Newsgroups: or.politics,talk.politics.drugs
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 13:25:35 -0800 (PST)
From: "Anti-Prohibition Lg." <[aal 01] at [teleport.com]>
To: [p--i--t] at [whitehouse.gov], [vice president] at [whitehouse.gov]
Subject: ART: LA Weekly news on Crack/Cocaine (fwd)
For those in Oregon please note the connection with EVERGREEN AIR
based in McMinnville. Floyd.
*** DRUG WAR, or DRUG PEACE? ***
New Dope on the Contra-Crack Connection
Mystery man Lister's business partners had strong ties to U.S.
intelligence The principals in the case have all completed prison
terms, and none has ever provided a full accounting of his schemes.
But new evidence revealed in the past week provides important details
that illuminate possible links between U.S. intelligence and the
shadowy network alleged to have sold drugs in Los Angeles to finance
the illicit contra war in Nicaragua.
The drug wholesaler in the scheme was Danilo Blandon, a contra
supporter and convicted trafficker who says he started in the trade to
fund the contras, but stayed in the game solely for profit. Blandon's
primary retailer, according to evidence presented at trial this year,
was Donnell "Freeway Ricky" Ross, a notorious crack racketeer recently
sentenced to life in prison.
Another player in Blandon's operation is just coming into focus.
Ronald J. Lister was first linked to Blandon during a series of
investigative raids conducted by the Sheriff's Department in 1986.
Lister was recently identified as the source of a wide range of arms
and electronic intelligence gear to Blandon and Ross. Now, more is
coming out.
One key source of new information is the Sheriff's Department, which
conducted a two-month investigation into the contra-crack charges
after the San Jose Mercury-News broke the story last August. Sheriff
Sherman Block declared last week that his inquiry effectively cleared
the CIA of complicity in the scheme. But the report afforded Lister a
much more important role in the Blandon organization than was
previously understood. Law-enforcement officers investigating the
Blandon operation in 1986 knew of Lister as a "mule" who transported
millions of dollars in drug money to Miami. They say the cash was
laundered there, presumably to pay off suppliers, and allegedly to
provide assistance to the contras.
More important, interviews and documentation released in connection
with Block's report indicate that, while Lister may not have been a
CIA agent, he certainly acted like one. He was for years engaged in
international sales of arms and security equipment - some of it
restricted and illegal to sell abroad - with potential customers as
far-flung as Iran, Eastern Europe, Hong Kong and El Salvador. In
addition, the report confirmed Lister's connection to an active
participant in the murky underworld of Reagan-era covert operations:
three-year Naval Academy classmate of Oliver North and current San
Diego resident David Scott Weekly.
After getting his start fighting in Vietnam with the U.S. Navy SEALs,
Weekly pursued an adventuresome career as a mercenary who specialized
in sabotage and deep-cover penetration. He is best known for his
portrayal in the Hollywood treatment of former Special Forces Colonel
Bo Gritz's 1983 POW expedition to Southeast Asia. The film Uncommon
Valor featured a blond explosives expert from San Diego, and Gritz,
now famous as a militia leader, likes to refer to Weekly as "the Real
MacGyver." While Lister was laundering money for the Blandon ring and
pitching "security" contracts to the Salvadoran military, Weekly was
carrying out covert operations being directed through the Vice
President Bush-headed National Security Council.
Both Lister and Weekly were interviewed by Sheriff's investigators. It
was the first time they have been questioned in connection with the
alleged contra scheme. While both were guarded in their comments, both
acknowledged an occasional working relationship that lasted several
years.
Scott Weekly's name first surfaced on October 27, 1986, when L.A.
Sheriff's deputies and narcotics detectives targeting the Blandon ring
searched Lister's Mission Viejo home. They confiscated paramilitary
equipment, training films, photos of Lister apparently taken at
military training camps in Central America and boxes of documents.
According to deputies who participated in the raid, an agitated Lister
told them they were making a big mistake and threatened to report the
officers to his contact in Washington, "Mr. Weekly of the CIA."
Lister's strange words were first published by the Mercury-News in
August. Two months later, the Los Angeles Times dismissed the man who
uttered them as a coke addict who made bogus claims in a ludicrous bid
to throw the police off his trail. But Block's report gives foundation
for Lister's claim that he was connected.
In a 10-page handwritten note made by Lister in 1985 or 1986 - the
document was confiscated during the raid of his house and released
last week by Sheriff Block - Lister wrote that he had "regular meeting
[sic] with DIA subcontractor Scott Weekly. Scott had worked in El
Salvador for us." The scribbled notes appear to refer to Lister's
early-1980s "security" dealings with that country's military and
government leaders through two Orange County companies he headed,
Pyramid International Security Consultants and Mundy Security Group.
And DIA appears to refer to the Defense Intelligence Agency - a
little-known intelligence outfit connected to the National Security
Council.
Other documents seized from Lister's home show that Lister was
arranging a contract for Pyramid to provide equipment and CIA-trained
"physical security personnel" to Salvadoran Defense Minister Jose
Guillermo Garcia. Pyramid employee Christopher Moore flew to San
Salvador to meet with Garcia's ally, ARENA party founder and
death-squad don Roberto D'Aubuisson. Lister's other Salvadoran
contract proposals involved a failed deal to sell school buses and
medical supplies to the Christian Democrat government, and security
services for a French-built air base. The air-base deal apparently
went through.
In his handwritten notes, Lister also wrote Weekly's name next to that
of D'Aubuisson and Christian Democrat politician Ray Prendes - two key
Salvadoran officials and business contacts for Pyramid.
Lister explained during the recent interviews with deputies that he
"often met with Scott Weekly because Weekly was very knowledgeable in
the area of commercially available military-related systems." Lister
added that he occasionally used Weekly "as a consultant." The report
noted, "[Lister] said he still considered Weekly to be a friend."
An independent source contacted by the Weekly helped flesh out the
nature of the Lister and Weekly collaboration. The source, a
knowledgeable arms merchant who insisted on anonymity, said he worked
with Lister and Weekly in the early 1980s. The source said Lister's
business deals in Central America were successful thanks to the
cooperation of the DIA, which at that time answered to Oliver North.
Speaking of Lister's dealings with D'Aubuisson, the source laughed,
"Somebody from the DIA wanted it to happen."
The source also described a second figure in Lister's company as
intelligence-connected - Richard Edward Wilker, named in the Pyramid
contract as the technical director at the firm. The source described
Wilker as a CIA agent who left the agency in the wake of the Edmund
Wilson/Quadaffi arms scandal of the 1970s.
Two additional sources on Wilker are Robert Barry Ashby and John S.
Vandewerker, both security consultants who worked with Wilker at
Intersect, Inc., a security consulting firm which went out of business
in the early 1980s. They claim Wilker never worked for the CIA, but
both Vandewerker and Ashby, admit they worked for the agency
themselves. They said Intersect pursued military and security
contracts in Latin America. Vandewerker said he stopped working for
the CIA in 1974. He also added that, through Wilker, he met Lister in
the early 1980s and confirmed that Wilker traveled to El Salvador on
business trips with Pyramid in the early 1980s. Efforts to locate
Richard Wilker to comment for this story were unsuccessful.
Both Wilker and Weekly accompanied Lister to El Salvador and Nicaragua
on repeated trips in the early and mid-1980s, the anonymous source
claimed. Other records and sources confirm that Lister and Weekly have
continued their occasional collaboration to the present day.
Court records filed during Lister's San Diego trial on 1989 cocaine
charges show the pair working together as late as 1991 - while Lister
was out on bail under the terms of a plea-bargain agreement, which is
still under court seal. (Both Lister and federal attorneys in San
Diego have ignored requests that they move to unseal the agreement.)
San Diego attorney Lynn Ball, who represented Lister until Lister had
him taken off the case, claims he came to represent Lister after
receiving a telephone call from his old Navy acquaintance Scott
Weekly. "Weekly called me and said Lister was in the bucket and that
you should go over and see him. How in the world they knew each other,
I don't know," Ball said in an interview.
Ball explained that, as part of his effort to get Lister released on
bail in 1990, he helped convince the court to allow Lister to work
with Weekly at the San Diego offices of Markon Corporation, a
mysterious company Ball said was engaged in international commodities
exchange. In 1991, Lister traveled to Mexico with Weekly on Markon's
behalf, a trip he would later regret. Upon his return to the United
States, Lister was thrown back in jail and Markon's offices were
raided by the DEA. Prosecution briefs filed in Lister's 1989 cocaine
trial assert that Markon was "nothing more than a front organization"
set up to launder money from drug and weapons sales.
Ball denied Markon Corp. was anything but a legitimate business. In a
brief filed in federal court, Ball claimed that an eight-month
investigation by the DEA had failed to turn up any evidence that
Markon Corp. was involved in illegal activities. Ball repeatedly
denied that Lister worked for the CIA, but was less certain about
Weekly. "I heard he was a SEAL. The SEALs worked under the CIA in
'Nam. If he was a SEAL, maybe he was working for the CIA."
Lister and Weekly demurred when Sheriff's investigators asked them to
describe their connections to the U.S. intelligence agencies that
helped secretly arm the Nicaraguan contras in the mid-1980s. Lister
told investigators their focus on the CIA was miscast: "There's a
bigger picture here," the report quotes Lister as saying. "You've got
to remember, there's 32 intelligence agencies out there. The CIA is
just one of them." As an example of another, Lister suggested the
National Security Council.
When Weekly was asked if he had worked for the DIA, he said, "Let me
put it this way - there is not one ounce of love lost between the DIA
and me. It is even more aggressive than that . . . It's a non-subject
- that's as much as I'm going to say about it. As far as I'm
concerned, I wouldn't piss on them if their face was on fire."
Scott Weekly's animosity toward the DIA goes unexplained in Block's
report but almost certainly stems from his 1986 conviction in an
Oklahoma City federal courthouse for smuggling C-4 explosives onboard
two civilian airliners bound to Las Vegas. After turning himself in to
federal agents, Weekly pleaded guilty to explosives-smuggling charges
but refused to give the names of anyone else who was involved. After
Weekly served 14 months of a five-year prison sentence, the court
granted him a new hearing that focused on new evidence about the
explosives.
Court documents and recent interviews show the explosives were used by
Weekly in a short-lived covert U.S. operation aimed at uniting the
leaders of various Afghan rebel factions by providing them lessons in
how to blow up Soviet tanks. Weekly and his friend Bo Gritz testified
they carried out the operation on Bureau of Land Management property
near Sandy Valley, Nevada. Gritz testified that he received permission
to use the site, which consisted of little more than an airstrip and a
chain-link fence, from an organization called "Evergreen." In a recent
interview, Gritz confirmed that Evergreen was actually Evergreen
International Airlines, identified elsewhere as a proprietary company
spun off by the CIA after Congress ordered the agency to "dissolve"
its secret airline, Air America, in 1978. Evergreen officials have
denied links to the agency.
At the same hearing, Judge Wayne Alley pressed Gritz and Weekly about
the extent to which the U.S. government was involved in an operation
he suspected violated the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Both answered
they had discussed the mission with U.S. Army Colonel Nestor Pino - a
Cuban-American who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion and worked
with the NSC's Defense Security Assistance Administration - and a
State Department official named William Bode.
In addition, Weekly and Gritz said, they were paid by Osman Kalderim,
a representative of a company named Stanford Technology. According to
the final report on the Iran-contra scandal by Special Prosecutor
Lawrence Walsh, Stanford Technology was a private company set up by
two of Oliver North's associates in Iran-contra, retired Air Force
Major General Richard Secord and Iranian businessman Albert Hakim - to
fund the secret arming of the Nicaraguan contras.
According to Gritz, the Nevada prosecution was part of a White House
effort to discredit him after he returned from a late-1986 POW mission
to Burma with videotaped "interviews" asserting that the CIA was
smuggling opiates out of Southeast Asia. The ill-fated Burma mission
would end Gritz's and Weekly's smooth relationship with U.S. covert
operators.
The Afghan operation in Nevada was itself cut short when Gritz and
Weekly were called to a late-October 1986 meeting at the White House
in order to launch the Burma project.
"On Halloween," said Gritz in a recent interview, "[National Security
Council official Thomas] Harvey called me from the White House. Harvey
said [Vice President] Bush had it on good authority that [Burmese
warlord] Khun Sa had POWs and . . . Scott and I flew to D.C. to meet
Harvey, who gave us some documents. I asked him, 'Do you want us to
stop the Afghan training operation?' He said, 'Yeah.'"
The documents - which Gritz published in his 1991 autobiography,
Called To Serve - were letters of safe passage that he and Weekly
carried with them to Southeast Asia. A letter written on National
Security Council letterhead and given to Weekly describes him as "an
operational agent cooperating with this office."
Weekly's high-level meeting at the White House took place just days
after Ronald Lister told police about a well-placed contact in
Washington named Mr. Weekly.