CRISES PROTECTED BY THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100310002-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 29, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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'RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815
656-4068
FoR
PROGRAM
PUBLIC AF
2 0 2 0
FAIRS ST
AFF
STATION
W J L A- T V
ABC Network
pA~
July 29,
1982
10:00 P.M.
CITY
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT
Crimes Protected by the CIA
HUGH DOWNS: Up front tonight, crimes protected by the
CIA. There have been disclosures over the years that agents and
former agents and informants of the CIA, our spy organization,
have abused their power. One example, former CIA agent Edwin
Wilson, who was arrested last month and charged with illegally
supplying explosives to Libya and who is under investigation for
possible involvement in an assassination attempt.
Well, tonight another story. This time of a CIA
informant involved in crimes in the United States. And here with
the report is John Stossol.
JOHN STOSSOL: Hugh, this starts out as a story about
car theft. Last year California police came upon an incredible
car theft ring that was stealing thousands of cars. But as
police started to make arrests, they found themselves up against
the CIA.
PRESIDENT RONALD REACAN; You, the men and women of the
CIA, are the eyes and ears of the Free World. Like those who are
part of any silent service, your sacrifices are sometimes
unappreciated, your work is sometimes misunderstood.
STOSSOL: Right after President Reagan made that speech
to the Central Intelligence Agency last month, he signed a new
law designed to protect CIA agents. It makes it a crime for
anyone to reveal the name of any covert CIA agent or informant.
That includes people like this man, the former head of Mexico's
secret police, Miguel Nazar Haro (?).
CARLOS: You're dealing with a high government official
who I think would have been very happy in Nazi Germany. Even
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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when he wasn't participating, he would direct what kind of
torture would be perpetrated, and seemed to enjoy it: smile,
laugh.
STOSSOL: What happens when a man like that is
discovered by California State Police, the FBI, and the press to
be working with thieves in the United States, smuggling guns and
stealing cars? And his ring of car thieves didn't steal just any
car. They stole Porches, brand-new Rolls-Royces, Ferraris,
Maseratis, Mercedes, and four-wheel-drive Ford Broncos. They
even stole a few motor homes.
Mostly, they stole fancy cars like this Ferrari. It
went on for seven years. They stole cars, mainly here in
Southern California, but some were from Texas. They took cars
from all over the Southwest. They were brazen thieves. They
stole in broad daylight.
MAN: The salesman got out of the car. The customer
grabbed the steering wheel, literally kicked him out of the car,
and was gone before the man hit the ground.
STOSSOL: Other times the thieves worked in pairs. One
distracted the salesman while the other went into the key box and
picked out the keys for the cars he wanted to steal.
MAN: They just in the middle of the night drove a truck
through two gates and then smashed right through the garage door,
moved four cars to get the one car they wanted, drove it out.
And, you know, the sirens are going, the whistles are running
around, the LAPD is closing in. Never deviated from the mission.
And they did get the car, and they still have yet to locate that
vehicle.
STOSSOL: Southern California dealers started setting up
all kinds of security devices to protect themselves. They
installed surveillance cameras, bought police dogs, built
barbed-wire fences and chained in the cars. Even that didn't
work.
MAN: Formed a wagon train, kind of like the old wagon
trains of old, and turned around and took a great big massive
chain and enclosed all these vehicles. We11, they just went
away.
STOSSOL: All the stolen cars had one destination,
Mexico. There's an enormous demand for stolen cars in Mexico
because it's nearly impossible to import a car legally. If
you're a Mexican citizen, you need a special permit and you must
pay a tax that can double or triple the original purchase price.
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A Chevy Caprice that cost $8000 in the U.S. will sell for 19,000
in Mexico City.
Getting the cars into Mexico is easy. Heading south,
the border is wide open. Authorities rarely stop you as you
cross. I borrowed a new Ferrari and they just wave me through.
Of course, it's even easier if you have the cooperation
of the Mexican police. No problem for these thieves led by
Gilberto Perazo Mayan (?) because they were stealing-to-order for
Mexican police and some private citizens.
Doug Schwartz, Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Diego.
DOUG SCHWARTZ: There were so many orders that were
being given to him and so much pressure for him to steal cars and
deliver it to law enforcement agents in Mexico, and they would be
lining up at the border, waiting for him to get there so they
could bid on the cars, that he would actually hide from the
agents. He was just too busy.
STOSSOL: Perazo's being so busy attracted this man
Nazar Haro and his secret police. They took over the ring.
SCHWARTZ: They basically told Perazo that they wanted
him to steal exclusively for them, and he basically did.
STOSSOL: The secret police in Mexico are called the
Directorate of Federal Security, the DFS, seen here in this
demonstration raid staged so Mexican television could film them
in action. The DFS used many of the stolen cars themselves and
gave away others in exchange for political favors. The car
thieves, because they were working for the DFS, had nothing to
fear from Mexican police.
CARLOS: The [Spanish term for DFS] has unlimited
powers. They can arrest a person and put you in prison there as
a political prisoner for life, as long as they want. They don't
have to answer to anyone.
STOSSOL: Carlos worked for another branch of Mexican
intelligence. Ne agreed to talk about the DFS if we'd shield his
identity.
CARLOS: If any Mexican citizen outside of a [Spanish
term] agent was seen driving a car that was any bigger than a
Chevy, he would be stopped immediately, you know, and he'd lose
the car. But a [Spanish term] agent can drive a Mercedes, he can
drive a Lincoln Continental, he can drive anything he wants.
Who's going to stop him?
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STOSSOL: Maybe no one in Mexico. But in California,
November 1980, the Highway Patrol stopped two stolen cars headed
for Mexico. One of the thieves decided to talk.
MAN: The whole gang, we stole 27 cars in one day.
STOSSOL: Twenty-seven cars in one...
MAN: Twenty-seven cars in one day.
STOSSOL: The FBI persuaded the car-thief-turned-
informant to help them get one of their agents inside the
ring. He succeeded, and even got the ring to meet inside the
agent's San Diego apartment, where the FBI could film them
with a hidden camera. The camera caught a DFS policeman
bragging about his ability to bring cars and guns into Mexico.
The undercover FBI agent asked:
TRANSLATOR: Do you have any problems getting things
through the border?
No, never. I just show Customs my DFS credentials, and
they leave me alone. Even the federal police don't bother me.
STOSSOL: They seemed less concerned about being caught
than being sure they stole the right color car.
Norman Zagrosi (?) of the FBI.
NORMAN ZAGROSI: We tried to show one of the thieves,
the ringleaders, a four-wheel-drive Bronco. And he asked our man
the color. And we stated that it was red and white. And they
said, "Well, we're not interested in red and white. You know
that our colors are black and white. We want black and white
Broncos. We don't want red and white."
So this individual never even left the motel room to
come and look at the car.
STOSSOL: The undercover operation went on for eight
months while hundreds of cars, like these, continued disappearing
into Mexico.
SCHWARTZ: It was a game of trying to figure out how we
can get as many of the defendants into the United States at one
time, so we can arrest them all.
STOSSOL: But they decided they couldn't wait because
the car theft ring added machine guns to their shipments and they
started becoming suspicious of the FBI undercover agent and the
informant.
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MAN: There was a big meeting. They kicked me out of
the room, and the agent. And I started getting suspicious, you
know. I talked to the guy, to the agent, "Hey, we're going to
get killed, or something."
STOSSOL: Federal authorities heard that this man had
been brought into the United States to kill the informant and the
undercover agent.
SCHWARTZ: There was great danger to our confidential
informant and to our FBI agent. So we decided that the time to
act was then.
STOSSOL: So the FBI surrounded this motel and then
arrested these men. They eventually caught 14 of the thieves.
Fourteen others were indicted, but never arrested because they
never showed up in the United States.
The strange part of it was that one man was missing from
the indictment, the most prominent and powerful member of the
alleged conspiracy, the top man in the DFS, Nazar Haro. Several
of the thieves say he personally ordered cars stolen.
MAN: He ordered a Porsche. He ordered a van. He
ordered a boat, a mobile home.
STOSSOL: You brought the van to his house.
my hand.
MAN: He was there. He received the keys from me, from
STOSSOL: So why wasn't Nazar indicted? 20/20 has
learned that an agent of the FBI, stationed here at our embassy
in Mexico City, sent out cables saying the CIA considered Nazar
Haro a friend of the United States. Said the cable, "Damaging
Nazar Haro would damage our national interests." They said he
should not be prosecuted.
Former U.S. Attorney Doug Schwartz, now in private
practice, says he was told:
SCHWARTZ: That Mr. Nazar was an intelligence source who
cooperated and acted with the CIA regularly.
STOSSOL: Why was Nazar Haro so valuable to the CIA?
Because Mexico City is a hotbed of international intrigue and
spying. The Russians here, from their embassy, run their biggest
spy operation in Latin America, as do the Cubans from theirs.
Intelligence sources told 20/20 that Nazar Haro and the DFS spied
on those embassies and shared some of what they learned with us.
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Second, Nazar Haro and the DFS provided information on
revolutionaries plotting the overthrow of Central and South
American governments.
And in the 1970s, when unrest in Mexico was worrying the
United States, Nazar Haro kept the CIA informed.
The way he gathered information earned him a reputation
as a torturer.
CARLOS: One of his favorite methods of interrogation is
to take a prisoner in a [Spanish term], a station wagon, in the
back seat, laying face-up, two agents, one sitting on his legs
and one sitting on his chest, and push him out of the car and
push his head towards the freeway to Pueblo, doing 80 and 90
miles an hour.
STOSSOL: Law Professor Robert Goldman studied human
rights violations in Mexico. When he asked prisoners about
torture, the name that came up most often was Nazar Naro.
ROBERT GOLDMAN: Not only was he known to be the head of
one of the most organized group of official vigilantes that
operated with impunity and beyond any form of judicial control in
Mexico for almost a period of ten years, but according to
testimonies that I regard as very hard and very concrete`, he is
something of a beast.
STOSSOL: For the U.S. Government, this creates a
difficult situation. Here we have a man who tortures people and
whose employees steal 4000 American cars. On the other hand, he
helps the CIA. So what do we do? Do we prosecute him? If we
did, we'd lose his help. Also, if we prosecuted, what might he
say? What secrets might he reveal that might endanger national
security?
There's a term for this. It's called graymail. It's
not exactly blackmail, so they call it graymail. And it was
because of this graymail that Nazar Naro was not prosecuted for
nine months.
Then the press got involved. San Diego Union reporter
John Standifer (?) heard rumors about CIA intervention in the
case. He called this man, then-United States Attorney William
Kennedy, who confirmed the story. The reaction from Washington
was quick. Kennedy was fired by the Reagan Administration.
If Kennedy had named Nazar Haro as a CIA source today
instead of a few months ago, he might be in jail instead of just
fired. And reporter John Standifer might be in jail, too, for
revelaing Nazar's role in print. That's because that law you
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saw the President sign earlier now makes it a crime punishable by
three years in jail and a $15,000 fine for anyone to name a
covert CIA source.
The irony of it all is that Nazar Haro finally got
indicted anyway. Three weeks after Kennedy's firing, Nazar came
to the United States to hold a press conference.
MICUEL NAZAR HARO: I don't do nothing bad.
ST05SOL: He announced he was filing an $11 million
libel suit against Time magazine for calling him a thief.
SCHWARTZ: I think that turned the tide against Mr.
Nazar. He needed to be brought to justice, just like any other
person who commits crimes within the United States.
STOSSOL: In the glare of publicity, Nazar's protection
dissolved. The Justice Department gave the go-ahead, and the FBI
arrested him. But he immediately posted $200,000 bail in cash
and went right back to Mexico. So Nazar and the 4000 cars are
still in Mexico. The FBI says that despite repeated promises,
not one car has been returned.
Nazar Haro today is no longer head of the DFS. But he
lost his job in a political shakeup, no relation to the car
thefts. And today he's not hiding. He lives in a nice house in
Mexico City. He apparently is not worried about being
prosecuted.
DOWNS: Why not? Isn't there an extradition treaty with
STOSSOL: There is a treaty. It gives Mexico the choice
to either send him back to the U.S. for prosecution or to try him
themselves. But, at the moment, they are not doing either.
DOWNS: Thank you, John.
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