
Interview: Celerino Castillo

All North's pilots ran drugs, says 
former DEA agent

{Celerino Castillo, who was the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration's (DEA) top agent in El
Salvador during 1985-87, is the co-author, with David
Harmon, of a new book, }Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and
the Drug War.{ He was interviewed by Edward Spannaus on
Sept. 10, 1994.} 
       
EIR: Mr. Castillo, before we get into the question
of Oliver North, I'd like to ask you a little bit about
your background. Could tell us what your employment with
the DEA was? 
    Castillo: Being born and reared in south Texas,
we come from a family which is very patriotic. My father
was a World War II hero who was shot six times in an
ambush in the Philippines, and he is the recipient of the
Bronze Star, and of course the Purple Heart, and so forth. 
    I'm the only male in the family, and I could have
been kept from going to Vietnam. But I did go to Vietman;
I'm a Vietnam veteran. I'm a recipient of the Bronze Star.
Because of my combat experience, I decided to go into law
enforcement. I saw a lot of my buddies shoot up heroin in
Vietnam, and I decided when I got back I would get
involved with the federal narcotics system. 
    I went to school, got my degree in criminal justice,
and was a police officer at the time I was going to
school. I worked the midnight shift and went to school
during the daytime. 
    After that, I applied with the DEA, and was hired by
the DEA in 1979. My first assignment with the DEA was in
New
York City. I turned out to be the first Mexican-American
to work in New York City. I teamed up with another agent
who was Italian, and we ended up conducting the
investigation that ended up in one of the biggest heroin
seizures in New York City of all time. 
    After four years in New York City, I was assigned,
because of my Vietnam experience, to conduct jungle
operations in Peru. I did a lot of assaults on airstrips
there, and air assaults on cocaine labs. 
    We conducted an operation there called Operation
Condor, which was the first time in history that the
Peruvians and Colombians worked hand-in-hand in combatting
narcotics trafficking. We ended up seizing a cocaine lab
in Peru that was producing 100% hydrochloride cocaine. 

EIR: What year was this? 
    Castillo: This was in 1984.... I was supposed to
do a two-year tour there, but I ended up doing about 
a year and a quarter, because of my exposure to
international stardom in Peru. There was a picture of me
during the operation that was in every newspaper in South
America. For security reasons, I left Peru and I was
assigned to work in Guatemala. 
    I arrived in Guatemala in October 1985, and of course
that was the first time I was forewarned by the country
attache@aa, Bob Stia, about the Contras being involved in
narcotics trafficking. 

EIR: What was Stia's position? 
    Castillo: Robert Stia was the country attache@aa,
which involved two agents and himself. Two agents covered
four countries, including Belize, Guatemala, Salvador, and
Honduras. 

EIR: What did you find out while you were there? 
    Castillo: At the beginning, I was in charge. I
was supposed to be the agent in charge of El Salvador,
which means I was the DEA representation in that country. 
    One of the things that we had in El Salvador was an
informant who was in place at Ilopango airport. This
informant was the one who did the flight plans for the
Contras, and he had previously given reliable information
to the U.S. Embassy in regards to some of the pilots who
were involved in narcotics trafficking. 
    We had another individual who had been a DEA
informant since 1981, and he was also very politically
involved with the Arena Party, which was the party of the
far right, the party of Maj. [Roberto] D'Aubisson,
[Napoleo@aan] Duarte, and [Alfredo] Cristiani. We had
gathered intelligence, and we continued to start the
investigation on it. 

EIR: What was going on at Ilopango? 
    Castillo: We had pilots, who were being hired
down in Central America, who were running supplies for
the Contras and were also involved heavily in narcotics
trafficking. When we finally got the names of all the
pilots who were involved, we ran it through our computers,
and it was revealed that every single one of them was
documented as a narcotics trafficker. This was brought to
the attention of the U.S. ambassador, Edwin Corr. He was
advised of the investigation that we were conducting. 
    His answer to me was the fact that it was a covert
operation from the White House and Ollie North, and he
advised me that I would be safer to stay away from that
investigation, because I would be stepping on people's
toes at the White House. 

EIR: What were these pilots doing? 
    Castillo: They were flying narcotics into the
United States. They were also flying monies--U.S.
currency--into Panama, into the Bahamas, to launder money
for the Contras. 

EIR: Were they also flying guns? 
    Castillo: They were flying guns. They were flying
supplies for the Contras, and they were also involved in
narcotics trafficking. 
    On Jan. 14, 1986, I met George Bush, then vice
president, at a cocktail party in Guatemala City. It was
at the U.S. ambassador's residence. He came up to me, and
asked me what my job description was as a DEA agent in
Guatemala. I told him that I was an agent conducting
international narcotics investigations, and I told him
that there was something funny going on with the Contras
at Ilopango airport. As soon as I said that, he shook my
hand, he smiled for the cameraman, and then he just walked
away from me without saying a word. I knew then that he
knew what I was talking about, about the Contras. 

EIR: Was there any doubt in your mind that he knew
what you were talking about? 
    Castillo: Not at all. I want to go on the record
saying that on that same day, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm
sure I'm not, I saw Oliver North in Guatemala City, and I
definitely saw Calero, the leader of the Contras, at the
same time in Guatemala City at the U.S. Embassy. 

EIR: This is Adolpho Calero? 
    Castillo: Yes, sir. They were all there at the
same time. 

EIR: Did you have any information as to what they
were doing there? 
    Castillo: They were meeting in the ``bubble,''
and the ``bubble'' means the CIA room up on the third
floor, where they were discussing sensitive information. I
knew Calero was there and [involved] in discussions about
the Contras. That's just what I think was going on. 

EIR: Let me come back to this question of the
pilots again. Who hired these pilots? 
    Castillo: These pilots were being hired,
according to the pilots and according to our informant, by
Felix Rodriguez, who was running Hangars 4 and 5 of
Ilopango. They were hired by the CIA, Oliver North's
Contra operation, and so forth. 

EIR: What was Rodriguez's relation to George Bush
and Bush's office? 
    Castillo: They were very close friends, according
to a lot of information we had received. 
    What happened is that this investigation snowballed
in early 1986, and I got a cable from the country
attache@aa in Costa Rica, advising me that they had
received reliable information that there were Contra
pilots flying out of Costa Rica into Ilopango into Hangars
4 and 5. It turned out Hangars 4 and 5 are owned and
operated by the CIA and the National Security
Council--which is Oliver North--and were run by Felix
Rodriguez. 
    When we contacted our informants in there, they just
went ballistic, telling me that that is what they had been
trying to tell everybody: that the Contras and the CIA and
everybody else in Hangars 4 and 5 were heavily involved in
narcotics trafficking. 
    This informant himself saw, in one instance, $4.5
million in cash going from Ilopango into Panama. Secondly,
he saw drugs. Thirdly, he would call us and let us know
when a certain pilot was on his way to airdrop money into
the Bahamas. One of his pilots was Chico Guirola,
Francisco Guirola, a Contra pilot. This same individual,
who had gone to the Bahamas on certain days, had also been
arrested in 1985 in south Texas, with $5.5 million in
cash. That was a Contra operation. He was deported and, if
I'm not mistaken, that money was given back to him. 

EIR: What's the story on this fellow ``Brasher''?
[In Castillo's book, Walter Grasheim is referred to as
William Brasher.] 
    Castillo: Mr. Walter ``Wally'' Grasheim was a
civilian. He was a documented narcotics trafficker. When I
approached everybody in the U.S. Embassy to find out who
this individual was, they told me that he was working for the Oliver
North Contra operation out of Hangars 4 and 5, and was the
liaison officer between General Bustillo and Oliver North. 
    I built a unit in El Salvador, an
anti-narco-terrorist unit, and this individual was hit,
his house was searched, by my unit in El Salvador. 
    When it was searched, he happened to be in New York
City at the time, and we found a lot of U.S. munitions,
cases of grenades, cases of explosives--C4. Every
explosive we could find was found at that residence,
including sniper rifles, helicopter helmets, you name it.
This guy was a civilian who was not supposed to have any
of this stuff with him. Surprisingly, what we also found
at his residence was that all his vehicles had U.S.
Embassy license plates. We found radios belonging to the
U.S. Embassy. We found weapons belonging to the U.S.
Embassy. 

EIR: This is somebody who is a documented drug
trafficker? 
    Castillo: A documented drug trafficker and a
civilian. He violated every Customs law there is, in the
exportation and importation of those items into El
Salvador. 

EIR: What happened? Was he prosecuted? 
    Castillo: Well, no. We had a warrant for
his arrest, if he was to come back. He found out.... 

EIR: When you obtained information about drug
trafficking running out of Ilopango, what did you do with
that information? 
    Castillo: I wrote cables; I wrote DEA-6s; I wrote
reports. I did everything I was supposed to do. 

EIR: Now these reports would go where--to DEA
headquarters? 
    Castillo: The DEA in Washington. Exactly. We've
got to remember one other thing that a lot of people are
not aware of. Every time I wrote a report, every time I
sent a cable out, it had to be approved by the country
attache@aa and the U.S. ambassador. Those reports had to
be approved, and they did not interfere with me sending
those reports, because they knew that some day it was
going to come back and bite them in the butt if they
didn't do it. 

EIR: What was the response from headquarters to
this? 
    Castillo: I got no response in the beginning.
None at all. For example, on June 19, 1986, the informant
at Ilopango called and advised me that Chico Guirola had
departed Ilopango to the Bahamas with large shipments of
money--and he was the one documented in 11 DEA files, and
he was the same one arrested with $5.5 million in cash. I
have certain times and dates, to verify what they were
doing. 
    We're going to go back to 1986, in the Kerry Report,
on July 26, 1986. The Kerry Report reported to Congress on
Contra-related narcotics allegations. The State Department
describes the ``Frogman'' case. The Frogman case was a
case out of San Francisco. This case got its nickname from
swimmers who brought cocaine ashore on the West Coast from
a Colombian vessel. It focused on a major Colombian cocaine
trafficker by the name of Alvaro Carvajal. He
was the one that supplied a number of West Coast
smugglers. It involved another Nicaraguan citizen by the
name of Pereida, and two other Nicaraguans--Carlos Cabezas
and Julio Zavala. Now, these guys testified before the
Senate committee that the money they were smuggling, or
profiting from the cocaine that was being smuggled into
San Francisco, was going to the Contras. They testified to
that. 
    It's a funny thing and it's a small world: In 1991, I
was conducting an undercover operation in San Francisco,
and the wife of Carlos Cabezas delivered to me five kilos
of cocaine. She was arrested. Carlos Cabezas came in, and
advised me that he, and also Carvajal, was an informant
for the FBI, going back to the Frogman case, and that we
needed to release his wife. I said, ``I think I know you
from somewhere.'' 
    He went on and he discussed the Oliver North/Contra
narcotics-trafficking operation in detail. Of course, a
report was written on this all the way into 1991, in
reference to Oliver North. He described everything else
that he had done for Oliver North, running drugs for the
Contras. 

EIR: Did he describe that Oliver North was
personally involved in this? 
    Castillo: He said that they all have personal
contact with Oliver North. Oliver North has given them
permission to do whatever they want. 
    I have a recorded statement from the informant at
Ilopango where he goes into detail, that every single
pilot that was involved with the Oliver North/Contra
operation gave Oliver North's name as having permission to
run drugs freely. They all had credentials by the
Salvadoran government and by the CIA so that they would
not be searched. 

EIR: You have described that there is an awful lot
of evidence against Oliver North. Oliver North says that
he is ``the most investigated man on this planet.'' This
is the response he gives whenever the question of his
involvement in drugs comes up. What would you say about
that? 
    Castillo: Point one: He was not ever investigated
on the narcotics matter, ever. He was investigated on
everything else. 
    If Oliver North had been investigated on narcotics
trafficking, they would surely have contacted the agents
down in Central America--which includes me--who conducted
the investigation on him. In October 1986, 1987, I'm not
sure what day it was, but I got a call from the DEA in
Washington, not to close the case on the Contras, because
the Kerry committee wanted access to my reports and the
DEA had told them there were no reports. Maybe that's why
they never contacted the agents down in Central America.
But if somebody is going to do an investigation on the
Contras, and there's a lot of implication of narcotics
trafficking, they should have and would have contacted the
agents in Salvador. 

EIR: You sound like you were continuously writing
reports and sending information to Washington. Did you get
any reaction? Did anybody indicate some interest in
investigating this? 
    Castillo: Finally, they decided to come down.
What happened was the DEA sent a rookie intelligence
analyst, and another guy from intelligence, and they came
down to Salvador, and after debriefing two of the
informants in the case, went back and reported that it was
a couple of Contra pilots, but it was not organized. 
    What happened was they had made up their minds what
they were going to write, before they even got to
Salvador. They just wanted to cover their butt.... In two
days they were able to determine it was just a couple of
pilots and not very organized. Of course, we found out
later on from several testimonies from several of the
pilots who had been testifying before the committees, that
it was a very well-organized operation being run by Oliver
North. 

EIR: Is there any way that those two agents could
have arrived at that conclusion based on what you told
them? 
    Castillo: Oh, no. What happened was they {were}
told, the people they interviewed were the Contra--the
informant who worked at Ilopango. He told them exactly
what he was reporting to me. It wasn't like, they knew
right away, but they needed to say something, that this
was happening. What happened then, the guy who was in
charge of the Latin American desk for DEA, his name was
John Martsh. And he is now, if I am not mistaken, the
deputy administrator for the DEA; he just got promoted.
This is the same individual who conspired to hide the
truth about the Contras' involvement in trafficking. He
came back to me, and he suspended me for three days
without pay, because I was ``too close to my informant.''
This informant, that ``I was too close to,'' was my {only}
backup in El Salvador. He was an informant because he was
the Salvadoran officer who ran the narcotics unit in El
Salvador. He was the one that raided Mr. Grasheim's
residence. To put pressure on me, they came back [saying]
that the DEA manual says I cannot associate with an
informant. 
    The DEA does {not} give us backup. And that's what
got Kiki Camarena killed in Mexico. That's what caught
Victor Cortez in Guadalajara, Mexico, because the DEA
would not furnish Hispanic backups on that investigation.
The only person I could work with, and the only person
that was given to me to work with, was this informant. Of
course, we became friends. But DEA policy says you can't
do that. Yet this guy was the adviser, DEA adviser to my
narcotics unit that I built in El Salvador. This guy was
not just an informant. He had credentials as a national
police officer. 

EIR: Was this an unusual step for the DEA to take,
to discipline you for that type of thing? 
    Castillo: No. They just wanted me to stop. I had
several calls. Mr. Martsh called me to stop reporting
this information. 

EIR: He told you to stop reporting? 
    Castillo: Yes. To stop reporting it. And if I was
going to do any reporting, I should use the word
``alleged.'' I have a letter from him. 

EIR: Did you ever, in any other case, have a
superior tell you to stop reporting? 
    Castillo: Never. Never. I have a letter where he
says I should use the word ``allege,'' and that my grammar
was terrible. I'm going back. Every evaluation I've gotten
has been an ``outstanding'' evaluation--up to then. Even
then, even when I got suspended for three days, a month
later, I was put in for a promotion. I had ``outstanding''
evaluations. It is just the fact that the pressure was
being put on me to stop the investigation on the Contras. 

EIR: Were there other forms of pressure put on you
also? 
    Castillo: Yes, sir. I was ordered to travel to
Salvador constantly, by land, by myself, through guerrilla
country. It's like they were looking for me to get killed
or something. I have proof, that I'll show later on,
that they were trying to get me killed. Without any
backup, they were having me go out undercover on the
Salvadoran military corruption--weapons that were being
seized from the guerrillas, they were selling to the
cartels. They were sending me out there by myself, so I
could get killed. 

EIR: You would attribute this to your involvement
in the Contra operation? 
    Castillo: With the Contra operation, exactly. I
continued, I continued, and I continued to report this.
We'll go back to where several people were starting to
report this on the Contras. For example, on March 16,
1987, on a plane owned by a narcotics trafficker, U.S.
Customs found an address book and the address and phone
numbers were to Robert Owen, North's courier. 
    We go back to the Kerry report in 1988: They confirm
my allegation that there was substantial evidence of drug
smuggling through the war zone on the part of the
individual Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the
Contras, and the Contra supporters throughout the region. 

EIR: Let's talk about the Kerry Committee report
for a minute. When that report came out, it got very
little attention, it seems. Why was that? 
    Castillo: It got very little attention because
there was no credibility on the part of the people who
were testifying before the committees, because they were
all smugglers, they were all Contra pilots that had been
let out to dry, they were all criminals. So there was no
credibility at all on them. But, they never, ever brought
{me,} the agent in charge of El Salvador who conducted
this investigation, to ever go before a committee. They
never contacted the Guatemala office. Why? 

EIR: You say you were never contacted by the Kerry
Committee? 
    Castillo: Never contacted by the Kerry Committee
in any way, shape, or form. I was never contacted by the
FBI, which was trying to file the violations of the
Neutrality Act out of Costa Rica on John Hull, on Oliver
North, and all those people. {Never} did anybody contact
the DEA [officers] in Central America who actually
conducted the investigation. 

EIR: When the congressional committees were
investigating the so-called Iran-Contra affair, they had
the public hearings and a lot of private interviews and
depositions. Did they ever contact you? 
    Castillo: No, sir, not at all. And I was the agent
in charge in El Salvador. I was the one who was reporting
everything. Maybe they didn't want to hear the truth. 

EIR: What about the special prosecutor, Lawrence
Walsh? 
    Castillo: Let me tell you something about
Lawrence Walsh. I had my attorney in San Francisco in 1991
contact Walsh's people to tell them that I had
substantial evidence in regards to Oliver North getting
involved in narcotics trafficking. The DEA did not, in any
way, shape, or form, want for me to contact them. I went
ahead and contacted them secretly. I had a covert meeting
with FBI agent Mike Foster, at my attorney's office in San
Francisco. He was shocked to find out that there was a lot
of evidence that the Contras had been involved, that
Oliver North had been involved, in the knowledge of the
narcotics trafficking. 
    When he asked who in the White House did I think knew
about the Contras being involved in narcotics trafficking,
I showed him a picture of George Bush and myself. His
mouth dropped. He couldn't believe what I was telling him.
He said, ``Cele, if we can prove that the Contras and
Oliver North were involved heavily in narcotics
trafficking, it would be like a grand slam home run!''
Those are his words. 

EIR: Did you ever get any feedback from Foster or
Walsh's office? 
    Castillo: I called Mike Foster several times, and
he kept telling me that he still hadn't gotten approval
from Mr. Walsh to continue the investigation. 
    That was the end of the
investigation. They weren't about to open up another can
of worms, because what happened was, everything was
dropping, everything was going off. They were working on
[Defense Secretary Caspar] Weinberger at the time.... They
weren't interested in conducting a narcotics
investigation. 

EIR: Have you looked at the final report issued by
Lawrence Walsh? 
    Castillo: Yes, sir. I have that. Nowhere
in this whole report does it indicate that there is any
narcotics investigation at all. 

EIR: There's no reference to narcotics? 
    Castillo: No reference to any narcotics
investigation. Oliver North is saying that he is the most
investigated person--and if he is, then why isn't there
anything in the Walsh report? 

EIR: In the course of your 12 years with the DEA,
how many cases or prosecutions were you involved in, would
you estimate? 
    Castillo: Thousands of them. All over the
country, all over the world. I was constantly having
fugitives arrested.... I was an agent who was not scared to
get involved. I lost my family because of that. I was just
a workaholic; I believed in the system; I believed in the
agency, and I believed that what was right is right, and
what was wrong is wrong. And it didn't take me 20 years to
try and figure this out. I found out after my six years
that the DEA was corrupt--in the sense that there was a
major coverup. We were losing agents because of political
fights within Washington, and I decided to leave. And I
negotiated my leave from the DEA. 

EIR: You say you're involved in thousands of
prosecutions. So you're pretty familiar with what kind of
evidence is needed to get a conviction in a drug case. Do
you think that the evidence that you compiled concerning
Oliver North would have been sufficient to get a
conviction? 
    Castillo: Absolutely. Absolutely, from the
get-go. I kept waiting for the phones to ring. I kept
waiting for someone to call me. ``We need you to testify
before a committee. We need you to tell us what you have
on Oliver North.'' Nobody. {The phone never rang}. There
was enough evidence, especially on violation of the
federal narcotics law, where if a U.S. official has
knowledge that there's narcotics trafficking being
conducted by somebody, and he does not report it, that's a
violation of the law right there. We had the Contras; they
were heavily, heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. 
        
EIR: What do you think about the idea of Oliver
North becoming a U.S. senator? 
    Castillo: Well, it's going to be the first felon,
convicted felon, to become a U.S. senator. He should be in
jail. He should be in jail. On his own words, he lied to
Congress, he lied to everybody, he deceived, he's
deceiving the American people right now. I think people do
not know the real fact that he was heavily involved in
narcotics trafficking--his organization was heavily
involved in narcotics trafficking. And he had {knowledge}
that these people were involved in narcotics trafficking. 

EIR: That knowledge would be sufficient for him
to have been convicted? 
    Castillo: Absolutely. But nobody ever
contacted me down in Central America. Now, why? Was there
a conspiracy to protect him? Was there a conspiracy to
protect the President of the United States, George Bush,
or the vice president at the time? Apparently there was. 
    All of these things happened. It's documented, it's
in black and white, I have case file numbers where it can
be obtained. The DEA refuses to release that information. 
    The funny thing about it is: They're talking about
Oliver North with the Contras. Well, there is a case file
in 1991 that came out of Washington D.C., that implicates
Oliver North. The file number is under Oliver North's name
for smuggling weapons to the Philippines with known
narcotics traffickers. Now, he's under the investigation
by DEA and he's running for U.S. senator: Explain that one
to me. 
     
EIR: And you believe this case is still open with
the DEA? 
    Castillo: Well, I don't know, maybe it is. Nobody
can get access to it. 

EIR: Is there anything else you would want to tell
the people of Virginia about Oliver North? 
    Castillo: One of the things that Oliver North is
stating, is that I am doing this because he is running for
U.S. senator. But, the truth of the matter is that I have
been trying to report this going back all the way to
1985-86, then in a memo in 1989, when I met with Walsh's
people in 1991; there was a newspaper article that came
out with this story in 1993, and in 1994 the Associated
Press picked it up again. So it's a continuation of my
attempt to educate U.S. citizens to the fact that Oliver
North had knowledge that his operations were heavily
involved in narcotics trafficking. 

EIR: Are you going to come to Virginia and tell
your story to the people of Virginia? 
    Castillo: Absolutely, I will go to Virginia. And
the other thing I will say: I've never been paid 1@ct to
tell my story. Never. When I
found out that nobody was listening at the time to my
story, I decided to write a book, a year ago. 
    One of the other things I want to remind the
Virginians, is that I kept a daily journal of everything I
did with the DEA. That's why I'm able to put these stories
together with times and dates and so forth. So everything
was documented.... 
    Even Jack Blum, the special counsel for the Kerry
Committee, resigned his post saying, ``I'm sick to death of
the truth I cannot tell.'' So it's not me, there are other
people out there who are saying the same thing. 
    In the Kerry Report, it says there is impressive
evidence on the record that U.S. officials who turned a
blind eye to narcotics trafficking and opposed the
investigation of foreign narcotics smuggling, must also
bear the responsibility for what is happening in the
streets of the United States today. 
    And Oliver North should be responsible for that.
Oliver North cannot stand there and say that nobody died
of the narcotics that the Contras ran into the United
States--which could be the ``Frogman'' case, or any other
case. He cannot guarantee me that. 
     


To get Mr. Castillo's just-to-be-released book,  call 800
3878992.
 
-- 
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com
------------------------------------------------
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Patriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of
Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)

