-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- via Newshawk: The Bush Drug Sting, The Sins of the Father, The Sins of the Son and -- The Smoking Airplane Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal's Airplane? by Daniel Hopsicker and Michael C. Ruppert It has all the makings of a major box office thriller: Texas Governor and Republican Presidential contender George W. Bush and his brother Jeb, allegedly caught on videotape in 1985 picking up kilos of cocaine at a Florida airport in a DEA sting set up by Barry Seal... An ensuing murderous cover-up featuring Seal's public assassination less than a year later by a hit team...the members of which, when caught, reveal to their attorneys during trial that their actions were being directed by then, National Security Council (NSC) staffer - Lt. Colonel Oliver North... And a private turboprop King Air 200 supposedly caught on tape in the sting with FAA ownership records leading directly to the CIA and some of the perpetrators of the most notorious (and never punished) major financial frauds of the '80s. ...Greek shippers paying bribes to obtain loans from American companies that would never be repaid....An American executive snatching the charred remains of a $10,000 payoff check from an ashtray in an Athens restaurant...Swiss police finding bank accounts used for kickbacks and bribes... Add to this mix the now irrefutable proof, some of it from the CIA itself, that then Vice President George H.W. Bush was a decision maker in illegal Contra support operations connected to the "unusual" acquisition of aircraft and that his staff participated in key financial, operational and political decisions... All these events lead inexorably to one unanswered question: How did this one plane go from being controlled by Barry Seal, the biggest drug smuggler in American history, to becoming, according to state officials, a favored airplane of Texas Governor George W. Bush? ----------------------------------- Three months into an exhaustive investigation of persistent reports dating to 1995 that there exists an incriminating videotape of current Republican Presidential front-runner Bush caught in a hastily-aborted DEA cocaine sting, the central allegation remains unproven... But some startling details have been confirmed, amid a raft of new suspicions emerging from conflicting FAA records. Those records, along with other irrefutable documents, point to the existence of far more than mere happenstance or dark "conspiracy theorist speculations" in the matter of how George W. Bush came to be flying the friendly Texas skies in an airplane that was a crown jewel in the drug smuggling fleet of the notorious Barry Seal. Those documents reveal - beyond any doubt - that in the 1980s Barry Seal, with whom the CIA has consistently denied any relationship, piloted and controlled airplanes owned by the same Phoenix Arizona company, Greycas, which in a 1998 bankruptcy filing, was revealed to have been a subsidiary of the same company that owned the now defunct CIA proprietary airline Southern Air Transport. The investigation started with a lead into the history of the aircraft (a 1982 Beechcraft King Air 200 with FAA registration number N6308F - Serial Number BB-1014). The handwritten tail number was found in records kept by Seal's widow and later linked to other "hard paper" records left by Seal after his 1986 assassination by "drug traffickers" who were subsequently connected to Oliver North. Those records, including leasing agreements, insurance policies and maintenance records, exhibit a deliberately-confusing "paper trail" of convoluted ownership recalling the 'glory' days of the Iran Contra hearings, where the machinations of American covert intelligence operators were unmasked before a disbelieving public. Combined with revelations in a 1998 CIA Inspector General's report of Contra-era cocaine trafficking in which the CIA admits to "briefing" then Vice President Bush on how it lied to Congress about cocaine trafficking by its agents, it becomes clear that father and son have common secrets to conceal from the American public. That report, Volume II of the CIA Inspector General's report into allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking can be viewed at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/cocaine2/index.html. A detailed discussion of that report, along with relevant excerpts is available at www.copvcia.com. Unraveling the plane's tangled and colorful history requires, first, a brief look backwards at the momentous year of 1982, when President Reagan first introduced the public version of "Project Democracy," in which he called for a "crusade for freedom." What it became instead was a license to murder, loot and steal. This climate was the nursery into which N6308F was born. "The War of '82" The detonations had rumbled like Armageddon along the rocky course of the Rio Negro in Nicaragua throughout the night of March 14, 1982... Concrete bridges groaned suddenly under their own weight, crashing in avalanches of black dust in a dark landscape seen through night-vision goggles... In Washington D.C., it was time to break out the champagne. War was breaking out in Central America. Just two days later Barry Seal took possession of the first of many planes supplied to him through CIA Director Bill Casey's "off-the-books" Enterprise. There were more than 100 U.S. advisers in Honduras by March of 1982. In April, the chief of the Honduran Army, General Gustavo Alvarez, said that his country would agree to U.S. intervention in Central America if it were the only way to "preserve peace." "Up to March 1982 you could still change your policy," recalled a member of the NSC Core Group In Charge as he spoke to reporters later. "The issue was still the question of support for El Salvador's rebels. If that ended, so could pressure on Managua. But once the first forces of Nicaraguan exiles were trained and set in motion, any real negotiating became much harder. The blowing of the bridges was an announcement." Throughout 1982, Democrats, fearing that President Reagan was pushing the United States into another Vietnam-style quagmire, tried to cut off aid to the Contras. It was precisely at this time, the height of CIA Director Bill Casey's frenetic efforts to ward off these Congressional efforts, that Barry Seal acquired use of not one but several brand new Beech Craft King Air 200s. Ownership of the planes had been deliberately obscured through a number of convoluted transactions involving Phoenix-based corporations suspected of being "fronts" for General John Singlaub's "Enterprise" activities. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Retired Major General Singlaub organized in early 1982 an American chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), called the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF), with a loan from Taiwan. Funding for Seal's planes would come from sources close to those efforts. "Jack" Singlaub had a long history of involvement in covert operations, beginning with service in the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He had served as CIA Desk Officer for China in 1949 and Deputy Chief of Station in South Korea during the Korean War, and during the Vietnam War he commanded the Special Operations Group Military Assistance Command, Vietnam--Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG), which participated in the CIA's Operation Phoenix assassination program. Singlaub's efforts, and Seal's as well, had been necessitated by the shocking scandals of the 1970s combined with drastic reductions in "official" CIA capabilities in the Carter years. Until then, the CIA. had controlled a huge network of planes, pilots and companies for use in paramilitary situations. But with the end of the Vietnam War and the public revulsion at disclosures of out of control CIA covert operations, many of those assets (such as the infamous Air America) were dissolved or sold off. Consequently, when the Reagan Administration sought to expand covert paramilitary operations in Central America and elsewhere, the Agency was forced to rebuild much of its capabilities illegally, relying frequently on outside assets, usually retained under contract, like Barry Seal. The Contra war put everything into high gear. The CIA and the Army jointly agreed to set up a special aviation operation called "Seaspray," New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh revealed in 1987. [This was old news to local and state police in affected areas. Cops had already seen the cynical (and perhaps intentional) manipulation of this operation flooding America with a river of drugs. When law enforcement authorities debriefed convicted "drug smuggler" Seal in late 1985, one of the cops present brusquely began by stating, "We already know about Seaspray."] Everybody Will Be There. The "boys" were getting ready to go to war in the Spring of 1982: -- CIA agent Dewey Clarridge put a proposition to Contra leader Eden Pastora. "He would become the star of the second revolution as he had been the star of the first," -- John Hull, whom Congressional sources said worked for the CIA since at least the early 1970s, rented a Contra safe house in San Jose, Coast Rica at CIA request. -- Retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord began managing an operation in which Israel shipped weapons captured in Lebanon to a CIA arms depot in San Antonio, Texas, for re-shipment to the Contras. -- Felix Rodriguez drew on his Vietnam experience and wrote a five-page proposal for the creation of an elite mobile strike force, called the Tactical Task Force (TTF), that would "be ideal for the pacification efforts in El Salvador and Guatemala."-- And at this exact same time, in the Spring of 1982, Barry Seal began flying private planes into a then-obscure airport in the secluded mountains of western Arkansas known as Mena. He moved his base of operations from Louisiana to hook up with the CIA, which was anxious to use Seal's fleet of planes to ferry both legal and illegal supplies to Contra camps in Honduras and Costa Rica. Rodriguez dubbed the search and destroy units "Pink Teams" and advocated using napalm and cluster bombs to give them "more destructive power." Rodriguez's proposal included a map of Central America which indicated that Nicaragua would be a target of Pink Team operations (based in El Salvador and Honduras). Favorably impressed, Vice President George (Poppy) Bush's National Security Advisor Donald Gregg sent Rodriguez's Pink Team plan to then Deputy National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane on March 17, along with a secret one-page memo on "anti-guerrilla operations in Central America." This was also, according to later Iran-Contra testimony of Medellin Cartel money man Ramon Milian Rodriguez, when he began to launder, at Felix Rodriguez' request, $10 million from the cartel for the Contras. In secret, sworn testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Milian Rodriguez claimed that he had been solicited by his old friend Felix Rodriguez. Also early in 1982 a new covert unit of the Armed Forces was set up by General Richard Stilwell. Known as the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), it became a separate entity in the Army's secret world of special operations, with its own commander, a Col. Jerry King. The army's involvement in secret operations would first became known to the House and Senate intelligence committees in early 1982, when they discovered a project known as Yellow Fruit, which ferried undercover Army operatives to Honduras, where they trained Honduran troops for bloody hit-and-run operations into Nicaragua. Through private front companies, like the ones that supplied Barry Seal with his fleet of smuggling aircraft, Operation Yellow Fruit ferried weapons like rapid-fire cannons to CIA operatives. It was these same operatives who later mined Nicaragua's harbors and raided oil depots, all in violation of Congressional legislation barring the Defense Department and the Agency from taking any action aimed at overthrowing the Sandinistas. The Army went to outside businessmen and arms dealers to make off-the-books airplane purchases, with funds that had been "laundered" through secret Army finance offices at Fort Meade, Md. More than $325 million was appropriated for the Special Operations Division of the Army between 1981 and the autumn of 1983. Had any of these operations become public then it would have caused enormous political damage to the Reagan Administration's campaign in Central America, according to a 1987 New York Times report by Seymour Hersh. "Enter CIA Agent Adler Berriman Seal" The flight plans for Seal's drug enterprise provided the perfect cover for the illicit resupply missions. Seal's planes would fly from Mena to Medellin Cartel airstrips in the mountains of Colombia and Venezuela, make refueling stops in Panama and Honduras, and then return to Mena, where, en route, the planes would drop parachute-equipped duffel bags loaded with cocaine over Seal-controlled farms in Louisiana. "His well-connected and officially protected smuggling operation based at Mena accounted for billions in drugs and arms from 1982 until his murder four years later," said Dr. Roger Morris and Sally Denton in their book Partners in Power. They also reported that coded records of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) showed Barry Seal on the payroll beginning in 1982. "My investigation established a conspiratorial period, chronologically, with a first overt act and a last overt act. The first overt act was April 12, 1982," stated Arkansas state criminal investigator Russell Welch, who was charged, he thought, with digging into Seal's Mena activities. Between March and December 1982, according to law enforcement records, Seal fitted nine of his aircraft with the latest electronic equipment, paying the $750,000 bill - as was his custom - in cash. The effects of Barry Seal's efforts to take weapons one way and bring drugs the other were soon visible, in ruined lives in the U.S. and in the maimed bodies appearing all over Central America. "Riding the Elephant Herd" Barry Seal was not alone. When small private planes began to bomb the Nicaraguan capital, resulting in the crash of a Cessna 404 at the Managua airport, an account of how three Cessnas were secretly transported from the New York Air National Guard to Central America for the raid on Managua reached the press. It was later learned that custody of a number of additional planes were moved from the U.S. Air Force in a top-secret Joint Chiefs operation code-named "Elephant Herd," on to the CIA, via a Delaware aviation company where they were armed, and then transferred to their ultimate destination, the Contras. A senior administration official admitted that small noncombatant military aircraft had been transferred from the Air Force to the Contras through the CIA. One company involved, Summit Aviation, was doing regular business with Barry Seal according to records in his widow's possession. In addition, according to Congressional sources, Summit, known to do Contract work for the CIA, had former CIA personnel on the payroll, and was linked through ownership records to the Cessna that crashed while bombing Managua. That aircraft, according to FAA records, was purchased by Summit Aviation in October 1982 from Trager Aviation Center in Lima, Ohio. On the same day that Summit purchased the plane, the company sold it to Investair Leasing Corp. of McLean, Va.. Investair, which has an unlisted telephone number, does Contract work for the CIA, according to Congressional sources. Bruce W. Trager, who sold the Cessna to Summit for $308,872, says the deal was "put together" by Patrick J. Foley, Summit's "military director." In addition to its work for Investair, Summit maintained and modified planes for Armairco, another company involved in covert government projects. Armairco, organized in 1982, also bought several multimillion-dollar Beechcraft King Airs, like Barry Seal's. Those aircraft were purchased directly from Beech in a procedure normally used only for military projects, according to Beech officials and aviation experts. When asked whether Armairco's government work included activities in Central America, an Armairco official said, ''That may well be.'' The Beechcraft King Air 200 has been in production since the mid 1970's. A little less than seven hundred of them have been manufactured to date. The twin engine turboprop has a pressurized cabin capable, with different configurations of seating up to nine passengers. It has a cruising speed of approximately 330 mph and a cruising range of more than 1,800 miles. New plane prices in1982 started at around $1,700,000 based on equipment. N6308F The convoluted, pretzel-like paper history of the airplane that once belonged to Barry Seal and is today used by Texas Governor George W. Bush begins when the title to the brand new aircraft was first recorded by Portland, Oregon dealer Flightcraft, Inc. Flightcraft's President, David R. Hinson, a former military and commercial airline pilot active in the Republican Party in Oregon, was, according to The Oregonian, at the time under consideration to head the FAA. The paper stated that Hinson had met with Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole to express interest in the job after travelling to Washington to promote himself for the post. Helping Bill Casey subvert the will of Congress, presumably, did nothing to hurt his chances. N6308F was spoken for, several times over, even before it arrived at Flighcraft's facilities in the Spring of 1982. "I don't think we're going to help you - I mean "be able" to help you said a nervous Phil Carrell of Flightcraft, Inc. when contacted for information by FTW. Carrell, a sales executive who was working at Flightcraft when "Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" was originally sold, told FTW that as far as he knew any records of the aircraft were no longer in existence. He referred us to the FAA title records for answers. We wish that answers were what we had found. According to records located by Dan Hopsicker in his investigation, a now defunct Lake Arrowhead, California firm, Ken Miller Aircraft Sales, entered into leasing agreements with developer Eugene Glick in February 1982, two months before the manufacturer's title was transferred to Flightcraft. Ken Miller Aircraft appears nowhere in the FAA title history of the plane. Ken Miller Aviation is also no longer in existence. Nonetheless, in February 1982, Ken Miller Aviation entered into a leasing agreement with real estate magnate Eugene Glick for the brand new aircraft. In that agreement, Glick and his wife agreed to make eighty-four monthly payments of more than $37,000 ($2,835,672) for the airplane which had a new purchase price of $2,010,556. No record linking Ken Miller Aviation to Flightcraft is known to exist. On paper at least, according to Contracts dating from February of 1982, the plane was owned by a Greyhound Bus Lines subsidiary, Greycas, which in turn leased it to a mysterious Phoenix firm in close proximity to John Singlaub's Enterprise operations named Systems Marketing, Inc." Systems Marketing then leased it to Continental Desert Properties which was the firm owned by Glick. In the final step, Glick leased the plane over to Barry Seal. In a Contract dated March 21, 1983 N6308F was leased by Continental Desert Properties to Seal's firm Baton Rouge Aviation . Insurance policies found in Seal's private papers confirm that Barry Seal subsequently purchased an insurance policy on the aircraft. What, exactly, was the purpose of this convoluted ownership record? What was it designed to conceal? The answer lies in the very definition of "tradecraft," a term for what it is that spies and covert operators do to operate in the dark. The "front" companies were in place to act as "cut-outs," layers of insulation, between the spy agency -- in this case Bill Casey's CIA--and the covert operative--, in this case, Barry Seal. FAA ownership records show that Gene Glick, who lived on Hope Ranch near Ronald Reagan's Rancho del Cielo in Santa Barbara, California, leased "Zero-Eight-Foxtrot" as well as several of Barry Seal's other planes during the same years that Seal was most active in drug and weapons smuggling 1982-5. Other documents located by Hopsicker confirm that Glick was also actively helping Seal purchase ocean-going vessels for use in drug smuggling activities and as stationary platforms for the CIA to use off the coast of Nicaragua in covert operations. An FBI agent had dismissed Glick's importance to Dan Hopsicker, which fueled his suspicions early on. "He's just a money launderer," said Delbert Hahn, who was the Special Agent in Charge of an Inter-Agency Organized Crime Drug Task Force looking into Barry Seal's organization back in the middle 1980s. At least in this case, Glick's behavior was consistent with Iran-Contra "bust out" operations because the lease defaulted in two years. The plane was repossessed. According to FTW contributing editor Catherine Austin Fitts who, as a former Wall Street investment banker and Assistant Secretary of Housing, served on the Resolution Trust Corporation in the wake of the S&L scandal, "This could have been a substantial cash pay-off to the concerned parties." Fitts, who also served on the "clean-up" committee for BCCI (a bank with abundant connections to CIA covert operations, financial fraud and drug trafficking) observed that the pattern here is typical of those seen by enforcement officials in that era. "It is worth researching to see if there were substantial cash pay-offs to the concerned parties,"said Fitts. "If the lease were insured at or near its full value and defaulted early as it did here in around two years; if the total value of lease payments were $2.8 million and if the lessor had paid only $2.1million for the aircraft then any insurance pay-off or "write down" after only a year or two could have netted a profit of a half million dollars or more for the covertoperators. This type of insurance fraud was used routinely during Iran-Contra to finance covert operations". <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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