A county coroner in Los Angeles has yet to announce the cause of death of Steven Carr, a 27-year-old U.S. mercenary who has provided Congress with much of what it knows about weapons shipments to the contras. Had Carr lived, he was also expected to testified in federal court against 29 contra supporters allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking, an assassination attempt on former contra leader Eden Pastora and a scheme to kill U.S Ambassador to Costa Rica Lewis Tambs.
While Detective Mel Arnold of the Los Angeles Police Department said the department is investigating the possibility that Carr was murdered, at this point he said there doesn't appear to be any evidence of "foul play." But in the days before his death, Carr told several people that he feared he would be assassinated. He was "very paranoid and frightened" because of his role as a witness, Carr's sister Ann of Naples, Fla., said.
Here is what the police are saying about Carr's death. He died at 4 am on December 13 in a parking lot near his friend's apartment in Van Nuys, Calif., where he was staying. In the predawn hours on this Saturday morning, while his friend, Jacqueline Scott, was asleep, Carr left the apartment for an unknown reason. After spending an undetermined amount of time outside, Carr began making noise which awoke Scott. Arnold said he could not describe the type of noise Carr was making. Scott found Carr in the parking lot, who was "distressed and having coordination problems." Soon after he died from a "probable cocaine overdose." Asked if the police found any physical evidence of cocaine use in the area of the apartment or parking lot, Arnold said "no comment."
Dan Sheehan, an attorney with the Christic Institute in Washington which filed the law suit against the 29 contra supporter, said Carr used cocaine, but called him "an educated user." Martha Honey, a reporter for the BBC, became friends with Carr while he was a mercenary in Costa Rica. She said Carr was not the type of person who would kill himself because he was under pressure. "Stevie was a survivor. He had this ability to get himself in trouble but he always seemed to bounce back. He had a great sense of humor."
The source of his fears were not just the contra supporters whose alleged crimes he revealed, but also the U.S. government. Carr said that while he was in Costa Rica, U.S. embassy officials threatened to jail him if he squealed on their contra operation in Costa Rica.
In April 1985 Carr was arrested by Costa Rican authorities for violating the country's neutrality and sent to prison. Carr was one of several mercenaries based in northern Costa Rica on land owned and managed by a U.S. citizen and reported CIA operative named John Hull. Evidence from several sources suggests that the contras operate what amounts to a military base on property controlled by Hull as well as an airbase for the movement of cocaine from Columbia into the United States.
While in jail, Carr spilled the beans about the contra operation. To reporters, he claimed that Hull had told him that Hull was the CIA liaison to the contras and was receiving $10,000 a month from the National Security Council to help finance the operation. Carr told Honey why he was revealing such secrets: "Carr said that the mercenaries had been led to believe that their mercenary activity was sanctioned by top U.S. military and Costa Rican officials. He was extremely bitter at having been arrested."
Honey compiled information from Carr and other sources into a book focusing on the role of Hull and other contra supporters in the May 1984 assassination attempt against Pastora in Nicaragua in which a bomb explosion killed eight people and injured Pastora. Hull sued Honey, and her colleague Tony Avirgan, for libel in May 1986. Carr received a subpoena to appear at the trial, where he was to be a key witness for the reporters' defense.
On May 16, Carr was released from jail. He later described the events which took place in his life over the course of the next week to Honey and an U.S. congressional aide involved in an investigation of the arms supply network to the contras.
Carr said that Hull bailed him out of jail as a way of persuading him to testify on Hull's behalf. Hull requested that Carr testify that the reporters forced him to make the charges against Hull, Carr said.
That same day, Carr said he went to the U.S. embassy to determine why he was arrested for participating in a war that the U.S. supports. He said he met with two officials, Kirk Kotula, the counsel general and John Jones, the acting chief of the consulute.
According to Honey's notes of her conversation with Carr about his meeting with the officials, Carr said: "The officials told me they knew all about Hull's contra operation and they had me call him. He picked up the phone instantly, as if he had been waiting for my call.
"They said if I go to court and testify in your behalf I'll go to jail whether I tell the truth or not. I had no choice in the matter. The embassy told me to get the hell out of Dodge or I'd go back to La Reforma prison. They told me that the bus to Panama leaves at 7:30 pm and to be on it," he said.
Carr spent the next three days staying at Honey's house. On night of May 19, Carr left the house to visit a friend, and the following day, the U.S. embassy told the court that Carr was in their custody and that he would appear at the trial, Honey said. However, Carr said on May 20, following U.S. embassy orders, he took a bus to Panama, and with the help to the U.S. embassy there, flew to Miami a few days later. Upon his return, Carr was put in jail in Naples, Fla., for a prior offense.
Kotula said he had talked with Carr, but denied the he had threatened him or forced him to leave Costa Rica. "That's not true, at least by me. I did not threaten him with any such thing. I couldn't do that, what would be the possible motive. I can't put people in jail and I can't get people out of jail.
"I tried to convince Steve Carr when I first met him not to go and join up with some bunch of guys. He was nothing but a overgrown child who had read too many John Wayne comic books."
Jonathan Winer, an aide to Sen. John Kerry D-Mass., said the Senator's office is investigating the matter. "There are obviously some very serious questions regarding the U.S. embassy's role in Steven Carr leaving Costa Rica," he said.
After Carr's return to the U.S., congressional investigators said they had planned on bringing him before Congress. His testimony, based on his participation on a March 6, 1985 arms shipment from Fort Lauderdale to Ilogango Air Base in El Salvador, would have linked Felix Rodriguez--the ex-CIA agent who reportedly met with Donald Gregg, aide to Vice President George Bush--to that weapons shipment, Sheehan said.
"He is the guy that can prove that the March 6 shipment of weapons that flew out of the Fort Lauderdale Airport went to Ilopango airport," said Sheehan. "He witnessed and can identify Felix Rodriguez as the guy who off loaded the weapons to smaller planes which were then flown to Hull's ranch in Costa Rica."
In early 1986, Carr and two other eye-witnesses told federal authorities that several major players in the arms supply network were involved in the shipment, including Tom Posey, head of the mercenary group Civilian Materiel Assistance, Robert Owen, reportedly a liaison to fired Lt. Col. Oliver North, and Hull, Sheehan said.
With no criminal indictment by October, Sheehan alleged before a congressional committee that the Justice Department had engaged in a "willfull conspiracy...to obstruct justice....A number of telephone calls were then placed to Mr. Kellner (the U.S. Attorney in Miami) personally by Edwin Meese...instructing Mr. Kellner 'to proceed very, very, very slowly' in any investigation of this case." Kellner has said he has talked with Meese about the case, but denied Sheehan's allegation.
A grand jury has recently formed in Miami to reportedly hear evidence about the March 6 weapons shipment. But the one person who could have provided the grand jury with an eye-witness account that the weapons were transported from U.S. soil to El Salvador--evidence which is essential in making a case that the U.S. Neutrality Act and the Arms Export Control Act were violated--is now dead.
"A great deal of the information Carr provided did check out. It will now be harder for anyone to bring a prosecution with Steven's testimony now unavailable, and I think that is very unfortunate," Winer said.
A "secret team" of former CIA and military officials and arms dealers are responsible for the covert weapons shipments to Iran and the contras under the direction of fired White House aide Lt. Col. Oliver North.
Members of the "secret team" came together in the secret war against Cuba in 1961, and have since been involved in "political assassination" programs in Laos, Vietnam, Chile and now Nicaragua.
The "secret team," through an association with known Mafia leaders, has resorted to opium and cocaine trafficking to finance their operations.
Edwin Wilson, the ex-CIA operative convicted for selling explosives to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, was an active member.
These allegations are part of a lengthy affidavit filed this week in a Miami federal court in support of a law suit brought by Dan Sheehan, an attorney with the Christic Institute in Washington. The suit names 29 alledged operatives in the contras arms network as defendants.
The suit alleges that the defendants supplied the C-4 explosives which were used in the May 1984 assassination attempt against contra leader Eden Pastora in Nicaragua in which eight people were killed and Pastora injured. The plaintiffs, Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, are American journalists who are sueing for personal injuries they suffered from the bombing.
The Christic Institute, a church funded public interest law firm, has taken on controversial cases in the past, such as the suit against Kerr McGree Nuclear Corporation on behalf of Karen Silkwood. And it was while Sheehan was defending a sanctuary worker that he received information which led him into the investigation of the contra arms supply opertation.
In March 1984, he learned from a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that FEMA had a highly secret plan to "deputize" government and State National Guard personnel for the purpose of interning 400,000 undocumented Central Americans in detention centers in the event that President Reagan launched "Operation Night-train"--a military invasion into Central America.
The plan also called for the distribution from U.S. military bases of hundreds of tons of weapons to be used by newly created State Defense Forces, composed of civilians, who would help enforce the "State of Domestic National Emergency" during the invasion. Sheehan learned from a Louisiana State National Guard Colonel that a State Defense Force in Louisiana planned to give half of the weapons it received to the contras.
In Miami, former U.S. military personnel and active National Guard units had organized a para-military organization, called Civilian Military Assistance, to arm, train and fight with the contras. The group, headed by Tom Posey, obtained "surplus" military equipment from the 20th Special Forces Unit of the U.S. Army in Alabama, Sheehan learned from a member of the group.
In June 1984, Sheehan was informed a man who working with the para-military organization in helping arm the contras also claimed to be a "personal representative to the Contras of...Lt. Col. Oliver North." His name is Robert Owen.
One year later, Sheehan began putting this information into a law suit when he learned that Posey, Owen and others were allegedly involved in the bombing of the Pastora press conference which caused physical and personal injury to the two American reporters.
Sheehans investigation also led him to the discovery of a "secret team" of former high ranking U.S. officials and officers who oversaw the procurement and shipment of weapons to the contras to to Iran. Through Posey, Owen and other they allegedly supplied the explosives for the press conference bombing. The "secret team" includes former high-ranking CIA officials Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, ret. Air Force Gen. Richard Secord, ex-CIA operative Edwin Wilson, and two arms dealers, Albert Hakim (of Los Gatos) and Rafael Quintero, both of whom are U.S. citizens.
In the affidavit, which cites 79 seperate sources, Sheehan said he learned of the "secret team" from a former U.S. intelligence officer who worked in Iran, a retired CIA officer, and a former Air Force officer.
The intelligence officer discussed "the existence of a 'secret team' of former high-ranking American CIA officials, former high-ranking U.S. military officials and Middle Eastern arms merchants--who also specialized in the performance of covert political assassinations of communists...(and) which carried on its own, independent, American foreign policy--regardless of the will of Congress,...the President,...or the (CIA)," the affidavit reads.
The source said the "secret team" was set up in 1977 under the supervision of Shackley and Cline, who were then with the CIA. Wilson worked with Gadhafi "to secretly train Libyan anti-Shah of Iran terrorists in the use of deadly C-4 explosives," the affidavit reads. Wilson's real purpose was to gather intelligence on the anti-Shah terrorist missions, and then pass the information to Quintero, "who was responsible for the assassination of these Libyan terrorists,"
Wilson was convicted for his dealings with Gadhafi, and Shackley and Clines resigned under pressure from then-CIA director Stansfield Turner. Shackley and Clines then join with Secord and Hakim and "went private" continuing to run their "secret team," the affidavit reads.
This group--initially through the Egyptian-American Transport and Service Company--was "responsible for the entire supply of weapons...to the Contras," when the CIA wasn't directly providing them. They began arming the contras in August 1979, after entering "into a formal contractual agreement with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza" despite President Carter's order banning the sending of weapons to Somoza, the affidavit reads.
The CIA took over in 1981, but when the 1984 ban on U.S. support went into effect, North reactivated the private merchants. Quintero, operating through a Florida based corporation named Orca Supply Company--a company earlier set up by Edwin Wilson--saw to it that the supplies were delivered to the contras through John Hull, a U.S. citizen, who reportedly operates a contra base in northern Costa Rica on land he owns. Among the delivered weapons were the explosives used in the Pastor bombing, the CIA source said.
To fund the contras, the "secret team" resorted to the foreign military sales scheme used in Iran in which military equipment is bought from the U.S. government at the manufacturer's cost and sold to Iran at replacement cost. The profits are then laundered through front companies.
The Examiner reported in July that Secord, partners with Hakim in Standford Technology Trading Group International, was involved in the 1981 sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia, in which money from that sale financed the contra operation.
In another report, the Examiner said the weapons were also financed by an elaborate cocaine ring involing Columbia's largest cocaine dealers in which the drug moves from Columbia, through Hull's land, into the U.S at a level of one ton each week.
When the Reagan Administration decided to undertake the secret sales of arms to Iran in 1985, it was Shackley, Clines, Hakim and Secord whom they used to carry out the mission, the affidavit reads.
In 1961, Shackley, a CIA station chief in Miami, and his deputy Clines, directed the covert war against Cuba. A special unit formed to assassinate Castro, supervised by the "Mafia Lieutenant Santo Trafficante," included Quintero--and Felix Rodreguez and Luis Pasada Carillo--two ex-CIA agent who reportedly operate the contras arms network at an El Salvador air base. Pasada was involved in the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner.
After the covert war activists were caught smuggling narcotics into the U.S. from Cuba, the operation was shut down, and Shackley and Clines were transfered to Laos, where Shackley was made CIA Deputy Chief of Station and Clines continued as his deputy.
According to the affidavit, Shackley and Clines directed a secret program which trained and used Meo tribesmen "to secretly assassinated over 100,000 non-combatant village mayors, book-keepers, clerks and other civilian bureaucrats in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand." The operation was funded by profits from an illegal opium trade.
A commander the political assassination program was ret. Army General John Singlaub, who has said publicly that he is helping arm the contras. North, a Marine Corps Major at the time, was one of Singlaub's deputies. Also involved with Shackley in Laos was Secord, then an Air Force General, the affidavit reads.
In 1971, Shackley and Clines, from their post the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations, directed the "Track II" operation in Chile which played a role in the assassination of Chilean President Salvador Allende, the affidavit reads.
In 1974, the two directed the Phoenix project in Vietnam, which carried out the political assassination of some 60,000 non- Viet Cong civilians in an attempt to cripple Vietnam's political institutions.
"With their secret CIA anti-communist extermination program coming to a end,...(they) started their own private assassination business..."
WASHINGTON--Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) and his staff said recently they are "confident" that money from the sale of narcotics helped finance the contras and that the arms network set up by Lt. Col. Oliver North could be involved.
North was fired from the staff of the National Security Council by President Reagan this week after the Administration discovered that North arranged for the transfer $30 million from the sale of arms to Iran to Swiss bank accounts controlled by the contras.
"I'm confident that the contras have received drug money. They have received illegal shipments of weapons and that U.S. officials knew of it," Kerry said, in calling for a special prosecutor to look into these other allegations.
John Weiner, a Kerry aide, said while congressional investigators do not know if North was directly involved, they do have evidence linking the "North network" to the cocaine-arms operation. According to a report produced by Kerry's staff, North established a network, involving retired Army Gen. John Singlaub, U.S. mercenaries and Cuban-Americans, to provide arms to the contras during the two-year congressional ban on U.S. support. After the downing of the C-123 cargo plane over Nicaragua, Administration officials also acknowledged that North set up the private arms operation to the contras.
Weiner and several other sources charge that individuals involved in the network traffic in cocaine to help buy weapons for the contras.
"We have received a variety of allegations about drug connections to the contras and to parts of the North network. As to whether Oliver North was directly involved in that I can't say. But parts of the North network allegedly were. And that needs to be looked at very seriously," he said.
The Senate Foreign Relations committee is expected to investigate these charges when Congress reconvenes in January.
The role that cocaine played in funding the network has been part of a two-year investigation carried out by the Christic Institute, a Washington- based law firm. Dan Sheehan, the attorney directing the investigation, said the proceeds from the sale of cocaine has been "one significant source of funding for the contras. He said he has subsantial evidence to prove that the contras and their Cuban-American supporters are smuggling one ton of cocaine into the United States each week.
The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that one ton of cocaine has a street value of between $26 and $50 million. Sheehan said a portion the profits are used to purchase weapons.
The cocaine ring, involving mostly major Columbian cocaine trafficker, or "cocaine lords," and Cuban-Americans from Miami had been operating for years before the North network began in 1984. John Mattes, an attorney for one of the Cuban-Americans involved in the North network, said that the cocaine traffickers and the arms network "got together as a marriage of convenience."
"The Columbians saw that the contra base in Costa Rica was an ideal transhipment point. Their planes would land there and refuel. They also benefit from the pilots, planes and intelligence information which the arms suppliers had and which they make extensive use of," Mattes said. In return, Mattes said the Columbians paid the contras $10,000 to $25,000 for each plane carry cocaine which landed in Costa Rica for refueling. The Christic Institute's allegations are all contained in a civil suit filed in May 1986 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida.
The suit is brought by two U.S. journalists, Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, who charge that the cocaine/arms conspiracy was responsible for the May 1984 assassination attempt on contra leader Eden Pastora in La Penca, Nicaragua. The journalists are sueing for personal injuries they suffered resulting from a bomb explosion at a press conference which killed 8 people and injured Pastora. "As amazing as it sounds," Sheehan said, "the conspiracy is continuing to bring about one ton or 1,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States each week." Jesus Garcia, a former corrections officer in Dade County, Florida, said he was actively involved in the cocaine-arms operation.
He is one of Sheehan and Kerry's main sources of information. In a telephone interview from prison, where Garcia is no serving a three-year term for possession of a firearm, he said "it is common knowledge here in Miami that that this whole contra operation in Costa Rica was paid for with cocaine. Everyone involved knows it. I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together under one roof, weapons that I helped ship to Costa Rica." In May of 1983, according to the suit, two Cuban-Americans, Rene Corbo and Felipe Vidal joined forces with John Hull, a U.S. citizen who owns 1,750 acres of land in northern Costa Rica, "to recruit, train, finance (and) arm" a Cuban-American mercenary force to attack Nicaragua.
To finance the mercenary force, the Cuban-Americans, Hull and others made arrangements with two known Columbian cocaine trafficers, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, "to provide hundreds of pounds of cocaine on a regular basis," according to the suit. Garcia said that individuals involved in the arms supply operation told him that Ochoa was supplying cocaine to the contras.
The cocaine was flown from Columbia to Hull's ranch, Sheehan said, where the planes would refuel. Sheehan said he has obtained records of Corbo buying huge gasoline tanks in Costa Rica which are used for refueling the planes. The Christic Institute learned about the cocaine shipments from members of Costa Rican Rural Guard, workers on Hull's land who unloaded the illegal substance from the small planes, and the pilots who transported the cocaine.
Corbo and Vidal belong to the Brigade 2506, an anti-Castro group in Miami whose members were recruited and hired by the CIA to fight in the Bay of Pigs invasion agaisnt Cuba. Kerry's staff report charges that "Hull... has been identified by a wide range of sources, including Eden Pastora, mercenaries, Costa Rican officials, and contra supporters as "deeply involved with military support for the contras...and has been identified by a wide-range of sources...as a CIA or NSC liaison to the contras."
According to Steven Carr and Peter Glibbery, two mercenaries based on land operated by Hull who were captured by the Costa Rican Rural Guard in 1985, Hull introduced himself to them as "the chief liaison for the FDN (National Democratic Force) and the CIA." Hull received $10,000 a month from the NSC, according to the report. The NSC denies having made payments to Hull.
Hull has denied that he is assisting the contras and that he is working for the U.S. government.
Sheehan said that the cocaine is flown from the land operated by Hull to Memphis and then to Denver. The drug is also packed into container ships at the Costa Rican port of Limon and transported to Miami, New Orleans and San Francisco.
Francisco Chanes, a Cuban-American, is the major importer and distributor of the cocaine coming in from Costa Rica, according to the suit. Sheehan said he learned of Chanes' role from Drug Enforcement Administration agents who investigated Chanes, Corbo and Vidal.
During a January 1986 interview with FBI agents, Garcia said he told the agents that Chanes and Corbo were also involved in the contra supply operation.
Garcia said the agents responded by saying that Chanes and Corbo were already the subjects of a FBI narcotics trafficing investigation. Mattes, Garcia's attorney who was present at the interview, said he also heard the agents say that the FBI was investigating Chanes and Corbo.
Sheehan said money from the sale of cocaine is deposited in one bank in Miami and two in Central America and then withdrawn to purchase weapons and explosives.
Garcia said he was personally involved in a March 1985 shipment of 6 tons of arms to Costa Rica from Miami. In July 1986, an official from the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami confirmed to the Miami Herald that "we now believe there were some weapons" illegally shipped to the contras by their U.S. supporters from the Fort Lauderdale International airport in 1985.
Garcia said he saw both these weapons and three kilograms of cocaine stored at the home of Chanes in Miami in the company of Chanes and Carr.
"They cocaine was kept in a dresser, about ten feet away from the weapons. Carr told me that the three keys (kilograms) was what was left from a larger shipment," Garcia said.
He said he had no direct evidence that the weapons in Chanes' home were purchased with the proceeds from the sale of cocaine. He said that Carr told him that the three kilograms were part of a larger shipment of cocaine brought to the United States from Costa Rica in container ships belonging Ocean Hunter, a seafood importing company owned by Chanes.
Garcia said he helped load the weapons into a van which were then taken to the aiport in Miami. Glibbery said he witnessed the arrival of these weapons on airstrips located on land operated by Hull in Costa Rica, according to the Kerry report.
The suit also names Theodore Shackley, former CIA associate deputy director for world wide covert operations, and retired Army Gen. John Singlaub as the main weapons suppliers.
According to the suit, Shackley "knowingly accept(ed) the proceeds from illegal sales of narcotics in payment for illegal arms shipments." Singlaub has made "admissions to various reporters that he has sent guns and bullets to the contras," according to the report.
Reasearch and Editorial Assistance: Connie Blitt
Articles by Vince Bielski (San Fransisco-based) and Dennis Bernstein (new York) have appeared in Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Plain Dealer, Denver Post, Dallas Times Herald, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun, San Fransisco Examiner, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury, Arizona Daily Star, Seattle Times, Minnieapolis Star and Tribune, and others.
N. C. O. I. C.
Civil Intelligence Association
Defense Oversight Group