Contra Campaign

John Kerry once took a shot at Miami's Felix Rodriguez for his part in
the Iran-contra scandal. Now the Bush family friend is shooting back.

BY BOB NORMAN
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/...-23/metro.html

The life of Felix I. Rodriguez provides a tour through the dark heart
of America. From the Bay of Pigs fiasco to Vietnam to the El Salvador
death squads to the Iran-contra scandal, the Cuban exile and
self-described "CIA hero" was there. His most famous assassination
mission came in 1967, when he led the Bolivian army group that
captured and summarily executed leftist revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara. He's worked closely with right-wing terrorists, and some of
his associates were involved in the Watergate break-in. Given his
background, it's not surprising his name has surfaced in numerous JFK
conspiracy theories as well.

Now retired in North Miami-Dade near Barry University, Rodriguez, who
says his CIA career was always fueled by a hope to unseat Fidel
Castro, also has special relationships with both of this year's
presidential candidates. George W. Bush sends him a White House
Christmas card each year. The president's father counts Rodriguez as
an old friend; Bush Sr. worked with him during the mid-Eighties, when
Rodriguez ran the operation to arm the Nicaraguan contras for the
Reagan administration.

Democratic nominee John Kerry, though, isn't so cozy with Rodriguez.
In 1986 the then-rookie senator formed a committee to investigate
Iran-contra. The so-called Kerry Committee alleged that Rodriguez had
helped steer $10 million from the notorious Medellín cocaine cartel to
the contras. The committee concluded that trafficking was rampant in
the rebels' effort.

Rodriguez ,who now leads Brigade 2506, the Bayh of Pigs veterans'
group squared off with Kerry during a closed congressional hearing. He
told the Massachusetts senator point-blank that the allegation was a
damned lie and, for good measure, added that he had no respect for
him.

That was some seventeen years ago, but Rodriguez's hatred for Kerry --
and his closeness to the Bush family -- has driven Rodriguez from the
CIA shadows onto the open political stage. He's railed against Kerry
on Cuban radio and in the October edition of Soldier of Fortune
magazine. He also jumped at the chance to join the Vietnam Veterans
for Truth, an anti-Kerry group that invited Rodriguez to speak at a
nationally televised September 12 rally at the Capitol.

At the sparsely attended event, the storied spook began with some
words on Vietnam, where he flew assassination and assault missions
(and flights with CIA-backed Air America, which has been tied to the
heroin trade). He portrayed his time there as if he were dropping food
and medicine from his combat helicopter. "I never saw any atrocities
that Senator Kerry claims we did in Vietnam," Rodriguez told the
gathering in his thick accent. "We helped the Vietnamese people."

Then he turned his attention to Central America, referring to Kerry's
accusation and noting that his nemesis ultimately backed off the
allegation against him. "That was one more lie from Senator Kerry," he
triumphantly said.

But who, really, is lying? Rodriguez maintains he saw no hint of drug
trafficking while he was helping to run the contra operation in El
Salvador and Honduras. "I never saw any indication of that at all --
it was all a great fabrication," he said during a telephone interview
last week. "That all came from Senator Kerry's committee. It came from
those people that didn't want to help the Nicaraguan resistance,
people like Kerry, who wanted to hurt Vice President Bush, who was
going to win the presidency."

It's a familiar -- and absolutely untenable -- refrain from the Reagan
and Bush administrations that continues to this day: The narcotics
ties to the contra operation were a politically motivated myth. Vice
President Dick Cheney, who was then a congressman, played a key role
in the disinformation campaign. He led the effort to squelch various
Iran-contra investigations, especially when it came to drug
allegations. And George W. Bush? Well, he seems to have no qualms
about Iran-contra, since he has hired several of the scandal's central
figures -- including Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, and John Negroponte
-- to serve under him.

Though it has been largely ignored, this historic battle between Kerry
and the Bush family not only provides a revelatory subtext to this
election but also indicates how much the two men running for president
dislike each other.

History clearly favors Kerry's side -- and he may even have been right
about that $10 million in cartel money. Rodriguez, at the time, was
the government's key man in El Salvador, where he was conducting
counterinsurgency missions against leftist rebels. But his main job
was the contra operation. He claims to this day that he wasn't paid
for his efforts, a contention about as shaky as H.W.'s famous excuse
that he was "out of the loop" on the contra affair. Rodriguez also
worked in Honduras, where the contras trained in the mountains, and at
another shipping point in Costa Rica (which has been repeatedly tied
to the drug trade).

The allegation against Rodriguez came from Medellín cartel accountant
and convicted money launderer Ramon Milian-Rodriguez, who met with
Felix Rodriguez in 1985 while he was out on bail on federal drug
charges in Miami. Milian told the Kerry Committee that Rodriguez
solicited the cash from the cartel and that it was later channeled to
the contras. The cartel, he said, hoped the contribution would bring
it "good will" from U.S. authorities. At the same time he was
implicating the CIA operative, Milian was adamant that Felix Rodriguez
had the American government's interest at heart and never kept a dime
of the proceeds.

Rodriguez admits the meeting took place but insists it concerned only
an offer from the money launderer to help set up the Nicaraguan
government in a cocaine sting. In 1988 Milian failed a lie detector
test on the subject, and Kerry retracted the allegation.

Rodriguez then had every right to gloat, but in 1991 the accusation
resurfaced. Medellín cartel cofounder Carlos Lehder, while testifying
for the U.S. government against deposed Panamanian President Manuel
Noriega, admitted that his organization had indeed given $10 million
to the contras. Lehder, then a federal witness working with U.S.
prosecutors, had no known motive to lie.

In light of that information, I asked Rodriguez if he was absolutely
sure the contra operation didn't receive the drug money. "I don't
think it did," he said, losing his resolute tone. "They always say the
same ****. Where did the money go to if they did? Every single penny
that went into the contras was accounted for."

While it's open to debate just how meticulously the contras kept their
ledgers, there have been other indications that Rodriguez's operation
may have been involved in drug smuggling. In 1984 Rodriguez's business
partner, international arms dealer Gerald Latchinian, was arrested in
a conspiracy to smuggle $10 million in cocaine to finance a plot to
assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova. (He was later
convicted.) While Rodriguez was never tied to the crime, Latchinian
argued that it was connected to the CIA.

Rodriguez's agency-trained compatriot, fellow Cuban exile Frank
Castro, was deeply involved in both drug smuggling and the contra
effort, according to the CIA. And in 1989 a drug pilot named Mike
Tolliver alleged on a CBS news show that he ran guns to Honduras for
the contras and that, while there, his plane was loaded with marijuana
for a return flight to Homestead Air Force Base. He identified
Rodriguez as his boss.

Perhaps the most damning allegation against Rodriguez comes from
former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Celerino Castillo, a
decorated Vietnam vet who was stationed in Central America during
Iran-contra. While working for the DEA, Castillo says he became aware
of drug trafficking at San Salvador's Ilopango air base, where
Rodriguez was organizing the contra supply effort. The DEA agent has
testified in Congress and recounted in his well-documented book,
Powderburns, how the airport hangars controlled by Rodriguez and other
government operatives were used by drug traffickers. "The only reason
Felix wasn't arrested is because he knew where all the bodies were
buried in the Iran-contra operation," says Castillo, who is now a
substitute high school teacher living in Texas.

Castillo recounts that in 1986 he met then-Vice President Bush at an
ambassador's party in Guatemala. "I told him there was something funny
going on at Ilopango," he says. "And he just smiled and walked away."

While Bush Sr. avoided the truth about Iran-contra, Castillo has
worked for years to expose it and, in so doing, has researched
Rodriguez's life -- from Cuba to Vietnam to El Salvador. He's come to
the conclusion that the Cuban exile is no hero. "He's always been a
terrorist, just like Osama bin Laden and all the terrorists we've made
in the past," he says.

Unflinching words, but Rodriguez has indeed been tied to known
terrorists, most notably Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-trained operative
who worked closely with Rodriguez after his 1985 escape from a
Venezuelan jail, where he served nine years for his role in the
downing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 civilians. Rodriguez admits
he worked with Carriles on the contra effort but says his friend
wasn't convicted of anything. He proffers that Fidel Castro may have
blown up the jetliner to "get rid of" Cuban military officials on
board who were plotting against the dictator.

But that far-fetched theory doesn't explain the Havana hotel bombings
that Carriles has acknowledged committing, or his recent incarceration
in Panama for planning to blow up Castro at a political conference
(his recent pardon made international news).

"I don't endorse or support bombings," Rodriguez says. "I believe it
kills innocent people, and that is not the way to do it. That will
backfire."

Rodriguez says he doesn't know why Castillo has made the allegations
against him. He insists he watched every contra supply plane land,
refuel, and take off from Ilopango and that there were never any drugs
onboard. "What I understand from the guys I asked at DEA was that they
fired [Castillo] for making all kinds of allegations about Ilopango,"
he says. "He was fired for incompetence. If any of his allegations had
a grain of truth, the Iran-contra committee would have brought it up.
They looked at everything with a toothbrush."

(Castillo actually retired from the DEA -- under pressure from
higher-ups regarding his whistleblowing -- in 1992. He collects a
pension from the agency.)

The Iran-contra Committee, which carried more weight than Kerry's
subcommittee, was, in reality, famously unconcerned with the narcotics
allegations. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who conducted the
criminal investigation, never even interviewed Castillo. Later, after
reporter Gary Webb's well-researched 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in
the San Jose Mercury News showed clear ties between the contras and
the Los Angeles crack trade, a Justice Department investigation indeed
found the "seed of truth" in Castillo's allegations but didn't bother
to make a real case.

As for the media, they can only look back at the time with shame. The
press -- led by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles
Times -- tried to discredit Webb. Though the papers dutifully reported
many of the salient facts, they never conveyed the big picture and, in
the end, let the perpetrators of one of the greatest scandals in
American history go largely unpunished.

Other than Soldier of Fortune, only the conservative Website
NewsMax.comhas brought up Iran-contra in the context of the
presidential election. In a July article, the Website portrayed
Rodriguez as a "wholly innocent freedom loving patriot" who was
blindsided by the unscrupulous, CIA-hating senator.

It may be just the beginning. Rodriguez says he'll vigorously oppose
Kerry until election day, continuing his work with the anti-Kerry
veterans' group, which is ideologically aligned with the similarly
named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and exposing the terrible
injustice done to him by the Democratic nominee. "He will tell you one
thing, then he will tell you another thing," Rodriguez says of Kerry.
"He is a complete liar."

We all know that Rodriguez can fight with the best of them, but what
about Kerry? His Florida campaign communications director, Matt
Miller, didn't respond to the question. Former DEA man Castillo, who
counts his vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 as one of the worst mistakes
of his life, isn't sure. And he believes Bush II -- who has already
led the country into a nightmarish war using false pretenses -- will
cook scandals to make Iran-contra pale in comparison if elected to a
second term.

"They say Kerry is a liar, that he lied about Felix Rodriguez, who is
a hero and patriot," Castillo says. "Bush and Cheney know how to
fight. Cheney says, öGo **** yourself.' I am so upset because Kerry
won't take the gloves off. It's like he's idling. If he doesn't fight
now, will he ever fight for us?"

miaminewtimes.com | originally published: September 23, 2004


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