Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency w

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency w

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:44 am

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA
by Terry Reed & John Cummings
© 1994 by Terry Reed and John Cummings

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• FRONT & BACK COVERS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• CAST OF CHARACTERS
• AUTHOR'S NOTE
• CHAPTER 1: PATRIOTIC TIME BOMBS
• CHAPTER 2: THE SOONER CONNECTION
• CHAPTER 3: PROJECT DONATION
• CHAPTER 4: INTO THE LOOP
• CHAPTER 5: GETTING OFF THE GROUND
• CHAPTER 6: AMERICA'S BANANA REPUBLIC
• CHAPTER 7: TAIL-NUMBERS GAME
• CHAPTER 8: THE BOMBER
• CHAPTER 9: GOLD MEDAL FLIGHT SCHOOL
• CHAPTER 10: CHRISTMAS PAST
• CHAPTER 11: 'WETA OKAMI'
• CHAPTER 12: STRANGE ALLIANCE
• CHAPTER 13: FEEDING FRENZY
• CHAPTER 14: COMPANY-PAID VACATION
• CHAPTER 15: TRIP ON THE DARK SIDE
• CHAPTER 16: A DATE WITH DEATH
• CHAPTER 17: NEW COVENANT
• CHAPTER 18: WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS
• CHAPTER 19: OPERATION SCREW WOR
• CHAPTER 20: MEXICAN HANDOFF
• CHAPTER 21: ESCAPE FROM 'FREEDOM'
• CHAPTER 22: MARGARITAVILLE
• CHAPTER 23: ON ICE
• CHAPTER 24: 'THE SNAKE THAT WOULDN'T DIE'
• CHAPTER 25: PROJECT Z
• CHAPTER 26: BIRTH, LIFE AND DEATH
• CHAPTER 27: POWDERED MONEY
• CHAPTER 28: WHAT A BIRTHDAY PRESENT!
• CHAPTER 29: MAX OR FELIX?
• CHAPTER 30: SEVERANCE PAY
• CHAPTER 31: DOUBLE CROSS
• CHAPTER 32: SERPENTINE
• CHAPTER 33: DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE
• CHAPTER 34: P.I.S.S.
• CHAPTER 35: SALVATION AT THE RACE TRACK
• CHAPTER 36: DEEP THROAT IS SABOTAGED
• EPILOGUE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX

"Talk to Emile and he'll give you the Seneca right around the first of the year."

"What's significant about the first of the year?"

"The tithing is gonna really go on the increase, come January 1."

"Tithing?"

"Yeah, the dime that the state's workin' on for lettin' the Agency's operation go on here," Seal answered. "You didn't think somethin' this big could be goin' on without havin' to pay for it. Shit, you were in Southeast Asia. Didn't you tell me we had to pay some fuckin' prince in Laos every time the Air Force dropped a bomb there? You see it's all the same, just one fuckin' banana republic after another."

The "dime" Seal referred to was the 10 percent being charged the CIA by high Arkansas state officials for allowing the Agency to operate in Arkansas. The word tithing Terry had learned back in his Sunday school days in the Nazarene Church. The term meant 10 per cent of your money would be given the church and, in return, as the Bible proclaimed, you would get it back 10 fold. And this was undoubtedly true for the CIA.

Arkansas was providing cover for the Agency's illegal airplane modifications, Contra training operations, arms shipments and, from what Seal revealed, ways to invest the black money that was being made from its gun-running to Central America. So that's why the singer Glen Campbell called Arkansas the "land of opportunity."

***

Here he was at the core. Like Dorothy, he had looked behind the curtain and seen the true "Wizard."

Here was what seemed a strange alliance. A state run by Democrats in bed with a Republican administration in Washington, and both conspiring to evade Congress' prohibition against aiding or abetting the Contras. It was so steeped with hypocrisy.

Was the CIA the invisible force that had the power to compromise these political pillars of the nation?

Were these same invisible forces orbiting only in Arkansas or throughout the nation? He wondered. But why limit it to the nation? Perhaps the world functioned under one control. Could that control be the CIA? Was there a secret alliance of agents worldwide who operate as they please?

Religion, he had come to realize, was a form of social control. Was politics as well? Was it just a game like professional sports, simply to divert public attention from what was really happening? Was it all just a placebo?

While driving back to OSI, Terry was strangely quiet and withdrawn. He was feeling manipulated by the social order he had been raised to obey, and now he had doubts about his previous motivations in life.

"You're awfully quiet, Terry-san," Sawahata said after a few minutes.

"Aki I've got to ask you a question. It's funny I've never asked, considering all the time we've spent together. Are you a Republican or a Democrat."

"I am a political atheist. I work for the CIA."

"What does that mean?"

"That means Agency is politics. Agency is the government. Everything else is just puppets, a big game, Terry-san. You did not know that?"

If Terry Reed was not a liability before, he certainly was now. Those who see behind the curtain are always a threat. It was like someone telling the Pope in the 1300s that the world was really round and that it did, indeed, revolve around the sun, rather than the other way around.

***

Seal began yelling at the top of his voice, something totally out of character for him. Terry had never seen him this euphoric.

"YEE-HAWWWWWW," he screamed. "I'm gonna fuckin' make it. We're gonna do this, Terry. We've got these assholes eatin' outa our hands. YEEHAWWWWWWWWW. Give me the fuckin' airplane."

He grabbed the control yoke and executed a series of aileron rolls. Terry had never been sick in an airplane, but he was sure he was about to lose his SOS.

"OK, enough of that shit," Seal said after seeming to tire of the aerobatic antics. "You got the airplane, I'll hook up the radios."

Terry sat silently at the controls, trying to figure out what was driving Seal. As Barry emerged from under the electrical panel, after making the radio connections, he abruptly began pounding with his right hand on the dash of the Lear until Terry thought the avionics in the control panel would be dislodged.

"There ain't nuthin' in this world more powerful than good ol' fuckin' blackmail, Terry. And don't let anybody ever tell ya different. Jeeeeesus Christ, I got some good shit on some big people."

"Will you let me in on your party? Calm down, Barry! Tell me what's goin' on. "

"Terry, what's most important right now is for ya ta play ball with these guys and get your ass down to Mexico ASAP. You impressed the shit out of Leroy ... Robert Johnson, too. I won't be able ta come ta Mexico right now, I've got a little matter ta take care of. But ya get on down there and get in a position to receive me, and I'll be joining ya soon. Goddam, this'll be great. Won't it be fun workin' together and spendin' all their fuckin' money?"

"What this blackmail, you're talking about?"

"Ever hear the old expression, it's not what ya know, it's who ya know? Well, whoever said that just hadn't caught the Vice President's kids in the dope business, 'cause I can tell ya for sure what ya know can definitely be more important than who you know."

"You gotta calm down and tell me what you're talking about, if you want me to know. What's this about the Vice President's kids and dope."

"I don't wannna tell ya too much, 'cause truthfully ya don't have a need to know. But Terry I been workin' with several federal agencies for the past couple of years as ya probably suspicioned. In the course of that business, a person can't help but run across some real sensitive information. It seems some major players in the Medellin Cartel, whom I personally know, ran across some knowledge that's very valuable to both the Republicans and the Democratic Party. Real national security stuff. It seems some of George Bush's kids just can't say no ta drugs, ha ha ha ha ...Well, ya can imagine how valuable information like that would be, can't ya? That could get ya out of almost any kind of jam." Seal paused for a moment then asked, "Ya ever play Monopoly? The information I got is so good it's just like a get-out-of-jail-free card ... ha,ha,ha,ha YEEHAWWWWW..."

"Barry, are you telling me George Bush's kids are in the drug business?"

"Yup, that's what I'm tellin' ya. A guy in Florida who flipped for the DEA has got the goods on the Bush boys. Now I heard this earlier from a reliable source in Colombia, but I just sat on it then, waitin' to use it as a trump card, if I ever needed it. Well, I need ta use it now. I got names, dates, places ....even got some tape recordins'. Fuck, I even got surveillance videos catchin' the Bush boys red-handed. I consider this stuff my insurance policy. It makes me and my mole on the inside that's feedin' the stuff to me invincible. Now this is real sensitive shit inside of U.S. Customs and DEA and those guys are pretty much under control. It's damage control as usual. But where it gets real interestin' is what the Republicans will do ta the Democrats in order ta dirty up the people who might use this information against Bush."

"So you've got direct knowledge of the Republicans trying to neutralize some Democrats before they can nuke Bush with this?"

"Hell yeah. I've been part of it. Remember that meetin' we had at SOBs when I told ya ya should play ball with these guys and get your butt down ta Mexico and be prepared to receive me? ... Remember in that meetin' I told ya I had a plan to blow the lid off the whole damn Mena deal and shut it down due to adverse publicity? Well, what I didn't tell ya was that project was already in effect, and the Republicans were already trying to neutralize some important people in Arkansas ...namely the Clinton family."

Seal took a break to communicate with ground control. When he turned back to Terry, he continued, "Yeah, that day ya explained to me the connection between the Ward family, the Rose Law Firm and the governor's mansion, well ....I about shit! Ya see what ya didn't know was I was on a secret mission by none other than the Agency ta sort of.. ..uh, dirty up some people real close to the governor. Now I had been workin' on this through Dan Lasater. Now Dan's a good ol' boy and all that, but he's gotta drug problem, and he's got the balls to be stealin' from the Agency, too. From what I hear, Dan's been doin' a lot of questionable out-a-state investin'. In fact, he's stashin' a lot of cash in a resort in New Mexico. *

"I was told ta exploit that, which I was workin' on. But you come along with this new connection. And when ya told me that Finis Shellnut was the guy at the ranch (where the 'green flights' dropped their money in Arkansas) ... dollar signs started dancin' in my head. I saw an immediate way to get some white stuff up some noses around Bill Clinton real fast. Now don't get mad, but that duffel bag I had ya take over to Skeeter Ward wasn't really money."

"I'm afraid to ask what it was," Terry said as he focused on the "little airplane" displayed on the Lear's flight director.

"Let's don't call it cocaine. Let's just call it neutralizin' powder. Least that's the way the Bush family saw it. This is just one family warrin' against another. Just like the Mob."

"Goddam, Barry, this is heavy shit! Are you saying you were the source of the cocaine ending up around a lot of important people in Arkansas. Like the ones I've been reading about in the paper. There's a major scandal brewing there ..."

Terry sat silently and continued to think. Seal gazed out the window and said nothing.

Already predicting the answer by Seal's silence, Terry asked, Did you have anything to do with Roger (Clinton) and some of those guys in Lasater's firm getting investigated?

"Terry, I told ya when I met ya, I'm in transportation and I transport what the government wants transported. In this case, the Republicans ... the Bush family ... wanted some stuff transported through Mena and into Arkansas that would end up in the noses of some very prominent Democrats. And yes, I must 'fess up, I've had a hand in that. YEEE-HAWWWWWW! It's not who ya know it's what ya know."

Terry found all this disquieting. Seal had never discussed drugs with him before, and if Barry was telling the truth, he had unknowingly delivered some to Skeeter Ward. Seal was telling him that he had a hand in the major political storm that was brewing in Arkansas. Terry had not bargained for this sort of involvement.

Roger Clinton, the governor's brother, had already been arrested and had pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges. He was now serving time at a federal prison/drug rehab center in Texas. Rumors abounded that Roger was helping the Feds implicate major figures in the Arkansas financial community for cocaine related crimes. Not only was a federal grand jury investigation getting underway, but panic was already permeating the Arkansas bond business with fears that investor confidence would be shaken if the Feds proved that the bond industry was laundering drug money and its corporate leaders were actually trafficking in drugs.

The Feds were targeting Dan Lasater and people in his firm, most of them friends of Governor Clinton. But George Bush's real target, from what Seal was saying, was Bill Clinton and Seal was the instrument that Republicans were using under the guise of the CIA.

***

The five waiting men were clearly taken aback when Governor Bill Clinton stepped from the vehicle with his aide, Bob Nash, and led the entourage into the World War II ammunition storage bunker that would serve as the meeting place.

In a low tone, Cathey turned to Terry and said: "Shit! I was afraid he'd show up. That'll certainly upset our agenda. I'm glad Johnson is here. He'll be able to handle him."

The waiting group of five had expected Nash, but not his boss, Arkansas' Commander-in-Chief, Bill Clinton. By his mere appearance, Clinton was risking exposure of his involvement in unauthorized covert operations. But he seemed desperate.

The meeting had been called at Camp Robinson, an Army facility outside Little Rock, to get some problems ironed out. In addition to the governor and his aide, the "guest list" included Max Gomez (Felix Rodriguez), John Cathey (Oliver North), resident CIA agent Akihide Sawahata, Agency subcontractor Terry Reed -- and the man in charge, the one who would call the shots. He called himself Robert Johnson.

Johnson had been sent from Washington to chair this very delicate operational briefing that would hopefully extricate the Agency from its entanglement in what was becoming a messy situation in Arkansas....

Cathey began the briefing.

"Governor Clinton," he said switching to his toastmaster tone, "I'm glad you could attend tonight's meeting with us. We're both surprised and honored. Bobby (Nash) didn't inform us you would be attending ... However, let's get down to it....

Terry viewed this meeting as his initiation into the inner circle. But this impromptu appearance by Governor Clinton, however, would expose Terry to yet more things that he had no "need to know." It would also confirm his suspicions that operations in Arkansas were being run with Clinton's full knowledge....

"Gentlemen," Cathey said, "this meeting is classified Top-Secret. The items discussed here should be relayed to no one who does not have an operational need to know. I repeat Top-Secret. There are to be no notes taken."...

Johnson, Cathey said, was the personal representative of CIA Director William Casey and had been sent to chair the meeting. Casey was too important to show his face, Terry assumed. But he felt honored, and yet surprised, to find he'd been dealing with someone so closely connected to the Director of Central Intelligence, the top of the intelligence pyramid.

"Thank you," Johnson said. "As Mr. Cathey mentioned, I am the emissary of Mr. Casey, who for obvious security reasons could not attend.
We are at a major junction of our Central American support program. And I am here to tie up a few loose ends. As you are all aware, the severity of the charges that could be brought against us if this operation becomes public ... well, I don't need to remind you of what Benjamin Franklin said as he and our founding fathers framed the Declaration of Independence ..."

Cathey interrupted. "Yeah, but hanging is a much more humane way of doing things than what Congress will put us through if any of this leaks out." This marked the only time during the briefing that laughter was heard.

"This is true," Johnson replied. "And therefore, Governor Clinton, I'm going to find it necessary to divide this meeting into groups so that we don't unnecessarily expose classified data to those who don't have an absolute need to know. We can first discuss any old business that concerns either "Centaur Rose" or "Jade Bridge", and I think that you will agree that afterwards you and Mr. Nash will have to excuse yourselves ..."

Clinton was visibly indignant, giving the angry appearance of someone not accustomed to being treated in such a condescending manner.

"It seems someone in Washington has made decisions without much consulting with either myself or my aide here, Mr. Nash. And I'd like to express my concern about the possible exposure my state has as you guys skedaddle out of here to Mexico. I feel somewhat naked and compromised. You're right, there are definitely some loose ends!"...

Nash interjected: "Sir, Governor Clinton's concerns are that there may be some loose ends cropping up from the Mena operation in general. As you know, we have had our Arkansas State Police intelligence division riding herd on the project. And that has been no simple task. Even with some of our ASP officers undercover over there, we couldn't have gained any real inside knowledge had it not been for Mr. Reed's ability to report it directly to me. This thing about Barry Seal getting Governor Clinton's brother involved is what's got us all upset. I mean, as we speak, there's an investigation going on that could spill over onto some very influential people here in Arkansas, and people very close to the governor personally ..."

Johnson looked like he was getting irritated. Clinton had not been scheduled to be there and his original agenda now was being discarded.

"Hold on!" Johnson shot back. "Calm down! Mr. Casey is fully in charge here. Don't you old boys get it. Just tell me what has to be taken care of, or who needs to be taken care of, and I'll fix it for you!"

Johnson boasted to the group that Attorney General Edwin Meese, by arranging the appointment of J. Michael Fitzhugh as U.S. Attorney in Western Arkansas, had effectively stonewalled the ongoing money laundering investigations in Mena where the Contra training operations had been centered. It was his impression, Johnson said, that everything was now "kosher" and the "containment" was still in place. Operations "Rose" and "Bridge" had not been exposed because federal law-enforcement agencies had been effectively neutralized. But Johnson said he was now concerned that the "drug" investigation there might expand beyond his control and unmask the residue of black operations.

Now the meeting was starting to turn into a shouting match, Terry quietly observed that Clinton appeared on the verge of losing his well-rehearsed, statesman-like demeanor. Stopping investigations around Mena had helped the CIA and its bosses in Washington, but it had not solved any of the governor's local political problems. And these same problems were threatening to unveil the Mena operations.

It was the spring of 1986, just over a month after Barry Seal's assassination in Louisiana. Clinton was facing a very tough and dirty reelection campaign. His Republican opponent was certain to be ex-Governor Frank White, the only man who had ever defeated Clinton. The newspapers were filled with stories about Clinton's brother, who had been convicted and served time from federal drug trafficking charges, giving White the dirt he needed to launch a serious and damaging political attack.

Roger Clinton had "rolled over" and turned informant, enabling the Feds to begin an investigation of investment banker Dan Lasater, a close personal friend and campaign contributor of Clinton's. This investigation, it was clear, could spill over into Lasater's firm, possibly exposing CIA money-laundering and other possible illegal activities. [1]

The investigation of Clinton's brother had been carried out largely by disloyal state police officials who were backing White, and without Clinton's knowledge, when the inquiry was first initiated. Terry wondered whether a "coup" was building? Clinton was clearly in big political trouble, and his demeanor now was not the cool and composed man people saw on television. Perhaps the CIA and the Reagan administration wanted another "presidente," a Republican one, in its banana republic?

Rumors were also running wild that the bond underwriting business, in which Lasater was a major figure, had been used to launder drug money. In addition, candidate White had another big issue to run with. He would charge later that Clinton was directing choice state legal work as bond counsel to the prestigious Rose Law firm, where his wife, Hillary, was a senior partner. And Clinton had to be fearful that exposure of the Mena operations would be the death blow to his reelection hopes. And, if that weren't enough ammunition, the governor was also facing a possible state budgetary shortfall of more than $200 million.

By his comments, the governor's political problems and his potential exposure were clearly on his mind. Clinton showed his contempt for the young man from Washington as he lost his composure, jumped to his feet and shouted: "Getting my brother arrested and bringing down the Arkansas bond business in the process isn't my idea of kosher! You gents live a long way from here. Your meddling in our affairs here is gonna carry long-term exposure for me! I mean us. And what are we supposed to do, just pretend nothing happened?" He was angry.

"Exactly, pretend nothing's happened," Johnson snapped back. "It's just like the commercial, you're in good hands with Allstate. Only in this case, it's the CIA." Johnson paused, took a deep breath, and continued. "Mr. Clinton, Bill, if you will, some of those loose ends you refer to here were definitely brought on by your own people, don't you agree? I mean your brother didn't have to start shoving Mr. Seal's drugs up his nose and your friend, Lasater, has been flaunting his new wealth as if he's trying to bring you down. We're having to control the SEC and the IRS just to keep him afloat.

"Our deal with you was to help 'reconstruct the South,''' Johnson sniped, using a term Southerners hate, since it reminds them of the post-Civil War Yankee dominance of the South. "We didn't plan on Arkansas becoming more difficult to deal with than most banana republics. This has turned out to be almost comical."

"Bobby! Don't sit here on your black ass and take this Yankee shit!" Clinton yelled at Nash in an appeal for support. "Tell him about Seal bribing those federal agents!" It was getting to resemble a verbal tennis match as volleys were being lobbed, each one with more intensity. From the comment about Seal, Terry concluded that Clinton did in fact have his own intelligence network, too.

"Why, Mr. Clinton, with racial slurs like that, the federal government could terminate educational busing aid here," Johnson wryly shot back. "I thought Arkansas was an equal opportunity employer!"

Nash touched the governor's arm, coaxing him back into his chair.

Johnson continued, "The deal we made was to launder our money through your bond business. What we didn't plan on was you and your token nigger here to start taking yourselves seriously and purposely shrinking our laundry."

"What do you mean by shrinking the laundry?!" Clinton asked still shouting. By now, Clinton's face was flushed with anger.

To the CIA, Arkansas had to be a money-launderers' heaven. To understand why, one must realize that intelligence agencies have the same problem as drug traffickers. To launder cash, a trafficker must either find a bank willing to break the law by not filing the documentation required for cash deposits, or go offshore where reporting requirements are less strict. Like traffickers, once offshore, the CIA must use wire transfers to get their money into the U.S., but at great risk of detection.

The trafficker, having broken the law to make his money, has no legal recourse if his banker double-crossed him. In other words, it's an insecure investment, which pays low interest, if any.

Arkansas offered the CIA something money launderers are rarely able to achieve, a secure business environment containing a banking industry where vast amounts of money move around unnoticed as part of the normal course of business. Through its substantial bond underwriting activities, the state had a huge cash flow that could allow dirty and clean money to co-mingle without detection. All they were lacking was the "dirty banker" to cooperate with them by ignoring the federal banking laws.

And that they found within the Clinton administration. This "banker" was none other than the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority, or ADFA, which was a creation of, and directly under the control of, the governor's office. Its official mandate was to loan money to businesses either already in or coming to Arkansas in order to develop an industrial base for new jobs that Clinton had made the centerpiece of his administration. ADFA, was in effect, a bank making preferred loans.

But, from what Terry had learned from Seal and Sawahata, that was not all ADFA was doing. ADFA, in effect a state investment bank, was being "capitalized" by large cash transfusions that the Agency was taking great pains to hide.

"No paper, no trail," seemed to be the dominate doctrine of the Agency's activities since, by design, cash dropped from an airplane in a duffel bag is not the standard way of transferring money.

ADFA was designed to compete for the profits generated by the bond issues necessary to industrialize Arkansas. The old Arkansas Industrial Development Commission that Clinton had inherited had no money of its own, and was forced to send prospective clients seeking industrial development loans to the established, privately-run investment banking industry in Little Rock. The state could be very selective in its referral business, however, and those who received the state's business stood to profit handsomely.

This insider referral business was alive and well when Terry moved to Arkansas, and he saw Seth Ward's son-in-law, Finis Shellnut, jockey for a position to reap these profits by going to work for Lasater, who was getting the lion's share of the secret sweetheart deals.

Before ADFA's creation, the state sent preferred business directly to investment banking firms like Lasater's. All that was needed for money-laundering was the firm's silence and a source of cash, which, in this case, the CIA provided. The heads of these firms were a coterie of wealthy and well-connected people who got even richer by doing what comes natural in Arkansas, "The Natural State" as it's called ..... dealing incestuously under the table.

Arkansas desperately needed new businesses -- and so did the CIA. It had plenty of black money, but that alone was not enough. "You can't kill an enemy by lobbing dollars at him" was the phrase Cathey had used with Terry to explain the CIA's dilemma of having the monetary resources to fund the Contras, but no legal way to deliver it directly. The Agency was barred by Congress from converting the cash into weapons and training the Contras needed on the battlefield, at least not through traditional Department of Defense suppliers.

Under Director William Casey's plan, the CIA needed other companies that would be a source of secretly-produced weapons that would find their way into the hands of the Contras. These selected businesses needed payment to perform these services for the CIA, and that cash came to them conveniently in a legal and undetectable manner, through ADFA, in the form of industrial development loans backed by tax-free development bonds. The CIA should have been showing a profit through accrued interest on their secured investments. But a problem had arisen. As Johnson had said, the "laundry" was shrinking.

And Johnson was not happy about that as evidenced by the way he was firing back at Clinton. It was apparent that Johnson knew Clinton and his people had not abided by his agreement with the Agency.

"Our deal was for you to have 10 per cent of the profits, not 10 per cent of the gross," Johnson sternly admonished Clinton.

"This has turned into a feeding frenzy by your good ole boy sharks, and you've had a hand in it, too, Mr. Clinton. Just ask your Mr. Nash to produce a business card. I'll bet it reads Arkansas Development and Finance Authority. We know what's been going on. Our people are professionals; they're not stupid. They didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, as you guys say. This ADFA of yours is double-dipping. Our deal with you was to launder our money. You get 10 per cent after costs and after post-tax profits. No one agreed for you to start loaning our money out to your friends through your ADFA so that they could buy machinery to build our guns. That wasn't the deal. Mr. Sawahata tells me that one of ADFA's first customers was some parking meter company that got several million in ... how shall we say it ... in preferred loans.

"Dammit, we bought a whole gun company, lock, stock and barrel and shipped the whole thing down here for you. And Mr. Reed even helped set it up. You people go and screw us by setting up some subcontractors that weren't even authorized by us. Shit, people who didn't even have security clearances. That's why we're pulling the operation out of Arkansas. It's become a liability for us. We don't need live liabilities."....

Clinton had paused for a moment to ponder Johnson's words. "What do ya' mean, live liabilities?" he demanded.

"There's no such thing as a dead liability. It's an oxymoron, get it? Oh, or didn't you Rhodes Scholars study things like that?" Johnson snapped.

"What! Are you threatenin' us? Because if ya' are ..."

Johnson stared down at the table, again took a deep breath, and paused. It appeared he wanted to elevate the tone of the disintegrating exchange.

"Calm down and listen," Johnson said. "We are all in this together. We all have our personal agendas ... but let's not forget, both the Vice President and Mr. Casey want this operation to be a success. We need to get these assets and resources in place and get them self-sustaining and prospering on their own while we have the chance. This is a golden opportunity. The timing is right. We have communists taking over a country in this hemisphere. We must all pull together and play as a team. This is no time for lone wolves. Mr. Seal is an example of what happens to lone wolves. They just don't survive in the modern world of intelligence.

"I'm not here to threaten you. But there have been mistakes. The Mena operation survived undetected and unexposed only because Mr. Seal carried with him a falsely created, high-level profile of a drugrunner. All the cops in the country were trying to investigate a drug operation. That put the police in a position where we could control them. We fed them what we wanted to feed them, when we wanted to feed them; it was our restaurant and our menu. Seal was himself a diversion. It was perfect until your brother started free-enterprising and now we have to shut it down. It's as simple as that. Mr. Seal was a good agent and it's a shame he's dead. But, hopefully, our new operation will build on Seal's success in sustaining our Contra support effort while goddamn Congress dilly dallies around as the Russians take over Nicaragua."

Clinton just glared back. "That was a good sermon, but what can you specifically do to end this investigation concerning my brother and the bond business?"

"Your brother needed to go to jail," Johnson said staring at the governor. "As governor you should intervene and make things as painless as possible now. As far as the money investigation goes, Mr. Meese is intervening right now. There will be no money investigation. The U.S. attorney's office (in Little Rock) is 'getting religion' as we speak. *

"There may be nothing we can do about your friend Lasater's drug problem. I suggest that he and everyone else caught with their pants down take the bad along with the good and do a little time -- as your brother has. It's a shame. But bartenders shouldn't drink. If some of our people are going to be in the drug business as a cover, they should do as Mrs. Reagan says and 'just say no'."

Johnson had applied the balm and now the massage began. "Bill, you are Mr. Casey's fair-haired boy. But you do have competition for the job you seek. We would never put all our eggs in one basket. You and your state have been our greatest asset. The beauty of this, as you know, is that you're a Democrat, and with our ability to influence both parties, this country can get beyond partisan gridlock. Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you fuck up and do something stupid, you're No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the job you've always wanted.

Image
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)


"That's pretty heady stuff, Bill. So why don't you help us keep a lid on this and we'll all be promoted together. You and guys like us are the fathers of the new government. Hell, we're the new covenant."

Clinton, having been stroked, seemed satisfied that the cover-up was expanding to, at least, protect the bond business. Like Lyndon Johnson, Clinton had learned that politics is the "art of the possible." He had not gotten everything he wanted, but he was at least walking away whole.

It appeared to Terry that Johnson had won the debate. Clinton and his administration had no grounds to complain about the Agency terminating its operation. Too many errors had been made. The young governor seemed to recognize he had lost, for now, and didn't want to continue the argument in front of the others.

"Bobby, I guess you and I should excuse ourselves," Clinton said while turning to his aide. "These gentlemen have other pressing business and besides, we don't have a need to know ... nor do I think we want to know."

When Clinton exited the bunker, Terry took a moment to absorb what had happened. Clinton had been treated badly in front of the others. Terry had certainly underestimated Johnson, the man he had sized up initially as a mere errand boy for Casey. His youthful demeanor had been misleading. He was clearly a skilled hatchet man. But Terry felt somewhat embarrassed for the governor. Johnson had effectively neutralized the governor of Arkansas' argument by simply changing the subject, and what a subject it was!

Was he hearing that the presidency is offered to a few groomed men, men groomed by the CIA?

Bill Peterson of the Washington Post wrote in a March 1, 1980 article, "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory -- perhaps ever -- has attracted as much support from the intelligence community as [has] the campaign of former CIA director George Bush."

It was true. By the first of March, Ray Cline had helped put together an intelligence community campaign support staff of such size, complexity and character, that, had the Bush campaign initiated its own covert actions, it undoubtedly had the capacity to bring down at least half of the world's governments based on its own past experiences and associations.

George Bush's CIA campaign staff included Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962; Lt. General Sam V. Wilson and Lt. General Harold A. Aaron, both former Directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also included were retired General Richard Stillwell, once the CIA's Chief of Covert Operations for the Far East, and at least twenty-five other retired Company directors, deputy directors and/or agents.

It is hard to overestimate the level of CIA support that then existed for Bush's presidential campaign. At the annual meeting of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) the previous fall, Bush's Virginia campaign coordinator (and the former director of AFIO) Jack Coakley, claimed to have counted 190 "Bush for President" buttons being worn by the convention's 240 delegates. [1]

CIA support for Bush was apparently not limited to off-duty or retired agents, either. One of Bush's earliest supporters, Angelo Codevilla, informed a Congressional committee that he was "aware that active duty agents of the Central Intelligence Agency worked for the George Bush primary election campaign." [2]

Codevilla made this statement in a sworn affidavit prepared for a 1984 House investigation. In an amended copy of the document, Codevilla later changed his statement from "I am aware ... " to "I have heard that active duty agents of the Central Intelligence Agency worked for the George Bush primary election campaign." [3]

It is an important correction (the possibility of jail hung on the distinction). Given the extent of CIA involvement in the Bush campaign, it is a wonder that "the spook issue" was not discussed more in the press. Some of Bush's CIA backers themselves worried that it might be. "I can see the headlines [now]," said one former covert operations officer, "Bush Sprinkles Campaign With Former Spooks." [4]

One person who wasn't surprised by the lack of adverse press coverage of the CIA's role in the Bush campaign was Ray Cline. Calling attention to his own resignation in disgust from the Agency in 1973, Cline claimed that he had been promoting the pro-CIA agenda that Bush had embraced for years, and that he had found the post-Church hearings criticism had died down some time ago. "I found there was a tremendous constituency for the CIA when everyone in Washington was still urinating all over it," Cline said, in his typically colorful manner. "It's panned out almost too good to be true. The country is waking up just in time for George's candidacy." [5]

***

Uncle Bill

As important as Ray Cline's advice and support had been to George Bush, the real turning point in Bush's quest for the White House came when William Casey convinced Ronald Reagan to choose Bush as his running mate. [14]

Bush and Casey were, after all, old friends. By 1979, the two had worked closely on a number of intelligence matters for over a dozen years ...

-- The 1980 Campaign: Agents for Bush, by Bob Callahan


Who was this guy, "Johnson," who so easily manipulated Bill Clinton? He made Bill Clinton, on his own turf, appear to be under the control of an invisible force. Up until now, Terry had known Johnson only as the lawyer for Southern Air Transport. He was obviously a lot more than that. He was beginning to take on the mannerisms of a Viceroy and Clinton was certainly showing his obedience to authority and paying the price for fealty. Clinton was compromised....

When Clinton and Nash had gone, the mood changed dramatically. A mood of familiarity returned and only the brotherhood remained. Gomez was the first to speak. The man who was to be in charge of the new operation in Mexico was indignant.

"Presidente Clinton," he said with disgust in a thick Hispanic accent. "Why is it I have more respect for the enemy I've slain on the battlefield than I have for that yuppie kid governor. I've seen everything now. Republicans conspiring with Democrats. Isn't that similar to capitalists trusting Marxists?"

Johnson restrained himself as if wanting to chastise Gomez for not showing proper respect for Clinton in front of the others. "You need to realign your thinking about black and white, good and bad, us and them. Under our new plan we all get along for the advancement of the common goal."

Gomez spit contemptuously on the concrete floor. "Sounds like Mao Tsetung or Lenin philosophy to me!"

Cathey stepped in. "Let me apologize for Max and the rest of us cold warriors here. We're a product of our training, and old hatreds die slowly, if ever. But what we must all come to understand is that communism is our common enemy and not our dislike for one another. We are all hand-chosen by the highest office in the land to be entrusted with this mission. We should all feel honored to be here. Our objective is two-fold. One, to rid this earth of the evil communist element we've been trained to seek out and destroy. The other is to set in place a true self-sustaining and modern black operations division worldwide, as Mr. Casey has envisioned ..."

***

On March 16th, a little less than a month after Seal was murdered, Reagan went on television and revealed the secret photographs taken by Seal showing Cartel officials helping load drugs aboard Seal's plane, a military C-123 called The Fat Lady, which had been outfitted with cameras by the CIA. Seal was given no credit and was never mentioned by the President despite his undercover activities conducted at great peril.

"Yes," Cathey said, responding to Terry's question about the plane. "But you've got to keep in mind Seal had a multi-mission, if you will. His drug cover gave him the ability to move around freely in several areas for us. It's very unfortunate, but someone at DEA or the White House level made the decision to use the photo, or they just plain old fucked up. I suspect that Reagan didn't even know what he was doing that day. That guy's scary. Just wind him up, give him some props, point him towards a teleprompter and it's action on the set. You know what I mean. If it wasn't for Bush and Casey and guys like Johnson here, I'd be really frightened."

***

Terry hadn't noticed a man approach their table. He looked up and saw Bob Nash standing beside him.

"I noticed you were just finishing with your dinner. Bill would like to talk to you outside," Nash said.

"Bill?"

"Yeah, he's right over here in the corner ... Oh, here he comes now."

Reed turned around in his chair to get a better look and saw Bill Clinton walking away from the unruly group in the corner and toward Reed's table.

Clinton made eye contact with him and sauntered by without stopping.

"Hi! ... Bye!" was all he said as if speaking to no one.

The young governor continued walking until he reached the exit. It was easy to see by his glassy gaze and relaxed posture that he was under the influence.

Nash shrugged his shoulders and conjured up an apologetic expression, "I guess that means we're going."

"I hope you'll excuse us," Nash said to Janis and the Halls. "I'm sure we won't be gone long."

Terry excused himself from his wife and the wide-eyed Halls.

Outside, Clinton was already seated in the parked security van with the side door open. A man and a woman stepped out of the van as Reed and Nash approached and the governor told Nash: "Bobby ... I'd like to talk to him privately." Reed stepped in and Nash closed the door. Standing guard outside the restaurant watching the van was Arkansas State Police Lieutenant Raymond (Buddy) Young, the governor's chief of security. This was the same vehicle he had witnessed Clinton arrive in for the Agency's meeting at Camp Robinson.

Clinton was comfortably seated in a plush, swiveling captain's chair on the streetside of the van and Reed took the one opposite him on the curbside with his back to the van's side door, which was now closed. His eyes scanned the interior of what was really a mobile command post equipped with an array of electronics that included a computer terminal. It was a much scaled-down, wingless version of Air Force One, he thought.

The governor's invitation had come as a surprise to Terry. He would be even more surprised by what he was about to see and hear.

"Bobby says you've got a problem about going to Mexico because of the deal with Barry Seal," the glassy-eyed governor began. By this time, the smell of marijuana was unmistakable.

Clinton paused for a moment as if trying to sort out his thoughts. "I can see your concern. I understand Seal was a friend of yours. His death does appear suspicious. And Bobby says you got a feeling somebody here in Arkansas may have had a motive to kill him. But nobody here had anything to do with that. Seal just got too damn big for his britches and that scum basically deserved to die, in my opinion ..."

With that, Clinton got up from his chair and went to the back of the van, returning with a half-smoked joint. He reseated himself. He took a long, deep drag. After holding it in until his cheeks bulged, he then exhaled slowly and deliberately.

He extended his arm and offered the joint to Reed. Terry shook his head and gestured, no thanks.

"Go on, I'm the commander in chief here; you won't get busted," the governor said with a straight face while exhaling. Reed felt uncomfortable with a cop standing right outside the van and he sure didn't want to cloud his mind with anything more that the two beers he had already consumed in the restaurant.

"No, thanks. I just want to get all of this straight. You're saying that Seal's death, from what you know, is just as the papers say, he was killed by some Colombians because of his connection to the Medellin Cartel?"

"Yeah. And I think you're makin' a big mistake by passing up the opportunity to go to Mexico for Cathey. It sounds attractive to me. I wish I could go in your place. Terry, these guys are counting on you and they're leaning on me to get you to go. I'm not standing in your way. I just want to tell you that if you wanna still go to Mexico, you'd be leaving here with my blessing. There's no hard feelings about anything that happened here. I wanted you to hear that coming from me."

Clinton took another deep drag, held it and exhaled. In a raspy voice, with smoke still coming from his mouth, Clinton added, "Sure you don't want some of this? This is good shit. We sure do grow lotsa good things besides watermelons here in Arkansas."

"Thanks, again, but I gotta get back inside with my group before they wonder what happened to me."

"So what's your decision, you gonna go or aren't ya? I gotta tell Cathey somethin' ASAP to get him offa my ass. It's ridiculous, but he's holdin' me responsible for your vacillation."

"Tell him I'm goin'."

"Good."...

But he couldn't help but feel let down by the hypocrisy demonstrated by Clinton having the courage to smoke a joint in his presence and yet not possessing the strength to campaign openly to reform marijuana laws. When, he wondered, was someone from his generation going to stand up and tell it like it is to the voters.

Throughout the state that night, Terry was sure, kids were being busted and their lives destroyed for the possession of a few joints of "Arkansas' finest."

***

It was fitting that the Fourth of July, the day America celebrates its independence, was being celebrated by the Reeds in a foreign country from which Terry hoped freedom for Nicaragua would be spawned. Congress be damned! There would be victory this time whether they approved of it or not. Terry Reed and John Cathey would make it so. He felt elated that he was part of something, a cabal about which only a few knew. It was time for Terry to cash in, believing the members of the Cabal had singled him out to collect his reward for what he had suffered in Southeast Asia.

***

By this time, Attorney General Meese had set in place what Marr had referred to earlier as Casey's "secret plan" to contain the scandal and divert attention away from Arkansas and Mexico. Meese, at a White House news conference on November 25th, 1986, had revealed what he said was "the diversion."

Meese said funds from the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran were being diverted to aid the Contras. The investigation was continuing, but a National Security Council staff member by the name of Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North had done this all alone. Somehow, Meese indicated, North had taken over the entire government bureaucracy without anyone else noticing. Incredibly, just about everyone bought it....

Meese had thrown out enough peanuts to send the trained monkeys in the White House press room scurrying to pick them up. Somehow they overlooked the fact that this really didn't make sense. And the inquiry ended there.

***

But what did secret dealings with the Iranians have to do with Cooper being shot down over Nicaragua? Shultz, like the rest of America, didn't know there was any connection at all. This signaled to Shultz a total lack of leadership at the top allowing compartmentalization of policies and conflicting goals with no feedback to those in charge of implementing policies, namely the Secretary of State and his department.

"The CIA and NSC (National Security Council) staff, with the apparent support from the ... Vice President (George Bush), were still proceeding just as though nothing had happened," Shultz wrote. "Congress was being misled now, a month and a half after the revelation (the Cooper shootdown) first appeared. What was worse, John Whitehead (Deputy Secretary of State) said, 'the CIA has told the Iranians that the State Department is just a temporary impediment, (italics ours) and that after it calms down, Cave (a ranking CIA official) and Secord will be back in action. The President is being ripped to pieces and the CIA is reassuring the Iranians.'" [3]

CIA Director William Casey seemed to be stepping into an apparent vacuum of leadership and seizing de facto control of the government. Was some kind of "coup" developing? If Shultz had been getting briefings on this type of behavior going on in another country, he would probably have called it just that .... a coup. And as in any coup attempt, at least two factions are involved. Who was behind this coup? Casey had no political ambitions. And if not Casey, then who?

In private meetings that included Reagan, Bush, Casey, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, National Security Advisor John Poindexter, and CIA official George Cave, Shultz was learning to his dismay that the CIA was running foreign policy and possibly controlling the President.

***

And the real boss in Mexico, Terry was learning, was the CIA.

It was interesting for Terry to be on the receiving end of American influence and power, but it was upsetting to see America's foreign policy toward its allies through this perspective. Outwardly we say we support democracy and the American way. Terry was seeing that in reality the CIA was subverting democracy. It behaved in Mexico as if Mexican laws didn't exist. The Agency's and Gomez' ability to "grease the wheels" was undermining efforts by progressive Mexican reformers to achieve true democratic reforms and keep the oligarchy in power. It was an old story repeated over and over again in the underdeveloped Republics in Central America.

***

"I just received another bill from my customs broker" Fenue said by phone from his Naucalpan office. "The shipment appears to be identical to the last one. It was shipped from San Miguel to the border. This time, I want an answer from your people. Who is using our business license number for this activity?"

Terry could tell by Fenue's voice that their friendship was being strained by this mysterious activity. In Mexico City, both men privately discussed their options since Mitch Marr still seemed unresponsive to Terry's demands for answers and an investigation. And Fenue was beginning to feel vulnerable. Both men fully realized that the main export Mexico was becoming famous for was narcotics. What frightened them both was that whoever was doing this had access to their business names and numbers and someone skilled at not leaving a defined trail.

They had investigated the point of origin of the shipments to an overnight express company that specialized in quickly shipping cargo to the border. Shipping costs for both crates had been paid in cash, thus leaving no paper trail to the sender. The invoices from San Miguel simply showed Maquinaria Internacional as the sender, with the broker in Laredo as the consignee.

Their suspicions were beginning to zero in on Fenue's customs broker and both were wondering if perhaps they were dealing with a much larger smuggling ring, perhaps with connections to some government official who had access to corporate records. If so, they theorized, there was not much they could do about it. But quietly, and without Terry's knowledge, Fenue decided to get to the bottom of it. What he saw was greater risk than Terry felt at the time. He was still a KGB asset and fearful that one of his new-found business partners, the CIA, was setting him up....

On the way to Cortec's facilities, Terry's Hungarian friend told him of how he had alerted his customs brokers to intercept any additional shipments through their facilities at the border. His instructions to them were to seize any future shipments bearing Cortec's name and to hold them for his personal inspection.

Together they were going to review this third mystery shipment. From what Fenue was saying, it was identical in size, weight and packing as the other two and he could only conclude the others had contained the same "tooling" as this one. He had, in fact, intercepted the crate before it crossed the Rio Grande and had personally returned it by truck to Mexico City.

"IT'S COCAINE!" Fenue said, as he and Terry looked into the crate neatly filled with plastic sealed parcels that were now stored in the private rear office of the warehouse complex. "We've already had it tested and it's pure. My people are not in the drug business ... at least not here in Mexico," he added. "You need to get hold of your boss and find out what exactly is going on here. I have already told my people and they are expecting an answer. Comrade, I'm afraid our friendship is now on the line. Please .... help me with this problem."

The two men were the same age and were caught in the same web of conspiracy and deceit neither could understand. Why either side would be attempting to embarrass the other was beyond their reasoning since both were compromised by their mutual involvement in Screw Worm.

Even though they came from different ideological backgrounds, Fenue and Terry had hoped that their working relationship in Mexico would in some small way bring together their two cultures and countries. They viewed themselves as political pioneers, the equivalent of two young military officers in opposing armies who suddenly realized that the future is in their hands. They had hoped to prove that there was no reason to continue along the same path of hatred and paranoia as their elders had followed. By working well together on this project and laying the groundwork for trust, they had also hoped to prove to their respective handlers that there was no longer the same foundation from which to continue the arms race -- the world's preoccupation with self-destruction that had affected them their entire lives. Somehow this project was, in itself, a fragile experiment in cooperation and understanding. They had dared to dream that the intelligence agencies of the world could teach a lesson to their political masters.

-- Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA, by Terry Reed & John Cummings
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:45 am

Leaving the wives at home, Terry and Desko drove together to the airport in Terry's BMW. Access to the field and through Mexican security was swift. As they rounded the corner of the taxiway that led to Terry's warehouse they saw an L-100, the civilian version of a C-130, bearing a gray and white color scheme and the name of Southern Air Transport. The giant cargo plane, North American registration No. N517SJ, was backed into loading position by the main door of Maquinaria Internacional's facility. Though Reed didn't realize it at the time, this was the same airplane he had seen on May 30th, parked in nearly the same position.

However on May 30th it bore a different registration number, N46965, but had the identical paint scheme, a black band running longitudinal down the fuselage, separating white above the stripe and light gray below it. The number change was discovered in a search at the FAA records center in Oklahoma City by investigative reporter Jerry Bohnen, who found that tail number N46965 had been surrendered back to the FAA by SAT and replaced by N517SJ.*

Reed and Desko noted that the plane's loading ramp was down, but after circling the plane with the car, they ascertained no crew members were present, so Terry parked 100 yards from his warehouse under the shaded general aviation aircraft parking area.

"Before we go find these guys, JD, I'd like to go inside and make sure there's no mix-up on the cargo they've come for." This was a reference to the earlier foul-up in which Terry's machinery was accidentally shipped south.

From invoices he had received, there should have been another grinder belonging to Maquinaria Internacional in one of the containers. To avoid another cargo mix up, both Terry and Desko decided it was necessary to open the two conex containers stored in the warehouse to determine which one to ship.

After breaking the metal band attached to the handle of the container nearest the hangar door, Terry, to his horror, unexpectedly found the "hard evidence" that Marr had demanded.

Desko coolly peered inside the container. He shook his head in disgust. "If these guys can get loads like this in, Terry, the Agency obviously has the DEA and customs under their control."

The two men were looking in disbelief at a load of cocaine that measured at least 10 feet by 20 feet and five feet deep.

The container was filled waist high with green wooden weapons crates with rope handles. They were about four feet long, 24 inches wide and 12 inches high. Two of the boxes, whose label said they held rifles, had shifted in transit, and one had spilled its contents. Clearly visible were at least 12 rectangular parcels neatly wrapped in plastic and sealed with duct tape. From all the movies they had ever seen, the two men were certain the white powdery substance they were looking at was cocaine.

"It's either cocaine or someone is spendin' a hell of a lotta money to air transport sugar," Desko said.

"It's gotta be tons!" Terry exclaimed. "Think this'll be enough evidence for Marr? Fenue certainly had nothing to do with this shipment."

SO MUCH FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS!...

The CIA was dirty....

He felt a swarm of emotion; anger, isolation, the feeling of being used, but, most of all, he felt violated. Patriotism had become a joke. It had become just another word for profiteering. His patriotism had been exploited in Southeast Asia and now it was happening again. The selfishness, greed and illegal activity by a handful of renegade CIA operatives had placed him and his family in peril....

How long had America been in the drug business, he and Desko wondered? In Laos, Terry had been aware that certain U.S. military personnel had been arrested and court-martialed for shipping heroin under the guise of "classified material." Now, seemingly alone and helpless, he was smack in the middle of a drug ring and was being set-up to take the fall if anything went wrong. The company documents all bore his name and everything seemed to be disintegrating.

Terry thought there could be no lower point in his life. His foreign business partners wanted out, and their money back. His reputation as an honest businessman was being destroyed.

George Fenue had already walked away to protect his communist-backed trading company. George could not allow his firm to be associated with trafficking. His Japanese partner had sued him and was holding Terry personally responsible for the business losses.

And it was becoming clear to Terry that Rodriguez and company would take the drug profits as long as they could, and then let "the commies" take the fall along with Terry, if the activities were discovered or if anyone got out of line ... Rodriguez, George Bush's good friend, would later write a book entitled Silent Warrior telling of his selfless patriotic service to America, even as he was tightening the noose around Terry, and would probably choke and kill him if he didn't go along.

Fate had placed Terry in a dangerous position. Through no fault of his own, he had become a major liability for Rodriguez. If Terry could not be controlled, and he had no skeletons in his closet, the CIA's dirtiest secret could now become public knowledge.

***

'"At least you have to tell me the real name of the Israeli you mentioned. Since you know it's a code name, you must know his true identity. Come on, impress me again," Reed baited.

"'Sure, why not. Your side knows who he is. Our side knows who he is. His side knows who he is. You're the only one in the dark," he castigated Reed. "'His true name is Amiram Nir, the Israeli Prime Minister's Advisor on Combating Terrorism. You should be honored to be orbiting with him, he's very connected.

***

The Israeli in the right front seat started to relax somewhat as the pilot leveled off at 13,000 feet and engaged the autopilot.

"OK, here we are alone. Lay it on me." He slid the pilot's seat rearward to get a better view of the Israeli. The plane was now flying itself at 200 MPH heading easterly toward Morelia.

And lay it on he did. Terry's worst nightmare scenario began to unfold. It was worse even than his discovery 11 days ago that the CIA and Rodriguez were trafficking in drugs.

Nir expressed to him the belief that Rodriguez was a double-agent -- and directly responsible for the shootdown over Nicaragua the previous October of Bill Cooper's C-123 supply plane and the capture of Eugene Hasenfus.

How ironic this was, Nir pointed out, because he had warned Seal before his death that there was a "leak" in the Enterprise that could bring about a political thunderclap. And that's exactly what happened when the C-123 crashed and exposed to the world the deviousness of the Reagan administration.

There were too many disturbing coincidences to that crash. "Think about it for a minute," Nir demanded. "We're not so naive to believe that these happenings are circumstantial. Just try to explain away these events. Number one, you knew Bill Cooper much better than I. I've been told he was an excellent flyer. You don't live to be a 60-year-old pilot acting reckless! What was he doing flying many miles off his flight plan course, and directly over a Sandinista stronghold ... a military training camp no less?

"Number two, why did the aircraft have unnecessary and classified documents aboard? Documents from prior missions reflecting the dates of the flights, the crew members' names, the tonnage and descriptions of the munitions and the coordinates of the drop zones.

"Number three. Why was the crew not sanitized as the orders always called for? My God, Bill Cooper even had his Southern Air Transport identification card with him: That we cannot accept as an accident. My God, a direct link to the CIA. Cooper knew better!

"Number four, this guy Hasenfus ... the dumb ass survivor ... what kind of a story is this? No one was to have a parachute. The intention is to always go down with the craft in case of an incident like this. You know from your training that is the procedure, no one is to live. No loose ends. Instead, this guy claims his brother bought him a parachute in Wisconsin? My God, if it wasn't so serious, it would be funny.

"Number five. How does he know the plane was hit by a surface to air missile? If he was blown out of the plane by the explosion as he claims, he wouldn't even have seen it coming, let alone recognize the type of weapon.

"No sir, it's all too convenient. Daniel Ortega 'accidently' captures an American flyer who immediately spills his guts and starts babbling 'CIA, the White House, guns, Southern Air Transport,' and then to top it off, he's put on trial as a war criminal, convicted for his crimes and released as a humanitarian gesture! Shot down in October and home by Christmas. I'll bet your Vietnam POW flyers would have liked such an opportunity. Just think of it all."

As Reed adjusted the heading "bug" on the auto pilot and fine-tuned the plane's engines, he was absorbing the Israeli's itemized list of fatal mistakes.

"But I've saved the best morsel for last, if that's not enough to convince you," his passenger tantalized. "We warned Seal back in early 1986. Just before his murder, we warned him your side had a leak."

Terry's mind flashed to his feelings about Ferrue having too much in-depth knowledge of the Agency's operations. He had suspected a mole. Now Nir was confirming they too had suspicions. He decided to not interrupt and just listen.

"We knew something was going to happen to bring unwanted publicity to this operation. Again, what a waste of a good agent. That makes two friends of yours who are dead for no good reasons. Cooper and Seal."

"Three friends if you count Emile Camp," Terry added. "I still think his crash was sabotage. His plane was exactly like this one. He left Baton Rouge with three hours of fuel. He crashes two hours later. There's no post-crash fire. And no fuel in the engine lines. That's fuel starvation! Combine that with the fact he crashed in a heavily wooded area, miles off course, while executing an instrument approach to Mena in VFR conditions ... No, he was definitely sabotaged. But by whom? Emile never got along with [Ramon] Medina."

Terry's comments about Medina stemmed from his observation of arguments on several occasions between "the camp Jefe" and Emile Camp. This had made him suspicious that Medina was involved in sabotaging Camp's plane.

"Oh, Medina, that's another example of your CIA stooping to use terrorists to do agents' jobs. What did Medina ever do besides blow up civilians in airliners. These damn Cuban rebels, they're just not professionals."*

Reed almost wished to hear no further details, but Nir wasn't through.

"An agent of ours in El Salvador reports that Rodriguez boasted he was responsible for the killing of both Seal and Camp. You know Rodriguez, he must continually brag of his exploits. Who knows how many people he's either killed or caused to die? He's definitely ..."

"... A loose cannon, as they say in the Navy," Terry said.

"Yes. A loose cannon. We don't see how this program can continue. It may not even be salvageable."

What came next was a surprise to Terry. The Israelis were keeping close tabs on Felix Rodriguez ... he had a shadow and most certainly wasn't aware of it. This became evident when Nir revealed that he knew about drug shipments from San Miguel de Allende northward to Laredo, the same shipments that Terry had reported to Marr.

Nir was now confirming Terry and George Fenue's suspicions that Rodriguez was involved with the earlier shipments from San Miguel and Nir also said these drug shipments involved some of Rodriguez' unspecified relatives.

"That's simply profiteering for the sake of his relatives. It's ridiculous. Who's supposed to be in charge of this idiot?" Nir asked spitefully.

That was a good question. With North on the grill in Washington, Rodriguez was operating alone, and out of control.

"He's a runaway freight train with no engineer at the throttle," Nir said. He bolstered that comment by saying Israeli intelligence in Mexico had intercepted some very disturbing long distance telephone conversations. That Rodriguez, in violation of all intelligence rules, had called Washington directly from Central America on unsecure phone lines and discussed classified data. *

"My God, it's just so apparent to us, that he is a double-dipper (slang for double agent). He must be eliminated one way or the other."

Rodriguez might be the mole, the one who kept Fenue so informed and up to date on the Agency's plans, Terry thought to himself. After all, Rodriguez had been to Cortec's facilities several times and he knew Seal's dossier sufficiently well enough to pass it on to the KGB. Shit, I bet that's right, he thought. Rodriguez was probably the leak the Israelis had warned Seal about. It all made sense.

But talk of "eliminating" someone bothered Terry. "If you're talking elimination, do you have concrete proof, beyond the shadow-of-a-doubt proof? I mean he might just be an idiot, like you said before. A greedy idiot suffering from post-Bay of Pigs stress syndrome."

"Yes, we have the proof, and no idiot, as you suggest, could bring in an ex-Air America kicker and 'turn him' as quickly as Rodriguez did."

"So your people think he recruited and compromised Hasenfus?"

Nir was not specific as to how this information had been obtained. But he was certain about his facts, he claimed. "We know it for sure. And did anyone from your side tell you about Cooper and Sawyer, the co-pilot?"

"I've heard nothing new about the shootdown since the meeting with you and Rodriguez in Mexico City last December. What are you referring to?"

Terry was shocked, again, when Nir answered. "They were both dead before their airplane took off on that supposed ill-fated flight."

By this time, Terry's head was reeling, but some things were starting to make sense. All the circumstances outlined by Nir earlier concerning the shootdown were coming into focus. Nir said the autopsy performed by the Nicaraguans, the results of which had been relayed to the CIA, indicated the crew had been dead several hours, maybe even 12, before the plane crashed. There was no evidence of the usual profuse bleeding associated with a crash when the victim is alive on impact. This had to mean they were dead before they went down, Nir concluded.

This probably explained why Cooper's body hadn't been returned for burial, Terry thought.

"My God do you think it's Hasenfus that killed them? Terry asked. "Marr told me Hasenfus knows how to fly a C-123 even though he doesn't have a pilot's license."

"We're not prepared to say that. But he had to know the dead crew members didn't pilot the airplane ... if he was even on the plane at the time ..."

"Why? Don't you believe that plane was even shot down?" Reed asked, now fearing the answer.

"No. The aircraft remains were put on display in Managua and our people there said it appears the plane exploded outward as if it had been rigged with explosives prior to its last flight and then deliberately destroyed."

Both men then wondered if this could have been accomplished with a remote detonating device after Hasenfus bailed out of the airplane.

Terry had yet another shock. Nir informed him that the other dead crew member was the man Terry had called "Ramon No. 2," one of his trainees in Arkansas. Nir said "Ramon" did not die from the crash. His throat had been slit!"

"What a way to get rid of Ronald Reagan," Nir summarized. "The communists must be patting themselves on the back. They expose a covert operation that is in violation of Congressional law and get the President of the United States impeached -- all at the same time."...

That was the last time Terry ever saw the man he knew as Pat Weber. He would later hear about and view with great suspicion the circumstances surrounding Nir's untimely death. In November, 1988, Nir met his demise in the crash of a single-engine Cessna T-210 near Morelia. Why was he aboard a small private plane, a mode of transportation he so dreadfully feared, Terry wondered? The passport he was carrying listed the dead, one-eyed Israeli as "Pat Weber."

***

"Don't do anything fucking stupid and expose your position or there'll be 'incoming' on your ass right fucking now," North cautioned. "I'll do my best to arrange for a SAR mission and pluck you out of the wreckage."

***

Having never been involved in the Federal Criminal Justice System, the Reeds sought out and retained an attorney to counsel them on their rights and their legal status. Even the attorney was somewhat confused as to why they hadn't been already arrested. Terry was confused. Either he had been awfully successful in confusing them as to his whereabouts or they were still toying with him. He had been overtly living in New Mexico for almost five months.

But one thing was certain, he felt he was under direct frontal attack. And it wasn't he alone being attacked. While negotiating with an attorney in Kansas to represent them during the surrender process, he learned through his sister that his 72-year-old mother had been hospitalized.

"I don't know what's going on, Terry," his frantic sister told him over the phone. "But two FBI agents have been to mom's house twice and the sons of bitches have got her so shaken she's in the hospital. I think she's dying. She may have had a heart attack. Terry, I don't know what you did, but these guys want you real bad."

And they wanted him bad enough to have created a computer profile that would tempt even the most timid of law enforcement officers to come out of his police car with guns-a-blazin' hoping to receive credit for apprehending or felling such a seasoned desperado.

Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's Chief of Security, Captain Raymond (Buddy) Young had a played a major role in creating that profile. He had supplied the FBI with the following: "BUDDY YOUNG ADVISED THAT HE HAS RECEIVED INFORMATION WHICH INDICATES TERRY REED MAY BE INVOLVED IN MEXICAN AND/OR SOUTH AMERICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING AND MAY NOW BE RESIDING IN GUADALAJARA MEXICO. YOUNG STATED THAT A SEARCH OF THE AIRCRAFT REVEALED SEVERAL MAPS OF SOUTHERN NORTH AMERICA."

Young had further served as judge and jury over Reed by concluding he was guilty of the crime eight and a half months before the Grand Jury handed up the indictment. Young's "verdict" was stored in a computer file at the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC).

EPIC is a federal intelligence center specializing in storing information about border trafficking and other surveillance activity by police and federal agencies. It is operated by the DEA but many federal agencies maintain offices there, including the CIA. Young's insertion into the computerized records maintained at EPIC read as follows:

"On October 16, 1987, it was reported to EPIC that the Arkansas State Police, Little Rock, Arkansas, reported aircraft N2982M was recovered on October 16, 1987, from a hangar in North Little Rock, Arkansas where the owner Kent T. Reed (aka Terry Reed) hid the aircraft to collect the $33,000 insurance claim."

Young's form of justice moved swiftly.

Even more disturbing was a "profile enhancement" to affect the way police officers behave when apprehending a suspect. It was listed on an FBI AIRTEL message dated 5-5-88 from the FBI in Kansas City sent to FBI field offices in Little Rock, Memphis, and Oklahoma City. Its purpose was to classify Reed as "instant matter now being carried as armed and dangerous due to information developed by the Little Rock division".

Reed's paranoia was not.

The Reeds were fugitives. The FBI and CIA just never go away ... if you're an asset that becomes a liability....

This indictment, Terry knew, had nothing to do with justice, or even with mail fraud. There was no victim. No one had been hurt. No insurance company had ever complained. This was the CIA, the government, trying to silence him and "dirty him up." His knowledge of how they operated made him full of rage. He knew what was really going on. He had been schooled in propaganda and disinformation. The justice system, devised to protect people's rights, had been turned into an illegal weapon. And he knew who had his finger on the trigger ... Republican Presidential candidate George Bush, and the Republican Party.

Bush and the Republicans may have had their finger on the trigger, but the Democratic Party was probably passing the ammo, he figured. Terry could hear his great-grandfather laughing at him from his grave, "Got yourself in a fine fix, didn't ya boy? Both the Republicans and the Democrats want ya dead."

***

"If Terry will plead guilty, I will drop the charges against Janis. That way, there will be one of them on the street to raise their children." That's what the prosecutor told both Steve Robison and Marilyn Trubey at one point. "Must be George Bush's idea of family values," Terry responded when told of the offer.

***

"It's not that I didn't believe you when I first heard your story. It's just that I didn't want to believe our government did this kind of thing," Dunlap said to Terry later. He, like most people who hear stories of such grievous government misconduct, was, at first, in denial.

***

He became aware through his younger sister that his mother had been hospitalized as a result of FBI harassment and interrogation. She was 72 at the time and had suffered either a mental breakdown, a heart attack or both. It was thought she was dying.

Two FBI agents, Larry Nolan and another of the government's crime fighters, had made two trips to Terry's family home in Carthage, and refused to leave until his mother would inform them of her oldest son's whereabouts. They further stated, contrary to what Janis' parents had been told, that Terry was involved in serious "illegal activities" that would send him to prison "for many, many years." They further said the mother would be arrested, too, for "harboring a fugitive" if she refused to cooperate with them....

That same day, the FBI in Kansas City was demanding that Karen, Janis' sister, come by their office for an interrogation session. They were threatening her, too, with charges of harboring fugitives. Her sister had the name of one of the agents, Special Agent Violanti, from the Kansas City office. Terry called him, and that turned out to be a MAJOR mistake. He never actually spoke to the agent, instead he was told Violanti was too busy. A distraught Terry told the agent who picked up the phone, "I know you have a warrant for my arrest. I'm in the process of surrendering and if you guys kill my mother as a result of your searching for me, I'm gonna hold Violanti personally responsible."

"You just threatened a federal agent, buddy, so now you can add five more years to your sentence," the agent responded in an ominous tone.

***

Terry threw up his hands. His life, as well as his family's, was in the hands of a droopy-eyed judge who couldn't stay awake. A man who had to be briefed by his secretary about what had occurred in the courtroom.

***

"I've picked out a very exciting and high paying job for you with one of our cut-outs up in Denver. If you're interested I'll pass your name along and they will get in touch with you. You will be compensated very well. You're already qualified for the position. It's flying ..... you like that kind of work, don't you?", Felix asked expressing a compromising attitude. "Look, I know you need money. There will be lots of money in this."

"Flying for whom or, knowing you, Felix, flying what?" Reed said baiting him.

"I'll ignore that comment. I guess I had it coming," Felix snapped. "No, this is totally legitimate. It's an aerial photography company in Denver that has a contract with the Agency to do some 'special work' in Mexico and along the border."

Rodriguez went on to explain that an asset of theirs had put together an operation that was disguised as performing ecological services working primarily in the area of pollution control. The real purpose of the firm's activities, however, was to run surveillance on poppy fields in Mexico to pinpoint their locations and provide their coordinates to both the Mexican and American DEA. Through newly developed infra-red photography technology, they would also have the capability of identifying the radiation wavelengths emitted by other illegal plants, including marijuana.

The Agency's primary interest was not necessarily the eradication of the crops, Rodriguez said. Theirs was to find and surveil the international kingpins behind the production. Rodriguez went on to explain that the Bush Administration definitely felt that this whole drug epidemic was a communist-backed conspiracy to destroy the minds of our children. Most definitely, he said, the jefes behind the production had to be communists!

To Reed, after having gone through all he had; to know what he knew; to have seen all he saw; and then to hear Rodriguez attempt to distance himself from the entire drug epidemic by calling it in effect a communist conspiracy ... well it was almost too much to stand!

Here we go again, Reed thought. Felix can build a communism sandwich around any subject matter known to man. How many more of them like him are out there he thought? With hammers and sickles emblazoned on their brains. But that wasn't it, he knew.

Felix didn't believe his own line of shit, Reed guessed! It's just a ploy! It's just a cover! It's just a job! My God, he and others like him have turned this whole commie thing into a profession.

It saddened him and gladdened him all at the same time. He could now finally see through the smoke and mirrors that had formed his life. That made him happy. It was like finally whipping an addiction ... yea, that's how he felt! Like when he ultimately whipped the demon nicotine back in 1973. When his body no longer screamed out for the 'fix' it had grown addicted to. That's how he felt.

All of this pain and suffering was perhaps what was necessary for him to finally rid his mind of the "communist demon" that his society had implanted there. It was like an exorcism, he figured, and he saw the image of the spirit leave his body that very instant. It was probably the closest Terry had ever come to a religious experience, but here he was, looking into his own reflection bouncing back from the sunglasses worn by the man who had undoubtedly killed Che Guevera. And it was Sunday afternoon.

At that very moment he hated no man. He had no fear. He simply saw how ridiculous his motivations had been. His hot buttons had been disarmed. He was going to do the right thing! Even if it hurt ... again!

"I'm through with all this communist hatred," Terry replied almost reverently. "I was wronged and no job offer in Mexico is going to correct my pain. I'm going to do whatever is necessary to right that wrong .... in court. Felix, I wish you no harm. I'm going to take my sons and go home. Vaya con Dios."

Under the glaring stare of Rodriguez and the cowboy, Terry gathered his cherished sons and walked away. They wouldn't dare shoot, he thought. They're cowards, he suddenly realized.

-- Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA, by Terry Reed & John Cummings


**********************

FRONT & BACK COVERS:

Compromised is the true story of Bill Clinton's political sell-out to the CIA.

Clinton's unbridled political ambitions and his campaign pledge to create "Jobs for Arkansans" led him to compromise his ideals in exchange for CIA support in his bid for the Presidency.

Her permitted the "Agency" to use Arkansas factories to make untraceable weapons and he allowed CIA contract agents to train Contra pilots on rural airstrips in support of the war in Nicaragua -- effectively evading the Congressional ban on military aid to the Contras.

This expose' unfolds through the eyewitness account of Terry Reed, a former CIA asset whose patriotism transformed him into a liability when he refused to turn a blind eye to the Agency's drug trafficking. While helping the CIA set up its secret "black" operations, he unwittingly compromised his family's safety, ultimately forcing them to become fugitives. Realizing that Reed witnessed the making of a counterfeit President and knew too much about its drug operations, the Agency set out to destroy him and his family.

This Arkansas-CIA connection became Clinton 's darkest secret -- a secret shared by then Vice-President Bush, who himself was compromised by his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. Their shared guilt kept them silent and tied their hands as they faced off in the 1992 Presidential election with neither mentioning Iran-Contra.

The Justice Departments of Reagan , Bush -- and now Clinton -- have orchestrated an ongoing cover-up of the Arkansas-CIA connection which has gone undetected for eight years with Bill Clinton its major beneficiary. Clinton's reward for this Faustian pact? The White House.

Reed puts Clinton directly in the "Iran-Contra loop". Both attended a secret meeting where CIA arms arrangements, illegal Contra training and money laundering were discussed. Involved with Clinton in this cabal were Colonel Oliver North, William Barr (George Bush's attorney general), Felix Rodriguez (Bay of Pigs veteran and George Bush's CIA contact) and CIA contract agent Barry Seal, who used the cover of a high-profile drug trafficker to carry out his missions.

Compromised reveals the details and names of all who were involved, including those faceless power brokers now in positions of public prominence in Washington, D.C.

When the CIA learned Reed had more patriotism than they bargained for, forces within President Bush's Justice Department, the CIA and the State of Arkansas decided he had to be neutralized. People close to Clinton conspired to set Reed up on false federal criminal charges, forcing him and his family into hiding. But Reed was acquitted, and now wages a one-man legal war to bring those who framed him to justice.

Found innocent by a court of law, Reed was then convicted by TIME Magazine which aligned itself with a Clinton campaign consumed with protecting its candidate from scandals.

Why did Terry Reed, who performed intelligence services for the US Air Force, FBI, and CIA, come forward with these revelations now? -- to set the record straight and to clear his name.

YOU WILL ALSO LEARN:

• Oliver North, like Reed, was another of the CIA's deniable links to the covert group which was set in place by ex-CIA Director William Casey to act as the secret government behind the government.

• When Reed discovered the CIA 's involvement in drug trafficking and tried to remove himself from the operation he, his wife, and three small children were forced to run for their lives.

• The "diversion" of funds revealed by Attorney General Meese in the Iran-Contra Scandal was itself a diversion -- one designed to keep investigators and an unquestioning media away from a larger, still secret CIA arms and drug operation in Mexico.

• Israeli Mossad agent Amiram Nir revealed to Reed that Israeli Intelligence believed the 1986 downing of a CIA plane over Nicaragua and the resulting exposure of Iran-Contra was a CIA attempt to embarrass Ronald Reagan from office in favor of the Agency's ex-Director George Bush.

• More than $9 million a week in cash was secretly air dropped into Arkansas, which became the CIA 's domestic "banana republic". These clandestine funds were laundered for the Agency and then used for the development of Arkansas industry.

• CIA contract agent Barry Seal disclosed, just prior to his assassination, that he had been involved in a Republican-backed plot to "dirty up" Democratic Presidential contenders like Clinton. Instead, he dirtied up Clinton 's brother Roger and other close political associates.

• Seal also revealed that Bush's sons were involved in a criminal conspiracy with the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia, a conspiracy that was being contained by the CIA and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration).

• Compromised answers the question raised in ex-Secretary- of-State George Schultz's book Triumph and Turmoil: Who was running the Reagan government?

• Incredibly, neither Senator John Kerry nor Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh were interested in pursuing Reed's information, despite corroborating evidence supplied them by federal and state investigators.

Compromised reveals one of the most clandestine operations in recent U.S. history. It also offers behind-the-scenes insights into the sordid world of intelligence, where things are seldom what they seem and powerful people disguise greed and ambition behind the convenient mask of national security.

Cover Design © Bruce Cummings, 1994 (more on back cover)
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:47 am

About the Authors

Terry Reed is a former Air Force Intelligence operative who served with the most secret project of the Vietnam War. Task Force Alpha. This was the most sophisticated and highly classified intelligence gathering unit of that period. At the age of 21, armed with a top-secret security clearance provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, a near-photographic memory and strong mid-western values, he was entrusted with America's dirtiest secrets. As a civilian intelligence asset, he later worked for the FBI and CIA on projects the law had barred these agencies from undertaking. His problems began when the CIA found he had more patriotism than it had bargained for.

***

John Cummings is a former prize-winning investigative reporter at N.Y. Newsday. He has co-authored the Heist (1987), Goombata: The Improbable Rise & Fall of John Gotti and His Gang (1990) and Death Do Us Part (1993).

For over thirty years, since the Bay of Pigs, he has studied the confluence of intelligence-gathering, money laundering and drug-trafficking. He resides in New York.

Dedicated to those intelligence assets denied.

For Marilyn Trubey and Joe Dunlap, without whose devotion to the defense of others this book would, at best, have been written from a prison cell. -- T.R.

For Bruce and Sebastian, the 6th. -- J.C.


This book deals with the Central Intelligence Agency co-opting the Presidency and how Black Operations, like a cancer, have metastasized the organs of government to the point where the malignancy cannot be removed without destroying the government it was designed to initially preserve.

Harry S. Truman, the man who created the CIA in 1947, alluded to this as far back as the 1960s when, in the twilight of his life, he stated his concern in a letter to a magazine editor about what the agency was becoming, only a little more than a decade after its creation.

The former president, never a man to mince words, voiced the fear that the CIA was out of control and that what it was doing was not what he had intended, nor what a democracy needed.

HARRY S. TRUMAN
INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

June 10, 1964

Dear Mr. Arthur:

Thank you for the copy of LOOK with the article on the Central Intelligence Agency. It is, I regret to say, not true to the facts in many respects.

The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.

Sincerely yours,

Harry Truman

Dear Mr. William B. Arthur
LOOK Magazine
488 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10022
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:47 am

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Diana Aguilar -- Real estate agent in Mexico and friend of the Reeds.

Tommy Baker -- Little Rock private detective involved in "finding" Terry Reed's stolen airplane.

Wayne Barlow --Terry Reed's FBI "handler" in Oklahoma City.

Cecilia Barlow -- Barlow's wife.

Richard Behar --Time magazine reporter.

Jerry Bohnen -- Investigative reporter in Oklahoma City.

Jozsef Bona -- KGB agent.

Emile Camp --A pilot involved in Contra pilot training operation in Mena, Arkansas.

Lazaro Cardenas -- Governor of the Mexican State of Michoacan.

John Cathey (Oliver North) -- Terry Reed's CIA handler and the man who put Reed into play with Barry Seal.

Steve Clark -- Former Arkansas Attorney General and original attorney for Terry Reed's civil lawsuit in Arkansas.

Bill Clinton -- President of the United States and former governor of Arkansas.

Hillary Clinton -- Clinton's wife and former member of one of Little Rock Arkansas' top law firm.

Roger Clinton -- Bill Clinton's brother who was convicted on a narcotics charge and who then implicated major figures in Arkansas.

William Cooper -- Former Air America pilot who worked in Contra supply operation and was shot down over Nicaragua.

Linda Crow -- Little Rock secretary.

John Desko -- Former United States Air Force Intelligence specialist and best friend of Terry Reed.

William Duncan -- Former Internal Revenue Service agent whose investigation in Arkansas was compromised by CIA.

Joe Dunlap -- Investigator for Federal Public Defender's Office in Wichita, Kansas, who handled Reed's case.

Edwin Enright -- Former head of FBI office in Oklahoma City and man who introduced Terry Reed to Oliver North.

Joe Evans -- Barry Seal's mechanic who worked for Contra in Arkansas.

George Fenue -- Hungarian businessman and intelligence operative.

Vincent Foster -Former law partner of Hillary Clinton who served as White House counsel and allegedly committed suicide.

Raul Fierro -- "Commandante" of Guadalajara Airport.

Robin Fowler -- Federal prosecutor in Wichita, Kansas.

Max Gomez (Felix Rodriguez) -- CIA man who ran operations in Mexico for "Operation Screw Worm." A man close to George Bush.

Lawrence Graves -- Chief of Staff for Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant.

John Wesley Hall -- Little Rock attorney who was first involved with the Reeds' civil right lawsuit.

Cherryl Hall -- A social and business friend of Janis Reed's in Little Rock.

Wally Hall -- Sports editor of the Arkansas Democrat, and Cheryl's husband.

Fred Hampton Jr. -- CIA asset and owner of Rich Mountain located in Mena, Arkansas.

Webster (Webb) Hubbell -- Little Rock attorney and close political associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Now an Associate United States Attorney General.

Mark Jessie -- FBI agent in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Robert Johnson -- Purported attorney for Southern Air Transport and the man in charge of the CIA's Operation Screw Worm.

Patrick Juin -- Mexican citizen and friend of the Reeds who witnessed key events while Reed was in Mexico.

Patricia Juin -- Wife of Patrick.

Dan Lasater -- Little Rock bond dealer implicated in federal drug investigation and ex-employer of Roger Clinton.

Mitchell Marr -- Terry Reed's CIA handler in Mexico.

Mark McAfee -- Little Rock businessman who entrapped CIA man in Arkansas.

Ramon Medina (Luis Posada Carriles) -- Cuban exile assassin who was in charge of Contra ground training for CIA Operation Jade Bridge in Nella, Arkansas.

Bob Nash -- Bill Clinton's top industrial development aide during his governorship and liaison between Clinton Administration and the CIA.

Larry Nichols -- Arkansas State employee who "framed" Steve Clark and who later exposed Clinton's philandering.

Steve Robison -- Janis Reed's defense attorney in Wichita.

Tom Ross -- FBI agent in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Akihide Sawahata -- Resident CIA Agent in Little Rock.

Adler Berriman (Barry) Seal -- Key CIA contractor during Arkansas based Contra night training (Operation Jade Bridge) and clandestine weapons delivery (Operation Centaur Rose) programs.

Finis Shellnut -- Seth Ward's son-in-law, and the man who coordinated Barry Seal's airborne cash deliveries.

Frank Theis -- Federal Judge in Wichita, Kansas who acquitted Reed of mail fraud charges.

Richard Tingen -- Canadian businessman and owner of Chapala Realty in Mexico.

Leroy Tracta -- CIA Agent in Latin America and handler of Barry Seal.

Marilyn Trubey -- Terry Reed's defense attorney in Wichita.

Seth Ward Jr. -- Father in law of Webb Hubbell, Arkansas industrialist and political power broker.

Seth (Skeeter) Ward III -- Seth Ward's son.

Emery West -- Hungarian emigre', Terry Reed's former employer and mentor in Oklahoma City.

Pat Weber (Amiram Nir) -- Israeli intelligence operative who alerted Reed of "coup" within the American Government and the man who briefed then Vice President George Bush on the Iran Contra Affair.

Russell Welch -- Arkansas State Police investigator in Mena.

Raymond (Buddy) Young -- former Chief of Security for Bill Clinton and the key man in the false criminal case brought against the Reeds.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:49 am

AUTHOR'S NOTE
By TERRY KENT REED


When I finished this book and pondered in search of a title, I reflected on its contents. My mind executed a sort of instant replay, cover to cover.

I saw myself and the people described within moving in fast-forward, jerky, almost comical motion. At times, my mental video data bank stopped, rewound and "froze" the action so I could more closely study the scene and analyze motives and behavior.

Then, from deep within my mental thesaurus, the word that accurately describes the common thread that holds together their, and my, motivations, came to mind.

COMPROMISE.

I leafed through the weathered pages of my Webster's New Universal and found the word so aptly applied.

com-pro-mise: kom'pramiz'

1. a mutual promise, or agreement.

2. to surrender or give up one's principles.

3. to lay open to danger, suspicion, or disrepute; to endanger the interests of.


Because I compromised my values and principles while working for the Central Intelligence Agency, I found myself saying "YES," when I should have been saying "NO".

When Bill Clinton, as a young governor, agreed to a compromise with the CIA, he not only surrendered his principles for the benefit of a mutual agreement, he opened the State of Arkansas, and this Nation, to danger, suspicion and disrepute.

Most certainly, in retrospect, the actions of Clinton, Oliver North, myself and others were well intentioned, but, did indeed endanger the interests of the United States. As is so adeptly said: I found myself doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

However, when I finally found the courage to say "No", when I could no longer compromise my beliefs between right and wrong, a chain of events unfolded forcing my family and myself to flee and go into hiding, traveling more than 30,000 miles over a period of months. My wife and I and our three small sons serpentined as fugitives, evading the FBI and, more frighteningly, the CIA that I had worked for.

How had we become fugitives? Why had the FBI falsely labeled us "armed and dangerous"? Why was Bill Clinton's Chief of Security manipulating government computers to falsely label me a drug trafficker? Why were my wife and I indicted and the criminal justice system used in an attempt to discredit and silence me? Why did people in the Reagan/Bush government want me killed?

KNOWLEDGE. I have knowledge of deep, dark, dirty government secrets that compromised individuals in positions of power, people who do not want my information compromised.

Knowledge, my teachers taught me, was power. They failed to point out that knowledge can also be deadly.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT THAT KNOWLEDGE.

John Cummings, my co-author, is the person responsible for my divulging this knowledge; to use pen and paper to chronicle the events that led up to my conversion from being an asset of the CIA to that of a liability. John came to me in 1991 and attempted to convince me that only within the pages of a book could I be assured that the truth of what happened would not be stifled or altered.

He suggested I reveal everything, not only to safely record the events as they occurred, but to relieve my mind of the burden I was carrying. I was reluctant. I did not want to compromise other intelligence assets and possibly ongoing covert operations. I foolishly felt a courtroom was the only proper forum to bring a culmination to this ordeal.

However, as John had sermonized and predicted, justice is often just an illusion.

At least it is when a sitting and former President can be compromised, in a federal courtroom, from the clandestine activities in which I was involved. John was right. The government, he said, would make certain that no mahagony-paneled courtroom ever heard this volatile story.

And so, I'm going instead to the court of public opinion and you can be the judge and jury.

As I take my oath for you, the reader, I make one promise: I will not compromise the truth. I want to set the record straight for my children's sake so that they will know from reading this book what really happened and how, hopefully, they and others can avoid the pain my wife and I are still suffering.

To my surprise and amazement, writing Compromised has proved emancipating and therapeutic. It has evolved into an intense, yet wonderful journey of self-discovery. Capturing this story on paper has enabled me to better understand my actions; to redefine myself; and emerge from this nightmare with my soul and my family intact.

It nearly destroyed me to be ejected form the secret cabal to which Oliver North and others had granted me membership; to be discarded, discredited, abandoned and labeled a threat.

It devastated my wife and me when TIME magazine, in April of 1992, ran a full page article which branded me a liar.

It hurt to find that in our time of need no one was willing to come forward to help us prove the truth and clear my name.

We grieved to discover that organizations and individuals who claim to search constantly for the truth simply turn their backs if the truth doesn't fit their version of reality.


This book became the vehicle to set the record straight and redeem my self-esteem. I'm not a public figure like some of the people who populate this book. In fact, it was only recently that I peeled back their code names and discovered who some of the people I was dealing with actually are, what their secret agenda was, and what the real consequences of my involvement with them meant.

I had operated under many mistaken assumptions, in part due to my own headstrong faith, and strict training. And yet, ironically, the same unyielding constitution that got me into this, got me out.

My intention in life was to combine my love of family and flying with business success and sense of purpose. Like those I admire ... people such as Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chuck Yeager, Joe Ida, Harry Truman -- I wanted to put back into society more than I took out.

The type of person I just described would never have envisioned being sought out by the Central Intelligence Agency, being recruited as an asset, being compromised and then labeled a liability. Never would I have imagined that the low-profile operatives I was put into play with at the beginning of this odyssey would eventually become a modern American folk hero, an Attorney General ... and even the President of the United States.

Bizarre things happened to me in Arkansas as I and others made our way carefully through the crack in the Congressional compromise strategically built into the Boland Amendments for the purpose of allowing secret aid for the Contras. During this CIA "black operation" in support of what later became known as Iran-Contra, I unknowingly became a witness to power ... and the abuse of it. Because of my knowledge, I became a liability not only to my government handlers, but to some very powerful people as well.

As I sat in a dimly-lit World War II ammunition storage bunker outside Little Rock, Arkansas, I observed the CIA compromise both major political parties. I attested to something that I, like others, had often wondered about: does the CIA sponsor candidates to the office of U.S. President?

The answer is yes.

I witnessed the creation of a counterfeit president.


Taken out of context, this is difficult to believe. But when one steps back from the explosiveness of the question and simply considers the mechanics of going from being a poor boy in Arkansas to the highest, most powerful office in the land, one begins to wonder ... How is this possible?

One answer is ambition, lots of hard work, and blind luck. But I know, from first-hand experience, that is not always the case.

Another answer is CIA conspiracy to elevate the "proper candidates" to this supreme seat of puissance.

By now you may be thinking I'm a "conspiracist." That is not the case. I am a realist from Missouri, a place synonymous with stubbornness. Our founding principle is: SHOW ME.

I've been shown. And, through my experiences as chronicled in this book, I will attempt to show you.

But why should you give me credence? There have been others who didn't -- initially. The federal judge who sat in my appraisal didn't believe me at first. But at the end of my criminal trial and ordeal, after discovering governmental misconduct, that he had been misled, and that I had been wrongfully charged, he acquitted me.

Having been found innocent in the courtroom, I was then "convicted" in the media. This disinformation effort to discredit me in order to minimize the damage to Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign culminated in a TIME magazine article on April 20, 1992.

What an irony! Seeing my face atop a full-page article calling me a liar, a cheat and a charlatan. By TIME making me famous, for all the wrong reasons, reminded me of what Lily Tomlin had said: "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific."


Why me? What had I done? Why was my credibility called into question? These are some of the questions answered in this Byzantine story.

I was not only a witness to power and its abuse, I saw with my own eyes the hypocrisy of our "war on drugs". I learned first-hand, while working on an intelligence operation, that our government's stated drug policy had been compromised by the CIA, which just couldn't say "no" to the unbridled power derived from illicit drug profits.

When I discovered a government that couldn't say "no," I said "no." I'm still paying the price for that decision. Since all of this occurred, a lot has changed for me and my family, who were also victimized and shared my pain. Most of what has happened was negative. But a positive aspect is I rediscovered myself in this crucible.

This experience provided me with a rare opportunity. I was forced to go back and reassemble the pieces of myself that I had lost along the way, to recapture the values I cherished as a young man -- values that made me an intelligence asset, but ultimately turned me into a liability.

As you read Compromised, I hope you will see me come full circle from the starry-eyed, patriotic over-achiever with Midwestern values to a man who hits moral bottom while working for the CIA. You will travel with a man who suddenly realized he must resurrect his morality, find himself once again and fight back against overwhelming odds.

THIS BOOK IS ALSO ABOUT REDEMPTION. But when I set out to redeem my values and drew my line in the sand, I was not allowed to return to a normal and productive life. Instead I became a disposable asset to the CIA. I had done nothing wrong, yet I was indicted, simply because I knew too much and had to be silenced. Neither the CIA, George Bush nor Bill Clinton could afford to leave me with what I cherished most: my credibility.

For more than two-and-a-half years, the Reagan-Bush Justice Department acquiesced in the plot to silence me and strip me of my credibility by framing me and converting me into a felon. They failed.

And though I was tried in Federal Court and found not guilty, I've learned that in this country, being innocent is not enough. The stigma remains and, at best, I have been elevated to the status of "an acquitted felon."


How did I get from "there to here?" I am a true baby-boomer, born in 1948, and a product of the Cold War.

Vivid recollections of my childhood in a small town, besides being smothered with love, include being molded by parents, school and church to accept the responsibilities of being an American male ... duty, honor, country. These were not the words of some military academy's doctrine, etched in stone to be learned later in life ... they were instilled in me from birth.

The world's most powerful man at the close of World War II, and a fellow Missourian who helped shape my life, Harry S. Truman, embraced and espoused the principles of freedom I accepted as religion.

The Cold War period was one of such international paranoia, political unrest and global instability that it fathered such terms as ICBM, super-power, nuclear holocaust, radiation shelter and The Domino Theory.

Truman, the only man who knew the weight that had to be borne for making the decision to use "THE BOMB", openly feared World War III. As he traveled in retirement, delivered speeches and spoke of the necessity to counter communist aggression around the world, I listened.

On January 20th, 1966 I was a high school senior wrestling with teenage temptations to rebel and reject my training. On that same day, a speech written by Truman was read in Jerusalem where the Harry S. Truman Center for Advancement of Peace was being inaugurated.

When I read his words they became the potion that my youthful soul needed to distance myself from those of my generation who were finding it unfashionable to have feelings of patriotism.

"We meet at a time in history, in a world beset with troubles and hostilities in many places. It is a world of evolution and revolution. An unimaginable catastrophe of a Third World War hangs like a dark cloud over all mankind. What so many in places of leadership do not seem to realize, that if petty bickerings and squabbles are not peacefully resolved, the situation could get out of hand -- as it has so many times in the past. But the next time, it will not be a Third World conflict -- it could well be the last folly of man -- and likely the last of man on this earth.

"There will be no Noah's Ark to save and repopulate the species -- the waters will be deadly as well -- for any life to survive ....

"[Wars] are made either by power-hungry adventurers, fanatical zealots, empire builders, false prophets, crusading conquerors, or too often depraved madmen.

"They incite, arouse and provoke their subjects to acts of war. In each case there is first an act of war by an aggressor. Whenever there is an aggressor -- there inevitably has to be a choice for the offended nation -- that of either surrender or defensive action. Then, the fat is in the fire -- and the flames usually spread."


Truman's logic on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia flowed parallel to his views that America could not ignore its United Nations obligation, and that President Johnson was unfairly criticized for his commitment to the conflict.

"But the President is badly served in his task, as is the nation, by those irresponsible critics, or side-line hecklers who neither have all the facts -- nor the answers.

"For my part I have reason to believe that our presence in South Viet Nam, as is our presence in other places on the globe, has but one purpose, and that is to help keep the peace, and to keep ambitious aggressors from helping themselves to the easy prey of certain newly formed independent nations.

"If we abandon these, to the new marauders and the 'Little Caesars' -- we are again headed for deep trouble.

"If we should commit the grave folly of abandoning the United Nations, or allowing the defaulters to curb its effectiveness, we will be setting the stage for a third world war ...

"Our purpose is honorable. We covet no territory. We look for no special privileges.

"The new Imperialists, however, who pose in the guise of liberators continue to spread misunderstanding and distortion of our intentions, to obscure their own designs.

"By now, it should be clear to all, that attempts at exploitation or subjugation of other peoples by any power is a threat to the peace and security of all ...

"For us, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, 'there is but one choice, and we have made it.'"


With those words, I made my decision. I would do as my elders requested and serve my country. To me, this was reality. Compared to the rest of the world, my world was worth fighting for. The young males with whom I grew up had a sense of duty, and an obligation to defend not only our country but our way of life. They sought to fulfill the mandate bestowed on the United States as a result of World War II; where a victorious, great nation that led the world in democratic reform, had inherited the responsibility to prevent World War III.

This sense of debt and obligation formed the values I embraced and cherished and they set me apart from those who were always looking for the free or easy ride. I was trained to do things the hard way; there was no easy way. Life seemed simple. Things were black and white, right and wrong, worth fighting for or not. Your elders made decisions that you followed and it was not your place to question their judgement until you became an adult.

How quickly we forget that the future of the USSR could not be predicted in the '60s. Nikita Khrushchev, pounding his shoe on the podium at the U.N., and shouting, "We will bury you", was the topic of social studies discussions when I was a student in junior high school. Russia was no wounded giant or decaying super-power in 1967 when I made the decision to serve my country and help create what Truman referred to as "conditions of freedom and justice in the whole world."

Truman was the man who personified my core beliefs. The same man whom Republican President George Bush, Democratic contender Bill Clinton, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot tried 50 hard to emulate and identity with during the 1992 Presidential elections.

In 1967, I entered the United States Air Force. My duty and my path were crystal clear. The world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear meltdown unless we all did our fair share to prevent it. I would pay my dues to the nation and society would repay me by allowing me to live my life in freedom, and in a safer world. I simply planned to follow the yellow brick road. The lines that separated the highway from the ditches were defined by reflective tape that not only glowed in the dark, but seemed to electrocute those who veered off course.

This seemingly simplistic view of life and youth did not mean I was simpleminded. My friends and I simply saw no real alternative. This was the necessary initiation into adulthood and maturity.

I felt then, as I do now, that this is still the right way to be reared. Youths in their teens and early twenties are not programmed sufficiently to question their elders. And if a nation cannot rely upon its youth to obey, to pay the price of freedom, what does it really have? I was taught that if you feel the values you are asked to defend are not worth the risk, then you should renounce your citizenship and leave. Simply go elsewhere, some place that does not levy demands on its citizens.

In many ways, I feel the course of what happened to me is the course of what has happened to our country.

I, like many Americans, feel the nation has slowly slid from the acme of freedom and self-government to the complex, fragmented form of governmental gridlock and compromise we have today. A government that operates long on money and short on ideals. A government comprised of spin doctors, handlers, lobbyists and talking heads, instead of the frankness and honesty radiated by Truman.

When I hit bottom while working for the CIA, I compared myself to an alcoholic, realizing that he either had to quit or die. If I continued on the course set me for me by others, I would compromise my entire code of ethics and I might as well be dead.

I was learning quickly that life and people dilute your value system, and it was all so easy to turn your back and give in a little bit at a time. I suddenly realized it was past time to make a major heading change or course correction in my life. Somehow I had ended up in the ditch with nearly everyone else. I needed to get my values and my life back on the yellow brick road. I'm still paying for that difficult decision. Weak people, those in the ditch, I have discovered, don't like the strong, the ones who crawl back to the highway.


Back on the road, I looked around and wondered how I had made this ill-conceived journey. How had I deviated so far off course and missed my original destination? One degree of heading change at a time, I realized. Then, the words of my grandfather came to me, saying: "If ya didn't plan on takin' the trip, why did ya pack your bags?"

Thus began the process of self-analysis that led to this book.

Oddly, the very same qualities for which the world of Military Intelligence sought me out, would lead to my divorce from civilian intelligence operations. I apparently had more patriotism than the CIA had bargained for. My love of my country had evolved into contempt for the government and I refused to be compromised, as Bill Clinton and others I was dealing with had been.

As Oliver North and I worked on our "black" project for the CIA, we analyzed America's ills and debated the medication necessary to recoup the nation. By reviewing the principles this country was founded upon and comparing its present condition to those principles, it's obvious that democracy has failed to insure that the founding principles are maintained. We came to the conclusion "that democracy doesn't work."

North and I felt the most paramount threats to our system of liberties had not come from the communists he and I had been programmed to hunt down and kill. The enemy came from within our own ranks. The decay of the voice of the people is what threatened us most. WE THE PEOPLE were being bypassed and our representation undermined through a breakdown in our built-in-system of checks and balances. The budget DEFICIT was to blame. The breakdown was occurring by not making each and every one of us pay as we go. Credit was an easy, evil siren by which to be lured, and one that eventually would bring an end to our way of life. Economic collapse was not all we feared. By not forcing the American public to pay for its way of life, to simply allow the public to "charge it," they were being lulled into a state of governmental nonparticipation that would eventually put the power of the government into the hands of only a few of the "ruling class". Karl Marx always said democracy doesn't work. We were afraid he was right.

Voter rebellion was what was needed and that revolution was being contained by not forcing the American people to be held individually fiscally accountable. There was no "feedback" to those who ruled us. Congress, we felt, was to blame for allowing the DEFICIT to exist. This had to be changed. Our first priority would have been to return this country to its original capitalistic foundation of "pay as you go."


Financial sacrifice was only one method of personal compensation to our governing system. There was another method and like the deficit, it too was a "D" word ...DRAFT. It represented personal sacrifice, or better stated: repayment to America for the privilege of living here ... a responsibility that should be accepted by all ... men and women alike.

Again, the check and balance, the "feedback" to the political leaders could only be effective in times of national crisis if the entire spectrum of citizenry was represented. The Vietnam debacle, whether avoidable or winnable, would have had a quicker outcome if all the socioeconomic groups were equally represented and had equally paid the price of enforcing our national foreign policies.

That's how simply Oliver North and I saw things back then. And I still believe they are valid solutions to our nation's ills.

North and I did not conspire to overthrow our form of government, but simply to return it to the basic principles on which it was founded. The crisis of leadership and the sorry state of affairs that produced the Vietnam War, a war that touched and changed us both, showed us it was impossible to solve the nation's problems within its present, corrupted system.

Just as a trim tab on an airplane wing can slowly correct a plane's heading, my involvement with the secret cabal, designed to operate outside of the main body of government, attempted to correct the heading of the country. Ours was not a plot to replace democracy, just fine tune it and return it to the state of true democracy our founding fathers had intended.


To me, the Cold War can be compared to a game of Monopoly. Simply put, the ideology was to control or own all the property on the game board. In the Cold War, as in the game, if your opponent goes bankrupt his assets are liquidated and you win. Thus is the case of the USSR. The Kremlin is out of the game ... for now at least.

How do I feel, as a Cold Warrior, about its defeat? I feel both honored and saddened. I completed my mission, the one for which I was trained. I destroyed my enemy. But yet the victory is hollow, and I, like others, see the present danger of our ways. Now that it's gone, I miss my old enemy, the USSR. I can now see its qualities. The USSR was, in fact, a stabilizing force for the world. What has replaced it is more unpredictable than it ever was.

Those now leading this country must deal with this instability and power vacuum in the world. But these are the same people who denigrate the principles I learned as a youth. They are the ones who rationalized their way out of serving their country and now seemingly claim that holding political office somehow repays that debt they welched on. They are the elite cadre of pseudo-intellectuals who not only evaded the draft, but seem to have disdain for those who served. They view veterans as less cerebral and lacking the intellectual capacity to understand the subtleties of world affairs.

Having worked in intelligence most of my adult life, I'm acutely knowledgeable of the rules that control classified material. I was, therefore, torn in writing this book for fear I might compromise classified data and methodology. One element I felt compelled to expose is the fact that there is no real government war on drugs. I feel this, the American people have a definite right and need to know. Other operations this book deals with, I felt initially, needed to be protected.

But, my co-author, John Cummings, convinced me otherwise. The public, he insisted, also has the right to know about the CIA sponsoring candidates for the U.S. Presidency and, thereby, compromising themselves and their values. We wrote this book because, otherwise, there would be no assurance that the truth would ever be told. I have decided to take the risk and, hopefully, I am not exposing any on-going classified projects or methodology.

Despite what I know about Bill Clinton's involvement with the CIA, I still voted for him. I, like many Americans, voted for change. This country had to get rid of George Bush and the outdated, misguided attitudes demonstrated by his wing of the Republican Party. Hopefully, our congressional leaders will take note and realize the American people will no longer stand by idly while witnessing the hawking and wholesaling of this once great land.

But right now, I have a more immediate problem -- larger and more complex than any with which I've ever attempted to deal -- that of raising three young sons, three young men who may be asked someday to serve their country, to pay their dues.

What kind of values do I instill in them to ensure this country survives? At the same time, how can I moderate the code of conduct I seek to instill, to unselfishly serve for the security of all, and yet alert them they may be exploited by this virtue?

Do I teach them to obey the establishment and work for change only within the defined framework of government? Or do I teach them there is a proper time to rebel and do as the American Declaration of Independence instructs, to take up arms and change what is wrong?

I fought the Vietnam War, I fought the Justice Department and now I am fighting TIME magazine. On April 16, 1993, I filed a lawsuit against TIME in a New York federal court under the federal libel statutes. * I am determined to prevail.

Terry Kent Reed
Somewhere in the U.S.

_______________

Note:

* Terry K. Reed vs. Time Warner, Inc., Time Inc. Magazine Company, and Richard Behar; United States District Court, Southern District of New York, case # 93 Civ. 2249. Exhibit A, TIME article "Anatomy of a Smear". (See document section at the end of chapter 36)

***

A word about the quotes in this book. I was a paid intelligence professional. I was recruited, selected, trained and compensated in great part for my ability to organize facts, events, analyze motives and mentally retain them.

Some quotes in this book are not verbatim.

In some instances, scenes in this book were reconstructed from notes and memories of the events, meetings and conversations shortly after they took place. All quotes are expressed in the spirit, intent, tone and inflection of the person or the participants in the included conversation.

Ethnic slurs and profanity are in no way intended to insult anyone or any particular ethnic group. They are factual and included to recreate authenticity in the dialogue between persons quoted in this book.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:53 am

CHAPTER 1: PATRIOTIC TIME BOMBS

As a nation,
You should never test
Your very best,
While at home
You leave the rest.

-- Terry Kent Reed, 1971


"Fucking Nixon and Kissinger! They're the real war criminals here," Oliver North lamented. North and his companion were talking heatedly about the blame -- and guilt -- cast upon the military in the wake of the Vietnam debacle.

Terry Reed replied, "Yeah. If those two bastards were put on public display in POW cages, maybe history wouldn't repeat itself."

At their first meeting on February 24, 1982, in Oklahoma City, Oliver North and Reed had discovered they were cut from the same cloth. They had lived parallel lives, served their country in parallel ways and had been the victim of parallel lies from the nation's leaders who had sent men to die and then sat back to debate its morality. Both men were seeking the same elusive thing: A chance to redeem the military institutions and the men they loved.

Although neither realized it at the time, they were patriotic time bombs produced in the same Cold War Factory.

"Us good soldiers seem to be disposable," North said over and over as he sat under the penetrating view of J. Edgar Hoover, whose portrait hung in all FBI offices like this one in Oklahoma City. North then professed to be working for the Central Intelligence Agency and used a cover name. His code name for this project was "John Cathey."

As the CIA man continued to sermonize, Terry Reed was astonished to find someone who was articulating the same frustration and anger he felt about the fate of those who had served their country, put their lives on the line and were then abandoned. In too many cases men like them had even paid the supreme price for freedom .... death. And for what, the man he knew as "John Cathey" asked?

The words stirred images and thoughts of the forces in Terry's life that had influenced his decision to serve his country.

* * *

A lump was forming in the young cadet's throat and his eyes were beginning to well-up as he listened to Harry S. Truman on that spring day in 1966. The former president, then nearly 82 and, his voice wavering, exhibited the spark and determination of the man who had made a decision that affected the world forever.

The man from Missouri had taken care of his soldiers in 1945. He had nuked the enemy, gotten the war over with and brought 'em home ...victorious.

The speech delivered that day in Carthage, only 20 miles from Lamar, the Missouri town where Truman had been born, was having a profound effect on 18-year-old ROTC cadet, Lieutenant Colonel Terry Kent Reed, "A" Company commander, Detachment No. 19, Fifth U.S. Army Instructor Group.

Terry and the other cadets of his elite unit were frozen at rigid attention on the Carthage Senior High School parade field, preparing to pass in review to convey respect for Truman, the man responsible for their unit's creation. The community's leaders were respectfully assembled to pass on to their youth the principles they embraced, the core of our freedom: duty, honor, country.

The scene resembled a Norman Rockwell painting. Here was a small southwestern Missouri town of 10,000 founded in 1842 and steeped in Civil War history. Named after the ancient North African city, Carthage was the site of the world's largest active marble quarry, with many capitol buildings in the North being built of the coveted white marble. Its vast resources of agriculture and lead and zinc mining made it a major asset to the Union's war-making capability causing the North to sacrifice many soldiers in attempts to keep the minerals out of Confederate hands.

Carthage, the county seat of Jasper County, was the site of the first land battle of the War Between the States, the location of some of the most savage guerrilla fighting, and where the North and South first tested their full scale battle resources and abilities. Jasper County was the location of the war's first extended campaign for the entire length of the war (1861-1865), which heightened guerrilla warfare tactics as opposing armies attempted to control this vital Mississippi River transportation artery.

The Battle of Carthage on July 5th, 1861, became the focal point of Missouri's struggle over whether or not to withdraw from the Union. For three years, both sides took turns occupying the town. On September 22nd, 1864, Confederate guerillas finally burned Carthage to the ground. [1]

The bloodshed certainly had an effect on the local citizenry. The census of 1860 noted the county population as 6,883. By war's end only 30 full-time residents were left.

Having to live under ongoing occupation by warring armies made the citizens of Carthage survivors, and wary of all government authorities. Reed's great-grandfather was a mule-trader and political organizer who prided himself on being able to buy mules, stolen from both armies, and then sell them to whichever army was occupying Carthage at the time. He, like the others left alive, had only survived by clinging to their wits and making the best of a bad situation. Perhaps this spit-in-the-eye-of-authority attitude was best manifested in Reed's grandfather who refused throughout his life to buy a fishing license, saying, "God put the fish there, not the State of Missouri." For his anti-government stance, he ended up paying fines levied by the game wardens far and above the cost of the license.

This independent, stubborn and enterprising attitude captured by the local newspaper of 1861, The Southwest News. Its motto was, "'Independent in all things, neutral in nothing", creating an environment that turned this region for a time into a sanctuary for misfits, malcontents and miscreants who became America's folk heroes, and often, its "'most wanted."

The list includes Belle Starr, the Dalton, Younger and James gangs, Quantrill's Raiders and even, in this century, Bonnie and Clyde. And, of course, Harry S. Truman.


By the end of the 19th Century, Carthage prided itself at having more millionaires per capita than any other town in America, having completely rebuilt itself and grown beyond its agrarian heritage by establishing a thriving, diverse industrial and manufacturing base centered around the mining industry. The town boasted sidewalks paved in marble and granite, which defined grids studded with Victorian mansions built by the wealthy and rivaling anything Eastern cities offered.

This centerpiece of American values, with its marble-constructed town square court house, complete with castle-like turrets and a clock that struck with a frequency that rivaled Big Ben, was where Terry Reed was raised -- twenty miles from the birth place of Harry S. Truman.

Truman, besides being a statesman and farmer, was a personal hero of Terry's, an example by virtue of his common sense attitude toward life and society. In Truman's mind things were either right or wrong. Terry shared that headstrong faith, based on values instilled by his strongly independent and religious-minded parents. It was part of a value system the young Reed knew was worth defending and, if necessary, dying for.

Consequently, there was no doubt in his mind of his purpose in life as he stood on the drill field in 1966 at Carthage High School. That day, he set out on the same path as Oliver North. That day, the field in Carthage and the parade grounds at North's Annapolis were one and the same. It was the day the Carthage ROTC unit received the highest award that could be given. They had been rated the best in the nation and the man who had fought for the unit's origination and accreditation, Harry Truman, had been invited to present the award. The cadets had presented the former President with an engraved Wilkinson saber as a token of appreciation to the man who immortalized the words, "'The buck stops here".

This scene of patriotism and duty did not reflect the entire nation's sentiment, however. Much of the country was in turmoil. As the former President extolled patriotism and honor, Lyndon Johnson was grappling with the problems of the Vietnam war. More than 400,000 U.S. "'advisors" were on the ground in Vietnam. Riots were tearing American campuses and cities apart. Thousands carried banners saying "'Make Love, Not War," and draft cards were being torn and burned. America's ally, Canada, was becoming the fashionable place for many draft-age youth to sit out the war.

Truman would have none of this, though, as he looked out across the field to the assembled cadets and crowd, and told them about duty, honor and country.

"In 1792 George Washington, President of the United States, asked Congress to start a military training program for the safety of this country. He was not successful in obtaining it.

"President after President has made the same request. We have made progress but we still have not integrated universal training programs.

"Our Government is founded on the principle of the consent of the governed. We believe that government is the servant of the individual and not his master. Jefferson like Washington and Hamilton was well aware that a strong military establishment was vital to the preservation of our liberty. All these early patriot leaders knew that effective military forces are not possible without proper training and able leadership. They all remembered Washington's struggle for men and leaders to win the revolution ...

"The spirit of our people has never been war-like. Our ancestors came to this country to find peace and freedom. That is what we have always wanted. That is what we want now.

"But there is a great difference between being peaceful and being passive. It's impossible to have world peace unless we are able and willing to stand up for our rights and the rights of the free world ...


"The welfare of the nation and the world is in the hands of its young men. They must attain the knowledge and ability to carry on ....

"Institutions such as this great school give young men lessons and leadership training and the fundamentals of a good education ....

"Never before in the history of the world has a great nation followed the path which we followed after the German and Japanese surrenders in 1945. We helped to rehabilitate the defeated countries just as we did our allies.

"Never in the history of the world had that happened before. It comes very nearly being the Golden Rule on a world basis.

"Young men and women study your history, study the great leaders in history and try to live by the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.


"You will be happy, you will make others happy and the country will be safe for the future."


Cadet Lieutenant Colonel Reed, Alpha Company commander with his Sam Brown Belt glistening in the sun and his saber drawn, had to fight back the tears. The discipline and challenges of ROTC had been Terry Reed's right of passage, forcing him to shed his shyness, build his self-esteem, and grow mentally and physically to levels he had never dared to dream possible. In Carthage, this haven of Middle American values, being an ROTC officer and leader carried the same status as varsity "jock." And here he was, standing at attention before his company, the group of cadets that he had lead and molded through out his year as their Co. These twenty students were a product of his undivided effort and most assuredly reflected the pride instilled in them by himself and the man who had made the monumental decision to end World War II.

Having risen to be one of only six company commanders, Terry saw himself as among the elite. Moreover, his company was the best of the six. And he was going to do what Harry Truman told him, serve his country. The draft dodgers and protestors be damned! "The nation can count on us", the young Reed and many others in his battalion pledged.

If anyone was as proud as Terry that day, it was his father. In battles across Africa and Europe, Harry Reed had helped defeat the Nazis and now he was passing the torch to his son, the eldest of six children. For 18 years, the young Reed had been taught by his father to honor his family, community and country.


Terry was the quintessential product of Middle America. Sown like patriotic seed on the plains, his destiny was to be harvested for the nation's use. He spent laborious nights shining shoes and polishing brass for open ranks inspections, and finding it sometimes necessary to study into the early morning hours to make the required straight A-grade average. It had been no easy task, but it had been worthwhile, culminating in that proud moment, one that had a profound and lasting impact on the young Missourian. He had proved capable not only to his parents and teachers, but more importantly, to himself as well.

This new "crop" of dedicated young men, for the most part born of veterans of World War II, was reaped by the government and sent on the fruitless and unsupported mission to halt the advance of communism in Southeast Asia.

By the Fall of 1967, Terry was in college but facing the draft, and was torn between duty and education. As the male enrollment in the school he was attending began dwindling due to increased draft quotas, he felt pangs of guilt. Hadn't he, after all, suffered and excelled during those years in ROTC to prepare himself for military service?

Although intellectually curious and eager to learn, his country needed him now. Knowing he had no other moral choice, he shopped all the military services and decided to join the Air Force, which he hoped would enable him to acquire valuable skills while fulfilling his military obligation.

Time of war terrifies most mothers and Terry's mother, Martha Reed, was somewhat relieved to see that her son was more interested in after-burners and jet fuel than bayonets and gunpowder. She knew the price that one can be asked by our country to pay, having lost a younger brother in World War II. Terry felt that from all the services the Air Force offered the best continuing college education program available while serving on active duty. After a battery of tests at the recruiting station in Joplin, Missouri, he was excited to find that due to high test scores, he was qualified for "any job the Air Force has."

Further testing at the Armed Forces Induction Center in Kansas City, and later at Amarillo, Texas, during basic training, indicated to the Air Force they were dealing with "intelligence material". Terry and one other airman from their flight of 120 were summoned one day to the base psychiatrist who told them "the Air Force is considering you for a highly-placed, sensitive job ... intelligence."

After attending basic military intelligence school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Reed honed his insidious skills at the 2nd Reconnaissance Technical Squadron at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. By the late summer, 1969, he was informed that he had been selected for Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara's top-secret project, code named Igloo White. The hard work and long hours of studying had again paid off. He had rivaled the Air Force's best.

So, at the age of 21, armed with Midwestern and religious values, a near-photographic memory and a top-secret security clearance given him by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he set out on what he saw as a patriotic course built upon his earlier years in ROTC.

With very little fanfare and an overloaded B-4 bag, Air Force Sergeant Terry K. Reed, AF16962257, departed Travis Air Force Base, California on October 9, 1969. He and the plane's load of human replacements for the war headed West, to where the action was .... and where a Marine by the name of Oliver North had just been promoted to First Lieutenant and was winding down his tour of duty in I Corp near the Demilitarized Zone in the northern area of South Vietnam. [2]


Then came the reality of Southeast Asia.

YEAR: 1969
PLACE: NAKHON PHANOM, RTAFB THAILAND
SUBJECT: TASK FORCE ALPHA
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET, NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION
CODE NAME: "IGLOO WHITE"


This shadowy, wing-level unit had a brigadier general as its commander and reported directly to 7th Air Force headquarters in Hawaii, bypassing the usual intelligence reporting channels in southeast Asia. From there, the intelligence information Task Force Alpha (TFA) collected went straight to the Pentagon where select briefers kept the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense informed on the success of the unit's secret mission.

This was the heart of McNamara's pet project, the so-called "electronic fence" that was to manage the interdiction and destruction of North Vietnamese resupply traffic flowing south along the primitive road complex known as the Ho Chi Minh trail. It extended over 400 miles from North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, into South Vietnam.


The complex task was in the hands of trained military and civilian technicians operating IBM's latest secret creation -- the world's largest computer, code named 360E, the "E" designating experimental. Working with the Department of Defense, IBM had pushed computer technology beyond the envelope as it was then defined. This project was the center-piece of the efforts of the Johnson administration to contain the war to Vietnam. It's primary mission was to cut off the supply routes afforded the enemy in the dense, triple-layer jungle canopy of Laos, and prevent stockpiling of supplies needed for another Tet offensive.

Located on the southern shores of the Mekong River in primitive northeastern Thailand, this remote Royal Thai Air Force base housed the DOD's supercomputer system. Protected by earthen-filled steel revetments, the futuristic, single-story facility extended below ground, protected by a camouflaged steel roof designed to take three direct hits by mortar fire without penetration. The technology contained within its walls was considered so advanced for its day that extreme measures had been taken during the construction phase to prevent it from falling into communist hands. The entire facility was wired with explosives to be detonated in the event the base was ever over-run.

The computers' pulse was monitored by teams of Air Force and civilian technicians in the command center known as the plot room or "floor". This futuristic battle station was dimly-lit and sunken into a hemispherical arrangement resembling a small amphitheater. The back-lit, Plexiglass targeting boards that glowed in the room's eerie darkness gave the appearance of a high-technology bull ring, comparable to the science fiction flight deck of the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek series.

The continuous twinkling of the sensor-activation lights mounted on Plexiglass screens combined with the latest technological breakthrough, LED (light-emitting diodes) clocks calibrated to read hundredths of a second, gave the visitor an advanced warning of the technology housed within Task Force Alpha's facility.

In a nutshell, and if all worked well, an appropriately cleared visitor to TFA would learn the following: As the "gooks", as the enemy was called, moved their supplies under the cover of darkness, foliage and clouds along the road segments in Laos, code-named "Steel Tiger", they were unaware of the airborne command post, an EC-121R, high above them at 35,000 feet. [3] This predecessor of the present-day AWAC system was armed with the latest classified electronic wizardry whose primary task was "monitoring" the electronic signals from a "string of sensors" that specially-equipped aircraft had previously dropped adjacent to the road segments below. Upon impact with the ground, the camouflaged sensors buried themselves up to their plastic antenna, which were designed to blend into the jungle foliage making them nearly impossible for the enemy to detect or locate.

When enemy truck traffic passed along these "seeded" road segments they unknowingly "activated" the sensors through seismic or sometimes audio vibration. This sent an electric signal skyward to the AWAC-style plane, via which the data was relayed to the "floor," or command center, of the plot room at TFA. There, the 360E began a series of calculations that would guide a specially-equipped and armed F-4 aircraft to an airborne point in space to coincide with the moving target. If all went well, a bomb would fall, seemingly out of nowhere, onto an unsuspecting enemy.


This advanced concept, in theory, would give the Air Force the ability to "kill" all trucks, day or night and in any weather conditions. It was exciting for Reed to be participating in an operation with such advanced technology that even the budget for it was classified. The price tag for TFA's internal operations, not counting aircraft and ordinance, was over $1 million a day. By early 1971, shortly after Terry left, the official and classified ordinance reports showed that over 2.2 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Laos. This secret air war was costing $10 billion a year and the Air Force was claiming that up to 12,000 Soviet-built Zil-57 cargo trucks had been "killed" per year.

The Royal Thai Air Force base, from which TFA operated, was also the home of another offshoot of the super-computer. Its code name was "Teaball," Seventh Air Force's special controlling facility that directed air strikes from EC-121s early-warning radar planes code named "Disco". [4] Its purpose was to coordinate air strikes and provide U.S. pilots operating over North Vietnam with advance warning of enemy fighter intercepts. TFA's computer was so advanced it could identify Soviet MIG aircraft by model number, track their fuel burn and even warn American pilots as to the skill of the individual enemy pilot. This was achieved by intercepting airborne radio voice communications in TFA's plot room. There they could compare stored enemy pilots' voice prints to the one in the plane, determine his name, relay to the American combatant his opponents proficiency in flying, and most frightening of all -- relay the number, if any, of American aircraft shot down in aerial dog-fight engagements.

Reed's job as a target selector and photo analyst was to focus primarily on a 50-by-15 square mile road segment known as the Route 23 complex, winding out of the mountainous and rugged MuGhia Pass from North Vietnam into Southern Laos. The route flowed around, over and through the volcanic karst formations which were riddled with caves, affording the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) subterranean protection for the never-ending B-52 strikes, code named Arc Light. This key segment of Laotian real estate was vital to the NVA resupply effort for its troops in South Vietnam. Without tons of munitions, food, and fuel moving south on a regular basis, the enemy stockpiles in Cambodia and elsewhere would quickly exhaust themselves leaving NVA regulars ill-equipped to continue their offensive efforts in South Vietnam. Terry and his team would use the tell-tale records of the sensor activations to determine where the enemy had hidden truck parks and storage areas along the jungle-shrouded route. By melding these electronic "tips" on where the enemy was hiding, combined with other intelligence provided by photo-reconnaissance and pilot reports, Reed's team was responsible for selecting the impact point of tons of high explosives delivered by aircraft.

The lives of many American flyers were relying upon the thoroughness in which Reed and his team did their job. The NVA was shooting back with some of the most sophisticated and concentrated aerial defenses Russia had ever built. "Flak traps," as they were known were placed throughout MuGhia Pass, and portions of Southeast Asia were actually being more heavily defended than Moscow. As a group supervisor, Terry briefed Air Force forward air controllers (FAC's) and F-4 jet pilots on not only the suspected location of North Vietnamese supply convoys, but these anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) positions as well. Six hours after a typical briefing, Terry and the returning pilots would study the bomb damage assessment (BDA) photos of the previous air strikes. Those retaliatory briefings, given also to the CIA, were Terry's introduction as to how legitimate covert operations are misused to disguise black, or illegal, operations. The CIA was "on the ground" in Laos despite Richard Nixon's public denial. He conveniently misled the public by making statements shrouded in deceit such as, "There are no American troops in Laos", the operative word being "troops."

But those weren't the only briefings Reed gave. There were those "special requests" that put him into contact with the civilian "spooks" who were doing secret work for "the customer," the Central Intelligence Agency. These were men under contract by the CIA, which was fighting its own secret war in Laos and it depended upon Task Force Alpha (TFA) and men like Reed to provide them with "fresh" intelligence so that they could carry out their own deadly agenda. The Air Force officially denied any linkage to the CIA.


But Terry knew the truth. So at the age of 21, he had come to accept as routine the heavy responsibility of making life and death decisions. He had also come to accept the fact that the government and the military had to deceive the American public to accomplish its national security objectives.

The rationale for this deception: the American public would not tolerate knowing that the war had spread beyond North and South Korea. Though supposedly a "neutral country," a half-million combat sorties had been flown and over a million tons of bombs had been dropped on the small nation prior to Terry's arrival.

But those massive and relentless air attacks only interrupted the enemy traffic. The secondary explosions Reed's team was rewarded for producing on the ground in Laos, were reverberating all the way to Washington. All of this ordinance was being dropped secretly and illegally on a country with whom we were not at war. Senator Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) would announce in public hearings, "we have been at war in Laos for years, and it's time the American people knew more of the facts." [5]

This disclosure was made in October, 1969, the month Terry arrived in Thailand, and it wasn't until five months later that President Nixon acknowledged for the first time U.S. "involvement" in Laos.

From the CIA's station headquarters in the capital of Vientiane, Reed knew the CIA was more than just a little involved. It was pulling the strings and bribing the ruling right-wing Laotian officials living off the misery of their own people. For each bombing raid, a "fee" was paid to Laotian Prince Souvanna Phouma for the "bombing rights." Terry began to think cynically of the U.S. government when learning that it was literally renting Laos for its secret and non-existent war.

And who was coordinating the "non-existent" effort in Laos for the CIA? -- Air America, the obscure, "humanitarian" airline that secretly shuttled lethal and humanitarian supplies along with personnel throughout the region with "civilian" pilots. The reconnaissance photos these pilots needed in order to locate their remote jungle airfields and targets came from TFA. With the assistance of Air America pilots for "target tips," Terry and his unit applied their deadly skills.
From the portable trailer in which he worked, equipped with the technology to analyze airborne and satellite reconnaissance, Terry dug in for the duration of his 12-month stay. Words such as "Heavy Hook," "56 SOW," "Spookie," "Raven," "Nail," "Bug," "FRAG," "HABU," "Black Crow," "Paveway," "Wild Weasel," "KS-72," and "Mark 86" proliferated his vocabulary, and became the dialogue of his trade.

But though Terry Reed worked in a 21st-Century space-age environment, where he lived was something else. The air-conditioning necessary to keep the computers cooled and operational didn't exist in the airmen's living quarters. Their "hooches," as they were called, were overcrowded, infested with mosquitoes and built on stilts to keep the cobras out during the sun-baked dry season and the torrents of water out during the monsoon season. This stark contrast between living and working quarters, combined with the sweltering heat and the relentless noise from day and night takeoffs and landings was draining.

The air was pounded 24 hours a day by the rotor blades of patrolling helicopters trying to prevent North Vietnamese Army (NVA) saboteurs from penetrating the perimeter of the remote base.
Because of its strategic northern location, 100 miles due west of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam, the base housed special search and rescue units whose job was to rescue downed airmen. Nakhon Phanom (NKP) was a perpetual beehive of activity requiring Reed and most of the other men to work twelve hour shifts, often seven days a week.

The reality of the human carnage brought on by the war was visibly displayed to Terry when giant C-130 transport planes landed full of body bags that were piled along the runway en route to the mortuary in Saigon. Observing Thai soldiers nonchalantly sorting the corpses by nationality triggered the realization of the fragility of life. While contemplating his own mortality and sitting in the sizzling heat awaiting personnel replacements from "the world," Terry would first meet a man with whom he would later bond for life.

It was December 1969 and the man from Erie, Pennsylvania, nicknamed Roger Ramjet by his intelligence school classmates, would walk down a C-130 loading ramp and into Terry's life.

Terry was surveying the group of "jeeps" (new arrivals) from the States who appeared to be simultaneously suffering from heat shock, culture shock, homesickness, fear and jet lag, when he first noticed Ramjet. He behaved differently than the remainder of the new arrivals wandering across the sweltering flight line.

The other "sheep" were aimlessly following some imaginary leader. But not Ramjet. He appeared to be alone, in charge, and more interested in inspecting the steel and sand-bagged revetments protecting the F-4 Phantom aircraft. He had a way about him ... an aura that radiated an instinct to survive, and an innate curiosity for these sophisticated instruments of war.

Ramjet had spotted the TFA sign Reed was holding, threw his gear into Reed's truck, and said in his soft-spoken, monotonal voice, "My name's John Desko. I'm from Erie, PA. I came here to blow shit up, win this war, and get outta here."

On the trip to the barracks, the conversation shifted from war to the hidden benefits of serving abroad.

"Is it true that B-52 pilots can smuggle in Jap bikes by hiding them in the bomb bay? If that's the case, then I'm lookin' for a Kawasaki triple."

Being a motorcycle fanatic himself, Reed and Ramjet hit it off immediately as they dug in for their one-year tour of duty in this outpost from hell. They became friends for life and both would later say that their main task during this time was keeping each other sane. This bond for life was not forged on some safe and secure college campus. It was deeper and more serious. Their Alma Mater would be Task Force Alpha. It was here they would lose their virginity and naivete about truth, deceit and the way the world of "intel" really operates, not the way they had been taught in Denver. They would soon discover that their unit was actually the "secret supermarket of intelligence material" to not only the Air Force but other "customers" they couldn't mention, particularly the CIA.

The CIA relied extensively upon Air America for logistics support to conduct their unstated objectives in Southeast Asia. Air America was described to the outside world as a humanitarian airline with bases in Vientiane, Laos, and Udorn, Thailand. With the majority of its aircraft painted white and bearing no military markings, Air America and its pilots shuttled some extremely "sensitive and lethal cargo" along with the rice and medical supplies it air dropped to friendly forces in the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos. That sensitive cargo included bootlegged intelligence material, secretly provided to the CIA by Task Force Alpha through this "shuttle service." Through this operation, Reed met some strange, rogue pilots who wore solid gold chains and flight suits with no insignia. The gold was for emergency bartering in case of a shootdown and their sanitized flight suits were supposed to give them the appearance of civilian pilots.

These pilots knew that if shot down and captured, their country would deny any knowledge of their mission or existence. By volunteering for this hazardous and secret duty they received compensation for their "black" services far above the going rate for "legal flights." If they survived, they could go home wealthy. If they didn't, their next of kin would probably never know the truth surrounding their death.


One of these pilots was a man by the name of William Cooper. He was then in his mid-40's and shuttling C-123's and DC-3's between TFA and Vientiane laden with, among other things, illegally provided aerial photography, photography that had been "sanitized" to be used for special CIA bombing missions to places openly banned by the President and Congress. Cooper was a nobody in 1970, but would become famous, or perhaps infamous, when he crashed and died in 1986 in Nicaragua at the controls of a C-123K filled with guns and gringos. That crash would usher in the era known as Iran-Contra.

TFA, or the "project" as it was known, would also house another of the dirty secrets of the Vietnam War -- the fact that U.S. servicemen were being sacrificed to accomplish bombing objectives in Laos.

In a diplomatic chess game, Air Force decision-making had been "neutered." Instead of a "flying armada" that could have destroyed North Vietnam's industrial capability, it had been turned into an instrument to achieve Nixon and Kissinger's political agenda that included "detente" with the Chinese.

Instead of raining fire non-stop on North Vietnam until the enemy quit, Air Force fire power became the diplomatic "stick" in Kissinger's "carrot and stick" policy.

The "carrot" was the curtailment of bombing in the North in exchange for an "honorable peace," which meant a pre-arranged American withdrawal before the political and military collapse of South Vietnam. The "stick" was the punishment side of the equation that Nixon would use to force the Vietnamese to negotiate like gentlemen at the bargaining table in Paris, showing the American's back home that he couldn't be bullied by the likes of Le Due To and Ho Chi Minh.

Caught in the middle of this political chess game were men like Reed. His job at TFA was to select the impact point for the bombs the Air Force was "allowed" to drop. In compliance with the Geneva Accords and the rules of engagement, Terry had to insure that the bombs did not fall on humanitarian targets, such as hospitals -- and POW camps built by the North Vietnamese along the trail network of Steel Tiger.

Hanoi, in a cold-blooded attempt to keep the road network open, had placed clusters of POWs in concentration camps at key junctions in the road network. Intelligence reports indicated that many of these POWs, who were being used as "human shields," had been transferred from camps in the Hanoi-Haiphong region to augment the captured American flyers shot down over Laos. By this time nearly 400 airmen had been downed while flying over this neutral nation.

By the spring of 1970, this human shield tactic was effectively preventing the Air Force from bombing those critical road junctions, allowing the North Vietnamese to build stockpiles in the south in preparation for a another Tet Offensive.

Hanoi was insidiously exploiting America's compliance with the humanitarian constraints placed on its Air Force. Largely due to the effectiveness of TFA's interdiction efforts, the NVA could not stockpile sufficient fuel to launch a mechanized or tank offensive in the South. They had become so daring in Laos, however, as a result of the success of their "American Human Shield Program" that they initiated a daring program to construct a POL (petroleum) pipeline, which would supply fuel to the Soviet-built Zil-57 supply trucks, thereby allowing them to haul containerized fuel to depots in the south. Reed's team and the Air Force sat helplessly watching the construction of pumping stations down Steel Tiger, normally protected in karst caves and in close proximity to these POW camps.

Major decisions affecting the war were in many cases influenced by political events in the United States. One such event was the killing of four Kent State students by National Guardsmen in the spring of 1970. Kent State had erupted on May 4, 1970 in response to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, a sign that the war was spreading. The political backlash and the public outcry from the Cambodian invasion forced the cancellation of a planned military ground invasion of Laos to destroy the petroleum pipeline under construction there, and to free the POWs.

The bullets that killed the students in Ohio had symbolically ricocheted all the way to Terry's trailer in Thailand. On a fateful day in mid-May, an Air Force captain walked into Terry's targeting shop and ordered that computerized "fail safes" that prevented inadvertent bombing of the POW camps be removed.

"Pull the map tacks," the captain commanded. Terry and the other enlisted men were shocked and appalled when the officer told them a policy change had been made and that the POW camps would no longer be protected from bombing operations.

A small mutiny ensued and ended shortly thereafter, with the stunned airmen standing at rigid attention while a full colonel read them the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically the section about the consequences of refusing to obey a direct order. They were guaranteed immediate lodging in the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, if the orders were not obeyed immediately, and told that replacements from Hawaii would be there within 24 hours, The replacements would follow the lawful orders being given. It was going to happen, with or without their cooperation.

Hadn't the American prisoners taken an oath, after all, and signed a service agreement to pay "the supreme price" if necessary? This was the logic the colonel applied. And who were the men paying the supreme price? Young men like Terry Reed and Oliver North were seeing the nation's very best slain needlessly to avoid upsetting geopolitical goals that only Richard Nixon and a select few could secretly articulate.

The red tacks came down and so did the bombs.

In retrospect, Terry came to understand how the military had appealed to his logic, of sacrificing the few to save the many. But, in the process, they had also exploited his sense of duty. The result was that he went home missing a part of himself, much like those who returned missing limbs. Except no one could see what he had lost.

No one except Oliver North, who 10 years later would return with that missing part, honor, and offer to graft it back on.

This heinous decision to bomb the POW camps, which Terry could not and would not talk about for years for fear of violating his secrecy oath that could send him to prison, haunted him. He would learn first hand that day that "national security" could be successfully used to mask the crimes committed by his own government.


Terry tried to rationalize what he had been forced to do since his brother, Gary, was an enlisted man still in harm's way and serving with the U.S. Army at a fire base near the uninhabitable and dangerous Demilitarized Zone. Maybe the action had prevented another Tet and had likewise saved his brother's and other soldiers' lives. It was time to block the incident from his mind and go back to "the world," the name GIs gave to America. Terry returned home on leave to no parades or welcoming bands at the bus station. "Where was Harry Truman now," he thought?

Dressed in his Air Force blues and wearing his Accommodation Medal, National Defense and Vietnam campaign ribbons, Terry suppressed his anger out of respect for his father. It had been four years now since that day on the parade field; the cheers had faded and the flags now were wrapped around the KIAs' (killed in action) caskets, Reed had grown to suspect that his Midwestern values had been exploited by the government. But worse yet, he felt that his elders had let him down. Why were the youth being forced to rebel and bring attention to the injustices brought on by our own government? Why were the adults not in the streets instead of the youth, protesting the inequities of the draft and the lack of a stated foreign policy? Why were the young paying the price both abroad and in the streets of America? It saddened him deeply.

It was like a scene from All Quiet on the Western Front when the young, battle-scarred German soldier returned home realizing that the flag-waving, the martial music and the heroic speeches did not prepare him for the realities of comrades dying in agony.

As Terry looked around he came to the unthinkable realization that possibly those who had stayed at home were the smart ones. They, at least, were intact, and not finding it necessary to defend the actions of their country abroad. How easy it was for them to rationalize their opposition and non-action.

At that time, news was focusing on all the negatives spilling out of the bloody conflict. An Army lieutenant named William Calley had become the measure of military morality. His actions in a village called My Lai later became known as the My Lai Massacre. Just coming home was turning into a battle of its own.

"Why can't those hippie soldiers kick their asses like we did the Nazis?" the elder Reed asked as they sat in the front porch swing that spring day in 1971. "I think this proves our society lacks any real values. And it's all my generation's fault. We gave you too much and you don't appreciate what you have. You're all soft. This must be how Rome decayed. You guys have been over there too long. Besides, the papers say you're winning. I don't understand."

"Not true," Terry replied. "The papers are lying; the government is lying. You can't know how bad we're losing. If it were up to the Air Force, we'd nuke 'em and be home by the Fourth of July."


The young Reed knew that body counts of enemy dead and bomb damage estimates were being "cooked" to keep the American public from knowing the truth of how badly the war was going. General William Westmoreland, the military's supreme commander, would later pay a price for perpetuating these battlefield myths.

Terry, now a staff sergeant in Air Force intelligence, had grown up believing in what Superman had called "truth, justice and the American way." Those beliefs had been shattered. There was no truth in this war. Where was the justice in it all? Was this the American way? He couldn't tolerate the thought of being considered a warmonger for his efforts to serve his country. He did not blame the military for what was happening, it was the political leaders who were at fault. The elders, they were the ones who were wrong and should be held accountable.

"It's a different war, Dad. The people aren't behind us. Our government won't let the military win. To tell the truth, Dad, I've grown to admire the determination of the people we're fighting. They're dedicated survivalists and in this thing for the long haul. They aren't going home until they're victorious or dead."

Terry's disillusionment only grew after being re-assigned to stateside duty. He found a country gripped in a generational war with students rioting on the campuses and the older generation wrapped in an Orwellian orgy of denial and self-deception.

He had not told his father, who had returned from World War II to cheering crowds and congratulations from his neighbors, that military authorities had warned the young airman not to wear his uniform in the Los Angeles airport because of the harassment he would encounter. His father had never had to wipe spit off his uniform.

My 1998 book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, delved into the origins of the stories and inquired into their persistence. I was careful not to call the stories lies, and even allowed that some version of their classic form may have actually occurred — after all, you cannot prove a negative. However, there is no evidence that such incidences actually happened, and a scant record of claims in the media or anywhere else made during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the corporate media would have made every effort to cast aspersions on anti-war activists.

Some particulars in the stories could not be true, such as returnees from Vietnam landing at civilian airports like San Francisco. Rather, those planes arrived at military facilities such as Travis Air Force Base, 50 miles north of the city where protesters could not have gotten near deplaning troops.

Also, it was very unlikely that returning soldiers would have been told to take off their uniforms. Discarding their uniforms would have meant abandoning military property, a serious offense that returning soldiers looking forward to getting home and out of the service would have been hesitant to commit. Plus, it is implausible that young women would spit on anyone as a form of political expression, let alone a battle-hardened male soldier.

Stories of protester hostility toward veterans were incongruent with the historical record that activists had reached out and recruited veterans to the cause of ending the war, and that thousands of service personnel returning from Southeast Asia joined the anti-war movement.

The image of spat-on veterans was displacing memory of veterans politicized and empowered by their wartime experience. The consequence of that displacement would be evinced years later when a new generation, oblivious to the political narrative of antiwar veterans, sought identity within victim-veteran imagery provided by the mental health discourse of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

I was most fascinated by the fact that similar stories were told in other nations after other lost wars including Germany following World War I and France after its loss of Indochina in 1954. In both cases, it was women who were alleged to have greeted returned veterans hostilely. The German women, some with pistols tucked in their skirts, were said to have spat on the soldiers.

The German scholar Klaus Theveleit, in his two-volume Male Fantasies, examined the stories and judged them to be what his title exclaimed — male fantasies. Theveleit used a Freudian analysis to explain that the stories were expressions of male fears of women with male powers — even the power to project body fluids.

In turn, the scapegoating of women masked veterans’ fears of their own female Inner-Other laying hidden in the subconscious until brought to the surface by battlefront defeat casting doubt on their masculinity.

-- Nobody Spat on American GIs!, by Jerry Lembcke


His aging father had been sired by a different America and still believed that America always fought on the side of right. "You're so lucky to have been born an American," his father repeatedly said during Terry's youth. "This is the greatest country in the world."

Believing that, how could the older man now believe that the country they had both loved and now served had become mired in a minefield of lies and deception? The answer, he decided, was impossible to convey to those of his father's generation. He wouldn't attempt to destroy his father's illusions. Some myths should be sacred.

He simply told an unbelieving father that he shouldn't always believe the newspapers, what he saw on TV... or his government. Victory in Southeast Asia, the young man knew, was not only not at hand, it was not even on the horizon.

As the two Reeds sat on the porch and tried to span the generation gap, many of the troubling revelations of America's secret agenda were yet to surface. And the young sergeant was forbidden to talk about the terrible secrets he was carrying inside him. Laos, he knew, was the place his fellow soldiers were being discarded wholesale.

The reality of men being put needlessly in harm's way and a war being fought without public support while Congress debated its morality was a stark contrast to what his father had known and what the son had come to expect. It changed Terry's life forever.

It was a bitter and disillusioned man who left the Air Force five years later and went about his life. He considered the whole experience as something perverse, a kind of "national masturbation" where the best seeds are needlessly ejaculated. Gone forever, they will never bear fruit.

But Terry thought as he embarked on civilian life that at least he had put government duplicity behind him. He would find, however, that one never really gets out of intelligence. He had attained the knowledge and self-discipline that made him an asset, literally. His Air Force file highlighting his patriotic efforts and honorable discharge now went to the Central Intelligence Agency, to be held for future use.

If you can't call it a war,
Then don't call me.

-- Terry Kent Reed, 1976


Image
1-1. Above, Air Force orders assigning Terry Reed, with his Top Secret clearance, to Task Force Alpha, code name "Igloo White," in Thailand. This operation, known unofficially as "McNamara's Project", after the Secretary of Defense at the time, was one of the nation's most secret units.

CITATION TO ACCOMPANY THE AWARD OF THE AIR FORCE COMMENDATION MEDAL (FIRST OAK LEAF CLUSTER)

TO

TERRY K. REED


Staff Sergeant Terry K. Reed distinguished himself by meritorious service as Imagery Interpretation Specialist, Day Shift, Targets Section, Exploitation Branch, 432 Reconnaissance Technical Squadron, Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, from 4 February 1974 to 23 January 1975. During this period Sergeant Reed displayed outstanding initiative, professionalism, and technical ability which contributed immeasurably to the completion of assigned reconnaissance projects and intelligence collection efforts. His work in the development of Target Intelligence Kits, prepared in support of United States Support Activities Group contingency planning, contributed significantly to the accomplishment of the mission of the 432 Reconnaissance Technical Squadron and the mission of the United States Air Force in Southeast Asia. The distinctive accomplishments of Sergeant Reed reflect credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

Image


Image
1.2 The citation, above, was given to Reed at Udorn, Thailand, Headquarters for Air America.

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1.3. One of Terry Reed's military proficiency reports written while serving at Task Force Alpha.

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1.4. An unclassified description of Reed's activities at Task Force Alpha. The majority of this work was performed in support of the CIA and Air America.

_______________

Notes:

1. Ward L. Schrantz, Jasper County, Missouri, in the Civil War, Carthage, Missouri, 1923.

2. Ben Bradlee, Jr., Cuts and Glory, The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, Donald I. Fine and Co., New York, 1988, p. 86-87.

3. John Morrocco, Rain of Fire, the Air War 1969-1973, (Boston Publishing Co. 1985), p.38.

4. Ibid, p. 145.

5. Ibid, p. 194.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 5:56 am

CHAPTER 2: THE SOONER CONNECTION

J. Edgar Hoover continued to glare from his ominous portrait in the Oklahoma City FBI office.

"Fucking Nixon and Kissinger!" Oliver North said once again.

"Yeah," Terry Reed replied.

The first meeting between the two Vietnam-era veterans had been arranged by Edwin Enright, the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) of the Oklahoma City FBI regional headquarters. But this was no ordinary meeting, and no ordinary FBI office.

The leased federal office complex was located in the building housing Sooner Federal Savings and Loan, whose logo, a giant neon pig, sat astride the roof above them. The FBI offices, consisting of the entire two floors situated atop the high-rise structure, had leaded walls to interdict electronic eavesdropping. The restricted basement floors below were a giant swat-team arsenal and a secret motor pool.

Terry did not know the man he was dealing with was Oliver North. He had used the cover name "John Cathey." When they had been introduced, "Cathey" had flashed government "creds" -- Central Intelligence Agency credentials -- with, as Terry recalled later, "the photo, the eagle and the whole nine yards."

This was not a chance meeting, of course. Terry and North had been brought together by Enright for a reason. The Oklahoma City office had a reputation of being run by men sympathetic to White House policy and their SACs were willing to intervene on its behalf. Prior to Enright's tenure, this office was headed by Oliver (Buck) Revell, who became the FBI's Executive Assistant Director and that agency's liaison with Oliver North, who would later solicit Revell's help in limiting the Iran-Contra investigation. [1]


Enright had arranged for both men to have lunch earlier at Cappuchina's, an up-scale hangout favored by the agents, because "Cathey" and Enright believed that Terry could be useful to both agencies.

Enright was pleased that both men appeared to have hit it off. And with good reason, for they discovered that day that they both had carried back from Southeast Asia the same emotional scars.

The lean, neatly dressed man in the business suit with the boyish grin and the gap between his teeth reminded Terry in some ways of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Newman. Cathey told Terry that he was reporting directly to the National Security Council on matters dealing with defense-related espionage.

Terry felt honored that he was being put into play with someone who reported to the level of the White House. He had dealt extensively with the CIA through Air America during his Air Force intelligence days in Southeast Asia, but now he was being put into a new and more significant loop involving the dark side of civilian intelligence gathering.


Terry caught himself reminiscing about the events and turns in his life that had led to this eventful meeting. As he looked back at the six years since his discharge from the Air Force, he could barely believe the rapid and successful transition he had made to civilian life. The time from his January 1976 separation until now seemed a blur.

The first entry on his checklist of "must do" items after discharge had been to enroll in civilian flight training. The Air Force had reneged on its promise to send Terry to flight school. They had told him if he would re-enlist and finish his college degree, he would be guaranteed a slot in pilot training. But, due to congressionally-imposed manpower reductions as a result of the termination of the Vietnam War, the Air Force had an over-abundance of pilots.

But flying had become his obsession. For this reason, his first objective had been to exhaust his entire entitlement from the GI Bill in a civilian pilot training curriculum. After shopping around to find just the right flight school, he discovered Mizzou Aviation in Joplin, Missouri. What drew Terry like a magnet to Mizzou wasn't necessarily that the school offered an FAA approved training curriculum that was licensed to strict government standards, but rather the fact that Mizzou's manager and chief pilot examiner, John P. Brown, had a reputation that preceded himself. Brown was known as the hardest, toughest, strictest, most demanding, professional, son-of-a-bitchin' flight examiner in the entire mid-west -- causing most student pilots to flee to schools beyond his authority and reach to schools that adhered to less demanding standards.

Being a person who enjoyed doing things the hard way, and getting his money's worth, Terry zeroed in on and Mizzou and Brown. After all, if he was going to go to all this effort and expense to learn to fly, he wanted to be good.

Terry was successful in attaining his flying goal and spent his last dollar of entitlement on JP-4 (jet fuel) in pursuit of his advanced jet rating. He had made it at last. He had his wings. He had his commercial/instrument pilot's license which included his "torch" (jet) rating and all instructor certificates to boot.

Terry worked full time during the two years he attended flight school. Besides providing him with necessary cash to attend school and support himself, the job did something else equally as important. It introduced him to the world of American business. His job as a manager of an industrial equipment rental firm put him into contact with building contractors, finance people, and heavy equipment manufacturers and suppliers.

This awakened his entrepreneurial spirit.

Terry was seeing first-hand the invasion of Japanese and other foreign tools and implements into the American work place. Companies like Makita, Kubota, Mikasa, Bosch and Stihl were looking for a toe-hold in the American economy from which to launch major competitive assaults against American manufacturers. This both excited and saddened him. He identified what he thought to be tremendous opportunity in the marketing segment of the foreign onslaught, but what interested him the most was the comparison of this activity to warfare.

Surely, he thought, the American manufacturers would have to fight back. If not, they would obviously be over-run and destroyed.
Surely this great nation wouldn't allow that to take place. He could easily see that Japanese products were far superior to America's. After all, his company in Joplin, Missouri, utilized many different makes and models daily in the worst possible battle grounds -- the rental market. Without a doubt, tested side by side, the foreign tools were vastly superior. They performed more reliably and most importantly, needed less maintenance. Surely, he thought, American firms would have to re-tool their factories, redesign their products, and fight back!

"Factory automation," he thought back in 1979, would be the coming thing. American firms would be forced to automate and up-grade their facilities in a major way -- for the first time since World War II. That would be it. He would combine his newly documented flying skills with the world of manufacturing. He set out to find an aggressive young company that would offer him the opportunity for which he felt he was so justly qualified.

First, he hired on as a flying salesman for an aluminum extrusion company in Kansas. The company president Joe Ida, himself a pilot and one of America's originators of the technology of "squirting" heated aluminum through a die, immediately took note of Terry's industrious, disciplined work ethics. Ida took Terry under his wing and introduced him to his thriving and growing customer base.

This brought Terry into contact with all the major aircraft builders, many of their sub-contractors, and their machinery builders. This world of metal, computer technology and industrialists, he discovered, was exactly what he had been searching for. He instantly took root and began to mature and grow in this new-found environment. With the skills and freedom to pilot himself between sales accounts, Terry normally had the jump on the competition, which was still wondering "How does a person actually get to Hays, Kansas?" after finally locating it on a road map. He simply flew there, got the order, and flew on to other "strategic targets." It seemed so simple.

And he was noticing something else: the lack of discipline of his "enemy," the competition. For the most part, he was discovering civilians were lacking in skills that the Air Force had not only instilled in him, but had demanded. He was normally more organized, better prepared, and, in most cases, better trained than his foes. Simply, they seemed to be "inferiorly equipped," as they used to say in Air Force intelligence.

It reminded him of debriefing USAF F-4 Phantom crews who were making air raids in North Vietnam. Those who engaged the enemy in MIG dog fights toward the end of Linebacker II (the last authorized bombing of the North), normally reported "no contest -- they're inferiorly equipped." Reed was beginning to enjoy the world of business when he met Emery West, president of Northwest Industries in Oklahoma City, in November of 1979. West had been shopping for a corporate pilot to fly the company's aircraft. The firm expanded it's computer controlled machine tool sales activity beyond Oklahoma and into Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas.

What had made Terry's resume stand out among the other 600 applicants for the flying job was "Air Force Intelligence" and his nearly three years living in Asia. West figured Terry's familiarity with Asian customs would be advantageous in negotiating with the Asian machine tool suppliers he was courting. And his intelligence background made him instant "mentor material" since West himself had spent most of his adult life interfacing with the CIA, FBI, and KGB.

Emery West was an escapee of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, who then emigrated to the West and later received asylum in the U.S. He was still drawn to the world of intrigue masked within intelligence operations. Reed's hiring offered him a chance to interact with someone from the shadow world once again.


Terry's assets combined with his understanding of manufacturing technology, love of flying and ferocious business acumen made him an instant success at Northwest Industries (NWI) and within the machine tool industry. He had proven himself time and time again to West until ultimately he was made the company's executive vice-president and became West's protege.

Together they embarked on building a high-technology manufacturing/marketing firm with offices in five cities and dealers in four more. They were involved in the expansion of this endeavor when Terry flew Emery to the Chicago machine tool show in the new company plane in September of 1980. There they discovered that Hungary had a machinery display and was soliciting Western trading partners.

As West and Reed chatted with the Hungarians that day, the groundwork was laid for Northwest Industries to become a communist bloc trading partner, and Terry's life had suddenly veered back into the world of intelligence gathering. West had "offered Reed up" to the FBI as point man to monitor the KGB moles "planted" within the Hungarian trading company and operating in the U.S. This relationship with Reed had proved so successful for the FBI that they stayed in touch with him even after he left Northwest Industries in 1981 to start his own machine tool and automation consulting firm. As fate would have it, Terry's first order of business in January, 1982, had been to become a dealer for Toshiba Machine Tool, Inc., headquartered in Chicago. He was not aware that Toshiba was under investigation by the FBI and CIA for suspicion of selling American defense technology to the Russians. But he was about to find out. Someone at the CIA had retrieved his Air Force file, and he was now being interviewed by a representative of the Agency.

* * *

"I've reviewed your military record," Cathey continued intently, "and considering your technical knowledge you'll have the perfect cover for helping us nail this dirty Jap company you are brokering for."

The world of high-tech spying was nothing new to Terry. He was already an FBI asset and had just spent the last 16 months spying (he preferred to call it "monitoring") on a KGB-infested Hungarian machine tool company for his FBI handlers.


"Barlow tells me you're good at this," Cathey said to him. "Barlow" was a reference to one of Enright's counter-intelligence agents, Wayne (Buzz) Barlow, who had been Terry's prime handler in the Hungarian project. Their relationship had grown into something more personal as Barlow and his wife, Cecelia, had become intimate friends with Terry and his wife, Janis.

"With your military background, you won't need a security briefing," Cathey continued, "and considering your technical knowledge you'll have the perfect cover for moving freely within the Toshiba organization."

It was clear that Cathey had already familiarized himself with Terry's military service record, something not available to everyone. Cathey had also been impressed with Terry's background in aviation, high-technology manufacturing and international trading.

Prior to continuing his conversation, Cathey turned his attention to Enright. This bulldog-jowled J. Edgar Hoover clone, both physically and mentally, sat staring at them from the far end of the conference table through his puffy, bloodshot eyes. He gave the appearance of a man near burn-out.

"We're getting into a sensitive area here, Ed," Cathey said to Enright. "I'm sure Terry is aware of the problem of a CIA agent operating within the CONUS (referring to the Continental U.S. where laws bar the CIA from operating). Let's not create any needless problems. I'm sure you'll agree you should excuse yourself before I continue."

After Enright grudgingly left the room, Cathey's briefing centered on information developed from foreign agents who had uncovered something highly disturbing to the U.S. Government. From the evidence available, it was obvious that Toshiba Machine Tool, a division of the giant Japanese electronics conglomerate, was illegally exporting restricted technology to the Soviet Union. But beyond that, Cathey said, the company had also stolen secret defense information and apparently provided it to the Soviets along with the equipment to use it. *

"We about shit when Barlow informed us you had become a Toshiba dealer," Cathey continued, in a much more relaxed tone. "Talk about luck! We've been watching Toshiba for quite some time but have been unable to nail them in the act. And Barlow tells me we're getting two agents for the price of one. It's not very often we find an asset who has a cooperating wife. She really gets into this, huh? That's great."

Based on Cathey's comments, Barlow must have thoroughly briefed Cathey prior to the meeting. Barlow, in essence, had "sponsored" Terry into the intelligence club, a prerequisite for membership.

Wives can be a problem for assets. Some spouses can never adjust to a world of deceit where things are never quite what they seem. Barlow had passed on to Cathey Terry's wife's excitement over being part of the cloak and dagger world that the Reeds had become drawn into.

As Terry and Cathey reminisced and traded war stories, Terry told him about how his relationship with Barlow had started and realized that Buzz had become more than a handler. They were now friends, or so Terry thought. The bond between them had flourished initially because of their common interest in flying. Although Barlow had been a carrier pilot in the Vietnam years, his first bonding with Terry came in the cockpit of a 1980 twin Cessna 414, N2693F, in October, 1980, high above the plains of Oklahoma.

* * *

Even though the temperature outside at 10,000 feet was below freezing, perspiration was beading on Barlow's balding head. Barlow, in the left seat, was, in pilot's jargon, clearly "behind the airplane" as he attempted to deal with the "emergency" Terry had created.

"Goddam it, I don't know what you did, but please give me back the left engine! I'm rusty at this! It's not fair to do this on our first training flight!"

Terry was evaluating Barlow's flying performance and, in flight instructor's jargon, was conditioning him to become "receptive to learning". In order to test Barlow's responses to an in-flight emergency, he secretly had shut off the fuel valve to the left engine and was now watching this ex-hot dog carrier pilot lose his cool over Duncan, Oklahoma. Reed was amazed that this Annapolis grad was not demonstrating "the right stuff" pilots always admired.

Barlow's "cover" at Terry's firm was to be that of a company co-pilot, and Terry, the man in the right seat and a certified flight instructor, was trying to get Barlow's pilot proficiency up to speed. It would be necessary for "Buzz" to demonstrate competency to be added to the aviation insurance policy covering NWI's plane. It had been a long time since Barlow had flown and Terry seized the chance to gently wring out his FBI student.

"You gotta tell me the procedure from your checklist for a restart or I'll die right along with you. Keep your mind working. Come on, engage your brain!"

Slowly, Barlow began to research his data bank of flying knowledge to find the computer disk in his mind labeled "pilot." He awkwardly but methodically began prioritizing his cockpit workload and groping with the procedures to deal with the simulated emergency Terry had created as a "real-time" test.

"Hey, this thing performs pretty good on one engine," Barlow said after successfully "caging" the left engine.

"Don't get cocky," Terry smiled, "or I'll shut down your right one, too."

After restoring power to the engine, and promising no more simulated emergencies, Terry set the auto pilot so they could ease the tension and get on to the other business at hand, namely spy work.

The KGB had gone on a buying spree. They had learned that Lenin's words were quite true: "A capitalist's only religion is money." The Soviets didn't have to steal the technology they desperately needed and couldn't produce. They simply had to come to America and buy it. The Japanese were more than willing to do business, even if they didn't really own what they were selling. And what the Japanese couldn't provide them, the KGB was apparently going to "procure" through legitimate business ties they were establishing in North America.

"Barcorp in Canada is loaded with KGB," Barlow said, referring to a machine tool trading company that was importing communist bloc equipment for sale to the West. "You need to keep me informed of all the players you come in contact with from Technoimpex, and especially be wary of a guy by the name of Jozsef Bona. He's a card-carrying KGB agent."

Mention of Bona's name caused Terry to give Barlow his undivided attention. He had already met Bona the month before at the International Machine Tool Show in Chicago. Terry remembered him as an aging version of James Bond, a man in his mid-50s who could drink all day and all night without it ever seeming to affect him. His suave, European demeanor was highlighted by his thick, bushy mustache and deep set eyes. Bona was smooth, witty, intelligent, and articulate. Terry irritated Barlow later when he told him that he thought Bona was much smarter than the FBI agents he'd met.

Referring to Bona, Barlow said, "He's been in India, Pakistan and Africa that we know of. He speaks seven languages and is a lovable, cunning son of a bitch. He's suspected in at least three deaths of foreign agents. I want to hang his fuckin' head on my wall! Will you help me?"

"What do you have in mind? Just because I'm a pilot doesn't mean I invite danger."

Reed was a little apprehensive. From his intelligence school training he had been told that, in many areas, the KGB out-gunned even the CIA. He didn't know if the Oklahoma City FBI office could be a match for the Kremlin's finest.

"I'll back you up and be your shadow in anything I ask you to do," Barlow said. "I need your help because I'm technically weak in manufacturing."

Reed agreed to help nail Bona which would apparently be a big scalp for Barlow to have hanging from his belt.

The Technoimpex that Barlow had referred to was the Hungarian government-run trading company and Barcorp, in Toronto, was its Canadian trading partner. Bona had told Terry facetiously, "Technoimpex is not the East Bloc venereal disease it sounds like."

And from what Barlow had said, the KGB's North American operations were based in Toronto. Cathey would later tell Terry that his CIA oversight of this espionage operation was also based there.

The prematurely-balding Barlow was a linguist fluent in Russian and Magyar. His remaining hair was thick and graying, his face unlined except for the laugh wrinkles around his eyes. Small in stature, he was unpretentious and professional and did not have the usual "cop" demeanor found in many agents.

The job of a counter-intelligence agent is to look for people who work for hostile intelligence services or people who have access to plans and activities of those services. The objective is to learn the plans of these intelligence services, neutralize their operations, induce defections and undermine the credibility of their agents.

Barlow had worked in counter-intelligence the majority of his FBI career. He was placed under cover in Terry's firm when it became one of the first American companies licensed to market computer-controlled machine tools and equipment produced in Hungary, then a Soviet Bloc country.


The FBI knew that this experiment in East-West detente would serve as a possible conduit for the theft of American technology, especially computer technology. Such technology was a specialty of Terry's Oklahoma-based firm, Northwest Industries, Inc., in Oklahoma City. Northwest's founder and president, Emery [Veda] West was no stranger to the world of East-West intrigue. As a political prisoner, he had escaped from his native Hungary during the 1956 uprising and was given asylum in the U.S., but was never completely trusted. The FBI saw every emigre as a possible KGB "plant," or "mole". Enright had been West's handler for years and conveyed privately to Reed his concerns about West's true allegiance.

Terry's job for the FBI was to discuss technical aspects of machine tools and to be aware of the technology the Hungarians wanted. Terry was also the person designated to travel to Hungary when possible and report on Soviet manufacturing capabilities.

Barlow's job was to identify KCB agents and eavesdrop on their conversations in their native language. His undercover placement at Northwest Industries and the company's mandatory "cooperation" were U.S. government prerequisites for obtaining the necessary State Department licenses allowing trade with Hungary. To do his job, Barlow had to pose as the company's pilot. But he hadn't flown since his Navy days and Terry was assigned the task of reintroducing Barlow to the cockpit.

The friendship flourished over many emptied bottles of Chivas Regal in the latter months of 1980. But Terry at that time was still a third wheel in Barlow's social circle because of Terry's bachelorhood. The two men's "gray" friendship expanded to a social one when Terry began dating his future wife, who would later be accepted into the world of "spook" (the slang term for intelligence operative, or spy) marriages by Barlow and his wife.

For a man who had professed to need only an airplane, a credit card and a condom to have a good time, a strange thing had begun to happen to Terry in late February, 1981. He had been a bachelor with a vengeance, making up for the fact that he had been in Southeast Asia during the sexual revolution. His activities had gone far beyond just selling machine tools in the oil patch.

Terry had not been looking for love in his countless rendezvous when he reluctantly agreed to a blind date with Janis Kerr. She was an aggressive, attractive and liberated woman with a keen eve for business whose real estate career was flourishing during the oil boom in Oklahoma.

As he pulled into the driveway to pick her up for their first date, a peculiar sensation came over him. From the visual clues he was noting, he began to get his hopes up that this woman might be "different." Here was a perfectly manicured brick home, 1930's vintage, with an old fashioned wooden porch swing on the large screened-in front porch. There was also a Mercedes 300D in the drive. He liked her taste in cars, and decided to forgive her for buying a diesel.

"Ummh," he thought. "Here's an independent woman who must be successful in her own right. Maybe this female is different."

As soon as he stepped into her living room that cold February night, he knew she was different. Not the typical glass and chrome furniture with Herculon love seat he was so accustomed to seeing in the apartments of his other dates. Two wing back chairs sat in front of the fireplace where gas logs cast a warm glow in the cozy parlor. The vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, antiques, and Impressionist paintings displayed her distinctive tastes. As he sipped his scotch and water from the Waterford glass she had just purchased in Ireland, he surveyed her book case -- Somerset Maugham, Robert Frost, Carlos Castaneda, the writings of Dag Hammarskjold, Dickens, Michener, and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. The gamut.

"I've got to get to know this woman," he thought.

"So how did you end up in Oklahoma?" Terry asked as they dined at Sullivan's Restaurant later that evening.

"That's a good question," she said, becoming noticeably distant and appearing to be reflecting back to distant memories.

"How did I?" she asked of herself in a confused tone. "Time, certainly has a way of erasing one's motivations."

But Terry's earlier dinner conversation discussing the Vietnam War and the sixties had triggered nearly-forgotten images ... images she would later share with him ... images of a key event ... a turning point in her life.

The light green 1966 GTO sat parked on the overlook of the industrial town of North Kansas City, Missouri, as the smoke stacks along the Missouri River belched out their nightly doses of pollution. The location known as Water Works Park was a popular parking place for local teenagers and the site of many back seat conquests. The year 1968 had come to a bloody close for Americans torn between country, causes, communism and social revolution.

The windows of the vehicle that John Z. DeLorean created during his stint at Pontiac Motor Division were foggy as a result of the heavy breathing inside.

Much to her date's frustration, Janis Kerr, the 17-year-old passenger in the car that night in January, 1969, was not going to surrender her virginity for many reasons; not the least of those being the physical barrier known as the four-speed console that separated their naugahyde bucket seats.

But she had a lot more than sex on her mind, much to the dismay of the "jock" in the left seat hell-bent upon a course of adding another notch to his gun. The screaming sirens of morality, religion, and the conflict of just being a teenager in the late 60's were definitely interfering with her date's plans that January night.

The Tet offensive in Vietnam had turned the war around a year earlier. Some of her older male school mates had already been drafted or had volunteered in order to fight enemies that she only read about in newspapers, which the United States Government coldly referred to as "body counts." But the war for her, as well as most of the citizens of the industrial community north of the Missouri River where she had been raised, was little more than a nightly abstraction beamed electronically into a secure living room.

But now that she was on the threshold of womanhood and experiencing the biological instincts of motherhood, she began to question, even rebel, at the thought of needless death on both sides -- classmates had already returned from Southeast Asia in body bags.

"So what's wrong? You're so distant, Janis. Why can't you just let go and have fun with this? Everybody else is! These are the 60's! We're the love and peace generation, right?"

She straightened her rumpled clothing. "We're supposed to be, I guess. But right now our love and peace generation is either hiding out in the education system to avoid the draft, or plain old hiding in Canada. Most are either burning buildings and protesting or being shot at in Vietnam. I want to get involved .... you know .... organize, protest. This war is wrong. Look at this Tet offensive. It's obvious our government is lying to us. We're not winning over there. We need to bring our soldiers home."

"You can't protest! Your parents won't let you, " he said mockingly. "They're so strict they would throw a fit if I didn't have you home by 10 o'clock. Christ, you don't have the guts to even tell them about me. Some protester!"

This angered the girl raised in the affluent Baptist church in Northtown. Just being with him, she believed, was a sign of protest. Her parents didn't even know about Dan. He was older, 23 years old in fact, and from her parents' viewpoint would have represented the Devil himself. She could only imagine what they would have thought had they known what he was trying to accomplish that winter's night.

Janis' mother, a strict Baptist and fifth grade school teacher, would never have allowed her oldest daughter to date an "older man." This occasional clandestine date with Dan was probably the most rebellious thing this straight-A, straight-laced student had ever done.

"You'd better take me home. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble for taking someone out that's under age," she snapped.

While the car containing the two silent occupants headed to her best friend's house to drop her off, she was still smarting from his comments. She had to admit to herself that he was right. She had to get out from under her parents' thumbs to mature and find herself. A plan was formulating in her mind. She would escape! She would leave home! She would no longer be smothered by her restrictive parents and the church she was forced to attend three times a week. Janis would later laugh about how she never got to see more than just the beginning of "The Wizard of Oz," which aired on a Sunday night each year. She had to leave for church just as Dorothy's house crashed on top of the wicked witch and the movie turned to Technicolor. She grew up believing the entire movie was in black and white!

But built within this religious system to control the minds of their youth was a basic flaw. And this flaw, lying right under the noses of the deacons of the Baptist church, was a product of their own doing and support: Oklahoma Baptist University.

OBU, 375 miles southwest of Kansas City, was a place she had learned about from the church's "underground youth network. " It was a place that the products of this strict Baptist rearing could ''flee'' to with the consent of their parents, who believed that their young adults were receiving the very best education, conducted in a rigid religious environment.

If they only knew! As most males living near a parochial college can attest, the annual shipment of freshman female arrivals into these institutions are a bundle of hormonal time bombs, just ticking away waiting for someone or something to activate the detonator. The influx of teenagers that were convinced they had been suppressed their entire lives made for a formidable student body, determined to make up for lost time now that they were out from under the daily monitoring of parental guidance.

"Dan, I won't be seeing you after tonight," she said as the car pulled up in front of the her friend's home. "I think you should date someone else. I've made a decision to get out of here and go to college in Oklahoma. I'm going to get involved with the movement against the war and try to make a difference. You're right, I just can't let go and have fun, at least not in this town. Maybe Kansas City is a good place for you, but not for me."

As the 389-cubic-inch engine caused the rear tires to spin, leaving dual black marks, the driver "went through the gears," breaking the silence of the quiet residential neighborhood. Janis Kerr felt more at peace.

She was going to do things HER way! 1969 was the eve of America's second revolution and she wanted in on it -- head bands, granny glasses, bell bottoms, birth control pills. The sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll generation was upon her.

She was realistic enough to know. however, that she needed a sound education to effectively compete heads up in a male dominated society, and she was determined to attain one. She was already beginning to feel like a second class citizen, noticing how society was placing demands on only the male population. Why wasn't the government demanding she register for the draft? Women may have come a long way, but they still had a long journey ahead of them. She wasn't going to handicap herself by staying here and limiting her goals and ambitions.

After retreating to her friend Merrillyn's bedroom that night, she outlined her life strategy and how she would explore the world before settling down and having children with Mr. Right.

"What kind of person do you think you'll marry?" Merrillyn asked.

"Well, if I do ever get married, all I know is, he'll have to be exciting!" she said. Little did she know.

As she arrived home the following Sunday morning to dress for church, her mother opened the door, giving her the once-over to see if there was any external evidence of wrong-doing.

"Mom, Dad, I've made a decision," Janis said. "I'm going to go to OBU with Merrillyn and get a degree in Education." She knew her mother would approve, considering her own profession.

"Oh, Janis, we're so glad. We knew our prayers would be answered," her mother said as she hugged her.

The plan had worked! Her life was finally just beginning!

"Sorry if my question disturbed you," Terry said somewhat confused by Janis' long silence. "I was just curious how you chose Oklahoma City. I thought maybe we shared some acquaintances since I have old friends that moved here to attend Bethany Nazarene College."

Their first few encounters after this pleasant but uneventful blind date centered around conversations on a variety of subjects. Janis had just finished Margaret Truman's book about her father, Harry S., and told Terry how much she admired the man from Missouri.

"You know, he was so unpretentious and pragmatic. I feel a real affinity for this man," she said. "Maybe it's because I grew up with an aura about Truman. You know, having been raised in Kansas City, all of the school kids went on a yearly field trip to the Truman Library. Oftentimes ole Harry himself was there and would play the piano for us. He was just so down to earth and amiable. Plus, he was so much more intelligent than most people gave him credit. Did you know he loved to read the classics? I mean the real classics like the writings of Sophocles and Plato. And Chopin was his favorite composer. He's not the hick from Missouri all those arrogant, blue-blooded politicians tried to portray him as."

As Janis continued her book review and analysis of Truman's political stance as well as his marriage, Terry was becoming more and more intrigued. Here was an intelligent female he could really talk to.

She wasn't desperately searching for a husband. It seemed like so many of the women he went out with were seeking a step-father for their kids from their "previous commitments," as much as a husband.

By late February, they both decided to take their relationship beyond the conversation stage and into the Ramada Inn, next door to the Crash and Burn Club in New Orleans, famous for its aviation architecture and whose building was constructed to partially engulf a giant old Lockheed Constellation 4-engine passenger plane. He invited her to spend Mardi Gras week with him in New Orleans, where he was attending a machine-tool show. Terry had carefully selected a room overlooking the club, which had the plane's left wing and the three-ruddered tail jutting from the building. He was big on symbolism.

But more than electricity was generated between them, and strange things began to happen inside his head that weekend. Caught up in the energy of Bourbon Street and the madness of the Mardi Gras crowd, something struck him. For the first time in years, he was totally oblivious to the hordes of attractive women around him. "But why?" he asked himself.

And Janis, that independent woman who was determined to stay that way, was having the same, frightening revelations. Here was a handsome, successful man, a pilot with airplanes and sports cars at his fingertips who seemed oblivious to all these trappings. He was so unlike the "oilies" she had dated in the past with their gold chains and Rolexes -- men so impressed with themselves. She had found them generally to be insecure, shallow, and hedonistic. Here was a man with a mind. That's it. That's what she was falling in love with. The first time she had ever called him at home she was surprised to find him there. When she had asked him what he was doing he had said, "Actually, I'm reading Pythagoras. I need to brush up on the Pythagorean theorem so I can apply it to the project I'm involved in." What a change from the jocks she had been seeing, whose only knowledge of theories involved the "Split T" or the "Quarterback Shuffle."

And that first Saturday morning she spent with him in New Orleans she felt a childish delight and warmth as they lay in bed and laughed at Wylie Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. This man was so unpretentious. And as they talked about their goals she realized that they both had the same basic, intrinsic values.

By the time Sunday night rolled around, as Janis was asleep in the right seat beside him in the twin-engine Piper Seminole heading back to Oklahoma City, Terry's mind returned to what the Air Force had taught him about developing a battle plan for any contingency. His "target" he decided, was sleeping right beside him.

"Goddam!" he thought to himself, "I'm falling in love!"

As their relationship developed, Terry found his mind filled with strange and new thoughts. Up until the point he had met her, he could bond mentally only with other males in a true team environment where words were not always necessary; a world where ideas and attitudes are shared without the usual excuses required between men and women. It was all no-fault. No facades or veneer existed. He had never met a female he could relate to and still not feel constantly accountable.

When he was with Janis, he sensed that somehow together they were greater than the sum of their two identities, that together they became a critical mass, explosive and lethal when joined together. He saw the potential power within the relationship and knew that it could be harnessed in a positive way, or become destructive. This both fascinated and frightened him.

Together, he believed, they were capable of anything -- both good and bad. The negative in this type of relationship, he realized, was that there was no brake. He believed that the combination of their personalities could prove fruitful or fatal, since she was not only with him, but ahead of him, in some respects. They both yearned to walk on the wild side, something mandatory for a life in intelligence, but a quality not especially practical when it comes to evaluating risk. Two and a half months later, on May 16th, after a whirlwind courtship, they were standing at the altar in Golden, Colorado. They knew they were making a decision based not on lust, but on logic and love. Each had gone though a previous marriage and both had been part of the lonely singles scene for years. With tears in their eyes, they were hoping that this commitment was forever and, this time, for all the right reasons.

As the sun streamed through the skylight in the chapel ceiling, and, after exchanging the traditional vows, he put the ring on her finger, kissed her softly and made one personal vow. He made her a promise: "It'll never be boring." The words proved to be prophetic. In the years ahead, as she lay awake crying, fearful for her safety and that of her children, she often wished for boredom. Much to her chagrin, he had kept his vow.

But, from the moment they were married, she became a willing participant in the world of international intrigue, never dreaming then that the government would in the future define this to mean "accomplice." They enjoyed a brief weekend honeymoon at the Brown Palace in Denver, knowing that they were going to have a truly one-of-a-kind June honeymoon -- behind the Iron Curtain.

After they were married, Cecelia and Wayne Barlow threw a party for the newlyweds at their home in Edmond, Oklahoma. Cecelia embraced Janis and, in a reference to the incestuous spook world, whispered, "We're so glad to have you in the family." It became a spy-wife's support group where women like Cecelia could share their feelings openly without violating security. Cecelia and Janis were both petite, vivacious, intelligent women -- always ready for a good time -- and stimulated by the lives their husbands led.

A great deal of trust is required of couples in such situations. Some questions have to go unanswered. They are different in many respects and often gravitate to a world of their own. They cannot easily mix with "non-spook" couples since they must always be guarded.

Cecelia Barlow had identified in Janis the qualities she would need to maintain her marriage, namely the ability to totally trust your mate, ask few questions and still find the dark side of the intelligence world intriguing.

And now, Janis had become the wife of a spook, a secret title that excited her. This new circle of friends her new husband was exposing her to were definitely different. The Barlows, she thought, seemed normal enough on the surface, but underneath was something else that fascinated her.

Janis immediately liked "Buzz," his nickname from his Navy days. She saw a soft side in him and liked the influence he had on her husband. He was always sharing his latest literary discoveries with Terry, who tended to be content reading technical manuals, Aviation Weekly or Car and Driver magazine. She would often find them in intense discussions about Buzz's most recent book, from Siddhartha, Kahlil Gibran, and Illusions. His choices were all indicative of a man who had advanced beyond the world of covert activities and who, in reality, was torn between the life he had chosen and that of a simple, intellectual, non-violent existence. His privately stated goal, in fact, was to move back to Portland, Oregon, and open a candle shop, hardly the contentious quest one might expect of an undercover agent.

On the horizon was an important espionage trip to Hungary. Terry's ostensible purpose as vice president of Northwest Industries was to sign a corporate trade agreement with a Hungarian machine-tool manufacturer.

But Enright and Barlow had seized on this chance for some spying, simply because Terry could travel there and they couldn't. He would be exploring the bowels of the East Bloc manufacturing companies from which the USSR was buying its most advanced manufacturing equipment. It was a unique chance to evaluate the USSR's technical capabilities in both hardware and electronics, and especially computer technology. Now they wanted Terry to do what they were trying to prevent the Hungarians from doing in this country -- spy!

* * *

The Reeds spent the 4th of July in 1981 on the "Pest" side of the Danube. Terry would meet men he would later be put into play with, and under far different circumstances. Two of these men, George Fenue and Mike Szilagyi, were people that the Reeds came to enjoy and like immensely. They entertained the Reeds royally during their visit to Hungary and Janis was made to feel like a visiting dignitary when they arrived in Budapest. She found herself being greeted at the airport with bouquets of roses, and she and Terry were immediately whisked away to their hotel in a chauffeur driven car.

Although she had traveled extensively throughout Europe, this was her first visit to a communist Bloc country and she was intrigued by the bleakness and lack of color. Everything appeared gray and oppressive, except the spirit of the people whom she found to be delightfully charming with their satirical sense of humor honed to a razor's edge. She was also impressed with their intellect and knowledge of American history that rivaled what she herself knew of her country.

As she lay awake one night in Budapest, she realized her fantasies were being brought to life. She and Terry were both well aware they were being followed wherever they went. By whom, they were not sure. A cold chill had sent shivers through her body when, on the day of their arrival in Budapest, a voice out of nowhere "suggested" she put her camera away. And now, she found herself being both apprehensive and tantalized by the thought of re-consummating their marriage in the Hotel Olympia, while secret cameras and microphones were most likely recording them. Oh well, they both decided, if that were the case they would at least give the KGB voyeurs something to look at. No paranoia was going to spoil this honeymoon. She thought then that she had married James Bond. She was unbelievably happy. Kansas City now seemed like someplace on another planet.

But behind this facade was deadly serious business. The FBI had an agenda for Terry. They wanted to know, most of all, the level of the Soviets' manufacturing capability and the type of computer-memory technology being developed.

This memory, known as a "bubble memory," was the world's most advanced state of the art for that time. Computer-controlled machine tools shared this memory technology with advanced weapons systems. By Terry's analyzing a machine tool capability, it would be possible to evaluate the level attained by the Russians in advanced memory design for weaponry. The FBI believed that this cruise missile technology had not been perfected at this time by the Soviets. Or had it?

Terry's "investigation" discovered that the Soviet Bloc did, indeed, possess a rudimentary design, but it was still experimental and far too large for weapons applications. The Soviets definitely lagged far behind the West in this weapons-critical technology. But the Soviets could make rapid advancements if they pirated the technology from the right trading partner in America. This was what concerned the FBI.

* * *

Back home in Oklahoma, Cecelia Barlow didn't want to know about Hungarian technology. She wanted to know about the Danube, the shops, the food, the clothes and the people Janis had met.

"So tell me about the men," she said. "What are they like? Are they all just obnoxiously macho? Did you really meet Joe Bona? A real KGB agent? I've heard so much about him!"

As the women drank their Hungarian wine and discussed the trip off in the corner of the Barlows' den, Janis told Cecelia, "You would not believe the road crews there. I about died when I saw them. The men wore only their bikini bathing trunks. That's it! That and their combat boots. And these guys are not petite. Most of them look like professional wrestlers! But my, do they have good tans!"

Oblivious to the giggles in the corner, Barlow debriefed Terry about the technical aspects of the trip. It had been highly-productive for the FBI to have someone moving freely within Soviet manufacturing circles. Barlow felt he might soon get his long-awaited opportunity to nail Bona.

By October of 1981, Barlow still didn't have Bona's head, but Terry's attention was off of communism and onto capitalism. While working on a manufacturing project, Terry had come to know some Japanese executives of the American division of Toshiba Machine Tool. One of them, Takashi Osato, who was based in Houston, was impressed with Terry's marketing capability and offered what Terry saw as a once in a lifetime opportunity -- a Toshiba dealership for Oklahoma and Northern Texas if Terry would leave his job at Northwest Industries and start his own company.

"Buzz, I've got good news and bad news," said Terry over lunch at Cappuchino's in early November. "The good news is I've been offered a chance to start my own company, and I'm going to. The bad news is I won't be your eyes and ears on the Hungarian project any longer. I'm resigning from Northwest Industries."

Barlow was visibly upset. The departure meant he would be losing his key asset, but Terry had spent many hours making his decision and Barlow was not going to stand in his way, no matter how much he protested. Within the ensuing weeks, however, KGB super-spy Bona let Terry know that he wanted to retain their relationship, regardless of Terry's employment status with NWI. For this reason, and others that would later become clear, Barlow wanted to stay in Terry's shadow. He wanted to be kept informed of all requests and movements of his KGB adversary.

By December, Barlow had undergone a complete turnabout. He was ecstatic about Terry's career decision to link up with Toshiba. The reason didn't become clear until February, 1982, when Enright called Terry and said, "I've got somebody in my office who you need to meet. Why don't we all have lunch at the usual place."

Oliver North, using his alias John Cathey, came into Terry's life during lunch that day over cups of cappuchino and talk of their mutual enemy. "Fucking Congress," Cathey kept saying. And Terry shook his head in agreement.

As the day wore on through the meeting with Enright and the briefing taking place under the neon pig, Terry sensed something hauntingly familiar about the well-groomed man from the CIA who looked out of place in a business suit. He had a GI knot in his tie.

They had met before, Terry was sure. But where? And when?

Suddenly it came to him as the day was winding down. He turned to "Cathey" and nearly shouted, "NKP! That's where I saw you. You were a Marine, right? And your name isn't Cathey, right?"

NKP was Nakhom Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base where Terry had worked with Task Force Alpha, the elite and Top Secret unit. It had hosted many visitors from other services, the CIA and Air America. The Marines had, in fact, been the major force behind the sensor development program.

Chagrined but smiling the CIA man nodded and said, "Damn, you do have a good memory. But I'd just as soon you forget about that for the time being."

He was glad to forget it. Thinking of Task Force Alpha was not his favorite thing. Too much scar tissue. His service there became the timer ticking away, the catalyst that armed the patriotic time bomb inside him.

"How about it?" Cathey asked. "Can I factor you in on this? Help me hit a home run on this Toshiba thing and there may be a big promotion in it for you down the road."


* * *

Terry could still hear himself saying "yes" to the man from the CIA as he drove home that evening to tell his wife about his abnormal day.

Not just anyone could be handed off to the CIA on such an important project as this. He began to recap the major events in his life that had led to the point where he had become the right man in the right place with the right credentials. Maybe his pain and dedication had not been in vain after all.

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2.1. FBI memorandum cover sheet from Freedom of Information Act request [FOIA] initiated by Oklahoma City investigative reporter Jerry Bohnen in an attempt to gain data on Terry Reed's company Northwest Industries. Redaction begins!

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2.2. Heavily redacted FOIA document which clearly shows FBI interest in the business relationship between Reed's company, NWI, and the Hungarian firm, Technoimpex.

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2.3. Heavy redaction of the above secret FOIA document provided to Bohnen proves by default that NWI was heavily involved in counter intelligence activities.

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2.4. Note line 3 of above FOIA document. Jozsef Bona is the KGB agent whom Special Agent Barlow was shadowing. The discussion of the computer boards shows FBI concern that U.S. Defense technology contained within the memory circuits of the boards may fall into Soviet hands.

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2.5. Terry Reed's business card at Northwest Industries (NWI) -- the technology trading company he worked for when he began his civilian intelligence activities along with the letter Reed wrote to NWI President Emery West, who secretly forwarded it to Edwin Enright, FBI's top man in Oklahoma, in case anything untoward happened to Reed during a trip to Hungary.

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2.6. Evidence of Reed's travels behind the Iron Curtain. This particular trip to Budapest, Hungary was to determine if the USSR did in fact possess advanced computer memory technology.

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2.7. Hungarian business cards Reed collected on his trip. Reed was told by the FBI that the director, Matyas, was a KGB chief.

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2.8. Letter of condolence from Takashi Osato of Toshiba Machine Tool Company to Reed at time of his father's death. Shows closeness of relationship between Reed and Toshiba as Reed spied upon the firm at the request of his FBI and CIA handlers.

_______________

Notes:

* Five years later, the U.S. Government would reveal that Toshiba Machine Tool had provided the Soviets with technology to produce silent submarine propellers that could elude sonar detection. The KGB orchestrated, between 1982 and 1984, the purchase by the USSR of four machine tools and associated computer programs directly from Toshiba. The scandal resulted in the indictment of Toshiba executives in Japan. Toshiba's president did the "honorable thing" and committed suicide. Sales of Toshiba Machine Tool products were banned in the U.S. for five years. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger said the illegal exports "caused significant damage to the security of Japan and the United States."

1. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), P. 287.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 9:15 am

CHAPTER 3: PROJECT DONATION

"This is a hell of an opportunity. Finally, we have a President that understands we gotta fuck Congress and take care of our obligations around the world. We've got goddam communists taking over countries in our hemisphere. We're gonna kick their ass, this time."

As John Cathey spoke, he and Terry Reed were in a world of their own, oblivious to the yuppie crowd of Oklahoma City's elite, sipping their drinks under the shade of Cappuccino's forest green awnings.

The empty demitasse cups on their table had been pushed aside as the two men studied a napkin that Cathey had turned into makeshift diagram material. Even someone watching from afar would have realized, from the men's body language and posture, that they were having an intense and intimate conversation.

It was March 11th, 1983 and a typical Oklahoma City spring day, sunny with gusts of wind from across the prairie. It was only mid-morning but the early lunch crowd was already starting to gather.

Cathey's voice, though low key, radiated excitement and enthusiasm. Cathey had just been promoted to head what he told Terry was "Project Donation." This would prove to have dire consequences later for Terry, who, at the time, realized that Reagan was digging in for a major battle with Congress over supplying the Contras and was preparing to find the aid he needed from any source necessary.

For Terry and Cathey, it was deja vu. Their old festering wounds were starting to bleed again. Congressional on-again, off-again whimsy, so reminiscent of Vietnam, angered both of them. This they would not and could not tolerate. This, they agreed, given a chance and the right leader. Once again, people were being put in harm's way without the backing they needed.

Cathey had informed Terry that highly-placed people in Washington had decided to pull him out of the high-technology espionage operation that had brought them together originally. Although Cathey considered the work important for national security, like most people not fully versed in the world of technology, Cathey personally found it boring and somewhat intimidating. Technology transfer, he confided, was not his true calling.

He had been a Marine combat officer in Vietnam and, with this new assignment, Cathey considered himself back "in the action" he longed for. Over the course of the past year, while tracking illegal Toshiba exports, the two men had exchanged many war stories. But Reed still only knew his CIA handler by his alias, "John Cathey."

North's activities during this period, from 1982 to the spring of 1984, have been highly-classified and kept totally under wraps to this day. Researchers have had little success uncovering his activities during that period. They have been told through leaks that North worked on some "bizarre," highly-classified projects for FEMA, the Federal Emergency Manpower Agency. [1] No witnesses have come forward to reveal what North really did under this cloak of secrecy.

Whatever he might have been doing for FEMA, North was busy running agency errands and using the FBI as a conduit. During that time, Terry's method of contacting North was through the FBI. North had told him, if he needed to talk, to call collect to an FBI office in Buffalo, N.Y., ask for a "Mr. Carlucci," another North code name, and leave a telephone number where Terry could be contacted. North would then call him back after the message was relayed to him.

Terry had assumed that the reason for Buffalo was its geographic proximity to Toronto, where North had said he was based because of KGB activity there. Lake Ontario would provide the deniable link between Agency and FBI collaboration. It also meant that Terry could have no record of telephone communication with North. It was built-in deniability and Terry understood how that worked. No paper, no trail, was the rule pounded into his head in intelligence school.

The Cathey-Reed meeting in Oklahoma City that March day came at a critical time for the Reagan administration. Six months earlier, Congress had passed the first Boland Amendment barring the use of funds "for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua." And as Cathey and Terry spoke, 37 congressmen were drafting a letter to the President, warning him that CIA activities in Central America could be violating the law. [2] A month later, reporters visiting Contra training camps in Central America wrote that the U.S. "secret war against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista regime has spilled out of the shadows." [3]

Because of the setback in Congress for his Nicaraguan policy, Reagan was going over the lawmakers' heads directly to the people. He was planning a dramatic appearance the following month at the Orange Bowl in Miami on the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion as a major public relations gambit to rally support for his Nicaragua initiative. North and others had hoped to use this appearance for massive fund-raising, lobbying and propaganda purposes. Their targets were wealthy benefactors who hopefully would supplement the Contra's secret foreign assistance and establish an underground supply network.

The formation of this underground supply network was what North had referred to at the beginning of this meeting as his "opportunity."


With his Alfred E. Newman grin from ear to ear, exposing the gap in his front teeth, Cathey looked up from the napkin sketches.

"Ain't this great? Nobody loses. I found a secret source of not only money, but hardware, too. Wouldn't you know it, it'd be available through fucking insurance companies. Only in America!" Cathey exclaimed.

On the napkin before them was a blueprint for the "money pump" Cathey had discovered. If Congress wouldn't appropriate tax money for the Contras, then the CIA would have to become "creative," think like businessmen and provide a way for the Contras' backers to write off their "contributions" as a business expense.

Money was always welcome, but there were problems with the cash donations North was seeking. Most people he had approached for monetary donations were only interested in contributing if they could take a tax deduction. But "questionable" tax deductions are not only highly traceable, the preferred cash contributors were in short supply and the money still had to be converted into hard assets. There was another angle to solving the problem: go directly after the hardware needed for the Contra support. The side of this equation that most fascinated Terry was the insurance angle that North briefed him on.

Through the insurance scheme, a donor could make a contribution of a hard asset, such as an airplane, helicopter or a yacht, and the "loss" incurred by a conspiring or "participating" insurance company could be offset or underwritten through something Cathey described as "loss brokering."* Cathey told Terry an amendment to the federal tax laws allowing this practice had actually been signed into law years earlier, but had recently been strengthened.

Cathey was not totally clear on the mechanics of the brokering, but told Terry it would allow the participating, or in this case CIA-controlled, insurance company to go shopping for the hardware items the Contras needed. Once the item and donor were located and it was determined which insurance company held the policy on it, the CIA's company could then buy the "liability" portion of the policy from the unsuspecting insurance company holding it.

Up to this point, it was all done on paper since no loss has actually occurred. The CIA knew that no one outside the insurance industry would ever understand this as it only pertained to federal liquidity ratios levied upon the insurance industry.

Then, when the "donated" item disappeared, the loss, or now real liability, would automatically flow through to the insurance company working secretly with the CIA. This company would then pay for the loss and take a tax deduction. The taxpayer, or the federal deficit in this case, picked up the bill.


North and I felt the most paramount threats to our system of liberties had not come from the communists he and I had been programmed to hunt down and kill. The enemy came from within our own ranks. The decay of the voice of the people is what threatened us most. WE THE PEOPLE were being bypassed and our representation undermined through a breakdown in our built-in-system of checks and balances. The budget DEFICIT was to blame. The breakdown was occurring by not making each and every one of us pay as we go. Credit was an easy, evil siren by which to be lured, and one that eventually would bring an end to our way of life. Economic collapse was not all we feared. By not forcing the American public to pay for its way of life, to simply allow the public to "charge it," they were being lulled into a state of governmental nonparticipation that would eventually put the power of the government into the hands of only a few of the "ruling class". Karl Marx always said democracy doesn't work. We were afraid he was right.

-- Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA, by Terry Reed & John Cummings


The complexity of the system required a napkin for explanation.

"Ain't capitalism grand!" Cathey said of the idea as Terry began to comprehend the scheme. "It's based on Ben Franklin's principle of a penny saved is a penny earned."

By reducing tax liability, and therefore reducing the amount of taxes owed the government, money is saved, and, therefore, earned.

"Yeah. But is all this legal?" Terry asked. "Doesn't the guy donating the hardware have to go along with all this? Or do your people just go out requisitioning things?" Terry was comparing this to the form of "borrowing" that is commonly done in the military. Servicemen don't view requisitioning as stealing, simply a redistribution of supplies, seeing as how "it all belongs to Uncle Sam."

Cathey assured him there was definitely no need for stealing. Economic downturns in the Texas-Oklahoma oil patch had been a blessing for the program.

"Believe you me, since the oil boom busted, we probably have plenty of people right here in Oklahoma, and especially Texas and Louisiana, that want to donate all kinds of things they now don't need, and can't sell," Cathey speculated. "I'm sure there'll be lots of 'oilies' just lined up trying to give us Lear jets, helicopters, yachts, all kinds of crap. No, we won't have to steal. The mother lode is right here in the Sooner State. To be a donor and to profit, all you have to do is have insurance on your donation, look the other way, and don't come looking for it."

"That's interesting. But why are you telling me all this?" Terry asked.

"I know the circles you travel in," Cathey said. "You rub elbows with lots of fat cats in the oil patch. I was thinking maybe you could steer me to possible donors. And you could tell them there's no danger in all this. We 'own' the insurance company, so no flat-foot investigators are going to come around asking questions. We've already thought of that."

Through the Toshiba affair Cathey had become aware of the affluent manufacturing circles Terry moved in. He realized that Reed was on a first-name basis with many of the wealthy, right-wing businessmen who were owners of the manufacturing companies. He had sold many of them expensive computer-controlled manufacturing equipment, transactions valued in the millions of dollars. A lot of them, risk-takers by nature and profession, were now caught in a cash crunch because of the collapse of their local economies and the banking industry that had underwritten their oil-drilling operations. They needed cash from any source. Why not get it from their own insurance company by "trading off" a high-value luxury item they could easily get along without?

Cathey did not know these men and he needed someone who could approach them on a personal basis. He hoped Terry would be a channel to them and act as a kind of "fund-raiser" for the donor program. This was obviously an early effort by Oliver North to find big-money people, an effort that went full-blown in ensuing years and resulted in the private contributions of such fat cats as Adolph Coors, the brewing magnate and Helen Garwood, a wealthy Texas widow who ended up donating more than $2.5 million in cash and stock. These contributions and others were made available through the private fund-raising efforts of men like Carl (Spitz) Channell and Richard Miller. [5] North sought out these and other conservative minded business men to form the nucleus of a "private donation" network to solicit tax exempt contributions for the Contra causes. One such organization controlled by Channell, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), raised more than $10 million from private contributors. [6] (See chapter end.) It was a true capitalistic operation, with the blessing of the CIA, to thwart the wishes of Congress.

Terry told Cathey he was fascinated by the whole operation, approved of the concept and wished him well. But it was not a good time for him to get involved, he already had too many irons in the fire. He and Janis had a six-month-old son, Duncan, their first child. In addition to the other demands on his time, he was trying to keep Janis happy by completing the construction of their new nursery. Being anxious, first-time parents, they had shared their bedroom with Duncan until now, but the baby needed a nest of his own so that his weary parents could get a full night's rest. He would definitely have no time for fund raising, and he had to admit to himself that he doubted its legality, no matter what financial manipulations the CIA had devised.

"And in addition to all the other irons I have in the fire," Terry added, "we're going to Florida tomorrow to an Ultra-light fly-in. I've decided to do a little market analysis, and if things go well, I may be buying part of a Ultra-Light manufacturing plant located near Kansas City."

As of late, Reed had become very involved with a manufacturing firm in Olathe, Kansas, that was building one-man sport planes, the latest craze in aviation. Ultra-lights did not require a pilot's license to operate and were quickly becoming a new industry within aviation. A flying event held annually in Lakeland, Florida, called Sun 'N Fun, was being billed that year as a major Ultra-Light marketing event.

Terry informed Cathey that he would be flying his private four-seater Piper Turbo Arrow, N2982M, to Florida the next day and would be taking with him, along with Janis, an old attorney friend and his wife from Joplin, Missouri.

Cathey expressed a desire to go along, since he had always wanted to see a major Ultra-light event, and he thought Ultra-Lights had a definite military application. But five adults can't fly in a plane designed for four people, so that was out of the question.

But Cathey wasn't yet finished with the sales pitch for the donor program. "Hey, maybe you want to get in on this. You have an airplane. Perhaps you want to donate it?" he asked Terry.

Terry was perplexed. Yes, he had an airplane. But for a donor to profit under Cathey's formula, he would have to have a large equity in it. Otherwise, the donor would simply be losing something that he needed. This made no sense in his case.


"Hey, my plane is financed at the bank. I don't think I have any equity in it at all. For your plan to be attractive to a donor, doesn't he need equity in the asset? Besides, I need my plane. I use it continually in business," Terry said.

Cathey was confused. His grin was gone as he pondered Terry's words. Apparently his plan was flawed. It wasn't for everyone. He picked up his pen and wrote "equity" on the napkin.

"I hadn't thought of that," he confessed. "I see why you're a businessman and I work for the CIA."


Throughout the Toshiba affair, Cathey had appeared to be impressed with Terry's business acumen. He was seeing an aggressive business style that mirrored military warfare. Terry's "take no prisoners" attitude had come from his military training, which he was realizing had a definite business application. All those hard days and nights in Southeast Asia had not been for naught. Not only did his military days give him the discipline and attitude necessary to succeed, but more importantly his "wild oats" were already sown. While most of his competition, or "enemies," cruised the singles bars and nursed hangovers the next day, he was home working late into the night getting ready for tomorrow's battles.

The talk then turned to social things. Cathey said he was going to stay over and suggested Terry and his wife join him for dinner. "I'm sorry, John," Terry said. "This thing about having a baby is putting a cramp in my social life. Janis and I have added a new term to our vocabulary ... babysitter."

"Yeah, the last time I saw your wife ...when was it ...in October, right?," Cathey asked, then adding without waiting for an answer. "She was all wore out. Hope she liked the roses I brought her. Too bad she couldn't have held off a little longer so that your son could have shared my birth date ...oh well, at least we're both Libras."

Cathey was referring to his visit to Oklahoma City on Oct. 5, 1982, the day after the Reeds' son, Duncan, was born in Mercy Hospital. That day he accompanied an ecstatic new father to Janis' hospital room where she lay recovering from 12 hours of natural childbirth. Terry had learned over the course of "interfacing" with Cathey that his birthday was October 7th, 1943. Oliver's and his son's birthdays would be celebrated three days apart.

The primary purpose of Cathey's visit that October day was to see what he could do to repair the disintegrating relationship between Terry's firm and Toshiba Machine Tool since Reed's information was apparently more valuable than Terry had realized. Terry had been "monitoring" Toshiba for 10 months and, as common practice, the "handler," i.e. Cathey, did not inform the "asset," i.e. Reed, the true value of the vital information Terry was passing on. This is done for security reasons and to keep the asset calm and in character so that the significance of his role remains unknown to him.

Toshiba had proved it not only had the ability to screw up the balance of power in the world, it had also been screwing its dealer network and had reneged on its contract with Terry's new firm. This had put Terry in a position of having to file a state lawsuit against Toshiba to force it to honor its contract.

Working with the Japanese had been quite an education for Terry. He had learned they were exploiting the American legal system by trying to apply Japanese custom to American business practices. Their insistence on keeping written contracts to a minimum and, focusing instead on the Japanese custom of handshakes to seal agreements, was becoming a major area of litigation in American courts.

"We no need paper, only word," they customarily said. This had forced him to defend his position as a dealer with Toshiba when they attempted to violate his oral contract with them.


Terry had assumed that the reason for Buffalo was its geographic proximity to Toronto, where North had said he was based because of KGB activity there. Lake Ontario would provide the deniable link between Agency and FBI collaboration. It also meant that Terry could have no record of telephone communication with North. It was built-in deniability and Terry understood how that worked. No paper, no trail, was the rule pounded into his head in intelligence school.

-- Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA, by Terry Reed & John Cummings


Terry's duties as a Toshiba dealer gave him free access to the company's bonded warehouse in Houston, a place where neither U.S. Customs or any other federal agency could go. Armed with the FBI and CIA's "shopping list" of questions, he would visit Houston twice a month for sales training and, most importantly, inspect the conditions and specifications of equipment shipped from Japan, still crated and awaiting release to the American market.

Cathey had told Terry that agents in Japan were tracking the crating and shipping of certain "key" models of machine tools that possessed the capability to manufacture highly-classified defense-related parts. The KGB had expressed great interest in one particular model of machine and was trying to purchase it anywhere, and anyway, they could. What bothered the CIA was that at least two of these $1 million machines had been built and shipped from Japan to bonded warehouses within the U.S. and then had "disappeared." They had been tracked going into warehouses, but they had never come out.

Considering the value of this equipment, logic dictated that they would not be warehoused for long periods of time and had probably been somehow "pirated" out of these facilities.

What the Agency needed Terry to do was actually quite simple. The old formula of "who, what, when, where and how" had to be applied and solved. Terry's eyes and ears were critical to relaying inside information about how these machine tools were "vanishing" and if possible, to where were they being shipped.

Terry's lawsuit initiated against Toshiba due to the unexpected business rift had, in effect, brought his involvement with Toshiba to an end, and with it, his work for the FBI.

At this meeting, Cathey was forced to disclose to Terry the importance of the information he had been passing on. Without him, Cathey said, they were "blind and deaf" and the States-side portion of the operation was in jeopardy. It suddenly became apparent to Terry just how important an asset he had been. Cathey was grasping at straws and began looking for a way, any way, to repair the business rift.

Cathey had surprised Terry at the earlier October meeting by displaying his seeming lack of business acumen. The CIA handler sought to mend the break by offering to pay Terry for the damages Toshiba had inflicted. This had made no sense whatsoever, forcing Terry to point out: "Hey, money doesn't solve these kinds of problems. Business relationships are based on contracts and trust. They've fucked me and your money can't change that. This is about honor. You should understand that."


From Terry's viewpoint, John Cathey's Project Donation had started and ended with that March meeting. And he had been of no real value to the Agency since the prior October, due to the Toshiba rift. Terry felt he was simply out of the spook business, for now, and was in no position to contribute further.

Instead, Terry spent the balance of the time that afternoon sharing with Cathey his new-found high. The exhilaration of a Vietnam comrade finally doing what he wanted: Getting another shot at the commies, and Congress. At that time, Terry was not interested in getting directly involved with Cathey's new war. He had a living to make and all the past spook work had been voluntary, with no real compensation for his time and effort.

But times and circumstances change.

* * *

"What do you mean my plane's not there?" Terry questioned. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

Terry was in the Olathe County Courthouse in Kansas, a short distance southwest of Kansas City, researching some incorporation files. It was 11 AM on March 24th, 1983. At the other end of the telephone was the receptionist at Mizzou Aviation in Joplin, Missouri.

"No it's not here. It wasn't here this morning when we came to work and we figured you had picked it up."

"Well, I didn't, so, if you're sure it's missing, call the police." He was upset.

Twelve days previously, Janis and Terry had begun their planned trip from Oklahoma City to Florida by way of Joplin to pick up his friends. That was the day Janis had learned her husband was in fact made of "the right stuff" when he calmly and skillfully handled an in-flight emergency. Their single-engine plane suddenly decided to deposit six quarts of oil on the windshield, the result of three broken pistons.

Terry had been able to nurse the ailing plane to Joplin, "change underwear" and pick up his waiting friends. He rented an aircraft for the remainder of the trip and turned his plane over to Mizzou Aviation, the fixed base operator at the Joplin Airport, to be repaired. Mizzou was where Terry had gone to flight school, and had later worked as a flight instructor. The plane had remained in Mizzou's custody until the morning of the 24th when he called to see if the airplane was repaired and ready to be picked up.

As he hung up the pay phone in Kansas, the haunting recollection of the "donation" sales pitch from Cathey, a few days earlier on March 11th, came to mind. But he had certainly not agreed to any donation -- or had he?
There had been a subsequent conversation with Cathey after their initial talk. A week and a half later, on March 21st, Cathey had telephoned Terry at his office in Oklahoma City for what had seemed to be a purely social conversation.

Cathey asked about the Ultra-light show and Terry casually chatted with him about the near catastrophic plane incident and the fact that his plane was at the Joplin Airport being repaired.

"Are you sure, you don't want to donate it?" Cathey had asked in a joking manner after considering the sizeable repair bill that would be forthcoming. Terry shrugged it off as a bit of friendly banter.

After leaving the Kansas courthouse, he drove to Joplin in a borrowed car to find out what had happened to his plane. What he learned there proved to be very unsettling. On the afternoon of March 23rd, the aircraft had been repaired and then tied down beside the airport beacon tower. For some unexplained reason, the mechanic in charge of the repair put the engine and airframe log books in the pilot's seat but did not bother to lock it.

This perplexed Terry since even student pilots are trained early on never to carry those log books in the airplane. The reason? Doing so is an added invitation to theft since it's almost impossible to sell an aircraft without its log books.
It would tip off a buyer that the plane is probably stolen. It's like trying to sell a car without the title.


When questioned later why he had been so careless, the mechanic answered that he had no excuse and that it was simply inadvertent. But Terry was more upset over the way the theft was being handled, since no one could assure him that anyone in law enforcement was actively searching for the plane.

Terry decided to take matters into his own hands and called his FBI handler, Buzz Barlow, at his home in Edmond, Oklahoma, to ensure that the theft was entered in the FBI's National Crime Information Center in Washington. Barlow assured Terry that he would confirm the entry of the theft, and Terry returned home by commercial airliner from Kansas City, upset and suspicious.

This plane was more than utilitarian to Terry. In addition to its being impeccably maintained, Terry knew its complete service history since its delivery from the factory. He had flown it during his training as a commercial and instrument student, and felt that he had lost an old friend, one he would probably never see again.

To add to his mounting problems and inconveniences from the theft, his irreplaceable, original pilot log books also were gone. He had left them in the plane when he turned it over to Mizzou for repairs. These books reflect a pilot's credentials, and without them it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove flight time and ratings history. Terry set about the difficult and time-consuming task of trying to reconstruct his flying history.


He eventually sent his insurance claim to his carrier in Wichita, Kansas, and, after much foot-dragging, finally was awarded $32,950 on June 13th, 1983, for his loss. The insurance company's bank draft was made out to both Terry and Lakeshore Bank of Oklahoma City, which held a $27,000 lien on the plane. After deducting the amount of the lien, the accrued interest, the monthly payments he made after the plane was stolen, and rental bills for other aircraft used while awaiting payment from the insurance company, he netted approximately $1,500 in "revenue." He had been fortunate, but he was still without his log books.

Three days after receiving and signing over the check to Lakeshore, Terry got another unexpected social call from Cathey. In that conversation peppered with humor, Cathey theorized the plane was probably "south of the border and being put to good use by now."


Approved For Release 2003/03/28 : CIA-RDP80R01731...

December 30, 1955

Mr. Allen W. Dulles
2132 E Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Dulles:

While browsing through the Army-Navy Club Library today, I came across a copy of "The Goebbels Diaries", and inside there was pasted a copy of your review of the book which appeared in an April, 1948 issue of the New York Times. Your comments were extremely well taken, and the review was excellent.

While still in college, I "discovered" Gustav Le Bon whose studies in mob psychology and influence on the mass mind are basic to any propagandist. That discovery led me to delve deeply into this problem, since I had intended to make radio broadcasting my career. I did so until 1941. In 1935, having watched Goebbels closely, read his writings in German papers and subscribed to the German Information Service publications, I created a radio program called [DELETE] which, taking the American Bill of Rights as a basis, proceeded to smack hell out of Hitlerism-Fascism in what to me then was the best Goebbels style. That series won national attention [DELETE]. Later, in Germany, I went much more deeply Into Goebbels, finally turned up the Diaries in question and used ten pre-war years of experience to good effect in Radio RIAS. I tell you these things, first, because you may be interested and, secondly, because I wish there were a dedicated "Goebbels" available to our side today.

It always seemed to me that Goebbels' success was predicated on two facts:

(1) First, his dedication to the cause of national socialism and his complete sympathy with it, and

(2) Secondly, his utter devotion to Hitler personally.

Goebbels was the kind of complex character who would have been at home on Madison Avenue in other times and other circumstances. He was magnificently well informed, had an agile, active and inquiring brain, was utterly ruthless, vicious and ambitious. But in the field of knowing how to influence his people, he was without parallel. I recall one statement he made as early as 1927:

"The Berliner will stand on his head for a cigarette".

How true that was in 1945!

In view of Mr. Kruschev's violent reaction to President Eisenhower's Christmas message, I wish we could exploit that to the limit through every facility at our present command, some of which we have yet to employ.

Very best regards to you in the New Year and all best wishes for your good health and continued splendid service.
Sincerely,

[DELETE]

WFH:rwb
PhonAudographed


Cathey expressed a desire to stay in closer contact with Terry because his new project, he said, was getting exciting and "taking on new dimensions." Terry, he thought, might be i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t-e-d. Cathey said he would keep his friend posted.

By August of 1983, Terry had decided to acquire partial ownership of the Ultra-Light company in Kansas and, along with two other partners, move it to Little Rock, Arkansas. His old boss, mentor and friend from Kansas, Joe Ida, had propositioned Terry with an offer that was hard to refuse. Ida and an old friend, Seth Ward, from Little Rock were interested in bidding on the now defunct company in Kansas and moving it to Arkansas, where Ward lived. He said Terry could have equity in the company if Terry would forgive the $35,000 debt owed him by the now-bankrupt Kansas firm and be willing to manage the new company being formed from the deal.

Terry not only saw this as a fair deal and an opportunity, but also a way to relocate his machine-tool company, Reed, Kerr and Associates Inc., to Arkansas, where a more diverse manufacturing economy was developing. And it was less centered around the oil industry.

Much to his wife's initial dismay, Terry felt it was in their best interest to uproot the family and sell their restored Victorian home in Oklahoma City, which had been their labor of love.

Throughout this "Sooner connection" phase of intelligence "handoffs" in Oklahoma, Terry believed that he had made only one true friend, Buzz Barlow. By now, their relationship was a close, personal one and Barlow and his wife voiced regret repeatedly that the Reeds were planning to leave Oklahoma.

By late August, they finally sold their house and the Barlows hosted a going-away party. On August 23rd, Cathey unexpectedly called Terry at home.

"I hear through Enright that Buzz says you guys are moving to Arkansas," he noted. "I really can't talk about it on an unsecure line, but we've got an exciting project in the works down there and I think there may be a slot for you. One that'll maybe even pay you this time."

Terry was interested. The money would certainly be nice, especially since Janis would not be working for a while after their move to Arkansas. She was hoping to be a full-time mother to their son.

"Hey, if you're interested, it's best I just put you into play with the guy that's going to be running the operation for me. I'll make the introduction and have him look you up. I'll tell him you're a good guy."


"How do I know who he is and where to find him?" Terry asked.

"He'll find you ...and his name is Barry Seal."

Terry had just been handed off to a man whose name would come to haunt those who worked with him.

It was another step closer to the abyss.

The Channell-Miller Contra Assistance Network

Image
This chart represents the money flow of the Channell-Miller Contra Assistance Network.
Source: Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition and House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.
3-1. Chart showing the complexity of the corporate relationships set up to raise funds for the Contras. The chart also suggests a probable connection between the corporate entities and "Project Donation."

_______________

Notes:

* Net income for the "losing" insurance company would continue to increase because of tax breaks that were allowed from underwriting losses. Loss-reserve selling allows one insurance company to sell future claims to another company, giving the first company immediate income from the purchase, and from the unused claim money. The buying, or second, company is provided with instant tax write-offs through mandatory, tax-exempt cash "set aside" requirements. [4]

1. Ben Bradlee Jr., Guts and Glory, The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, Donald I. Fine Inc., 1988, pp. 132-4.

2. Public Law 97-377, Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1983, Sec. 793

3. Newsweek, April 11, 1983, P. 46.

4. Wall Street Journal, Bill Targets Tax Breaks for Self-Insured Reserves, October 12, 1981. Dun &. Bradstreet Reports, Insurance Crisis, Who's To Blame for High Insurance Rates, March/ April, 1986 pp. 40-43; Wall Street Journal, Oil Company Captives See New Tax Liabilities, November 8, 1982; Wall Street Journal, Risk Managers Increase Investment Savvy, October 11, 1982; Internal Revenue Code, Title 61, Paragraph 601, subdivision .276.

5. Bradlee, Guts and Glory, PP.226-28.

6. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), p. 85.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 9:17 am

CHAPTER 4: INTO THE LOOP

As the Lear 23's jet engines spooled to take-off, RPM and the turbine-temperature needles rose to the red-limit markers, Barry Seal assumed the flight instructor's posture in the right seat.

With his arm around the back of the pilot's seat occupied by Terry that late December day in 1983 at Mena, Arkansas, Seal told Terry "now release the fucking brakes and let's have some fun." Terry appeared tense.

"Relax, you're gonna like this," Seal assured him. "A Lear jet behaves similar to the Citation that you're rated for, except things happen faster."

Terry had always wanted to fly what pilots call "the businessman's fighter plane." And now he was getting his chance as he and Seal started their return trip to Little Rock, and continued to fine-hone their friendship newly found in the cockpit of N13SN.

Terry had been in Arkansas less than three months, and the man Cathey had said would find Terry had done just that.

The white jet accelerated abruptly to V-l and Seal reminded his "student" that it was "time to fly." Terry gingerly pulled back the pilot's yoke and much to his amazement, the plane leaped skyward. He had flown a lot, but this was truly fucking fun, with twin capital "F's."

Seal knew flying. But he was also a renaissance man, multi-talented and faceted, something that had enabled him to survive the many other troubles then besetting him. By the winter of 1983, as they headed back to Little Rock, Seal had begun to recognize that Terry shared some of those multi-talented traits. And, more importantly, besides flying, he knew manufacturing as well.

And Terry also began to realize something. He was beginning to sort out from among Seal's talents his intriguing ability to handle the government handlers who thought they were handling him.

It was clear that Seal was not impressed with these men who worked for the government, people Seal looked down on as having limited ambition. "Fucking GS suits (slang for General Salary Schedule)," he had called them. "No balls, and very little brains."

In six words, Seal had articulated what Terry had come to realize since his days in Oklahoma when he began to realize that he had foolishly allowed the government to use his talents over and over, monopolizing his time and knowledge, with no compensation and no apparent appreciation of a businessman's necessity to generate cash flow.


As the jet assumed a heading of 077 degrees and was soaring through 15,000 feet, Terry turned to Seal and said: "Maybe we can trade off services. I'll teach you about manufacturing if you'll train me to handle these GS bean-counters so I can have a plane like this."

Seal smiled. "It's a deal," he replied.

In short, Seal knew his business and Terry saw him as a mentor in dealing with "the suits." But what did Seal really see in Terry? Clearly, Seal had many ventures going and was shopping for reliable "subcontractors." But, until this trip to Mena, Seal had not appreciated Terry's in-depth knowledge of manufacturing techniques, or simply how things are made.

From childhood Terry, the oldest of six children, had been the "weird kid" who always wondered how things were made. As his friends swung baseball bats in his Little League days, Terry was pondering machines. He was more curious about the type of machinery required to manufacture bats than he was in learning the art of using one.

Terry's curiosity as a young man was a gift from his father who, in addition to being a schooled jeweler, worked on top-secret research and development projects for rocket engines at the Rocketdyne Division of North American Rockwell in Neosho, Missouri. Dinner conversation in the Reed house in Carthage, Missouri, was often about thrust requirements needed to orbit payloads in outer space and the machinery needed to manufacture rocket engines.

In fact, instead of sports, what had "tripped his trigger" as far back as grade school, was the wail of an internal combustion engine at red-line RPM. Young Terry's fascination with all things mechanical would accelerate him on a course of building backyard and garage motorized inventions that would astound adults.

Friends recalled him winning a debate with his seventh-grade science teacher concerning the inner workings of a car starter. His love of speed, engines and aluminum was what directed his attention to airplanes.

And now here he was, at the throttle of "Bill Lear's orgasm," a Lear-23! As Seal demonstrated a series of aileron rolls while still maintaining a heading, it wasn't taking Terry long to become addicted to the smell of kerosene that was powering Seal's jet instead of the high octane fuel Terry was used to using.

After the Air Force had reneged on its promise to send him to flight school, he had eventually attained his type-rating in Cessna Citation jets at Flight Safety International in Dallas, a very expensive education, and had amassed more than 2,000 hours flight time.

All the money Terry had put into his aviation studies now seemed worthwhile as Seal cancelled the IFR flight plan, handed over the controls of the craft streaking through the Arkansas skies and said: "It's your airplane. Wring this bitch out and show me what you're made of."

Terry met the challenge and with a "shit-eatin' grin," snapped the airplane into a left banked wing-over maneuver, fighter pilot-style. He brought the plane's heading to north and rolled, wings level while diving toward his "target," the airport setting atop Winthrop Rockefeller's Petit Jean Mountain. The airspeed indicator was now at VMO...306 knots indicated. He held the Lear approximately 100 feet off the ground as they buzzed the runway and then slowly began pitching the nose skyward beyond 45 degrees of pitch-up attitude.

Reed nursed the stick rearward forcing the craft and its occupants to pull an estimated four G's in order to catapult the plane into the complicated chandelle maneuver he was attempting.

Seal cautioned, "Watch out for the compressor stall! Push it over the top and recover this thing. I'm overweight and these G's are gettin' to me."

After Terry recovered from the maneuver and leveled off at 17,500 feet, Seal turned and said: "Guess I'm too old for this shit. OK, hot dog, let's take it back to base. You got the right stuff."

By the time Seal and Terry landed at Little Rock's Adams Field, a bond between the two men was developing so strong that Seal violated a cardinal rule of intelligence. He would now tell Terry something he didn't "need to know."

They went directly to the coffee shop inside the building housing Central Flying Service. There, Seal began by telling Terry the real reason why they had just made the trip to Mena in the rural mountainous area of Western Arkansas and to the firm called Brodix Manufacturing. Seal had told Terry he held an interest in the Brodix firm that was, as far as anyone knew, an aluminum foundry and machining company that was slated to "expand" into something new, and SECRET.

"It's time I let you know the truth about what we want to do at Brodix," Seal said. "Let's have some coffee and you can tell me all you know about the investment casting process."

Terry was puzzled. "Investment casting is normally for close-tolerance precision steel parts," he replied. "I just came from an aluminum foundry. What's your interest in application for steel?"

"Guns, what else?" Seal replied as he peered over his coffee cup.

Without either man saying it, Seal and Terry had just crossed the Rubicon. The lives of both men were then changed forever. That day a chain of events was set in motion that would lead Terry to learn eventually what was really going on in Arkansas: the state was going to be the secret source of weapons for the Contras, as well as a major training base and trans-shipment hub for weapons.
Seal, because of the mutual trust that was being developed, had divulged to Terry information that he had not been cleared to reveal.

"I'll have to talk to our friend on this (a coded reference to John Cathey), but I need you in on this project. It's more difficult to make weapons parts than they led me to believe."

Seal explained that a New Jersey gun-manufacturing company had been purchased -- lock, stock and barrel -- and was being moved to Arkansas to quietly and discreetly produce weapons components for the Contras.

This was clearly another facet of what was later described in the Congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra Affair as CIA Director William Casey's plan to have CIA-owned proprietaries, or front businesses, become the bypass conduit around a whimsical Congress.
The Director saw these flip-flopping Congressional attitudes as obstacles to the Reagan Administration's controversial and unpopular foreign policy initiatives.

Continuous on-and-off Congressional bans on American military aid to the Contras was creating a shortage in the arms supply for the Nicaraguan operation. This "drought" was depleting the level of arms in the reservoir to a critically low level. Firms that normally supplied the Defense Department had been barred by Congress from supplying the Contras because of those Congressional bans. Casey wanted to establish a continuity to the supply effort, hopeful that the White House objective of overthrowing the Sandinistas could be attained through eventual armed internal rebellion.

Terry, having seen unnecessary loss of life in Southeast Asia, put himself in the shoes of the Contra soldiers. How could they, he thought, have even a chance of survival without at least a minimum stock of weapons? In Vietnam, he had been put in harm's way while Congress debated the morality of the "conflict." Now, it was happening again, only this time to a group of "freedom fighters", as President Reagan called them, in a country so close to his own. The Congressional jockeying continued to rage on.

The recent moving of a New Jersey arms-manufacturing company to Arkansas was not merely, as the state would claim, the result of vigorous recruitment by the Clinton administration. It was instead, Seal said, the result of behind-the-scenes CIA decisions to make Arkansas the equivalent of a "proprietary." But, nonetheless, it would help Bill Clinton deliver on his campaign promises to provide "jobs for Arkansans."

Iver Johnson's Arms Inc., the firm brought to Arkansas from New Jersey, was one steeped in American history. Originally established in Massachusetts during the American Revolution, it had helped arm the colonial soldiers to fight the British. It already had ongoing military and civilian arms contracts that would allow it to operate openly under the usual scrutiny of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.


Under federal law, arms companies must create a paper trail for tracking and control of all weapons, especially for components that go into fully-automatic weapons. The M16, the weapon used by American military services, is a weapon requiring this documentation and control. All international sales require an End-User certificate, which traces the weapon from origin to destination. The Boland Amendments, which banned sales to the Contras, effectively forced the CIA to find a source of weapons without such certificates.

This secrecy required to produce the non-traceable parts posed an immediate problem for Iver Johnson's. Iver Johnson's was working on a classified contract with the United States Navy to produce a .50-caliber sniper rifle. This required government inspectors' scrutiny of the company's operations in its new location in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

To circumvent this scrutiny, the decision had been made to cast critical, and untraceable, parts at a location other than Jacksonville.
Seal explained, as they sat in the coffee shop, that Brodix would contain that casting operation. The trip to Mena was now beginning to make sense to Terry.

Because Iver Johnson's was an established firm, it provided instant cover for the clandestine work that was slated to be done in Mena.

On paper, Philip Lynn Lloyd, a wealthy Arkansas businessman with close ties to the Arkansas bond industry, was listed as a principal in the company and the man responsible for its relocation to Arkansas. * Terry was learning that Lloyd was probably just a "cover" for the project.

"So now that you know what we're up to, what will it take in the way of machinery to cast and machine the lower receiver housing of the M16?" Seal asked.

"I'll need blue prints and I'll need to know quantities," Terry replied.

The lower receiver housing is the major part that differentiates the M16, fully automatic, military assault weapon from the AR-15, the semi-automatic version that is sold to the public in sporting goods stores.

Federal law requires that during production each receiver housing be stamped with a serial number, and documentation be created that will track it from cradle to grave. Obviously, the CIA did not want serial numbers on weapons going to the Contras during a period when Congress had banned the sales.

Seal and Terry ended their first arms discussion pleased with themselves. Seal had found a local confidant who understood machine tools and Terry felt honored that he was being entrusted with such important secret knowledge. He felt that the window of opportunity was opening and he decided to leap through it. He had been in Arkansas less than three months, and the man Cathey had said would find him had done just that.

Things were going well for the Reeds in Arkansas. They had temporarily moved into an upscale apartment on the west side of Little Rock, the "in" place to be. Terry's new Ultra-light company named Command Aire was getting a lot of good press representing, as it did, the efforts of the state to attract new industry.

The Reeds found that being part of this effort was the key to membership in Little Rock society.
In just a few months, they had an overview of the social and political pecking order there. Because one of the principals in Terry's company, Seth Ward, was a socialite and a Little Rock industrialist, Terry already was traveling in high social and political circles. This newly-found status led to an introduction to Hillary Clinton, the wife of the governor, who worked at the prestigious Rose Law Firm, * THE Arkansas law firm, where Webb Hubbell, Ward's son-in-law and former Little Rock mayor, was a partner. This firm, which was handling Terry's company's product liability work, was the unofficial pipeline to the governor.

While establishing his new ultralight business, Terry visited the Rose Law Firm often. These lawyers were most definitely "in the loop" as the Arkansas oligarchy was dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

This was not your typical law firm whose strict charter kept them primarily aligned with the pursuit of civil justice ... Deal brokering was the firm's specialty. All that was missing was Monty Hall screaming, "Let's make a deal!"

The icons of Little Rock's business community flowed through the firm's front door. Terry realized Seth Ward had taken him directly into the heart of the beehive where things were really made to happen in Arkansas.

The Who's Who in Arkansas congregated a short distance down the hall from Webb Hubbell's office. There Hillary Clinton, the Queen Bee, anointed her subjects and gave her blessing to meticulously prepared contracts outlining proposed business ventures.

"Webb's office is right next door to the Governor's", Seth Ward joked about Hubbel's proximity to Hillary Clinton's office. "She wears the pants in the family," Ward continued, "And she's a stone-cold son-of-a-bitch. Kicking ass in a man's world. I wish I had a daughter like that ... Hell, for that matter, I wish I had a son like that," Ward mumbled in reference to his only male offspring, Skeeter, a somewhat passive and foolhardy yuppie type who had already left a string of business failures in his wake.

Terry was finding that in 1984 Arkansas' young governor, Bill Clinton, was no hero to a lot of these people. Ward and others often spoke contemptuously of Clinton behind his back, calling him a wimp and referring to him as their "token politician." They made it clear they had no respect for any man whose wife was the major bread winner and often referred to him as the "boy governor." It was clear from the back stabbing comments made by Ward and his cronies that Clinton was viewed as a political light weight who was long on promises and short on delivery. They said he lacked true political finesse, was too damned wishy-washy, and never cut a deal with anyone that he wasn't forced to compromise on later.

Terry figured their distaste for Clinton had more to do with his "progressive attitudes" and his quest to attract out-of-state businesses which were a major threat to the established power base. Clinton just didn't fit their mold of what a consummate politician should be. Their political hero was still Wilbur Mills, once a powerful Congressmen who grabbed the nation's attention when he drove drunk into the Potomac tidal basin with his mistress, a former stripper named Fannie Fox.

But Mills' wife had never worked. Instead, she had spent her time attending meetings of the Daughters of the Confederacy. These elite and pretentious southern belles of Little Rock, who retrieved their fur coats from storage at the first sign of a frost, viewed Hillary Clinton as a social outcast because of her "uppity, liberated, northern attitudes", the fact that she had a career and her audacity, when first marrying Bill, to not take her husband's last name. After his only political defeat, she apparently realized this was something to be reckoned with and promptly became Hillary Clinton rather than Hillary Rodham. Now she's both.

To Janis Reed it seemed as though she had driven accidentally through a time warp on her trip to Little Rock. Although the distance from Oklahoma City to Little Rock along I-40 was only 270 miles due east, she found it was like going back 100 years in time. She discovered that the average male in Arkansas believed that next to Appomatox-Arkansas' blackest date in history was the day women won the right to vote. Not only were women's rights barely acknowledged, but civil rights in general barely existed. Janis was astounded by the racial prejudice she encountered.

"You won't believe the discussion I had today," she remarked to her husband one night during dinner. "Some people at my real estate seminar asked me which school Duncan was going to attend. I told them I had him in Montessori school part time and I was happy with it. Oh, they said, that's not what they meant. They meant when he goes to kindergarten. I said he's only a year and a half old! Then they proceeded to tell me that I'd better get him on the waiting list for certain private schools. 'So what's wrong with the neighborhood school?', I said. They said 'oh honey, you don't want your child going to school with colored children.' Terry, some of the women are my age and younger. It's not like they're old ladies who remember the Civil War. I asked them why they were so prejudiced. And you know what? Everyone responded with a look of disbelief.

"'Honey, what do you mean prejudice? Why I even let my maid's husband wait for her in the parlor in my house last week. I thought at that time my dead mama would be rolling over in her grave. We're not prejudiced. We just think it's best for all of us not to have our children co-mingling. And we know a lot of Negroes who feel the same way.'"

Education was the issue that continuously dominated the newspaper headlines while the Reeds lived in Arkansas. The need to improve their education system -- which ranked nearly dead last in comparison to other states -- came down to a supposed lack of qualified teachers. Clinton took a political lead on the issue, pressed hard and finally got the Legislature to pass mandatory teacher testing, despite the outcries of the teachers. The Reeds were infuriated, however, when, the day before the test was to be administered, the previously sealed and secret test was "leaked" to the media and printed in its entirety in the local newspaper. Despite outcries that the entire test had been "compromised," it was administered anyway and, needless to say, the vast majority of the teachers passed.

Arkansas' movers and shakers, the sons of the Old South, hated "carpetbaggers and Yankees" like Clinton's wife. (Hillary claimed Chicago as home.) For them, the Civil War still was being fought. This pervasive reactionary attitude precluded any real economic advancement for the state, unless, of course, there was something in it for the good ole boys. True status was reserved usually only for people whose grandfathers had traded slaves and cotton at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis 150 years before.

Despite these obstacles, Terry was moving up. He had even shared the men's room with Governor Clinton at the segregated Little Rock Country Club. Anybody who was anybody urinated there -- provided, of course, he was white.

And it was often in the men's room where many of the back door deals were struck while a black man held the cologne and soap and towel for the Arkansas' "Bond Daddies" who did their insider trading and got the advance word on what would be the most lucrative "politically-wise" investments.

Old South protectionist attitudes had put in place usury laws that capped interest rates in Arkansas. To get around this cap, and make their money perform, the municipal bond industry was developed as a vehicle to give the Arkansas' elite a way to invest their money outside the state, where higher rates were legal. As a result, a small "Wall Street" had sprung up in Little Rock and the people who operated it were called "Bond Daddies."

One of them was Dan Lasater, a man very close to Bill Clinton and whose firm, Lasater & Co., was handling more than $300 million annually in preferred state bond activity. The state was using the Rose Law Firm as its bond counsel for much of this activity. It was one big happy family.


Terry reminisced about the first time he had met Lasater, a man in his mid-30s who delighted in flaunting his wealth. Lasater hadn't been traveling alone that day. He had been the person who introduced Terry formally to Barry Seal.

Lasater was also displaying a "trophy" that eventful November day in 1983 when he walked into Command Aire's Ultra-Light factory unannounced. The "trophy" was Roger Clinton, the governor's trouble-prone, half-brother.

"I'm Dan Lasater and this is my driver, Roger Clinton. He's the governor's brother," Lasater said referring to the hyperactive young man next to him. As Lasater started to swagger into the factory area as if he owned it, Terry's eye shifted to a rather large man standing in the doorway. Unlike Lasater, this man was behaving like a guest and demonstrating some manners.

"Oh yeah," Lasater continued. "I guess I should introduce a client of mine. This is Mr. Barry Seal."

Terry shook hands with the neatly-dressed man who appeared robust, but overweight. As the entourage walked into the factory, Lasater and Clinton ran off to look at the colorful Ultra-Light on static display. As they walked slowly together, Seal turned to Terry and spoke in a slow and cordial southern drawl, "We have a common friend who says you have some talent I need."

"Does this common friend have a name?"

"John Cathey."


Terry had just been handed off, again, into a new loop.

In using Adler Berriman Seal, Cathey and the CIA were turning in desperation to a "hidden" asset with automatic deniability ... a man with a handle. Seal was a man with a past, a man with a criminal record, and a man the CIA could do business with when they needed performance.

Nicknamed "Thunder Thighs" because of his size, Seal was the type of man about whom movies are made. In fact, a movie about Seal, named Double Crossed, was made in 1991 though it minimalized the extent of Seal's true connections to the intelligence community, portraying him as a drug-trafficker-turned-informant who was assassinated after the White House blew his cover. True as far as it went. But Terry would learn there was much more to Seal than just that.

Seal was considered by those in his inner circle as the consummate pilot. At the age of 26, he had been the youngest 747 pilot in the nation. But his commercial aviation career with TWA was brought to an early and abrupt end in 1972 when he was arrested in New Orleans for alleged violations of the Mutual Security Act of 1954, which bars the export of explosives without approval of the State Department. A DC-4 owned by Seal and loaded with 13,000 pounds of C-4 explosives, primercord and blasting caps was seized in Shreveport, Louisiana. The government contended these were explosives earmarked for anti-Castro groups operating in Mexico. But the charges were never fully tried and the case was later dropped without any real explanation. During Seal's trial, two key government witnesses failed to appear. A mistrial was declared and the charges were later dismissed by an appeals court. A CIA source revealed to coauthor John Cummings that the Agency, in fact, aborted the case because it feared that CIA assets' names might be revealed in court.

At this first meeting with Reed, Seal described himself this way: "I'm a contractor. I specialize in transportation. Whatever there is to transport, I transport. I have certain connections within the government, and I presently have a contract that you may have interest in. I'll talk to you later, privately."

Terry knew to press no further and accepted Seal for what he appeared to be: a wealthy businessman with high intelligence connections. After all, look who had brought them together, Oliver North, aka "John Cathey."

Seal would later refer to himself as a "calculated risk taker" who "needed excitement" in his life. The CIA apparently knew he also had the talent, organization and the cojones to get the job done. But a lot more was going on in Seal's life at the time that Terry was unaware of.

Seal was one of those hidden assets who had been kept on the shelf for years, a kind of black reserve force. But Seal was already isolated, beyond the normal arms-length relationship for built-in deniability. This would become a problem. The lack of professional intelligence leadership within this cut-out would result ultimately in critical mistakes being made.

As Lasater tested the suspension of the Ultra-Light in the showroom by bouncing up and down in it in his $1,000, three-piece business suit and high-priced Gucci shoes, Terry and Seal agreed to meet again later, when they could talk privately, without the presence of company that was demonstrating such boorish behavior.

"So Barry tells me you don't need to be a pilot to fly one of these things," Lasater said, referring to the Ultra-Light.

"That's not what I said, Dan," Seal said shaking his head in disgust. "You have to be a pilot, you just don't need a license. There's a big difference between the two. Hey, I think this is a sure-fire way for you to kill yourself. Let's get out of here. I need an investment banker that's alive."

Roger Clinton ran in a state of high excitement to open Lasater's limousine door and the uninvited entourage departed.

* * *

Later that same month Seal returned to Little Rock for "banking purposes" and took the opportunity to invite Terry to dine with him. At that dinner meeting, which was much like a job interview, Seal thoroughly debriefed Terry about his Air Force intelligence background and other special qualifications he had.

As Terry was talking about his second tour in Southeast Asia and his unit's support of air drops in Cambodia, Seal interrupted, "Stop right there! What exactly did you do? Were you involved in that? I mean in a hands-on capacity?"

Terry told him that selecting drop zones for supplies delivered by air was part of his job as a photo-intelligence analyst in Thailand, which was only one facet of his highly specialized training at Air Force Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. At Udorn, Thailand, he said, his team had been in charge of many aspects of C-130 aerial delivery, including crew training and ground support. Also of great interest to Seal in this conversation was the revelation that Terry's Air Force unit, Task Force Alpha, supported Air America, the CIA's airline.

"So, besides being a flight instructor, you speak Spanish and you know how to coordinate with aircrews in order to put the shit on target?"

Terry nodded.

"You're hired. But I got a more pressing problem right now. When can you go with me to Mena?" Mena was not only the site in which Seal had moved his aircraft operations from Louisiana, but he now co-owned a manufacturing facility there as well.

The "more pressing problem" for Seal at that moment was not finding someone who was a flight instructor with knowledge of aerial delivery, rather he needed immediate manufacturing advice, which Seal knew was Terry's profession. Seal needed to set in place several things in Arkansas, one of which was an underground arms manufacturing network.

Throughout the month of December, the two men became better acquainted through repeated telephone conversations, and by personal visits whenever Seal showed up in Little Rock to make his numerous "deposits" at Lasater's firm.

At that time Terry was wearing two hats, one as a principal in Command Aire and the other as president of Reed, Kerr & Associates, an automation consulting and marketing firm. In Oklahoma, he had been instrumental in starting an Ultra-Light air park, which the Federal Aviation Administration viewed as an airport requiring licensing under Part 157 of Federal Aviation Rules (FARs). Seal was drawing upon both the manufacturing and aviation talents Terry possessed.

By January, 1984, a month after visiting Brodix Manufacturing in Mena with Terry, Seal needed to get something else underway. He had to find a site in a remote area around Mena that would serve as a secret base to train Contra pilots in air-delivery techniques.

At this time, a restaurant named SOBs (Shrimp, Oysters, Beer) situated on the north bank of the Arkansas River in Little Rock and close to Terry's factory, had become their hangout. Seal, who lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, liked the Cajun atmosphere and the restaurant's resident ragtime band.

"Christ, Cathey didn't tell me we gotta teach these fuckers to fly, too!" Seal said referring to the Contras. "It was my initial understanding these guys would all be skilled pilots and all we had to do was teach them how to hit the fuckin' target, with a palletized load of supplies. I guess the truth of the matter is the fuckin' Nicaraguans don't have any pilots. Some fuckin' freedom fighters!"

Seal had unforeseen problems because the Agency had suddenly discovered that, like it or not, the CIA would have to create a "Contra Air Force" with people who had motivation but little else. And Cathey, a former infantry officer, either hadn't recognized this or he had kept the fact from Seal. These crews were needed desperately to reduce the CIA's exposure in case one of the supply planes was shot down. If that happened, Seal had warned, the crew "had better be beaners," so the world would not discover the Boland Amendment was being violated.

Seal desperately needed someone who knew FAA requirements for setting up an airport.

"Tell me about this airport you started in Oklahoma City," Seal said as he built his salad from the ice-filled bathtub that served as SOB's salad bar. "Especially the part about FAA licensing if you're near a vector airway."

From his conversations with Terry, Seal was now aware of Reed's prior involvement with a group of Oklahoma businessmen who had sought an FAA permit to build a private airstrip north of Oklahoma City. Seal had become concerned about FAA notification requirements and didn't want to be in violation of any FAA rules as this would bring immediate and unwanted attention to the training site.

"Better yet, why don't I just put you on board officially as an aviation consultant while I figure out exactly how you fit in to all this," Seal suggested.

"Sounds good to me. What do I need to do?" Terry replied as he loaded his plate with radishes.

Image
4-1. Map, above showing location of secret air training strip set up for CIA operations "Jade Bridge" and "Centaur Rose" by Reed and Barry Seal at Nella, in Western Arkansas. (Credit Arkansas Democrat).

Image
4.2. Censored FBI report obtained by Terry Reed and his attorney Robert Meloni through court discovery. The date of January 20, 1984 is significant in that Reed and Seal were selecting the Nella site at precisely that time. Whatever the FBI's function was as the strip went into operation, remains hidden behind government black ink.

_______________

Notes:

* Lloyd was convicted in Federal Court in Little Rock in December, 1990, of nine counts of bankruptcy fraud and conspiracy stemming from the concealment of more than $500,000 worth of assets when his personal financial empire collapsed. [1]

* From the time of Clinton's successful presidential bid in late 1992 and the publication date of this book, the Rose Law Firm has surfaced repeatedly in the news as having been the "bull pen" for up-and-coming Washington influence peddlers and people who used their prior relationships, professional and personal, with Bill and Hillary Clinton as a conduit to positions of power in Washington. The list, so far, includes:

1. Vincent Foster-- the now-deceased, former law partner of Hillary Clinton who moved to Washington to serve as White House council and then suspiciously, allegedly committed suicide after not properly handling some rather minor scandals which erupted at the onset of the Clinton Administration.

2. Webster Hubbell -- now serving as Number Two man in the Justice Department and rumored to be the man running interference for the Clintons as the brewing Whitewater scandal develops. He is rumored to be the man actually running Justice.


1. Arkansas Business, December 17, 1990.

2. Newsweek, January 24, 1994.
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Re: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: How the Presiden

Postby admin » Sun May 22, 2016 9:17 am

CHAPTER 5: GETTING OFF THE GROUND

"Bank tighter to the left. More! More! There it is, offa my left wing. What do ya think?" Barry Seal asked from the right seat of his Lear jet, N83JA.

It was a clear, cold January day in 1984 as Terry Reed and Seal circled a remote area of Western Arkansas at an altitude of 5,000 feet MSL (mean sea level). Terry, still somewhat uncomfortable piloting the high-performance jet, was concerned about the plane's stall speed as they exceeded 45 degrees of bank in order to bring the field Seal was referring to into view.

"OK, I got it now. It's definitely remote and I like the surrounding terrain. But does the topography look similar to Nicaragua?" Terry asked.

"Yeah. They'll love it. They'll think they're home," Seal answered, "Now, if we can just teach 'em to stuff an airplane into 2,500 feet without killing themselves, maybe uncle sugar will give us a big r-e-w-a-r-d! Let's go land at Mena and drive back up here to see how it looks from the ground."

Maps of the area below refer to it as the town of Nella. But only Rand-McNally -- and God -- know where it is for sure. (See chapter end.) It is not now, and never was, a town. In it's best days it was only a wide spot in the road, a road house, a stagecoach stopover point, a watering hole before entering the Oklahoma territory. The area reminded Reed and Seal of the movie Deliverance, where Burt Reynolds and a group of city slickers discover the beauty and danger of backwoods rural living while on an all male canoeing and camping trip.

The nearest town, about 12 miles to the south, is Mena, population 5,000. In describing Mena, a local law enforcement officer told one of the authors "If ya wanna pick up girls here, you gotta go to your family reunion." Seal had earlier selected this heavily-wooded location, along with two others, to be the possible site of the Agency's clandestine bivouacking and training area.

Terry had officially been on board the operation only two weeks. He and Seal were flying to Mena that day in order to have an engineering discussion with J.D. Brotherton, the president of Brodix Manufacturing and, on the way, Seal had wanted to show Terry the primary site he was considering. After the meeting at Brodix, which was to outline the computer-controlled machine tools necessary to produce the needed weapons parts, Terry and Seal attempted without success to drive to the Nella site. One thing they discovered: Security would not be a major problem if they chose the Nella site. It was almost impossible to find it on the ground, even with a map and compass.

But the two did eventually survey the area and conclude it would be a perfect training base, serviced only by primitive dirt roads maintained by the United States Forest Service for fighting forest fires within the Ouachita National Forest and accessible safely only by four-wheel drive vehicles. They immediately identified that the mountainous terrain within the region would not only add realism to the flight training, but add danger as well.

Terry was instructed to return later to do a more thorough survey of all three sites, not only evaluating ground conditions, but -- more importantly to Seal -- to consider the strict FAA rules governing the airspace above the land. If the site was not selected properly, commercial aviation could be adversely affected and bring about unwanted FAA licensing requirements. Of concern to Terry was the ability to use ground based navigation aids already in place in Western Arkansas as a way to locate the field in inclement weather and at night. Seal initially had not paid enough attention to this.

It was now clear that the problems to be dealt with were increasing. On the flight back to Little Rock, Terry noted, "As I survey these sights, I should take into consideration the proficiency level of the pilots that'll be using the field. That surrounding terrain could be pretty dangerous, especially in bad weather. They still peel about a half a dozen flatlander pilots off of Rich Mountain every year."

Chuckling, Seal replied, "I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is Cathey says the beaners know how to fly single engine airplanes. The bad news? Barely."

This was becoming more and more like Richard Nixon's "Vietnamization" program, Terry thought. His mind drifted back to Thailand where, in 1973, the U.S. Air Force was tasked with trying to teach Vietnamese pilots not only to fly Mach 2, but to use such advanced western technology as the toilet. All within one life span. It was simply impossible to do, Terry had discovered first hand.


Seal's headquarters in Arkansas was based at Rich Mountain Aviation, situated in a brand new building at the southwest end of the Inter-Mountain Regional Airport in Mena. From there, Seal said he had based his aircraft refurbishing and retrofitting activities, another facet of his business activities.

Terry, familiar with the aviation world as he was, was impressed not only by the building, but the quality of the major airframe repair and modifications going on there. This was no backwoods operation, even though it was located in the backwoods.

Terry completed the surveys over the ensuing month during which time he met Seal's Mena "network" consisting primarily of Fred Hampton, Joe Evans and Emile Camp. Hampton, he was informed, was a second-generation fixed base operator who lived in the area and had operated Rich Mountain Aviation prior to Seal's arrival. But Terry could tell by Hampton's demeanor, that though he was the purported owner, he was not the man calling the shots. Seal called the new facility "my new building" when he toured it with Terry.

Evans, Seal had said, was an Air Force-trained, "cracker jack" aviation mechanic and the only man Seal truly trusted to work on his personal airplanes. It was clear that they went back together many years.

Camp was a pilot and a business associate of Seal's. Camp said he was involved with Seal in the purchase and sale of airplanes in Baton Rouge. Later Terry would learn that Seal and Camp had met originally in a Honduran jail, where they had both been incarcerated for drug trafficking. Both were from Louisiana. Neither seemed at the time to be anything other than prosperous businessmen. Terry and Camp were about the same age and immediately took a liking to each other.

By the following month, February, 1984, the first Boland Amendment was in effect and the Contras in the field in Central America were beginning to feel its impact. The little money Congress had appropriated for them was running out. National Security Advisor Robert (Bud) McFarlane would assign to Oliver North the job of "holding them (the Contras) together in body and in soul." [1] The CIA was obviously under tremendous pressure by the Reagan administration to get things going in Nella.

This was evidenced by Seal's demeanor at SOBs when he and Terry met that month. As the ragtime band played its last few bars of "Dixie" and the roar of the patrons died down, the two men at the corner table finished their dinner. Seal wolfed down the last of the three-dozen oysters, washed them down with a gulp of soda, belched, lifted himself slightly from his chair and passed gas.

Now for business. He pushed the plates aside and grabbed a paper napkin to use as stationary. He turned to Terry and said, "Okay, you're the high-powered aviation consultant, where in the hell are we gonna build this goddam airstrip? It's time for a decision. Our friend (the way Seal always referred to "Cathey") says we gotta come on line sooner than planned. So what's your decision? Adjacent to the federal land to the west or under the Hog-2 MOA?"

Reed and Seal had spent several laborious hours scanning the aviation charts, taking into account all the aeronautical considerations for site selection. The protected airspace above the Nella location, known in pilots circles as an MOA, made this site ideal. Combining that with the ability to pin point the area's location from inside the plane's cockpit by use of a LORAN (long range navigation) receiver, made the Nella location the best of the three potential candidates for the clandestine airfield.

Terry was prepared for Seal's question. After hours of research and field work, he had made his selection. "Our main considerations," he said, "should be security, a 'real-time' training environment and the logistics of bivouac. I vote for Nella."

Barry agreed that more rural than Nella, you couldn't get. He took the napkin and drew a diagram of general runway alignment and said, "You work up the LORAN (map) coordinates and I'll relay the info to Cathey."

With the decision on site location now made, the black operation "Jade Bridge" could begin. Prefabricated chicken houses would be erected in order to blend in with the countryside and to serve as makeshift barracks for the Contra trainees who would be brought in. Headquarters would be located in an old farmhouse already existing on the north end of the property. Construction would begin to greatly improve a grass landing strip which already existed and would ideally serve as a landing field and practice DGZ, or drop zone.

Terry knew that this would meet basic Air Force standards designated as the Bare Base Concept. He had, in fact, been attached to the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing in North Carolina that perfected the concept of operating a fighter wing unassisted in an extremely remote location.

The heavily-forested site at Nella provided shelter, water and enough level ground for aircraft operations. Seal was pleased with Terry's work and he said he was passing the good word up to Cathey about his new-found friend and asset.

During this period, Oliver North, who was still known only to Reed as John Cathey, was living up to his reputation for being "action oriented" and "by-passing red tape." CIA Director William Casey was, by now, his "teacher or philosophical mentor" to whom North looked regularly for help and advice. However, Clair George, then the CIA deputy director for operations, saw North as a man whose ideas often were extreme, "crazy" or "hare-brained." [2]

By viewing it through his personal prism, North was continuously interpreting President Reagan's September, 1983 finding (a Presidential decision), which outlined United States policy in Central America.

The finding sought to use military action only as a means to force a diplomatic settlement, not, as North viewed it, a de facto declaration of war against Nicaragua. In a memorandum to National Security Advisor Robert (Bud) McFarlane a month after the Nella start-up decision, North proposed significant military actions against the Sandinistas, the details of which are still classified under the guise of national security. The operations being implemented by Seal in 1984 were clearly part of North's scheme to win the conflict militarily. [3]

Several of these hare-brained schemes of North's may have been what Seal was getting Reed involved with in Arkansas. Seal would later confide to Reed that there were going to be two separate, compartmentalized operations based out of the Mena area. The one Terry was becoming sucked into, involving flight training and aerial delivery techniques, was code-named "Jade Bridge". It's aircraft call sign was designated "Boomerang". The second was the ferrying of large quantities of arms and munitions from Arkansas to staging areas in Central America. This tributary to the Agency cut-out was code named "Centaur Rose", and its aircraft call sign was" Dodger".


* * *

During March, Terry was working night and day. He had a business to run, but his heart was in the spook world. He worked late into many nights preparing a training outline similar to the one used in the Vietnamization program and based upon the anticipated skill level of the pilots that were to be trained. Often Janis would wake up in the middle of the night to find her husband at work at his desk. She marveled at his ability to exist on three or four hours of sleep a night and his ceaseless high-energy level.

Seal knew that there were at least two other pilot training sites in place in the continental United States. His knowledge led him to inform Terry that the students the Nella facility was to receive would be recent graduates from the other two sites. They would have basic piloting skills that would allow them to fly single-engine aircraft in soft instrument conditions (marginally bad weather). Once in operation, Nella would upgrade the students to multi-engine status and teach them air-drop techniques.

But all was not rosy for Terry. There were problems developing in the Ultra-Light industry. Another company producing these sport airplanes had just been hit with a major liability judgment running into millions of dollars. As a result, the insurance companies underwriting the liability for this industry were getting skittish. Terry's backers, like Ward, were becoming nervous. It was their deep pockets that plaintiffs could reach into if their firm suffered a similar misfortune.

Until April 1, 1984, Command Aire had taken all the necessary legal steps to prepare itself for customer-related aviation accidents, but not for what happened that day. April Fool's day took on a new meaning for Terry as he lay in the dirt and rubble next to his totally-destroyed Ultra-Light. The accident had taken place southwest of Little Rock on Seth Ward's Triple-S Ranch. As an ambulance raced across the field toward him, Terry, fully conscious, frantically tried to dislodge himself from the wreckage, fearful of a fire from the spilled fuel.

While testing a customer's plane the brand new engine had "seized" in flight and Terry had been unable to glide back to the open field. He crashed in the woods among 60-foot high pine trees. His right foot was crushed on impact. He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in Little Rock where he underwent emergency surgery lasting more than eight hours.

After the surgery, doctors informed Terry that if circulation did not properly return, the foot might have to be amputated. Due to his stubbornness and overly-cautious attitude toward addictive drugs, he refused to take any painkillers and lay awake suffering miserably in a cold sweat, reliving all the dangers he had faced in his life. He brought up memories of his childhood, when he built and raced go-carts, had grown into motorcycles, and his two years in Southeast Asia without a scratch during more than 2,000 hours of flight time. He had, he thought, been a lucky man. But now he had almost "bought the farm" from a freak accident while doing something unimportant. As he writhed in agony, his life took on a new meaning and he began to philosophize about life and death and about the Contras who were willing to lay down their lives for a cause.

Janis stepped softly into his room and found her husband semi-delirious from the pain. "You know you made all the local news shows," she whispered. "I guess when they called the ambulance, someone said there had been a plane crash. The news dispatcher envisioned a 747 rather than a single engine plane. The place was swarming with camera crews."

He grimaced even more. The last thing a good pilot wants is "plane crash" in the headlines.

"How's Duncan? He saw me crash?"

"I think he's a little too upset. He's telling everyone his daddy's foot has a boo-boo. He's got his doll, Archie, in a cast. Actually, poor Archie is in a body cast and he looks a lot worse than you do. When I called my parents to tell them about the crash, my mother about fainted, she was so upset. But when I called your mother, do you know what she said? She said 'well, he's been too lucky too long.' Of course, she caught the next bus out of town and is on her way down to take care of you. Can you believe the difference in mothers? Mine raised two daughters and yours raised six kids .....listen to me," she said abruptly as her voice broke, "I'm just rambling. Dammit I'm so mad at you. I was so scared."

Janis started sobbing as she laid her head on his chest. "Do you know you almost got killed? You could be dead right now. Duncan almost lost his father. I had to sit in that waiting room all night, not knowing how you were, or if they were going to cut your leg off."

Terry interrupted. "Janis, listen to me. Calm down. I have to talk to you."

He told her he had made a decision, that he wanted her to be part of it and to understand -- to try and understand -- what he was trying to deal with. He finally realized that he was mortal. And he wanted to use his life for something significant, something more than money. The most significant thing he could think of was getting deeply involved in the Contra cause. If he had to die, he wanted to die for a cause.

The military cadet from Carthage had been resurrected.

Two days later, Terry looked up from his bed and saw Seal standing beside him. "Hey partner, you almost bought the fuckin' farm, huh? Janis tells me your heart's bruised and almost dislodged. Did ya go down makin' decisions, or did you freeze?" This is what pilots always want to know, wondering what they will do when the time comes."

"I got an opportunity to sorta prove myself ...to myself, Barry. Yeah, I was thinkin' all the way down all right. But, most important to me was I flyin' all the way to the ground instead of freezin' ... or prayin' to God. I was analyzing my options and acting on them all the fucking way to impact. I think my old instructor, John Brown, would be proud, if he knew. Don't laugh, but I'd like to think I performed as if I had 'the right stuff'."

Seal had sat down next to the bed and the two talked seemingly for hours about life and death, causes and the rest. They even discovered something more they had in common and had not realized. They both had the same birthday, July 16th.

"Barry, I've come to a decision. I want in. Full time. This may sound stupid, but, if I die, I want to die for something important and I think the Contra cause is important."

"You're hired ... again."


Terry had made his pact and he was at peace with himself.

Over the course of the next three months, Terry underwent two more operations, rehabilitation and he even designed and built his own cast support from Ultra-Light parts.

"What's that noise," Janis wondered as she walked in the door from work one afternoon. In the kitchen she found Duncan sliding around in his Big Bird house shoes amidst a cloud of white dust, "Snow mommy, it's snowing in the kitchen, watch me skate in the snow!", he shrieked.

She was flabbergasted by the sight of her husband with his foot propped up on a chair and his saber saw in his hands. He was cutting his cast off.

"You're supposed to leave it on six more weeks. What's Dr. Blankenship going to say?"

"Hey I know how things work," Terry barked. "Our bodies are like machines, and I know machines. The way I have it figured, if I saw the top part of this cast off and put this rubber tip on my heel I can exert my full body weight on my heel, and, by constructing the foot support properly, I will exercise my damaged foot muscles each time I walk. I'm getting rid of my crutches and building this brace. It makes perfect engineering sense."

"All right Dr. Reed, it's your foot," she answered. "But you'd better not bitch about pain or come to me for sympathy. I'm tired of hearing you moan in your sleep. I think you're a terrible patient. I'm going to start taking your pain pills if you don't, just to make living with you more tolerable."

"Come on, it's not so bad," he joked. "At least we get to park in handicap parking, don't we? The orthopedic surgeon told me I'm his first survivor of a foot injury of this magnitude. He wants to send my X-rays on a nationwide tour to all the medical schools. Maybe we'll get royalties."

"You are the eternal optimist," she said unable to hold back a smile.

The crash had temporarily removed him from his Ultra-Light business, but Terry had spent most of his recuperation time working on the Contra flight training outline. He had made his decision to divest himself of the Ultra-Light company, something that did not make Seth Ward and his other partners happy. But the spook world again had his interest and the accident would be the perfect excuse to extricate himself from the business.

June 11th was Janis' birthday and Terry's gift to her was making it his last day in the Ultra-Light business. She was happy about this because she didn't like her husband working with Ward.

She had grown to dislike the man intensely due to his overbearing ways and his tendency to siphon off the desperately-needed company cash flow to satisfy his insatiable greed.
He was a millionaire, but, inside his head, he was still the poor boy from "Dogtown," or North Little Rock, who needed to reinforce his ability to get the best of people in business deals. This was the way some Little Rock businessmen said Ward had made his fortune, by screwing his business partners. Janis considered him the ultimate bigot and sexist.

He had been a Marine fighter pilot in World War II and said he had flown with the famous "Pappy" Boyington and his "Black Sheep" squadron in the South Pacific. His favorite saying was: "Pappy was a pussy."

Ward was tall, 6'4', and gruff. But he could ooze charm when he wanted something from you. He would admit privately to Terry that he made his fortune by suing out-of-state companies for violating Arkansas' usury law, or its cap on interest. He had a reputation for using the legal system to his advantage. He was disliked by his neighbors and had only one true friend that Terry knew of. And Seth wasn't above trying to take advantage of him, financially. And the one running legal interference for him was none other than his son-in-law, Webb Hubbell, a former Chicago Bear tackle, a member of the Rose Law Firm and now a high-ranking official of the Justice Department. Terry and Ward split with bad blood between them.

On June 12th, Seal picked Terry up in Little Rock and flew him to Mena. Ground work on the field at Nella was about to start and drainage was a prime concern. Seal borrowed a pickup truck from Hampton, drove to Nella and both men "walked the field" to make one last inspection before the bulldozers started. Terry, actually, "limped the field."

While photographing the field from a knoll east of it, Seal turned to Terry and asked: "You want to be an instructor? I've hired a guy from Tulsa and another's coming down from Nebraska. Between them and Camp, that'll make four if you're on board. But I shit you not, this is gonna be dangerous. You told me that you love to fly at night, and I could easily work you in to the night schedule if you're interested. You want it?"

"Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic?"


Terry had now entered another loop. He was no longer just a consultant, he was now embarked on a course he had set in his hospital bed. He had committed himself and there would be no turning back.

As they flew back that day, it was briefing time again. Seal began by saying the job came with some perks. "We'll find you an airplane and part of our deal is you can keep it over in Little Rock. Consider it a company car. Evans will perform all your maintenance at Rich Mountain and he will have a secret source of bulk fuel for you to use, so that you won't be running up traceable fuel bills. The guy from Tulsa will be in charge of scheduling. He has created a perfect cover, which all the instructors are to use. If anyone asks you who you're training, just tell them you're a contract instructor with Ross Aviation and working in their foreign student department."

Ross Aviation was a real company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about 100 miles west of Mena. In addition to being a contract cargo firm, it operated a major flight training program and had a large foreign student enrollment. Its foreign student pilots, and those of another Tulsa aviation school, Spartan, literally filled the skies in this region during training, primarily in Cessna 150s. Many of their students were from the Middle East and Mexico. This would be a perfect cover for the Nella instructors since many of the Ross instructors were hired on a contract basis. Air traffic controllers would think nothing of hearing a panicky student screaming in a foreign tongue during a moment of stress.

"Have I left anything out?" Seal asked.

"What about communications? Surely, I don't use my home phone for scheduling, do I?"

"Oh I forgot. As soon as we land I'll take you by OSI and I'll introduce you to Aki."

"Aki? That sounds Japanese."

The fat man grinned. "It is. He's a slope."

Back in Little Rock, both men got into Terry's car and headed for 1217 Rebsamen Park Road, near the Arkansas River and within view of the State Capitol Building. The building was a nondescript, single-story building with rough wood siding situated next door to a pizza parlor. Aki Sawahata and his company, Overseas International (OSI), occupied the south half of the building.

Sawahata, neatly-dressed in a business suit, quickly closed a door at the end of the building as Seal and Terry walked in. Not knowing Terry, Sawahata clearly did not want the stranger to see whatever was in the room.

Terry was surprised and amused when Sawahata handed him a business card with his firm's acronym OSI, which to intelligence people meant Office of Special Investigations, the military equivalent of the CIA.

"Ohio, guizmas?" Terry was mustering up his best Japanese.

"You speak Japanese?" Sawahata asked amazed.

"Just enough to keep foreign nationals guessing," Terry grinned.

"In that case, I'll correct your Japanese. It's afternoon, so it's konichiwa."

"Well, in Southeast Asia, I always lived for kumbawa (night). That's when you go to town and play with the girls," Seal chimed in.

Sawahata was smiling. He seemed to be taking an immediate liking to Terry. Seal, who made the formal introductions, suggested going to a local oriental restaurant where they could talk without being overheard by Sawahata's two employees. Terry was learning how modern intelligence works. Real companies, doing real business, are used for cover -- just like the Mafia.

The firm had filed its incorporation papers with the Arkansas Secretary of State's office only three months earlier, on February 29, 1984. The papers listed as its officers Sawahata and a man identified as James Robinson of Clinton, Arkansas. Its ostensible business was developing trade for American companies wishing to conduct business with Japan.

Sawahata told Terry that the firm was set up primarily to export bulky commodities, preferably raw materials, back to Japan. In his words, the ships from Japan come over full and often return empty. His job was to fill the returning ships with cargo Japan needed. Arkansas had some of the resources his company was shipping: pulpwood, bauxite, and rice.

Terry later learned that wasn't all Overseas International was shipping. The tea-break that afternoon at Fu Lin's, the Chinese restaurant at 320 S. Victory, near the State Capitol Building, centered on communications.

"Now this is a little sensitive since CIA agents aren't supposed to be operating in the U.S.," Seal uttered in a guarded tone. "But Aki here is the Agency's resident guy. All three of us have a common friend. From your point of view, Terry, Aki's your secure communications link. He has all the radio gear at his office. We'll all communicate through him. That way, since he's local, you won't have any long distance phone charges on your phone over ta Mena."

While Terry was still absorbing all this newly passed information, Seal added. "While we're talkin' about phones, do not ever, ever, ever use any of the pay phones in Mena. They're all bugged."

"How do you know?", Terry asked.

"I had Aki have em' bugged, for security reasons ... let's just say we're huntin' for a mole. Get it?"


Terry knew to ask no further about the "mole". He knew what the term meant and assumed Seal and Sawahata were concerned about having a double agent in their midst. He cleared his mind of that eerie thought and got back to what was said earlier about secure communications.

Terry could see the beauty of the setup. He could contact Sawahata by local phone, and then would have no need to call anyone else. The Agency had taken care of communications security, it appeared, but he was curious if they used telephone lines or air waves.

"What kind of communications capability do you have? Just so I'll know," Terry asked Sawahata. "I mean, is it secure? And can you talk on aircraft frequencies?"

"Aki can communicate with God and the devil can't even jam him," Seal answered. That was all Terry needed to know.

"So, Terry-san, Barry tells me you know quite a bit about manufacturing. I find that very interesting," Sawahata said. "It is something I do not know very much about. And Company has tasked me with some oversight in this area. Maybe you could assist me if I get it cleared from higher up."

"Aki, I already took Terry to Brodix," Seal said. "And I told him about Iver Johnson's." Sawahata appeared uneasy. This had been a major breach of security. Seal had revealed the formation of the arms manufacturing network, without getting approval from Cathey. And Sawahata, the local man in charge, now was learning for the first time that Terry had been brought into a loop for which he had not been cleared.

Terry was already realizing that things were being run on the sloppy side, not the way things were done in Air Force Intelligence. There, no one was ever brought into a loop for which he was not specifically cleared. And the person had to have an absolute need to know.

"From operational point of view, Terry, I will be your primary contact from this point on," Sawahata said. "Mr. Seal is out of state a lot, so from now on just consider me your boss. I'm glad to have you with us. You come highly recommended by Mr. Cathey."


What Terry didn't know then -- and what Sawahata didn't say, was that Seal had something else to do for the Agency, something that had become more urgent and immediate -- priority numero uno. Seal, who knew how to always tell "the suits" what they wanted to hear, had done just that.

Seal had passed on to them that the Sandinistas were dirty, and providing the Medellin Cartel with safe haven and a trans-shipment point for mega-loads of cocaine heading north to America. Just what the White House needed to convince a recalcitrant Congress to approve military aid for the Contras. As Seal spoke that day in Little Rock with Terry and Sawahata, the CIA was getting ready to equip his C-123K military cargo plane called "The Fat Lady" for a sting to ensnare the Sandinistas.


On the way back to Sawahata's office, Terry saw a problem that had not been discussed. "Barry, when I get my new airplane, where am I suppose to base it? I bring this up because there is no private hangar space available here in Little Rock."

"For the time being, I've made a deal with Little Rock Air Center. I've got an old friend over there I can lean on for you. They only have tie down space available for now, though. And we will need better facilities, once this thing is fully operational."

Sawahata injected: "I went out to North Little Rock Airport recently and saw some private hangars under construction. Maybe you can get one of those."

"Yeah, that would be great. I still need a place to store my Ultra-Light, too," Terry said.

Seal winced. "Wasn't one brush with death in one of those crazy things good enough for ya?"

"Hey, you know us pilots. Calculated risk takers, isn't that what you say?"

After dropping off Sawahata, and on the way to the airport, Seal took the opportunity to give Terry some cautionary advice. "Hey, I know you're all gungho on this. But if I were you, I would go slow," Seal said. "There's no guarantee here on how long this may last. For all we know, Cathey could get his way and the fuckin' Marines could invade Nicaragua tomorrow. This whole Mena thing could come to an end before it even gets started. In other words, I wouldn't consider this a full-time job. I wouldn't want to see you and Janis hurt economically. "

Terry understood that assets had no GS rating, nor did he want one. He had cashed his last government paycheck when he left the Air Force and vowed then never to collect one again.

With that in mind, he told Sawahata he wanted to "volunteer" for the night shift at Mena and do his training under cover of darkness, always his favorite time to fly. The other instructors had no problem with that, since that was the most dangerous time to fly in mountainous terrain.

This would also give him the daytime hours to stay active as a machine-tool consultant. A good cover, he thought.

_______________

Notes:

1. Testimony of Oliver North, Hearings, 100-7, Part I, 7/7/87, p. 54

2. Ibid, 7/13/87, p. 40

3. Memo by North/Constantine Menges, 10/19/83, subject "Special Operations: Nicaragua."
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