ges against them, and do anything else it could to restore moral order. Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/09/MNCFLEADIN.DTL

"October Surprise," a secret deal made in 1980 between the Reagan-Bush campaign manager William Casey and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to undercut President Carter's re-election campaign. According to the deal, the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran would be delayed until after the November 1980 election. Iran, in return, would receive U.S. arms via Israel after Reagan was sworn in as president. A large volume of U.S. arms was subsequently shipped to Iran through Israel after Reagan's inauguration in January 1981.

Pres. Reagan in 1981 installed a highly compartmentalized organization separate from his National Security Council. He signed a top secret National Security Decision Directive #3 which established a new intelligence organization headed by VP Bush resulting in a separate spy agency within the White House. This group was formed to set up a special mercenary unit (yes, you heard right) to "take hostages and rescue them" as an option against terrorists. The ideas was to kidnap or assassinate terrorists and/or their families. Oliver North's boss in the Iran-Contra debacle was VP Bush, the head of this White House covert action group. (Source: Loftus, John The Secret War Against the Jews, New York: St Martin’s Press, p. 49).

In 1985, Vice President Bush authorized the FBI to expand its covert electronic surveillance operation,SCOPE whose purpose was to compile list of Jews in government, research, and institutional leadership (positions). Source: Loftus, John The Secret War Against the Jews, New York: St Martin’s Press pgs. 181-196.

JULY 7 1987, Appearing before the Congressional committees, Colonel North begins six days of frequently fervent testimony. He says that he does not know if Mr. Reagan was aware of the diversion of arms-sales money to the contras but that William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence, had approved it. Mr. Casey had recently died.

Comment: North fails to say the VP Bush was his boss of the separate spy agency within the White House aka the Enterprise.

DEC. 24, 1992 President George Bush Sr. pardons Edwin Meese,. Weinberger, McFarlane,

Elliott L. Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State,

Clair E. George, former chief of covert operations for the C.I.A,

Duane R. Clarridge, former chief of operations for the C.I.A,

and Alan D. Fiers, former head of the C.I.A.'s Latin America task force

----

What was covered up during the Iran-contra hearings was that the Enterprise also relied heavily on drug-smuggling operations. The CIA offered large-scale drug smugglers a simple deal: It would prevent U.S. drug and customs agencies from disrupting their cocaine traffic, if these traffickers would airlift and finance the flow of arms to the contras.

To fund the Enterprise, Casey and his representatives contacted governments closely tied to U.S. imperialism, including the Israelis, Argentineans, the Sultan of Brunei, the Saudi monarchy, and the various CIA-dominatedmilitaries of Central America. In exchange for all kinds of favors, these governments contributed arms, money, and trainers to the Enterprise.

In 1983, Vice President George Bush put the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operations under the control of the "national security" apparatus. In June 1983, the DEA office in Honduras was shut down.

After 1984, the contra operation was overseen by Donald Gregg, a long-time CIA official who was reassigned to be top aide of Vice President George Bush.

Later, in 1991 trial testimony, the CIA and U.S. Army admitted paying Noriega $322,336 since 1955. This is a very low estimate. Others report that then-CIA director George Bush started paying Noriega $100,000 a year in 1976.[4] During the '80s, Noriega deposited at least $33 million at the Panama City branch of the BCCI bank. Some of these funds were being laundered for the contras, others were Noriega's payoffs for the operations passing through his territory. To earn his pay, Noriega carried out all kinds of dirty activities for his U.S. masters. He supplied pilots, bases and funds to the contra supply operations.[1] Noriega's close confidant Floyd Carlton Caceres negotiated personally with the top Colombian cocaine smugglers Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria for the use of Panamanian air bases. Noriega's fees for such services were $200,000 per trip. Floyd Carlton later testified in a U.S. courtroom that their operation flew U.S. guns to the contras in Nicaragua and brought cocaine into the United States on the return flight.[1] In 1984, the Enterprise was reorganized, and Noriega's contra-drug operations shifted northward from Panama to Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador. Between October 1984 and June 1985, the gun-for-drugs operation run by Floyd Carlton alone moved at least four tons of cocaine through northern Costa Rica.[1] 1. http://rwor.org/a/firstvol/885/cia3.htm

Two Nicaraguans received regular shipments of 200-400 kilos of cocaine from the Contras. Blandon sold Ross 100 kilos a week, which Ross brewed into crack in restaurant-sized vats and moved $2-3 million worth daily. The profits flowed to the Contras via a bank chain in Florida. At the same time, Meneses supplied cocaine to street gangs in the San Fransisco Bay area.

Because the Nicaraguans' prices were well below normal costs, Ross quickly became a major dealer with broad influence over the spread of crack in Los Angeles. Blandon was selling so much crack that after his arrest, the federal prosecutor, L. J. O'Neale, said it was "off the scale" of mandatory sentencing guidelines. Blandon was described as "the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States," while Ross was widely considered to be the first crack-dealing millionaire to rise from the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Together, Blandon and Ross created a tidal wave of crack that swept into low-income American neighbourhoods in the mid-1980s. The black community was ravaged by a drug crisis of historic proportions, resulting in "crack" babies, record drug overdoses, unprecedented numbers of black male youth incarcerations, a rise in AIDS and numerous other afflictions.

Largely due to the CIA's efforts, Latin American cocaine exports to the United States escalated to sales of $29 billion during the 1980s.

Ramon Milian Rodriguez, an accountant for the Medellin drugs cartel, testified before the U.S. Senate Narcotics and Terrorism Subcommittee that he personally funded nearly $10 million from the cartel to the Contras, the money delivered in installments through couriers selected by the CIA's Felix Rodriguez. In turn, Rodriguez disclosed that he paid Manuel Noriega $4-10 million per month for protection of drug and money shipments from Colombia. From 1979 to 1983, the payments to Noriega totaled $320 to $350 million. Noriega had a deal with U.S. officials that one per cent of the gross income from his drug deals was set aside to buy additional weapons for the Contras. John Gotti, on June 21, 1991, former CIA agent Richard Brenneke gave a sworn deposition before Congressman William Alexander, fingering Gotti as an active detergent in "laundering" the CIA drug shipments coming into the Mena Airport in Arkansas.

Source: http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/ciadrugslaunder.htm

Michael Harari's participation ensured that Israel got a piece of Ollie North's action (the private covert operation Enterprise). Hararai, was formerly high in the Mossad, and had been demoted for assassinating the wrong "terrorist".

By December 1983 the Israelis had begun using a Panamanian CIA front company, IFMA Management Company, to funnel support to the Contras. Harari would later boast of his friendship with Donald Gregg, George Bush's national security advisor. In early 1984, Noriega began to call Harari his "mentor".

http://www.aci.net/kalliste/part29.htm

http://www.naturalhealthholistic.com/foster-1.html

------

During his Hawaiian exile, Marcos declared that he had given Reagan $4 million in 1980 and $8 million in 1984. Documentary evidence surfaced after Marcos was ousted by a revolution in March 1986. A Feb. 17, 1986, letter signed by a senior Marcos aide, Victor Nituda.

Nituda's letter specifically cited accounts set up for Reagan and his 1980 campaign manager William Casey, and bank loans and donations made to General John Singlaub, who was raising money for the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

(Sourcr: "Lost History: Marcos, Money & Treason," investigative reporter Robert Parry).Alan Quasha's father is William Quasha and is a Filipino banker, who had been at strong supporter of President Ferdinand Marcos. He also had advised top officials in Australia's Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation, which was involved in drug trafficking operations which originated in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

Harken Energy Corp. was a medium-sized, diversified corporation founded by Phil Kendrickthat, had been purchased in 1983 by a New York lawyer, Alan Quasha. Quasha seemed interested in acquiring not just an oil company, but the son of the Vice President. Harken agreed to acquire Spectrum 7 in a deal that handed over one share of publicly traded stock for five shares of Spectrum, which at the time were practically worthless. [WP, July 30, 1999.] "http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/081500a2.html"

The declassified version of Volume II of the CIA Inspector General's Report states that the CIA engaged in a conspiracy to protect known narcotics traffickers throughout the Contra war years. CIA admits dealing with more than fifty traffickers, failing to inform Congress for years and engaging in an apparent conspiracy to protect major narcotics traffickers. Oliver North is exposed. The CIA took $36,800 in drng money seized by the San Francisco police and returning it to contra drug smugglers. Source: http://www.copvcia.com/volii.htm

The 1983 Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare manual issued, in Spanish, to contra forces by the U.S. government provided a documentary link to prior U.S. army field manuals that explicitly prescribe the use of terrorism

The comic book received relatively little attention; its format and the “prankster” nature of much of what it proposed combined to encourage the media to view it as a relatively trivial production. The psychological operations manual was of another caliber: It openly set out criteria and a methodology for murder. Americas Watch examined the manual in the context of the United States’ obligations under the Geneva Conventions, and concluded:

[T]he United States has aided and abetted the contras in committing abuses by organizing, training, supplying and financing them, and by serving as their vigorous and enthusiastic public relations advocate. In addition, by publishing and distributing the CIA’s Manual. . . the United States has directly solicited the contras to engage in violations of the laws of war. l "95"

The latter point was also made by the International Court ofJustice, in a ruling of 27 June 1986: By producing and distributing the manual to the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Front, that is, the contras), the United States government had “encouraged the commission by them of acts contrary to the general principles of humanitarian law.

Duane R. Clarridge, the Latin America division chief of the CIA’s Directorate for Operations, briefed the Senate subcommittee. According to an account of the secret briefing, Clarridge acknowledged the murder of “civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges,”

Source: http://www.statecraft.org/chapter18.html

Harvard Medical School instructor Paul R. Epstein, MD, about the war the contras were waging against the Sandinista's health-care system. Epstein said he'd visited Nicaragua twice, in 1983 and in 1987; in the time between his visits, the contras had destroyed at least 15 community health centers built by the Sandinistas and had assassinated doctors. Reed Brody, a former assistant attorney general of New York State who had documented atrocities in Nicaragua, also testified that the contra war was aimed at civilians.

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/umass.edu/trial.html

A Reagan administration official bluntly stated in 1988: "We're not going to let a little thing like drugs get in the way of the political situation.

By 1989, the CIA's complicity in global narcotics traffic had allowed world opium production to multiply fourfold to 4,200 tons a year.

BCCI

BCCI collapsed in July 1991 with estimated debts of over $10 billion. It operated as a corrupt organisation throughout its 19-year history. It systematically falsified its records and knowingly laundered the illegal income of drug dealers and other criminals, and it paid bribes and kickbacks to public officials in many countries. BCCI was founded in Pakistan by Agha Hassan Abedi in 1972. It had branches in more than 70 countries but the bank's main office was in London. BCCI also had major centres in the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, where banking regulations are virtually non-existent. Here it utilised its operations to move money around the world for arms deals and intelligence operations, through a convoluted web of accounts and shell companies designed to camouflage the transactions.

BCCI perpetrated the world's biggest banking fraud, with an estimated $200 billion involved in money laundering networks worldwide. BCCI officials were arrested and convicted in Britain for laundering drug money in 1988. For years previously, U.K. Customs officers had passed on details of BCCI accounts being used to launder drug money to the intelligence services, yet the information was not acted upon. Acting CIA Director Richard Kerr told Congress in 1986 that the Agency was well aware that BCCI "was involved in illegal activities such as money-laundering, narcotics and terrorism."

http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/ciadrugslaunder.htm

The CIA distrubuted a 1986 report, containing most of the key information that BCCI was owned by First American, was distributed thru out the government intelligence agencies, except for the two agencies which would have had a statutory responsibility to begin investigations in response -- the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department. http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/161758.html

The Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute the bank's officials despite strong evidence of wrongdoing. They did not follow up on leads, including eyewitness accounts that the bank was involved in widespread corrupt activities, including money laundering and drug trafficking. Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Mueller, 3d, was in charge of the BCCI investigation, the present FBI Director.

http://www.viking1.com/spy/air3.htm

Reagon Administration Counter-left wing groups operations:

During the Reagan administration, there were revelations of a major FBI spying campaign that initially targeted the anti-intervention group Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and soon grew to encompass a hundred other organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (founded by Martin Luther King Jr.), National Council of Churches, United Auto Workers, and the Women's Rape Crisis Center in Norfolk, Virginia.

FBI-director William Webster personally overruled local field agents who sought to terminate surveillance of peace groups in their area. Source: Unreliable Sources, p124.

Grenada: Reagan lied

A minority of hard core Marxist-Leninists led a military coup on October 19, 1983 and placed leading moderates socialists under arrest. In response, there was a nationwide general strike and other protests. When a crowd of Bishop supporters liberated the ousted prime minister Maurice Bishop and his allies from prison, army troops massacred dozens of protesters and executed Bishop and two other cabinet members.

The initial justifications for the invasion proved to be either highly debatable or demonstrably false. President Reagan immediately implied that the Cubans were behind the coup and the killings. In reality, Cuban President Fidel Castro had condemned the coup and declared an official day of mourning for the late Prime Minister. Strongly worded cables from Havana underscored the Cuban government's concern, threatening a cessation of Cuban assistance and a declaration that Cuban forces on the island would fire only in self-defense

The major justification for the invasion was the protection of American lives. Reagan administration officials falsely claimed that the islands only operating airport was closed, offering the students no escape. In reality, scores of people left the island on charter flights the day before the U.S. invasion, noting that there was not even a visible military presence at the airport and that customs procedures were normal. Regularly scheduled flights as well as sea links from neighboring Caribbean islands had ceased as of October 21, however, though this came as a direct result of pressure placed on these governments to do so by U.S. officials.

Apparently, by limiting the ability of Americans who wished to depart from leaving, the Reagan administration could then use their continued presence on the troubled island as an excuse to invade. The Reagan administration admitted that no significant non-military means of evacuating Americans was actively considered.

The 800 American students at the U.S.-run St. Georges University School of Medicine were never actually in any danger prior to the invasion itself. Grenadan and Cuban officials had met only days earlier with administrators of the American medical school and guaranteed the students safety. Staff members from the U.S. embassy in Barbados visited Grenada and saw no need to evacuate the students.

The medical schools chancellor, Charles Modica, polled students and found that 90% did not want to be evacuated.

The U.S. media focused great attention on the students who were first evacuated, however, virtually no attention was given to those who stayed behind. There were no confirmed reports of any American civilians harmed or threatened before or during the invasion. It was three days after U.S. troops initially landed before they decided to take control of the second medical school campus, raising questions as to whether the safety of Americans was really the foremost priority. A second major justification for the invasion was the reported Cuban military buildup on the island. President Reagan claimed that U.S. troops found six warehouses "stacked to the ceiling" with weapons that were earmarked for Cuban military intervention in Central America and Africa. In reality, there were only three warehouses that were only one-quarter full of antiquated small arms that had been confiscated a few days earlier by the coup leaders from the popular militias.

A major concern for the Reagan administration was an airport under construction on the southern tip of the island at Port Salines, near the capital of St. George's. President Reagan repeatedly charged that it was to be a Soviet/Cuban air base. However, it has since been acknowledged that its sole purpose was for civilian airliners. Like other Caribbean islands, the tourist industry is an important source of income.

While many of the new airport's construction workers were Cuban, the contractor was Plessey, a British firm underwritten by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government.

A third major pretext cited for the U.S. invasion was a request for intervention by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the charter of which allows for "arrangements for collective security against external aggression." However, since Grenada was a member of the OECS, there was no external aggression. The article stipulates that decisions for such actions must be unanimous among member states, which was not the case, since Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, and Montserrat did not support it.

The U.S. assault was resisted almost exclusively Grenadans. Many observers speculate that this was the primary reason for the refusal by the Reagan administration to allow media access to the island during the initial phases of the invasion when most of the fighting took place. The U.S. estimates that only about 35 Cubans died, but has never released Grenadan casualty figures. Less than 100 of the 750 Cubans on the island were military personnel.

The current center-right government, for example, has engaged in some major irregularities in awarding contracts for public works projects to foreign investors with criminal ties and has set up offshore banking operations with little oversight.

//// In his race for the Senate in Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman attacked his Republican opponent incumbent, Senator Lowell Weiker, for having raised Constitutional objections to the invasion of Grenada.///

The covert-action, ENTERPRISE (operation BLACK EAGLE) In 1972, with the coming fall of Saigon, Air America, as the group had come to be known (complete with the cynical motto "We Fly Right") was officially disbanded. But during their four years of existence, they had established an important precedent. They had used an existing criminal infrastructure to finance intelligence community operations that they never would have received funding for had they gone through standard appropriations channels, thus subverting the will of Congress and the American people.

Even after Ted Shackley was brought back to the United States to run the western hemisphere operations of the CIA, his agents were still extorting millions of dollars from Vang Pao and transferring it to a bank in Australia called the Nugun Hand Bank. They also began to pilfer tons of military equipment from depots around Asia and transfer it to a secret base in Thailand. One of the men who flew the military hardware into Thailand and made the odd smuggling run for Vang Pao was Adler Berrimen a.k.a. Berry Seal.

In 1975 George Bush Sr. became director of the CIA and Ted Shackley receivedyet another promotion, this time to Deputy Director of Intelligence in charge of world wide covert operations. This was a major step towards the directorship of the CIA, which Shackley would have received had Ford won the election.

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."] http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/W_plane.html

But Carter won and Admiral Stansfield Turner became director of the CIA. Under Carter’s direction, Admiral Turner began to dismantle large parts of the CIA’s covert operations apparatus. Since the accounts in the Nugen Hand bank and the military hardware stashed in Thailand had never officially existed, they were never touched. However the remnants of Air America feared that this would not be the case for much longer so they found employment with the Shah of Iran until Turner’s purge had run it’s course. after Somoza was forced to flee to the Bahamas, Air America continued to supply arms and advisors to the vestiges of his supporters in Nicaragua, now called the Contras. The man who acted as liaison to the Contras was one of Ted Shackley’s old Operation 40 operatives, professional assassin Chi Chi Quintero.

Quintero took orders from the Contras and relayed them to Adler Berrimen (aka Berry Seal) who set up the shipping routes. Shackley’s next coup was to negotiate a deal with the Iranians whereby the hostages were kept on ice until the election was over. This enabled Reagan strategists to portray the Carter administration as weak and vacillating. Perhaps not an inaccurate depiction. The American public did not seem to think it coincidental that the hostages were released on the day of Reagan’s inauguration. All of this time and all of these operations were leading the Air America apparatus incrementally toward Mena.

To fund the Enterprise, Casey and his representatives contacted governments closely tied to U.S. imperialism, including the Israelis, Argentineans, the Sultan of Brunei, the Saudi monarchy, and the various CIA-dominated militaries of Central America. In exchange for all kinds of favors, these governments contributed arms, money, and trainers to the Enterprise.

What was covered up during the Iran-contra hearings was that the Enterprise also relied heavily on drug-smuggling operations. The CIA offered large-scale drug smugglers a simple deal: It would prevent U.S. drug and customs agencies from disrupting their cocaine traffic, if these traffickers would airlift and finance the flow of arms to the contras.

In 1983, Vice President George Bush put the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operations under the control of the "national security" apparatus. In June 1983, the DEA office in Honduras was shut down, one month after the local DEA agent started investigating SETCO.

Also in 1983, planes of Southern Air Transport (SAT--the CIA's newly "privatized" airline) were seen being loaded with cocaine in Barranquilla, Colombia (Washington Post, Jan. 20, 1987). SETCO and SAT were part of a larger air support network directed by "retired Air Force General" Richard Secord, a military logistics expert who is sometimes described as a CIA official.

After 1984, the contra operation was overseen by Donald Gregg, a long-time CIA official who was reassigned to be top aide of Vice President George Bush.

The Enterprise continued to grow. By 1986, the CIA had at least 300 agents operating in Honduras.[3] In 1984, SETCO started receiving funds directly from the U.S. State Department. State Department testimony before congress said that the CIA approved giving funds to Matta's organization. In addition, it was reported that North gave SETCO other money from secret accounts.[1] According to Newsweek, by 1985, Matta's organization was supplying "perhaps one third of all the cocaine consumed in the United States." Honduras' main cocaine trafficker was Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros.[1]

When Theodore Shackley became CIA station chief in Miami in 1962 he inherited the CIA's "executive action" program. "Executive action" is the CIA's euphemism for the assassination of foreign leaders. In 1975 the Church committee investigated this matter and identified the riflemen assigned to Shackley in this program. To identify the more recent assignments of these gunmen is to indicate the ongoing importance of this assassins group in U.S. foreign policy. Chi Chi Quintero was the base commander of the Contra air base, Santa Elena, in Costa Rica and Felix Roderguez was base commander of the lIapango resupply base north in Honduras. Frank Sturgis and Rolando Martinez, two other executive action gunman in Shackley's program, along with their supervisor, E. Howard Hunt were Nixon "plumbers" caught burglarizing the Watergate Hotel. Theodore Shackley and his deputy, Tom Clines, were the higher ups of the Iran/Contra scandal --- Shackley handling the Iran arms side and Clines the Contra end. "http://www.dcia.com/doping.html

Later, in 1991 trial testimony, the CIA and U.S. Army admitted paying Noriega $322,336 since 1955. This is a very low estimate. Others report that then-CIA director George Bush started paying Noriega $100,000 a year in 1976.[4] During the '80s, Noriega deposited at least $33 million at the Panama City branch of the BCCI bank. Some of these funds were being laundered for the contras, others were Noriega's payoffs for the operations passing through his territory.

To earn his pay, Noriega carried out all kinds of dirty activities for his U.S. masters. He supplied pilots, bases and funds to the contra supply operations.[1] Noriega's close confidant Floyd Carlton Caceres negotiated personally with the top Colombian cocaine smugglers Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria for the use of Panamanian air bases. Noriega's fees for such services were $200,000 per trip. Floyd Carlton later testified in a U.S. courtroom that their operation flew U.S. guns to the contras in Nicaragua and brought cocaine into the United States on the return flight.[1] In 1984, the Enterprise was reorganized, and Noriega's contra-drug operations shifted northward from Panama to Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador. Between October 1984 and June 1985, the gun-for-drugs operation run by Floyd Carlton alone moved at least four tons of cocaine through northern Costa Rica.[1] "http://rwor.org/a/firstvol/885/cia3.htm"

The Iran-Contra Report: Chronology

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-chronology.html o:p>

1981

AUG. 4 Oliver L. North, a Marine major, is assigned to the National Security Council at the White House.

DECEMBER President Ronald Reagan signs an executive order that authorizes a covert operation by the C.I.A. to support the contras, rebels who are fighting the leftist Government of Nicaragua. The Administration hopes its secret backing will bolster the contras' appearance as an indigenous independent force.

1982

DECEMBER With accounts of U.S. backing leaking out, Congress enacts the Boland Amendment, which bars the use of Federal money to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government.

1984

SPRING Major North is assigned as White House contact with the contras.

1985

FEBRUARY Through dummy corporations abroad, Colonel North and two associates -- Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general, and Albert A. Hakim, an Iranian-American arms dealer -- make the first of six purchases of weapons destined for the contras. The money comes from private contributions, all secret. By keeping the source of the money private, the White House is able to squeeze through a loophole in the Boland Amendment and maintain that this arms supply is legal.

SUMMER News accounts link Colonel North to a private network supplying military aid to the contras. The reports prompt questions from Congress, and Mr. North helps Robert C. McFarlane, the President's national security adviser, prepare a denial.

JULY Israeli Government officials, who long viewed Iran as a counterweight to Iraq and other Arab enemies of Israel, tell Mr. McFarlane that the Iranians want to open a "political discourse" with Washington. Although the United States publicly views the Teheran Government as terrorist and has outlawed arms sales to it, this overture soon leads to the first shipment of American weapons to Iran, without legal authorization. The shipment, in turn, brought the release of one of seven Americans held hostage in Lebanon by Islamic militants.

NOV. 19 Colonel North is appointed by Mr. McFarlane to handle logistics for a second arms shipment, of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, to Iran.

1986

APRIL 4 In a memo to John M. Poindexter, who has succeeded Mr. McFarlane as national security adviser, Colonel North proposes diverting to the contras $12 million of the proceeds from the sale to Iran. The memo, Colonel North will later testify, was intended for President Reagan.

MAY 25 Mr. McFarlane, who has formally left the Government but remains a consultant to the White House, flies secretly to Teheran with Colonel North and other officials, carrying spare parts for missiles.

AUG. 6 Meeting with 11 members of the House Intelligence Committee, Colonel North denies raising money for the contras or offering them military advice. As he later testified, this was a lie.

OCT. 5 Carrying arms to the contras, a cargo plane is shot down over Nicaragua. Three crewmen are killed, and a fourth, Eugene Hasenfus, is captured by the Nicaraguan Army.

NOV. 22 Justice Department investigators discover in Colonel North's office his April memo proposing the diversion of arms-sale money to the contras.

NOV. 23 Colonel North meets privately with Mr. McFarlane and tells him that the diversion was approved by White House superiors. The colonel also meets with Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d and informs him.

NOV. 24 Mr. Meese tells the President of the diversion.

NOV. 25 Mr. Meese discloses the Iran-contra connection. Mr. Reagan announces Mr. Poindexter's resignation and Colonel North's dismissal.

1987

JAN. 6-7 Special committees of the Senate and the House are created.

FEB. 26 A Presidential commission led by former Senator John G. Tower blames the President's top advisers for a chaotic environment that, the commission says, led to the Iran-contra affair. The panel says the President was largely out of touch with the operations of the N.S.C.

JULY 7 Appearing before the Congressional committees, Colonel North begins six days of frequently fervent testimony. He says that he does not know if Mr. Reagan was aware of the diversion of arms-sales money to the contras but that William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence, had approved it. Mr. Casey had recently died.

NOV. 18 The Congressional committees conclude that the President failed to meet his constitutional mandate to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." The committees say that he bears "ultimate responsibility.

1988

MARCH 11 Mr. McFarlane pleads guilty to four misdemeanor counts of withholding from Congress information about the Administration's efforts to help the contras. He is later sentenced to two years' probation and 200 hours of community service.

MARCH 16 A Federal grand jury indicts Colonel North, Mr. Poindexter, Mr. Secord and Mr. Hakim on an array of charges, among them conspiracy to defraud the Government by providing the contras with funds from Iran.

MARCH 18 Colonel North resigns from the Marine Corps.

1989

JAN. 5 The defense's demands for classified Government documents, and the Government's refusal to provide them, lead to the dropping of two central counts against Mr. North.

MAY 4 Mr. North is convicted of obstructing Congress, destroying documents and accepting an illegal gratuity. He is acquitted of nine counts.

JULY 25 The continuing battle over classified documents leads to the dropping of two of the most serious charges against Mr. Poindexter.

NOV. 8 Mr. Secord pleads guilty to one count of making a false statement to Congress. The plea resolves all charges against him.

1990

APRIL 7 Mr. Poindexter is convicted of conspiracy to mislead Congress, obstructing Congressional inquiries and making false statements.

JULY 20 A Federal appeals court sets aside the North conviction, ruling that the case may have been tainted by the testimony that Mr. North, under a grant of immunity, had given to the Congressional committees.

1991

JULY 9 Alan D. Fiers, former head of the C.I.A.'s Latin America task force, pleads guilty of withholding from Congress information about the arms-money diversion. He is later sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service.

SEPT. 6 Clair E. George, former chief of covert operations for the C.I.A., is indicted on perjury charges.

OCT. 7 Elliott L. Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State, pleads guilty of withholding information from Congress about efforts to aid the contras. He is later sentenced to two years' probation and 100 hours of service.

NOV. 26 Duane R. Clarridge, former chief of operations for the C.I.A., is indicted on perjury charges.

1992

JUNE 16 Former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger is indicted on charges of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the Iran-contra affair.

DEC. 9 After one trial in which the jury deadlocked, Mr. George is convicted of lying to Congress.

DEC. 24 President George Bush pardons Messrs. Weinberger, McFarlane, Abrams, George, Clarridge and Fiers.

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