swiss boats. They would blow up bridges, burn crops, poison materials to be exported from Cuba -- all to destroy its Communist economic infrastructure. "This joint NSC-CIA secret team, code-named 'Operation 40,' began in late 1959. "But not even satisfied with that, then-vice president Richard Nixon made contact with Santos Trafficante. "Trafficante had been the lieutenant for Meyer Lansky, running the Havana operations for the New York mob. In Florida he had learned about secret 'Operation 40,' since a large portion of the people the CIA was recruiting for it were Mafiosi who had worked for Batista and Trafficante in Havana. Learning of the plan, he wanted to 'help.' Having lost a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise when he was driven out of Havana, he wanted to re-establish it. "Trafficante reached out to two men. One was John Roselli, and the other was Sam Giancana, don of the Chicago mafia. Santos Trafficante arranged for these two to meet with a representative of Nixon. As his representative, Nixon chose Robert Maheu, [CIA- friendly] head of the Howard Hughes empire. Because the secrecy of their relationship had already been long established, Maheu was selected to mediate secret communications with the Mafia. "In early 1960, at the Fountainbleau Hotel, a meeting took place at which Richard Nixon, through his representatives, agreed to establish a sub-group inside Operation 40 -- a professional assassination unit. This unit was given the responsibility for carrying out the political assassination of Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and five other men in the leadership of the Cuban government. That Mafia-sponsored 'death squad,' known only to Nixon and a limited number of other people, was trained at a secret base in Mexico. "This group included a number of very interesting people. "One was a man by the name of Felix Gomez. You may know him as Felix Rodriguez. He was also known as Max Gomez -- the man who was named by [Eugene] Hasenfus as the person directing the Ilopango airlifts into Nicaragua. "Another member of the secret assassination team in 1960 was Ramon Medina, whose real name is Jose Posada Carriles -- the second man running the Ilopango airlift into Nicaragua. "Another was Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero -- who supervised construction of the secret air strip in Costa Rica that you've heard so much about of late. With Tom Clines, he was one of the men who delivered the $2 million bribe to rescue Mr. Buckley from the terrorists in Beirut. The money was donated by Ross Perot. "Other people from Nixon's secret team of assassins circa 1960 of whom you may have heard are Frank Sturgis (caught in the Watergate Hotel in 1971, after Nixon became President), Eugenio Martinez (caught with him in the Watergate Hotel in 1971), and [Virgilio] Gonzalez (also caught in the Watergate Hotel in 1971). "Three others, Rafael and Raul Villaverde and Ricardo Chavez, were also on that "shooter team." "One of the directors of Nixon's squad of assassins was a CIA man by the name of E. Howard Hunt. "Nixon's secret assassination squad within 'Operation 40' had extraordinary freedom of action thanks to authorization by the National Security Council, headed by the vice president of the United States. After President Kennedy came to office in 1961, indications are that he was told about 'Operation 40' -- meaning the contra operation against Cuba-- but NOT about Nixon's team of assassins. Kennedy's industrious younger brother Bobby decided to transform 'Operation 40' into a full-scale invasion -- the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961. "All members of 'Operation 40' participating in the Bay of Pigs were killed or captured. "By June of 1961, Bobby Kennedy had dropped back and reconstituted 'Operation 40,' renaming it 'Operation Mongoose.' 'Mongoose' was put under the command of a 34-year-old CIA official -- Theodore Shackley. Shackley's director of training was Tom Clines. Together with Ed Lansdale, Shackley and Clines ran covert operations against Cuba from 1961 to 1965. "Then a very strange series of events began to unfold. "In 1965, the entire unit, including its 'death squad,' was transferred to Laos in Southeast Asia. Under Gordon Jergenson, Theodore Shackley became chief of station. Shackley brought with him Tom Clines. "Accopanying them were Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, and Jose Posada Carriles, professional assassins. "By 1966, Shackley and Clines were, peculiarly enough, supplying air power for a major druglord named Vang Pao, who was engaged in a three-way war with rivals for control of the opium trade in Laos. They arranged to bomb Vang Pao's rivals. "The man who ran the air operation for druglord Vang Pao, under Tom Clines, was a young Air Force major, Richard Secord. "By the end of 1966, all Vang Pao's opponents had been assassinated and he was left in undisputed control of the opium trade in Laos. In gratitude, Vang Pao agreed to contribute an ongoing portion of drug profits to his benefactors, to finance the secret US training of Hmung tribesmen in Southern Laos. "The Hmung were being trained by the same man who, in 'Operation 40' under Richard Nixon, had been commander of the Guatemalan base for training Cuban contras. "The Hmung, secretly trained to be 'hit men,' were then dispatched to carry out the assassination of suspected Communist sympathizers throughout Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. "By 1966, such programs had been formalized into a group called the Special Operations Group, also known as the Joint Task Force on Unconventional Warfare, based in Vientiane. "The SOG, while technically under the control of the US military, was in practice run by Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines of the CIA. The man chosen to be military commander of that unit (supervising its assassination program using the Hmung tribesmen) was Major General John K. Singlaub. Deputy Air Wing Commander for this Special Operations Group was Richard Secord. "In late December 1966, the Special Operation Group in Vientiane was joined by a young Marine, a recent graduate of the Naval Academy, whose name was Oliver North. "One of the commanders of the Army's Special Forces Unit in the SOG was Dewey Owens, older brother of Rob Owens. "The function of this group was to oversee the political assassinations of some 100,000 NONCOMBATANT CIVILIANS in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand --mayors, bookkeepers, clerks, school teachers-- to destroy the economic-political infrastructure of each country, for fear its best and brightest minds might survive to become assets to Communist regimes in the future. "As soon as Theodore Shackley became the CIA's chief of station in Laos, Santos Trafficante flew to Southeast Asia to meet with Shackley's buddy Vang Pao in a hotel in Saigon. "By the end of 1968, Trafficante had become the number one importer of 'China white' heroin into the United States. The 'China-white' heroin trade grew, and commensurate profit accrued to Shackley's buddy Vang Pao. Consequently, the size of Shackley's 'death squads' in Southeast Asia began to grow. "In 1969, Shackley was transferred, becoming the CIA's chief of station in Vietnam, where he established the now-infamous 'Phoenix Program,' which carried out the political assassination of some 60,000 noncombatant civilians in that country. "Shackley remained in that position until 1972, when he and Clines were brought back to the United States. The two were put in charge of CIA 'black ops' in the Western Hemisphere. "Clines and Shackley ran the 'Track Two' operation against president Salvador Allende in Chile. They supervised the capture and assassination of Allende's Chief of Staff, General Schneider, and eventually the assassination of Allende himself. "That having been accomplished, in September 1973, Shackley was made head of Far East Operations for the CIA. "Now, at this point, we reach an extraordinarily important juncture in our story, because Theodore Shackley, Tom Clines, and cohorts now realized that the less militaristic, more liberal government of late '70s America was not going to allow them to continue their 'private enterprise' --for example, their 'death squad' business, the 'Phoenix Program'-- in Southeast Asia. "Using the cover of needing to fund a more massive Phoenix Program, they began to take a larger share of Vang Pao's heroin funds and transferred it from Vietnam, secretly, to a bank in Australia -- the Nugen-Hand Bank. "Between 1973 and 1975, Tom Clines and Richard Secord loaded millions of dollars into suitcases, got on an airplane and flew to Australia, unloading the money into Nugen-Hand bank accounts. They also pilfered thousands of tons of US military equipment from Vietnam and transferred it to a secret camp in Thailand. "They had already salted away all the resources they would need to continue their 'private enterprise' when the Vietnam War formally ended in 1975 and the CIA transferred them elsewhere. "And to where were they transferred? IRAN. "Secord was made the director of Foreign Military Sales for the Pentagon in the Middle East. "Shackley was promoted from director of Far East Operations to assistant deputy director of the CIA. Under CIA Director George Bush, he was put in charge of covert operations WORLDWIDE. In fact, Shackley was expected to be Bush's hand-picked successor as the next Director of the CIA, if Ford were to be re-elected president and the Republicans remained in control. "However, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the election, and his man Stansfield Turner became Director of the CIA. "Yet Shackley, Clines, Secord and Co. CONTINUED to siphon off profits from the CIA's drug economy and stash that money in their secret bank accounts. "In Iran, they established their own unauthorized, illegal assassination program for the Shah, working with the SAVAK, the Shah's much-hated secret police. Their director of operations in the program was Edwin P. Wilson; Frank Terpil was his assistant. "Between 1976 and 1978, the Shackley-Clines-Wilson-trained 'death squad' succeeded in assassinating nearly every political opponent of the Shah of Iran, a tyrant hated by his people. "The 'reign of terror' seen in Iran generated a peculiar resistance on the part of the State Department, which had not authorized a program of assassinations and was not supervising it. The Director began to dismiss people from the CIA who were involved in covert operations. Pressure was applied to get Shackley to cease his operations -- unsuccessfully. "Next, Theodore Shackley became a major defense-industry contractor, in partnership with Edwin Wilson, Richard Secord, and Erich von Marbod. They formed a company originally known as the International Research and Trade Corporation, which later became EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Service Company). "Through the good offices of Von Marbod, who was Assistant Secretary of Defense, their company received ALL of the contracts to ship weapons to Egypt as a result of the Camp David accord. They made hundreds of millions of dollars. "When it was discovered that EATSCO partner Wilson was selling C-4 explosives to Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, Assistant US Attorney Larry Barcella insisted on indicting him. "Barcella ALSO began to investigate Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Von Marbod, but he was told to stop ... He limited his indictments to only Wilson and Terpil. "That was a terrible mistake, as it turns out. "While Barcella was weighing whether or not to indict Shackley and Clines, the CIA was able to act first, asking the two to resign. Who was it that made that decision? The CIA's Deputy Director for Operations at the time, Frank Carlucci. "By the beginning of 1979, the American people, Congress, the President, and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency had all resolved to cut off military aid to dictator Somoza. "But in late February and early March 1979, Shackley and Clines sent Edwin Wilson to see Somoza. "A contract was signed under which they would sell military hardware to the dictator, in total defiance of US policy. "After all, these men were now private citizens. They had not been indicted. They were running a company making billions of dollars in profits, because they had access to all of the end-user certificates to get military equipment and access to all the biggest defense contractors. So they simply continued to sell armaments -- to whoever would pay for it. "Even when, in July 1979, Somoza had fled to the Bahamas, Shackley and Clines sent their people to visit him again and to reaffirm their business relationship with him. "Theirs, indeed, was the 'Secret Team' that kept the weapons flowing to Nicaragua despite the wishes of the US government. Likewise it continued to sell its other product, assassinations. "The Contras would identify persons whom the dictator wished to have assassinated. That information would then be sent to a man in Army intelligence, Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, whose job it was to take the Contras' orders for military equipment and make sure these orders were filled. Quintero passed the "hit list" to Clines and Shackley, who in turn passed it to Buckley, head of the CIA's Anti-Terrorist Program. "Such operations continued all the way up until Reagan became President. After Reagan took office in January 1981, a series of meetings took place in the White House, chaired by then-Chief of Staff Ed Meese, along with Vice President Bush, President Reagan, CIA Director Bill Casey, and Richard Allen, their National Security Adviser. By June 1981, these men in the White House had resolved that they would take over the functions of the 'Secret Team,' supplying the Contras with military hardware, weapons, and training. "In a June 1981 National Security Decision Directive, Victor M. Canastrero of the CIA was assigned to take over the operation until then managed by 'Chi Chi' Quintero. The White House-run operation continued all the way to the end of 1983 when, despite the White House's claims it knew nothing about the Contras, its covert operations team was caught mining Nicaraguan harbors and passing out an assassination manual. "It was becoming clear that Congress was going to pass the Boland Amendment prohibiting such activity. So what did they do? They dispatched Lt. Col. Oliver North, now in the National Security Council, to ask the 'Secret Team' to resume doing what they had been doing until the NSC took over the job in 1981. "The 'Secret Team' did. But in order to divert attention from the CIA's role in all this, it sent Oliver North in search of a cover story. North turned to Gray & Co., a Washington public relations firm made up of spooks. John Tower was vice president of the company at the time. Gray & Co.'s Rob Owen obliged, for the purpose setting up a group called 'Idea, Inc.' "Through use of this 'private' group, Owen began to drum up national support for the Contras. Owen made General Singlaub head of the operation, which raised around $5 million -- most of which was spent on private Lear jets used to fly around the world. So, Singlaub provided the cover story for the massive influx of weapons to the Contras supplied by the 'Secret Team.' "When the future Reagan-Bush administration decided it had to make its now-famous deal with the Iranians, they figured no one could make it work better than the 'Secret Team?' So it was Secord and his associates who were sent to Iran to deliver the cake and the Bible and the missiles. "Until then, Reagan and Bush did not seem distressed by Iran's holding of US hostages. So, why was only in 1984, when Buckley was kidnapped and tortured, that they began to care? "You may recall, first we were told that Buckley was an independent businessman in Beirut. Only later were we told he was CIA station chief in Beirut. What we were never told is that Buckley was the director of the CIA's Anti-Terrorist Program, which worked with Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Wilson. "What did Buckley know that made him so dangerous under interrogation by the Iranians? Why was it that, even after we knew Buckley was dead, the White House sent the Iranians 40 tractor-trailer loads of TOW missiles? What did he confess to that could have been worth all that? "And why was it that, when they wanted to know what they could offer in exchange for those weapons, the Iranians sent Ghorbanifar to act as secret negotiator? Why would Ghorbanifar deal not with North, Poindexter, or McFarland --that is, with the National Security Council-- but only with Theodore Shackley? "In November 1984 in Hamburg, Ghorbanifar met with Shackley. Shackley decided that the stakes here were so high, whatever Ghorbanifar's people wanted, the 'Secret Team' had to give them. "Now, who were Ghorbanifar's people? Moderates in the Iranian government? No, they were the very same people who had tortured and killed Buckley. Buckley had in reality been taken from Beirut to Teheran, where he died under torture, as recorded on videotape. "So, what was it that Buckley had revealed to the Iranians that made keeping it secret from us worth so much hush money? The answer is: the cold facts about this 'Secret Team' --led by Shackley, Clines, Secord, et al-- which has secretly operated, deep in the bowels of our own government, for over 25 years." DATE: 1986 ++++++++++
60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME The World According to Sheehan Indeed, Richard Nixon was the point man responsible for establishing inside the National Security Council a secret committee that was to be responsible for mounting a contra- like war against Cuba. They had determined that they did not like the politics or the economics of the Cuban government, and therefore, they were going to secretly recruit the ultra right-wing supporters of the dictator Batista, train them at a military base in Southern Florida --in the Cays-- and set up another military training base in Guatemala. There they would train these people to constitute a "contra" guerrilla force, and they would undertake attacks into Cuba, riding on Swiss boats. They would blow up bridges, burn crops, poison materials to be exported from Cuba -- all to destroy their economic infrastructure. This operation began in late 1959 and it was code-named "Operation 40." But not satisfied with that, the then-vice president, Richard Nixon, received communications from a man by the name of Santos Trafficante. Santos Trafficante had been the lieutenant for Meyer Lanskey, running the Havana operations for the New York mob. He had come to Florida and learned about this secret "Operation 40," since a large portion of the people who had been recruited by the CIA to work in it had been the criminal elements working for Batista and Santos Trafficante in Havana. After learning about it, he wanted to help. Being the red-blooded patriot that he was, and, of course, as the beneficiary of a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise that he had lost when he was driven out of Havana, he wished to re-establish it. And he reached out to two men. One was a man by the name of John Roselli. The other man was a man by the name of Sam Giancana, the don of the mafia in Chicago. THese two men were designated by Santos Trafficanted to meet with representatives of Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon selected a man with whom he had maintained an extraordinary secret contact. This man was the head of the empire of Howard Hughes, a man by the name of Robert Maheu. Because the secrecy of their ongoing relationship was long established, he was selected to undertake this super- secret communication. This meeting took place at the Fountainbleau Hotel in early 1960. And there, Richard Nixon, through his representatives, agreed to set up a sub-organization inside Operation 40 which was a professional assassination unit. This unit was given the responsibility for carrying out the political assassination of Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and five other men in the leadership of the Cuban government. This group was recruited out of the Operation 40 people, known only to Richard Nixon and a limited number of people. They were trained in a secret base down in Mexico. This particular group had in it a number of very interesting people who you are coming to hear about every day that we live. One of the men on this secret team -- this assassination unit -- was a man by the name of Felix Gomez. You know him as Felix Rodriguez and you know him as Max Gomez, the man who was named by [Eugene] Hasenfus as the man who directed the Ilopango airlifts into Nicaragua. Another man on this secret assassination team in early 1960 was a man using the name of Ramon Medina, whose real name is Jose Posada Carriles, who was the second man running the Ilopango airlift into Nicaragua. Another man in this group was a man by the name of Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero. He was the man who supervised the construction of the secret air strip in Costa Rica that you've heard so much about of late. Indeed, those who delivered the $2 million that was being given as a bribe to get Mr. Buckley away from the terrorists in Beirut, were Chi Chi Quintero and Tom Clines. The money was given by Mr. Ross Perot. The other people in this assassination team who you've probably heard about are a man by the name of Frank Stirgus, later caught in the Watergate Hotel in 1971, when Richard Nixon was President. With him in the Watergate Hotel was a man by the name of Eugenio Martinez, another man on the assassination team in 1960 run by Richard Nixon. Another man by the name of [Virgilio] Gonzalez was on that assassination team. He was also found in the Watergate Hotel. Two more men, Rafael Villaverde and Raul Villaverde, were on that "shooter team." Ricardo Chavez was also on that team. One of the directors of that team was a man by the name of E. Howard Hunt. This particular group had the extraordinary authority given to them by this secret grouping inside the National Security Council, and headed by the vice president of the United States to carry out the slaughter, the murder of political leadership of the Cuban government. Now, that operation ran all the way to 1961. When President Kennedy came to office, all the indications are that he was never told about the assassination team. He was told about Operation 40, the contra operation, the contra operation against Cuba. His young industrious brother, Bob, decided that he would transmute Operation 40 into a full-scale invasion. This they tried, in April of 1961, with the disastrous Bay of Pigs resulting. The invaders from Operation 40 were all killed or captured. By June of 1961, Bobby Kennedy had dropped back and re-established the Operation 40 program. Only they renamed it "Operation Mongoose." That particular program was put under the commanding control of a young 34-year-old CIA official by the name of Theodore Shackley. His director of training was a man by the name of Tom Clines. They ran the contra war, along with Ed Lansdale, against the Cuban government from 1961 to 1965. And then a very strange series of events began to unfold. In 1965, the entire unit and team was transferred to Laos in Southern Asia. Theodore Shackley became chief of station under Gorden Jergenson. Shackley brought with him Tom Clines. They brought with them Rafael Chi Chi Quintero. They also brought with them Felix Rodriguez and Jose Posada Carriles -- assassins, professional assassins. By 1966, Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines were, peculiarly enough, supplying air power to a man by the name of Vang Pao, a major opium trafficker in Laos. He was engaged in a three-way war with two other men for control of the opium trade in Laos. They actually figured out a way of dropping bombs on these drug dealers for Vang Pao. The man who ran the air operation for Vang Pao, under Tom Clines, was a young major in the Air Force by the name of Richard Secord. By the end of 1966, both of the opponents of Vang Pao in this war for the opium market had been assassinated, and Van Pao was the undisputed controller of the opium trade in Laos. Very interestingly he then, out of the largess of his heart, decided that he would contribute an ongoing portion of the heroin income to finance the secret training of the Lao tribesmen, the Hmung down in Southern Laos. They were being trained by the same man who had been commander of the Guatemalan base for the Cuban contras. They were sent out to carry out the covert assassination of suspected Communist sympathizers throughout Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. By 1966, this program had been formalized into a group called the Special Operations Group, also known as the Joint Task Force on Unconventional Warfare, based in Vientiane. It was placed under the control fo the military even though it was in fact run by Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines of the CIA. The man who was chosen as the military commander for that unit (that supervised the Lao tribesmen in the assassination program) was Major General John K. Singlaub. The Deputy Air Wing Commander for the Special Operations Group became Richard Secord. In the end of December of 1966, a young Marine, a recent graduate of the Naval Academy, joined the Special Operation Group in Vientiane, a man by the name of Oliver North. One of the commanders of the Army's Special Forces Unit in the Special Operations Group was a man by the name of Dewey Owens, the older brother Rob Owens. This group functioned to supervise the political assassinations of some 100,000 non- combatant civilians in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand -- young mayors, bookkeepers, clerks, school teachers -- attempting to eliminate the infrastructure of that society for fear it would fall into the hands of the Communists. In 1968, Theodore Shackley became the chief of station in Laos, and a man by the name of Santos Trafficantes, from Southern Florida, flew to Southeast Asia and met in a hotel in Saigon with Vang Pao. By the end of 1968, Santos Trafficantes had become the number one importer and trafficker in China-white heroin in the United States. The China-white heroin began to flow and the commensurate profits began to flow to Vang Pao. And the size of the Hmung tribesmen training group that was committing the assassinations began burgeoning accordingly. In 1969, Theodore Shackley was transferred to become the CIA chief of station in Vietnam, and they established the now infamous Phoenix Program that carried out the political assassination of some 60,000 non-combatant civilians in the country. He remained in that position until 1972, when Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines were brought back to the United States and put in charge of Western Hemisphere operations of the CIA. Now, since they don't do an awful lot in Canada, and less and less in the United States, that leaves you Central and South America. Tom Clines and Theodore Shackley ran their "Track Two" operation against Salvador Allende in Chile and supervised the political capture and assassination of Allende's Chief of Staff General Schneider, and, eventually, the assassination of Allende himself. When that had been accomplished in September of 1973, Theodore Shackley was transferred to become the head of Far East Operations for the CIA. Now at this point, we reach an extraordinary important juncture in our story, because Theodore Shackley, Tom Clines, and cohorts had come to the conclusion that the waffling American democracy was not going to continue their efforts in Vietnam. They were not going to continue their effort against the Communists. And so, they began an extraordinary program by means of which they took more and more money from Vang Pao's heroin funds, had them transferred into Vietnam, with the cover of having to carry out a more and more massive Phoenix Program. But, in fact, they brought more money in there than was necessary and began to embezzle this money from Van Pao's heroin sales and transfer the money secretly to a bank in Australia -- the Nugen-Hand Bank. Millions of dollars were transferred between '73 and '75 in an extraordinarily sophisticated program. What they did was have Tom Clines and Richard Secord load millions of dollars into suitcases, get on an airplane, and fly to Australia and unload the money and put it in the bank account. That went on from '73 to '75. They also began to pilfer thousands of tons of U.S. military equipment from Vietnam and transfer it to a secret camp in Thailand. When the war ended in 1975, all of these people simply transferred. Where did they transfer to? Iran. Richard Secord was made the director of Foreign Military Sales for the U.S. Pentagon in the Middle East. And where did Theodore Shackley go? Theodore Shackley was promoted from director of Far East Operations for the CIA, to the assistant deputy director for the CIA. Now he was in charge of worldwide covert operations under George Bush. It was anticipated that Theodore Shackley would be director of the CIA if, in fact, Ford had won the presidency and the Republicans remained in office. But when Carter won, and Stansfield Turner became head of the Central Intelligence Agency, these people continued their operation of pilfering funds and sending them to the secret fund. They established an unauthorized secret, illegal assassination program in Iran, working with the Shah and with the SAVAK [the Shah of Iran's much-hated equivalent of the CIA]. The man who was the director of their operations in Iran was a man by the name of Edwin P. Wilson. His assistant was Frank Turpel. These people carried out the assassination of many opponents of the Shah of Iran from 1976 to 1978. Now, that operation generated a peculiar resistance on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had not authorized it and was not supervising it. They began to dismiss people from the CIA who were in covert operations. You recall that history, with President Carter moving the people out of "covert ops" and the CIA. They began to put pressure on Theodore Shackley to get him to stop some of his operations. But the fact is they did not stop him. Shackley formed a private company, in which he joined as partners with Edwin Wilson, Richard Secord, and Eric Von Marbod. They formed a company originally known as the International Research and Trade Corporation, which later became EATSCO (the Egyptian American Transport and Service Company). This company, through the good offices of Eric Von Marbod, who had been the Assistant Secretary of Defense, received all of the contracts to ship all of the weapons to Egypt consequent to the Camp David accord. And they began to make hundreds of millions of dollars in that company. When it was discovered that Edwin P. Wilson was selling C-4 explosives to Qaddafi, Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Barcella, insisted upon indicting him. Larry Barcella also began to investigate Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Von Marbod. But he was told to stop, and his indictments were restricted to simply Edwin Wilson and Frank Turpel. That was a terrible mistake, as it turns out. What happens is that while they were thinking of indicting him, a decision was made to tell Shackley to resign -- he and Tom Clines -- from the CIA. Who was it that made that decision? The Deputy Director for Operations for the CIA at the time, Frank Carlucci. By the beginning of 1979, the U.S. people, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. President, and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency had resolved to cut off all military supplies to Somoza. Ted Shackley and Tom Clines, at the end of February and early March in 1979, sent Edwin Wilson to visit Somoza. And they established a contract wherein they would be selling military hardware to the dictator in total opposition to the U.S. policy. But after all, these men were now our private citizens. They had not been indicted. They were running this company making billions of dollars. And they had access to all of the end-user certificates to get the military equipment. They had access to all of the contractors, and they continued to sell the equipment. Even when Somoza fled in July of 1979 and went to a place called North Cay in the Bahamas, Shackley and Clines sent their people to visit him again and to re-establish the contract -- but now to sell them the military hardware in their new incarnation as the contras. This, indeed is the secret team that continued the flow of weapons. They continued the program of political assassinations. The contras would target the people who had to be assassinated. Then they would send the information to a man who was at the time based in Army intelligence -- a man by the name of Rafael Chi Chi Quintero -- who at the same time was the man visiting the contras, taking their orders for military equipment, and making sure that they were filled. Then, Quintero would pass the information as to who should be assassinated on to Tom Clines and Theodore Shackley, who would then pass the information to a man by the name of Buckley, who was head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Anti-Terrorist Program. This operation continued all the way up until Reagan became President. When Reagan became President in January of 1981, a series of interesting conversations began to take place in the White House, chaired by Ed Meese, then chief of staff, along with Vice President Bush, President Reagan, CIA Director Bill Casey, and the first National Security Adviser Richard Allen. By June of 1981, they had resolved they would take over the secret team, and the supplying of the military hardware, the weapons and the training. In a June 1981 National Security Decision Directive, they decided that they would assign a man by the name of Victor M. Canastrero from the CIA to head up that operation that had been run by Chi Chi Quintero. That operation ran, as we recalled at the beginning of our discussion, throughout that strange series of falsehoods from the White House about how they didn't know contras. This went on all the way to the end of 1983 when, in fact, they were caught mining the harbors and passing out the assassination manual. Then it became clear that Congress was going to pass the Boland Amendment to prohibit their activity. So what did they do? They sent a young man who was by now a lieutenant colonel in the National Security Council, Oliver North, to a contact the secret team to say, "Why don't you do it some more? You did it from March of '79 until '81. Why don't you sell the weapons to the contras and give them what they need?" They did. However, they needed a cover story. After all, everyone knew the Agency had been supplying the contras for years now. If they continued to receive the same amount of aid, people might suspect the Agency. So what they decided to do was to have a cover story. They sent Oliver North to Gray and Company, a public relations firm of spooks in Washington. A vice president of this company at that time, we understand, was a man by the name of John Tower. Further, they sought out a man by the name of Rob Owen from that company. And he, Rob Owen, set up a thing called "Idea, Incorporated." Using this "private" company, he began to provide the inspiration around our country to help these poor contras. Rob Owen was sent to get a man to head up that operation, a man by the name of General John K. Singlaub. That operation raised probably $5 million total, most of which they spent on their little Lear jets flying around the world. Singlaub had to give a cover to the massive influx of weapons to the contras, all being run by this secret team. When the administration decided that it had to undertake this famous deal with the Iranians, they figured: who better than the secret team? After all, "in for a penny, in for a pound." So these were the people who were sent --Secord and the other men -- to Iran to deliver the cake and the Bible and the missiles. But earlier the administration was not so distressed by the holding of all the hostages. Why was it they became terribly distressed only in 1984 when Mr. Buckley was kidnapped? When Mr. Buckley was kidnapped and tortured, then they became intensely interested in getting him out. You recall we were told he was an independent businessman in Beirut. Then we were told he was the station chief of the CIA in Beirut. What we were not told is that he had been the director of the Anti-Terrorist Program for the CIA. What was it hat he knew that made this man so terribly dangerous in Iranian hands? And why was it that we sent the Iranians 40 tractor-trailer loads of TOW missiles after we knew he was already dead? What do you think it was that he told them that was worth all that? And why was it that the Iranians sent a man by the name of Ghorbanifar to establish contact to see if they could exchange something to get the weapons? And who did Mr. Ghorbanifar go to? Oliver North? Poindexter? Bud McFarland? No. He went to Theodore Shackley. Ghorbanifar, in November of 1984, met with Theodore Shackley in Hamburg, and it was decided that this was so serious, something had to be paid to these people. And who are the people? Were they the moderates in the Iranian government? What will be discovered is that they were the very people who had tortured Mr. Buckley. These were the people to whom Mr. Buckley had been delivered from Beirut. He, in fact, had been taken from Beirut to Teheran, and was tortured to death in Teheran, all recorded on video tape. What was it that he told them that made it worth paying all that hush money? The fact of the matter is, that it was what Buckley had said about this secret team that had been functioning in the bowels of our government for 25 years. The United States has not been humiliated. We have been blackmailed. And who is it that doesn't know what we have been doing? Is it the Russians? Do you think it's the Cubans? Is it the Nicaraguans? It is you. And it is me. It is the American people who these people fear. They are afraid because of the program of assassinations, the horrible, dark secrets that they know. They are afraid because they know the source of their funding, from the largest shipments of heroin into our country for the past 20 years to the influx of over one ton of cocaine per week coming in through a shrimp company in Miami, owned by Francisco Paco Chavez, that has been financing these black, covert operations. They're afraid we'll find them out. So the questions that are floating are not, indeed, the right questions. Should we be asking ourselves the question: Do we think that Donald Regan should resign? Do you think maybe Mr. Meese should quit? Do you think all of these lower guys will be cleaned up by Frank Carlucci? Do you think these were a group of subordinates acting without authority within the White House? Or is this, in fact, more like Watergate where the Congressional committees will go so far as to impeach Mr. Reagan, impeach Mr. Bush, impeach Mr. Meese, prosecute Messrs. North and Secord and Hakim? Because let me say to you: if in fact that is all that happens, we will be dealing with a small cancerous nodule on the nose of the President. Rather as a fact, what we are dealing with is a cancer deep in the chest of our body politic. And the intelligence community will tell us, along with the Republican Party, "Please, we can't operate. The body politic is not healthy enough and strong enough. Please, maybe we don't have cancer. Hope we don't have cancer. Maybe it will go away. You cannot do this." The Democrats are suggesting that the people's confidence in our governmental structures will be too shaken if this information is made available to our public. The fact of the matter is this: These are the people who have never had confidence in the structures of our constitutional government, have never obeyed the American people, have never had confidence in the U.S. Congress. These are the people who have been dealing in the back alleys and underworld for 25 years. Will we listen to those people when they say, "Please our body politic isn't strong enough to survive the operation"? No, we won't. The fact is that this operation will be undertaken, our body politic is healthy enough, and our body politic will rid itself of this cancer. And the people who will make that so are you and me. And there are millions of people across our country who will not stand for this type of hypocrisy, who will not allow our country to take these positions, by means of which, we can be so clearly blackmailed. This will be put to a stop. It will be put to a stop now. We will not be allowed to face these minor questions. We will do this work. The Christic Institute has the federal case that has now been endorsed by the federal court system. We now have federal subpoena power. We know that this group is not, in fact, the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. They are indeed the moral equivalent of the mafia. And they will be treated as such. [Tumultuous applause] Question and Answer Session QUESTION: There are two questions that occur to me right away. Some of this information must have come out in the Watergate investigation. Why wasn't it pursued at that time? Obviously, there must have been that information. The other one: You talk about a shadowy world. When did this shadowy world begin? When did the separation between the military and civilian clearly collapse, causing so many of our problems? SHEEHAN: The first question: A number of these issues must have surface at least during the the Watergate investigation. And why were they not pursued? Well, let me give you one very special example of an issue that arose during the Watergate investigation. You will all remember that extraordinary conversation of March 21 [1973], where President Nixon was discussing the Watergate investigation with John Dean. And Nixon said to John Dean, "John, I want you to go to the CIA and have them tell the FBI to get out of this investigation." And John Dean said to him: "Well, Mr. President, what am I going to tell them?" And he said, "Tell them all the 'Bay of Pigs' stuff will come out." John Dean didn't know what that meant and he later asked what that meant. They asked this question of a number of people during the Watergate hearings. One of the men they asked was Mr. Halderman. And they said, "Mr. Haldeman, what was it that President Nixon was talking about when he said 'All the 'Bay of Pigs' stuff would come out'?" And Mr. Halderman said, "Oh, they were talking about the assassination of President John Kennedy." At which point, everyone looked at each other in the room and said, "What the hell was that?" And they went on to a new subject. It's a very strange issue one that has haunted us ever since 1963. What we face in this case is the possibility of striking up that music, of getting back to some of those issues, of delving into those people. I'll just say this in closing on that topic. Richard Spraig was appointed to be the general counsel for the Select Committee on Assassination Investigation for the House of Representatives, and he was investigating the assassination of President John Kennedy. He was doing some investigation that led him to issue a subpoena to John Roselli. John Roselli, you will remember, is one of the two men who met with Robert Maheu in January or so of 1961 or 1960 to set up this assassination team. In the very week that he was subpoened, John Roselli was found wrapped in chain and sunk in a barrel in Biscayne Bay. Because of the fear that they had, Mr. Spraig sent three FBI agants to protect Sam Giancana, who had been the other man in the meeting, before he issued a subpoena to him. Mr. Spraig did issues a subpoena to him. With three FBI agents in the house on Thursday morning before the Monday that Sam Giancana was to testify before the Select Committee on Assassination, one of the FBI agents left to go get a pack of Camels, one went to the bathroom, one was out getting some fruit for the cereal, and someone entered the house and killed Sam Giancana in his breakfast and left without a trace. And Richard Spraig was immediately fired as general counsel for the Select Committee on Assassinations. G. Robert Blakey was appointed. He said, "That's enough, no more investigations," and filed a final report which you can read, which says: "There appears to be some circumstantial evidence that President Kennedy may have been assassinated by a conspiracy group. And the main suspects are certain elements of organized crime and Cubans." What he didn't say, which is the truth, is that the suspected elements of organized crime were Santos Trafficante, and that the Cubans were the Cubans who were inside the shooter team for Operation 40! The second question was: When did all this shadowy world begin -- this peculiar blending between the civilians and the military? I would say that it actually began in 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act, the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, the establishment of this entire covert world. In the first meeting of the National Secutiry Agency, they passed a resolution, I think, called the 54/12 Resolution. It authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to gather intelligence data, to correlate intelligence data, and to preform other functions from time to time as were designated by the National Security Agency. That is the resolution pursuant to which the CIA has taken unto itself the belief that it has the authority to carry out covert operations, such as these assassinations. The major fear now, amidst the Central Intelligence Agency officials, is that all covert action capacity will be taken away from the Central Intelligence Agency and assigned to a Special Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. That is the way of a shakedown in Washington. All that that will do is get rid of this strange blending of the civilian and military and put it under the control of the military. But in the final analysis, we at the Christic Institute do not personally believe that Oliver North was a bad soldier. Oliver North was a good soldier. Oliver North took his orders. He followed his orders. The question is: Who did he take the orders from? Why would he be taking the orders from a man by the name of Theodore Shackley or Tom Clines, who are no longer in the government? Because they used to run covert operations for the entire Central Intelligence Agency. This is a strange identity that they have: when they leave, they don't really leave and they continue covert operations. We have to undertake absolutely major surgery on the public policies relating to covert operations before this scandal is over. QUESTION: Dan, as one lawyer to another, I want to compliment you for the skill and the finesse with which you carried on that campaign against the racketeers down there. I think we have a rather immediate problem before Dan can get all of his facts in deposition form and in documentary form, preparatory to courtroom use. That is: What can we do in this Congress about monies for the contras? We need, it seems to me, to look at this in a number of ways, and I'd like to get Dan's reaction to this. One of them is this: What's going on down there is conducted by the U.S. President through his agents, the contras. It consists of acts of war against another nation. By international law, the use of force against another nation is an act of war. By the Constitution of the United States, nobody can wage war in the name of the United States without the declaration of war by the Congress. So, isn't it an important element in the months to come that we emphasize this unconstitutional conduct by our President as the basis for denying aid to the contras? SHEEHAN: Absolutely. The fact of the matter is that here, in February [1987], there's going to be a vote taken in the U.S. Congress. The vote has a lot of peculiar technicalities to it. It is a caveat on the resolution that was passed by the 99th Congress to authorize the expenditure of $100 million for the contras for military equipment. Only $60 million was given to them originally. There is a certification vote that has to be taken here in mid-February to determine whether or not Congress will affirmatively certify to allow the last $40 million given to the contras to be used for heavy military equipment. Now, they did not want to allow the Congress to vote on whether they get the $40 million at all. So, some people, usually in the Democratic Party, are saying: "Let's really show them. Let's vote to let them get the $40 million only without using it for heavy equipment." There are others who argue, "Let's alter the resolution, after all, we are the government of the United States. We aren't helpless in the face of the executive branch. All we have to do is say that on the basis of newly discovered evidence, we're going to alter the vote here in February to eliminate the last $40 million and make them give back the original $60 million." Now, at base, what we have here is a lack of resolution on the part of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party doesn't know whether it's going to have Governor Cuomo as its nominee, or Joe Biden as its nominee, or a number of other people as its nominee...Gary Hart. But the American people have to speak out, they have to be determined. In fact, the Republican Party has stood behind the funding of the contras, insisted upon the funding of the contras in a vote that went down on the last day of the 99th Congress to give money to the contras with a straight party vote. And the Democratic Party, now, wants to take advantage, to take the credit for all of this. Let them take it. But make them earn it. Insist that they cut off the remaining $40 million, have them stand up to this program and pass a resolution condemning the contras, cutting off all military equipment and stopping the war, stopping the invasion. Now, the fact of the matter is that the Congress of the United States is capable of doing anything it wants to do. But it doesn't want to do this. And you have to insist that they do this, you and your friends, and your family, and your neighbors, all of the people you went to school with. We can't do it out of just an office at the Christic Institute with 15 people in Washington, D.C. It has to be magnified all across the country. We now have 35 national organizations that have joined with us -- church and synagogue groups, and labor groups and women's groups -- all across the country, to get this word out to their constituents to make Congress stand up and face this issue, cut off this money and once again, return our country to operating under democratic legal processes. QUESTION: It was said that during the Karen Silkwood case, a few years ago, that your staff uncovered a private training academy in Florida that was involved in the killing of Karen Silkwood. Does this have any connection to this case? SHEEHAN: That particular place was called the National Intelligence Academy, down in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It is where, in fact, the people were trained and equipped who were behind Karen Silkwood that night on the road. We can tell you now, there was a man by the name of Harold Barron, a man by the name of Larry O'Brian, and a man by the name of David McBride. These were the people who were trained in a group called the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit, a private fraternity of law-enforcement officers who are secretly trained and equipped at the place called the National Intelligence Academy down in Fort Lauderdale. This is the same place they trained the DINA (the secret political police from Chile), the same place where they trained the Bureau of Special Services from South Africa, the same place where they trained and equipped the SAVAK, the secret political police of the Shah of Iran. But this place has been engaged in this type of training for many years. I will tell you this: The fact is that the equipment that was used to kill Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier on the streets of Washington, D.C., came from the National Intelligence Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from Audio Intelligence Devices, which shares their building with them. They made the "hound dog" bumper beeper that was used to detonate the explosives in the car. When Jose Posada Carriles, back in 1973, blew up the Venezuelan airliner that killed 73 Cuban nationals, the equipment came from the National Intelligence Academy's Audio Intelligence Devices in Fort Lauderdale. This place is a veritable ethical cesspool in our nation, and it has been funded with grants from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which have been used to purchase equipment there. I It's funded by profits from GEICO, the Government Employee Insurance Company. AUDIENCE MEMBER: My God! I'm insured by them! SHEEHAN: That's right. And the man by the name of Leo Goodwin, Jr., is the man who runs it. He is the heir to the GEICO estate, which finances that place. There are so many things that are known that have never had anything done about them. One of the extraordinary things about this case is that it has them all up in front of us now. They're now in front of us, these people, and they can be brought to justice. QUESTION: Now, this other question is: What is the connection between this secret group and the assassination of Martin Luther King? SHEEHAN: I know of none. I simply know of no connection at all at this point in time. QUESTION: What is the real reason the press has been protecting Ronald Reagan? SHEEHAN: It's an extremely interesting question, actually, that has been discussed a lot of late. How could it be possible for him to have been so much like he is and for them not to be talking about it and writing about it all the time. Now, I knew it during the very first Super Bowl, when President Reagan was President and he came on at half time, I remember, and he was interviewed by the fellow from NBC. And he said, "Mr. President, you used to be an announcer, didn't you?" And he said, "Well, yes. Yes, I was." "In fact," he continued, "When I had my audition, I had to sit there and recall a game and see how well I did. So, what I did," he said, "I went back to a game in which I had actually played. And I was given all the names of how we made these blocks and we ran for a touchdown and made it." He said, "Of course, in real life, we didn't run for a touchdown." The NBC man and everybody went: Ha, Ha, Ha. Isn't that strange that he would have told a story like that? And Reagan followed it up with another story, saying he recalled one time that how he learned to do this audition was that he used to broadcast baseball games. He used to get the ticker tape, and he used to broadcast as though he was right there. And all they really had was that the ball went from Number One to Number Three to Number Four (or whatever it was, however they number the players). T hat's all he knew about the play. And he used to go, "Well, it's a hot grounder -- there it goes to the shortstop -- it goes to the second base -- it'll be a double play -- it goes to first base. You've go a double play!" And he said, "One time, I was doing this and the ticker tape stopped. And so, I just went right along and kept on making up things and never missed a beat." At which point, the NBC man laughed and said, "Oh, good for you, Mr. President." And now we're living with it, you see. One of the major problems is that so much of the media is involved in what we call "infotainment" that it's not really the news anymore. It's all the news that's fit to print. And I discovered it the other day. I was riding along with a New York Times reporter and a man from the Washington Post and I was giving them a ride through the snow in Washington, and they were sort of comparing their sources. And one of them says: "My sources are better than your sources." As it turns out, the Washington Post has the very best inside-the-White-House sources. The New York Times has the very best inside-the-intelligence-community sources. And the intelligence community tells the New York Times what they're doing. And the New York Times, therefore, can't burn their source and tell what they know or else they'll lose their access to the story. And the Washington Post can't burn their sources in the White House. So they can't tell the story. If that tells you anything, it's something that I couldn't understand because I kept thinking: I thought you were supposed to be telling the American people. And that isn't what really happens most of the time. But there is this interesting in-crowd community at the highest levels of the media. B ut now they're beginning to suspect the American people insist upon knowing and want to know. Therefore, they're caught in the situation of having to tell them. And the sources! you can smell them burning all over Washington. They're going to continue to burn until this story gets out. QUESTION: I have a question: Dan, could you explain Israel's participation in the Iran affair? SHEEHAN: As far as we can tell, at this stage, the Israeli government was merely doing what they were asked by an ally. The highest levels of the U.S. government, once they decided that they were going to undertake this exchange of arms with Iran, contacted Israel, discussed this with them and initially utilized a covert method of moving arms to Iran. What they would do is have the Israeli government move a bunch of the American arms that had been given to Israel up to Iran with the assurance that the United States would resupply Israel with an equal number of those arms. The U.S. government did that to conceal the direct participation of the United States in the activity. You'll recall that embarrassing November press conference in which President Reagan had specifically stated that there were no other countries involved in this. This story held up for, I think, 20 minutes. At which point he had to send a little memo out to all the media people saying: "Excuse me, there was one country. It was Israel." And then they tried as a trial balloon that, well, Israel did it -- and we didn't -- which lasted, I think, even less time because the Foreign Minister for Israel then decided to resign so that he could talk about it. He got up before international cameras, told them what had been done, and said that the U.S. government had specifically asked them as an ally to do this. And they had done it. So far as we can tell, that's all that really was involved, they were doing something that an ally had asked them to do. And as far as they knew, there was nothing illegal about it for them to participate. QUESTION: There are a couple of the questions that ask for sources. Could you please cite your sources to substantiate the Buckley angle as the key explanation of the Reagan-Iran initiative exchange. SHEEHAN: The fact of the matter is that we are in the process right now of obtaining certain tapes and direct documentary proof of these details. We have talked to people who have listened to the tapes, have taken notes on the tapes, and have assured us that we can have them. I have discussed those with them. We, in fact, have shared this information with the special prosecutor's office and are awaiting those very specific pieces of information. Obviously, it would not be appropriate to tell you who the source was for fear I'd never see that person again. But, the minute we get those things, and have given them to the special prosecutor, you can rest assured we'll make them available to the public. QUESTION: How about contributions to the Christic Institute? SHEEHAN: The Christic Institute is in Washington, D.C. We are a public-interest law firm that can only survive with contributions. That's the only way our investigation can go forward. They are all tax-deductible. You can send them to the Christic Institute. The address is 1324 North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. And the zip there is 20002. Now, if you don't get a chance to write that down, just ask information in Washington, D.C. for the Christic Institute, and give us a call. And we'll give you our address and everything then, and you can send any contribution you want. "Christic" is a phrase that comes from Teilhard de Chardin, who was the Jesuit paleontologist who had discovered Peking Man. He was a theologian in the church, and this phrase has to do with the bonding force that bonds everything together in harmony in the universe. We took that name as a public-policy center. A number of our Jewish directors were concerned about it. We all had a long discussion about it and said, well, that it seemed to be a really good term. I mean, at least, that's what he meant it to be. And since he had been condemned by the Catholic Church and forbidden to publish at all, we thought that was a great name for our institute. QUESTION: There was a number of questions that rather tie in together, Dan, can we expect a military invasion before the dry season is out in Nicaragua? SHEEHAN: There is a great deal of concern about this issue. The moderate forces in Washington, D.C., seem to be sanguine about this. They don't really believe the administration could have the audacity to undertake such an invasion. They end their observations by saying, well, that would be an act of desperate men. At which point, I asked them if they've got an hour or two when I can explain to them exactly how desperate these people must be right now, in light of what we know. So, we believe that based on direct information that we've got, there are plenty of special forces, men being trained right now for a jump into Nicaragua. They've been given Nicaraguan maps. They've been trained on Nicaraguan terrain. They're planning, specifically, to invade Nicaragua. The real question is whether or not they dare to go through with it. The degree of courage that they have to do this is dependent soley upon how emphatically the people in the United States demand that they refrain from it. Because there is no doubt that they do not feel bound by the majority demands of the people. So, I would say that there is very detailed information indicating that they intend to undertake the invasion sometime by the end of March [1987]. We're talking about a very serious plan here. And you have to communicate with your Congresspeople and your senators and demand that they confront the administration, call them before Congress, and insist that they renounce any plans to undertake such an invasion. The fact is that such an invasion would be preceeded by some major provocative action. So that is where we are focusing our intelligence data, to ascertain what type of provocation they would be trying to MANUFACTURE to get everybody cranked up to authorize an attack of that sort. So do write your Congresspeople, confront them, and insist this be prohibited. QUESTION: There's a question here. Have you a body guard? I hope so. SHEEHAN: Well, the closest thing I have to a bodyguard is Sarah Nelson, who is here, who has a limited vested interest in this since we get to see each other so infrequently now. But seriously, people have asked this question before and the fact of the matter is that professional bodyguards are very expensive. They charge $500 per day and have all kinds of strange equipment. I have been contacted by a number of friends who are in the security business who have made it very clear that we should have a bodyguard since the court has now entered the order giving us the authority of the federal subpoena to go after these people. I think we have to bring on a security force. But they're going to be very unhappy if I tell them they can't bring their guns. Nevertheless, we will have some sort of security force but I think we're going to have to develop a kind of higher consciousness security forces that don't use guns. But we will have some sort of security force. QUESTION: Can talking about all this jeopardize the lawsuit? SHEEHAN: That is an interesting question. The fact is that the attorney for Adolfo Calero, who is one of our defendants, he head of the FDN (contras), has hired the former general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency, a man by the name of Tony Lapham. The biggest gunrunner in the Western Hemisphere, who is also a defendant in our case, a man named Ronald Joseph Martin, has hired the former U.S. attorney from Miami for his lawyer. The fact of the matter is that they filed a motion demanding that the judge put a gag order on us to prohibit us from communicating to the public any of the information that we obtained about their defendants, even from our private investigations. At which point, the court threatened to hold us in contempt if he, the judge, heard that we had discussed anything else -- i.e., discussed the case after the court's warning with a large public group. So I hope he's listening now. The fact is that we have pointed out to the judge that his local court rule has been declared unconstitutional in the Eleventh Circuit, where he sits. So I know he's not happy. But he has a choice. He can either try to invoke the rule against us, only to lose the battle completely, when it's declared totally unconstitutional. Or he can leave us alone. And he has chosen the latter. So we're here today to speak with you and will continue to speak. QUESTION: Dan, on ABC Nightline, Tony Avirgan brought up the drug connection with the Iran-Contra affair. Ted Koppel said that he didn't now anything about it. Has there been any serious interest in the drug connection by the three major networks? SHEEHAN: Yes, as a matter of fact. In March, CBS --what is their show?-- CBS's West 57th Street will be broadcasting some extraordinary footage closing the issue once and for all about the contra drug connection. We've been trying to get them to reveal it earlier, but they don't come back on the air until March. In fact, we've given ample information to the courts, to the Justice Department, to the Congress, about the drug connection. Senator John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has interviewed under oath numerous witnesses. Indeed, we have put before them aircraft pilots who have directly testified under oath about traveling down to John Hull's ranch and back, bringing down guns and bringing back cocaine. There is no way that they are going to be able to conceal this information. Now, I've had some conversations with people at ABC about this. I guess, all I would suggest is that the newspeople at ABC talk to the people at ABC Nightline and get the information from Ted Koppel. =================================================================