THE BUSH CONNECTION
Nairn, Allan
theProgressive May 1987 The Bush Connection BY ALLAN NAIRN In 1983, the office of Vice President George Bush sent a former CIA agent to Honduras to work as a combat adviser for the Nicaraguan...
...Allan Nairn, a free-lance writer, wrote "The White House Tapes, Again," in the April issue of The Progressive...
...Other pilots who have asked not to be quoted by name have given similar accounts of arms flights from the United States...
...official identified Mejia as "a close friend" of Rodriguez...
...The Special Situation Group holds oversight authority for public and covert actions related to terrorism policy...
...The first meeting, according to the chronology, was to discuss "the general situation in Central America...
...His work in the contra-supply operation went on...
...Villoldo was permitted to run his own semi-autonomous contra support operation with backing from the CIA station while remaining off the agency payroll and outside its lines of authority, note U.S...
...Villoldo was part of an old-boy network of former CIA agents known to Gregg from his own career at the agency...
...The Herald also reported that another Bay of Pigs veteran "said it was likely that Posada had been brought into the contra operation by Felix Rodriguez...
...Winter, reached at his current assignment in Washington, D.C., hung up the phone when asked if he knew Gustavo Villoldo...
...Toliver says his last arms-supply flight arranged by Quintero and the man he believes to be Rodriguez took place in July 1986...
...Last fall, the media reported that Donald Gregg had sent Bay of Pigs veteran Felix Rodriguez to El Salvador's Ilopango air base, where much of the contra-supply operation was located...
...The statement claimed that Rodriguez and Gregg had not even discussed contra aid until August 1986—some nineteen months after the first arrangements had been made for Rodriguez to go to El Salvador...
...According to U.S...
...Though he failed to call for structural changes in the Death Squad apparatus, Bush and the U.S...
...Staben was publicly named as one of the suspected leaders of the kidnapping ring and was called in for interrogation by a Salvadoran court...
...Nobody fucked with you...
...Instead, he went for 'All Kinds of Weirdos' George Bush's links to the contras first became an issue last October after the Eugene Hasenfus supply plane was shot down over Nicaragua...
...The limitations eventually embodied in the first Boland Amendment of December 1983 explicitly prohibited the agency from pursuing a strategy of overthrowing the Sandinista government...
...Although the chronology acknowledged extensive contacts dating back to November 1983 among Rodriguez, Gregg, Watson, and, on three occasions, Bush himself, the statement claimed that the subject of Rodriguez's contra aid activities did not come up until August 1986 and was never discussed with the Vice President...
...Colonel Roberto Staben was one of the leaders some State Department officials were particularly anxious to remove...
...If Faribundo Marti [the Salvadoran guerrilla front] does it, why can't we...
...On January 23, 1984, a group of forty FDN and Misura (the Miskito contra group) task-force commanders signed a memo to "Colonel Raymond" of the CIA station praising Villoldo and asking that he be officially designated as their operations adviser...
...Some CIA officers are said to have blamed Gregg for erring badly in sending Villoldo to Honduras and believed that Villoldo's actions had been so provocative and disruptive of CIA operations as to call into question Villoldo's basic loyalties...
...The Bush task force's recommendations bolstered the group's authority...
...Henry Whaley, a former arms dealer who helped Castejon gain entree to the North network, told The Herald that "the letter with the Vice President's seal and its reference to Jeb Bush made it possible to channel Castejon into the 'shadow Administration pipeline in Washington.'" In late 1985 and 1986, Federal customs agents in Miami investigating contra gunrunning reportedly developed information that Jeb Bush may have been linked to clandestine contra arms shipments...
...Gregg then convened a meeting on the contra support operation with Watson, Corr, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Walker, a CIA representative, Raymond Burghardt of the NSC staff, and Colonel Robert Earl of the NSC, representing the office of Oliver North...
...Rodriguez had moved to El Salvador and set up shop at Ilopango some five months before Posada's August 18, 1985, escape...
...Chamorro says he worked with both men...
...But that is precisely the strategy Villoldo was pursuing, according to Steadman Fagoth, a Miskito contra leader who worked closely with Villoldo...
...By that time, according to a chronology issued by the office of the Vice President, Rodriguez had already met "with Gregg five times and once with Vice President Bush...
...Though the Tower Commission commented on the seeming isolation of Vice President Bush from the mainstream of Iran-contra decision-making, the offices of Bush and North were joined by a number of institutional links...
...U.S...
...intelligence sources familiar with Villoldo's tenure in Honduras, Villoldo presented his credentials to Donald Winter, the CIA station chief who was working as a political officer at the U.S...
...When asked about the charges in a telephone interview, Jeb Bush denied any personal involvement but said it's "plausible" that arms were sent from the United States to the contras...
...Gregg and Rodriguez met on November 3, 1983, and December 24, 1984...
...From January 19 to January 21, 1986, Colonel Watson spent three days in El Salvador with Rodriguez, Colonel Steele, and others to "discuss counter-insurgency operations...
...The Herald reported that "a Miami wholesaler and Bay of Pigs veteran who said he had spoken with one of two Cuban exiles who had aided Posada in his escape said that Posada was told while he was still in prison that a job with the contras was waiting for him in El Salvador...
...Jeb Bush also asks: "Has anybody ever done any research on how much the Sandinistas get from this country...
...Rodriguez and his Ilopango associate, Rafael Quintero, began meeting private pilots around August 1985 to contract for clandestine arms shipments, according to pilots who say they worked with Rodriguez...
...When asked by 60 Minutes if Gregg lied when he denied discussing the contras with Rodriguez, Bush responded that "he forgot...
...Another circuit of flights by Toliver and his colleagues reportedly went from Miami into Ilopango...
...I met Max Gomez [Rodriguez's alias] three times and never discussed Nicaragua with him...
...Some of the meetings reportedly took place in Miami, and some of the arms flights originated there...
...Villoldo in that role...
...The second purportedly concerned Rodriguez's "interest in going to El Salvador and working with the EI Salvador air force...
...Gregg and his staff maintained periodic communication with Felix Rodriguez, but were never involved in directing, coordinating, or approving military aid to the contras in Nicaragua," the statement said...
...North wrote to McFarlane that the Guatemalans cooperated as "a direct consequence of the informal liaison we have established...
...Winter reportedly introduced Villoldo to senior contra and Honduran military officials...
...According to intelligence sources who dealt with Bush's office, Gregg provided these men with contacts and introductions, gave them directions on how to tap into sources of clandestine funds, and encouraged them to recruit contra advisers in the United States and Latin America...
...According to press reports, the group debated the merits of preemptive kidnapping of suspected terrorist leaders...
...Rodriguez had worked for Secord in the late 1960s when Secord was the CIA station chief helping to run the secret war in Laos...
...The two men paid him in cash, he said, for a series of weapons flights from Miami into the joint CIA/Honduran airbase at Aguacate, Honduras...
...Intelligence sources say Villoldo also dealt with John Mallett, a CIA official who worked as second secretary at the embassy and succeeded Winter as station chief...
...Three years later, he turned up as a participant in Felix Rodriguez's contra supply operation, according to sources close to the Salvadoran military...
...Some participants in contra support operations claim that Bush's son Jeb, a fluent Spanish speaker who is close to the Miami Cuban community, played an important role in the clandestine contra supply network...
...One pilot, Michael Toliver, says he met in Miami on several occasions with a man he believes to be Rodriguez and another he knows to be Quintero...
...Villoldo's approach quickly won support among rank-and-file comandantes, Fagoth says...
...Research for this article was funded, in part, by contributions in memory of The Progressive's late Senior Editor, Sidney Lens...
...That's all I have to say," he added, and hung up the phone...
...embassy in Tegucigalpa...
...In 1983, they reportedly grew concerned about the mood of Congress and launched an ongoing discussion on the prospects for alternative contra aid channels...
...It's untrue, unfair, and totally wrong...
...If they needed to get word to Washington, they'd go from Jeb Bush to Don Gregg to George Bush...
...In one case, according to sources close to the Salvadoran army, Secord intervened with Sal...
...One meeting with Quintero in January 1986 reportedly took place in Guayaquil, Ecuador...
...The munitions would then be diverted to contra bases in Honduras...
...They noted Villoldo's service in Bolivia in 1967 where, together with Felix Rodriguez, he had participated in the CIA mission to track down and kill Che Guevara...
...Casey, Gregg, and National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter were members.^ North ran a special NSC counter-terrorism group, which included Dewey Clarridge, the CIA officer responsible for the contras in 1983-1984, who reportedly helped plan the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and oversaw the controversial CIA manual which discussed tactics for "neutralizing" local Sandinista officials...
...Quintero and Posada later joined Rodriguez on the staff of the contra supply operation at Ilopango...
...Better that the Geneva conventions not involve themselves in matters of war...
...When asked if Villoldo was sent to Honduras by Donald Gregg, Fagoth replied: "That could be, but I can't get into it...
...Fagoth asks...
...Chamorro says Mallett told them that "Villoldo worked for people of the ultra-right and not for the agency, that he wasn't controlled by them...
...The following day, Rodriguez spent ten minutes with Vice President Bush, with Gregg, Watson, former Senator Nicholas Brady (Republican from New Jersey), Oliver North, and ambassador to El Salvador Edwin Corr sitting in...
...Rodriguez to assist him in going to El Salvador...
...The Guatemalans were to falsify end-user certificates, claiming that what North described as "$8 million of munitions for the FDN" was destined for the Guatemalan army...
...Fagoth recalls working closely with Mallett, who acted as a contra liaison with the CIA...
...There are all kinds of weirdos coming out of the woodwork on this thing...
...Posada's Venezuelan lawyer, Francisco Leandro Mora, told The Miami Herald last November that Posada's escape—which involved $28,600 in bribes to Venezuelan prison authorities—"'was meticulously planned' with plenty of outside help" and was designed "to get Luis out of the country within twenty-four hours...
...Ollie had the highest regard for the Vice President," says Bruce Cameron, a Washington pro-contra activist who lobbied Congress with grants from the foundations of Carl "Spitz" Chanell, a key collaborator of North in the private aid network...
...Bush has also made a point of identifying himself with the actions of his staff in their handling of the contra issue...
...This one was attended by Colonel James Steele, the U.S...
...A February 1987 New York Times report quoting an unnamed U.S...
...On December 15, the office issued a chronology of contacts with Rodriguez which acknowledged that Gregg and Rodriguez had indeed discussed contra aid and that Gregg's deputy, Colonel Samuel Watson, had been called by Rodriguez and told the Hasenfus flight was missing—a day before the downing was announced by the Nicaraguan government...
...On a number of occasions, the Crisis Pre-Planning Group was chaired by Donald Gregg and turned to North for staff support...
...Villoldo wanted to win the war, and the CIA didn't," he says...
...North, Cameron says, "saw Bush as the person to go down to Central America and consecrate the democracies that were emerging there...
...On April 30, 1986, Rodriguez came to Washington and met with Watson "to discuss progress of the insurgency and the need for helicopter parts...
...He's not a liar...
...From the summer of 1985 to the summer of 1986, a period that spanned the Miami arms flights and dozens of direct flights into Nicaragua by Hasenfus and his Ilopango colleagues, Rodriguez spoke frequently with Gregg by telephone and had at least two additional meetings with Gregg, two with Watson, and two with Bush himself, the chronology states...
...According to sources who worked with him, Donald Gregg at times plugged his contra aid recruits into parts of the North-Secord system, as was done in the case of Felix Rodriguez...
...They instructed me where to go and who to see," Toliver says...
...I have a pact of honor with Villoldo to not discuss certain things...
...Villoldo continued his work in Honduras until late 1984...
...If the President had been told some of the things in that report, it wouldn't have happened, but he was cut off...
...North recommended an increase in U.S...
...On June 5, 1985, again according to the chronology, Rodriguez returned to Washington for another session with Gregg...
...Staben, however, refused to present himself...
...Bush takes a different view of the conduct of his own staff...
...We could go by any route available without any interference from any agency," Toliver says...
...Though some of the contra support work sponsored by Bush's office appears to have been done independently of other White House programs of covert contra aid, and even predated them, much of it was carried out in coordination with the private aid network organized by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, formerly of the National Security Council, and retired Major General Richard Secord, the NSC contractor who ran numerous missions for North in the Iran-contra affair...
...Senior customs officials elected not to pursue the matter, and some agents have now reportedly been asked about their information by Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh...
...backers, and according to sources with first-hand knowledge of the incident, presented Duarte with a letter from General Richard Secord...
...customs agents from Miami have reportedly told Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh that they believe Bush's son Jeb, former head of the Dade County Republican Party, was linked to contra arms shipments...
...From Miami, Rodriguez and two fellow Bay of Pigs veterans, Rafael Quintero and Luis Posada Carriles, ran missions for Operation Mongoose, a program of covert actions against the Cuban mainland, including a series of abortive plots to assassinate Fidel Castro...
...Intelligence on the progress of the clandestine arms shipments was passed on to both Oliver North and the office of Vice President Bush, principals in the various contra aid efforts have told Congressional investigators...
...intelligence agencies from providing the contras with any form of material military aid...
...Edgar Chamorro, a former director of the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (FDN), the largest contra group, says Winter and Mallett were CIA operatives assigned to the contra account...
...Asked for comment on Gregg's dealings with Villoldo, Bush spokesman Steve Hart quoted an October statement from the Vice President's office that "neither the Vice President nor anyone on his staff is directing or coordinating an operation in Central America...
...According to Central American intelligence sources, Rodriguez made contact during the trip with General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, the Guatemalan chief of state...
...The arrangement was in place during the period covered by the first Boland Amendment, which capped CIA spending for the contras at $24 million and barred agency involvement in efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua...
...If I thought he was a liar, he wouldn't be working for me...
...At the time, U.S...
...According to NSC consultant Terry Arnold, North served with the Inter-Departmental Group on Terrorism and the Terrorist Incident Working Group, both of which reported to the Crisis Pre-Plan-ning Group and the Special Situation Group...
...This March, press reports quoted members of the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-contra affair as saying that Casey was the main force behind the North-Secord private aid network...
...They just warned us to be very careful of this man," Chamorro says...
...The conversations at times included President Ronald Reagan and then-White House counsel Edwin Meese...
...Rodriguez wanted to work in El Salvador against the insurgency...
...In an interview with 60 Minutes this March, Bush reaffirmed the December statement and said that it "has stood the test of time...
...military aid to El Salvador was hanging in the balance because of bad publicity and Congressional reaction to the army's atrocious human-rights record...
...The chronology implies that during the next month, Rodriguez traveled to Central America...
...Neither the Vice President nor anyone on his staff is directly or indirectly coordinating an operation in Central America...
...intelligence sources and contra leaders familiar with the mission...
...Gregg did not respond to messages left at his home and office...
...Gregg and Colonel Watson to express his concerns that the informal contra support organization which then existed might not survive" until Congressionally approved CIA funding could get back under way in October 1986...
...military attache at the American embassy in El Salvador...
...Fitzwater responded to press reports that Gregg had sent Rodriguez to Ilopango with the statement: "Gregg has said he had no knowledge of anything involving contras...
...officials and contra leaders, his relations with local agency officials had soured badly...
...The memo reportedly angered the CIA station officers, who told colleagues that Villoldo was trying to undermine the FDN leadership of Adolfo Calero and Enrique Bermudez...
...The Vice President's office had no jurisdiction or responsibility with regard to contra supply operations...
...After the second meeting, Gregg called U.S...
...Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, now the President's chief spokesman, at first refused to comment on reports that Bush's office had helped direct the Hasenfus air drops...
...He explained he wasn't lying...
...Toliver claims the contents of the arms flights did not undergo the usual inspection by airport authorities...
...When asked by Time magazine about reports of his involvement with private contra aid, Bush responded sharply: "There is this insidious suggestion that I was conducting an operation," he said...
...I can deny it unequivocally...
...This goes against the Geneva conventions...
...After press reports of telephone records from Rodriguez's San Salvador safe house revealed a series of calls to the White House and Gregg's home, the Vice President's office revised its position...
...Much of the contra support work carried out by Bush's staff was done in coordination with CIA director William Casey and the private aid network of Oliver North and Richard Se-cord...
...The Central American sources say Rodriguez and Mejia discussed a plan, first broached by Rodriguez during a previous visit, whereby Guatemala would provide cover for U.S...
...Nor, Bush's office claims, did Watson detect any trace of it during his three-day visit to El Salvador—much of which was spent in the company of Rodriguez and Colonel Steele...
...Though Villoldo received intelligence, contacts, and logistical support from the CIA station, he did not report to the agency...
...Bush's office at first refused to say whether there was any connection to Rodriguez but later issued a statement saying that Gregg was simply doing a favor for an old CIA colleague who wanted to help the Salvadoran counter-insurgency...
...Staben, with what State Department officials describe as strong support from elements of the Pentagon and CIA, escaped the 1983 purge...
...By the end of 1983, according to U.S...
...He was very high on the role of Bush...
...Deniability was said to be a prime consideration, and none is known to have had written contractual relationships with Bush's office or the White House staff...
...The specifics of that plan were later revealed in the Tower Commission report, which printed excerpts from a March 5, 1985, computer message from Oliver North to then National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane...
...The deal went through in a series of shipments starting around March 10, 1985...
...The Reagan Congressional budget request, submitted soon after, called for an increase in U.S...
...arms shipments to the contras in exchange for increased U.S...
...Other U.S...
...This occurred during the time of the second Boland Amendment, which took effect in October 1984 and barred U.S...
...He believes Americans should "firmly support Democratic forces around the world, and Nicaragua is the best place to start...
...We didn't need a stamp of approval from Customs or anybody...
...The statement conceded, however, that Rodriguez had held repeated telephone conversations and meetings with Gregg and Colonel Samuel Watson of Bush's staff, and that Rodriguez met on three occasions with the Vice President himself...
...Hart said that questions on Villoldo would have to be handled by Gregg himself...
...Rodriguez in any of his meetings with the Vice President's office...
...On February 19, 1985, shortly upon returning from Central America and his Guatemala mission, Rodriguez met with Gregg again—this time, according to the chronology from Bush's office, "to report growing support for his work in El Salvador...
...theProgressive May 1987 The Bush Connection BY ALLAN NAIRN In 1983, the office of Vice President George Bush sent a former CIA agent to Honduras to work as a combat adviser for the Nicaraguan contras, according to U.S...
...Seventy-three people died in the blast...
...officials who served in Honduras at the time...
...officials complained that Villoldo's background had not been sufficiently checked...
...I'm not sure it's illegal," he said...
...In 1986, the government of Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte announced it had broken a major kidnapping ring involving senior military officers and members of the Salvadoran oligarchy...
...The commanders lauded Villoldo as a man "who we know and admire for his successful trajectory of anticommunist struggle...
...Several contra pilots claim that Felix Rodriguez was involved in clandestine arms shipments out of Miami—an apparent violation of U.S...
...Gregg's office...
...According to later press reports, Steele worked closely with Rodriguez on the contra air supply operation, at one point making a dramatic visit to a Rodriguez safe house to scold a group of Rhodesian mercenary pilots whose rowdy public behavior was endangering the mission's secrecy...
...He wants to bury the communists—whoever they may be...
...It is chaired by the Vice President...
...Posada came to Ilopango months after escaping from a Venezuelan jail, where he had been interned for nine years awaiting trial for planning the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines civilian flight...
...The letter vouched for Staben's character and asked that he be given favorable consideration in light of his work with Rodriguez in behalf of the contra network...
...Sure, there's a pretty good chance that arms were shipped, but does that break any law...
...Mallett, reached at the same Washington number, denied having worked with the contras and said he had never heard of Steadman Fagoth...
...According to Bush's office, however, Gregg and Rodriguez did not discuss contra aid, since at this point Gregg was still purportedly unaware of his friend's involvement in the contra support operation...
...Gustavo Villoldo arrived in Honduras as Congress was debating restricting the CIA role in the simmering contra war...
...According to former intelligence agents who say they worked with the Vice President's office, Villoldo was one of several individuals recruited by Gregg and put to work outside normal CIA channels to provide military aid for the contra forces...
...This February, while reacting to the findings of the Tower Commission, Bush implicitly faulted President Reagan's staff relations, noting that Reagan "is a del-egator...
...Donald P. Gregg, Bush's national security adviser, also declined to comment...
...support for an international medical brigade to treat contra combatants in the field...
...support to his U.S...
...In January or February of 1984, Edgar Chamorro recalls, John Mallett told a meeting of FDN leaders to steer clear of Villoldo and his people...
...The Vice President responded in a March 3 letter—later obtained by The Miami Herald— suggesting that Castejon meet with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North...
...Later that month, on May 20, Rodriguez was in Miami and spoke briefly with the Vice President at a reception for Cuban Independence Day...
...The planes were always loaded...
...There was no linkage to any operation, yet it keeps coming up...
...customs and neutrality laws—during the period when he was in close contact with Bush's office...
...vadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte in behalf of a Salvadoran colonel who had been working with Rodriguez on contra aid and faced prosecution on charges of masterminding a local kidnapping ring...
...Villoldo advocated an aggressive strategy of offensive guerrilla warfare featuring small-group battle tactics, economic and commercial sabotage, and a program of political kidnappings aimed at the wives and children of Sandinista officials, Fagoth says...
...Congress and the Carter Administration had curtailed U.S...
...A.N...
...Ambassador to El Salvador Thomas Pickering, Assistant Secretary of State Langhorne Motley, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Nestor Sanchez, "to recommend that they meet and talk with Mr...
...North was a consultant to Bush's 1985 Task Force on Combating Terrorism...
...Rodriguez was granted appointments with all these officials, as well as with General Paul Gorman, head of the Pentagon's Southern Command...
...The following month, in March, Rodriguez moved to Ilopango...
...Despite the strong feelings they apparently held about Villoldo, however, the CIA station officials were either unable or unwilling to remove him from his role as a contra adviser...
...Asked about the reports on October 11, Bush said, "It's absolutely, totally untrue...
...In December 1983, North traveled to El Salvador with Bush and helped prepare a message Bush read to the military commanders calling on the army to rein in Death Squad killings...
...According to former intelligence agents who collaborated with the Vice President's office, Bush's principal involvement with the contras dates to a series of 1983 conversations between Bush and Casey concerning Congressional plans to restrict contra operations...
...Congressional investigators say participants in the contra supply network claim that Vice President Bush's office received intelligence reports on the progress of the clandestine arms deliveries...
...Other new information from both on-the-record and confidential sources indicates that Bush's staff and their associates were deeply involved in contra support...
...But he says those who have helped the contras obtain arms are like the Americans who volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War...
...military aid to Guatemala in 1977 on human-rights grounds...
...Villoldo's mission provides the first confirmation of Bush's connection to clandestine contra aid and contradicts the Vice President's repeated denials that he or his staff played any role in contra military affairs...
...Such actions by private persons would appear to constitute violations of the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S...
...The former agent, Bay of Pigs veteran Gustavo Villoldo, carried a letter of recommendation from Bush's national security adviser, Donald P. Gregg...
...He said they feared that Villoldo was undermining the confidence of the FDN, telling people not to follow the strategy of Bermudez, and sowing discordant ideas...
...The Neutrality Act is a completely untested notion, established in the 1800s...
...Jeb Bush was the conduit to the White House through various Cuban organizations in the FDN," says Jack Terrell, a mercenary who fought with the contras in the Nicaraguan Mosquitia and has since become a contra critic...
...The proceedings against Staben were eventually discontinued...
...embassy in San Salvador succeeded in forcing the reassignment of several of El Salvador's more publicly notorious commanders...
...citizens on American soil from engaging in acts of war against a foreign power...
...security assistance from $12.8 million to $35.3 million, including $10 million in military aid...
...Felix Rodriguez, a friend of Gregg since 1970 when they worked together on Vietnam helicopter counterinsurgency operations for the CIA, was placed on the payroll of Corporate Air Services, a company set up by Richard Secord and used in Colonel Oliver North's contra support operation...
...Toliver, who is now serving time on drug-smuggling charges in Federal prison in Miami, claims that on the return legs of two arms flights his plane came back to the United States with large cargoes of cocaine and marijuana loaded at contra airfields by individuals whose identities he did not know...
...Early in 1985, Jeb Bush gave his father a letter from Doctor Mario Castejon, a Guatemalan politician seeking U.S...
...Jeb Bush vigorously denies that he was personally involved in any arms shipments...
...On December 20, 1985, Rodriguez returned to Washington and "joined in a Christmas Party with members of Mr...
...Bush and Casey had joined forces during the first years of the Reagan Administration to bring more individuals with intelligence backgrounds onto the NSC staff, Pentagon sources say...
...During the early 1960s, Rodriguez worked for Secord's business partner, Thomas Clines, in the Miami CIA station...
...He further stated that "the only thing" they ever discussed "was his involvement in the insurgency in El Salvador...
...For years, Staben's forces had been implicated in widespread civilian killings...
...On January 22, 1985, according to the chronology, Rodriguez met Bush—with Gregg sitting in—"to inform the Vice President that Mr...
...Gregg admitted introducing Rodriguez to officials of the Salvadoran air force, but claimed that he was unaware of Rodriguez's work with the contras...
...During all this time, according to the Bush chronology, Rodriguez, though in the midst of running the Ilopango contra support operation, made no mention of that fact to Gregg, Watson, or Bush...
...When asked whether Villoldo had come to Honduras under the sponsorship of Donald Gregg, Mallett said he had "never heard of Mr...
...The chronology says flatly of Rodriguez's August 8 meeting that "this was the first time that any such subject had been discussed by Mr...
...Jeb Bush says he has participated in two radiothons to raise money for contra "humanitarian" aid...
...Hasenfus's testimony and subsequent press investigations traced the plane to a secret contra air-supply operation being run out of El Salvador's Ilopango air base by Bay of Pigs veteran Felix Rodriguez...
...Such information was said to be conveyed by CIA agents reporting back to Washington through an unorthodox chain of command, the particulars of which are not yet clear...
...aid to Guatemala as compensation "for the extraordinary assistance they are providing the Nicaraguan freedom fighters...
...Citing his "good relations with the directors of the anti-Sandinista movements," the commanders argued that Villoldo "could be the decisive element in this enterprise" and could facilitate long-run contra unity...
...According to Bush's office, the subject of the contras was not broached until August 8, 1986, when Rodriguez came to Washington and "met with Mr...
Vol. 51 • May 1987 • No. 5
