DOPE STORY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 22, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
r Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630001-8
ARTICLE APPEARED 22 April 1987
ON PA~ /.-r=
Dope Story
Doubts Rise on Report
Reagan Cited in Tying
Sandinistas to Cocaine
Little Evidence Backs Tale,
Which Came From Pilot
Who Claimed CIA Link
Deal for a Lighter Sentence
T By JONATHAN KwiTNY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the early-morning darkness of June
-P 26, 1984, Adler Barriman al a wealthy,
convicted drug smuggler working as a fed-
eral informant in hopes of leniency, landed
his C-123 cargo plane at Homestead Air
Force Base near Miami. On board was
1,500 pounds of cocaine he said he had
brought from Nicaragua.
Within a few weeks, unnamed "admin-
istration officials," citing information pro-
vided by Mr. Seal, leaked to the press sto-
ries saying that top Nicaraguan leaders,
including a brother of President Daniel Or-
tega, were trafficking in cocaine with the
help of Soviets and Cubans.
The Reagan administration has used
the Seal story-which Nicaragua denies-
ever since in attempts to rouse congres-
sional and public support for aid to the
Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Mr.
Ortega's Sandinista government. On
March 16 of last year, in an appeal for a
Contra aid package, President Reagan dis-
played on national television a photo taken
by a camera hidden in Mr. Seal's plane.
"I know that every American parent
concerned about the drug problem will be
outraged to learn that top Nicaraguan gov-
ernment officials are deeply involved in
drug trafficking," Mr. Reagan said. "This
picture, secretly taken at a military air-
field outside Managua, shows Federico
Vaughan, a top aide to one of the nine
commandants who rule Nicaragua, load-
ing an aircraft with illegal narcotics bound
for the United States."
Some Problems
But Mr. Seal's evidence of Nicaraguan
drug trafficking doesn't appear to be as
sweeping as he or the Reagan administra-
tion portrayed it.
The Drug Enforcement Administration
says the cocaine on Mr. Seal's C-123 is the
only drug shipment by way of Nicaragua
that it knows of-and Mr. Seal said he had
brought it there to begin with. The Nicara- gling dope. He said he made $610,000 or
guan "military airfield" that officials said $700,000 while working for the DEA in the
Mr. Seal flew from is in fact a civjliaq field., Nicaraguan case, which the government
h
fl
n
used c
ie
y for crop-dusti
g flights, the says it let him keep to cover expenses.
S
tate Department now concedes. That con-
cession undermines the basis for linking
Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, Presi-
dent Ortega's brother, to the operation.
In fact, the man who supervised Mr.
Seal's work for the government-Richard
Gregorie, chief assistant U.S. attorney in
Miami-says he could find no information
beyond Mr. Seal's word tying any Nicara-
guan official to the drug shipment. As for
Federico Vaughan, the man Mr. Reagan
called an aide to a Sandinista comman-
dant, federal prosecutors and drug offi-
cials now say they aren't sure who he is.
Asked about the matter, a White House
spokesman says, "We got the information
from DEA and have received no indication
from them of any change in their original
assessment."
Contra Supply Network
Meanwhile, some DEA officials com-
plain that the administration's use of Mr.
Seal's story against the Sandinistas sabo-
taged a much bigger drug case, against
Colombians.
Now there are allegations that besides
drugs, Mr. Seal may have been involved
with other sensitive cargo. Four drug pi-
lots in prison in Florida say they knew
Mr. Seal as part of a network that deliv-
ered weapons to airfields in Central Amer-
ica for the American-backed Contras and
then sometimes flew back to the U.S. with
cocaine. Over the years, Mr. Seal told as-
sociates and testified in court that he
sometimes did work for Central Intelli-
gence Agency operations. Though the Jus-
tice Department was quick to follow up
Mr. Seal's Nicaraguan story with an indict-
ment, it rejected allegations from the pi-
lots and others of drug dealing by Con-
tras.
The Seal case is a complex double helix
of politics and law enforcement. Mr. Seal
provided his story about Nicaragua after
contacting Vice President George Bush's
anti-drug task force and offering to be an
informant. He gave the administration the
photographs and testimony it used to ac-
cuse Nicaraguan leaders of drug traffick-
ing. In return, federal prosecutors helped
him wriggle out of a long prison term he
faced on three drug convictions. He got six
months' probation.
Fleet of Planes
Doubts about portions of his story first
were raised last year in the Village Voice
and Columbia Journalism Review by Joel
Millman, who helped locate sources for
this broader investigation of the case.
It is clear Mr. Seal was a major drug
runner. He had a fleet of at least four
planes, and he testified in federal court
that he earned more than $50 million smug,
The money did him little good. On Feb.
19, 1986, as Mr. Seal was getting out of his
white Cadillac at a Louisiana shelter
where his probation required him to spend
nights, a squad of hit men gunned him
down.
When Mr. Seal first faced various drug
charges several years ago, he initially got
nowhere in seeking a deal. He twice went
to Justice Department and DEA officials in
Florida seeking a milder sentence in ex-
change for doing undercover work to catch
big Colombian drug-cartel leaders, and he
made the same offer in another federal
drug case in Louisiana. The prosecutors all
decided they preferred to have Mr. Seal in
jail.
So in March of 1984 he called Mr.
Bush's drug task force, got an appointment
and flew his Learjet to Washington, he ex-
plained later in testimony at drug trials of
others in federal court in Miami and Las
Vegas. Two task-force staffers say they
met Mr. Seal on a Washington street and
escorted him to a meeting with Kenneth R.
Kennedy, a veteran DEA agent.
The Justice Department says that he
was accepted as an informant to trap Co-
lombian dealers and that everyone was
surprised to learn later of a Nicaraguan
connection. But Mr. Kennedy recalls Mr.
Seal's saying at their first meeting that
"the officials of the Nicaraguan govern-
ment are involved in smuggling cocaine
into the United States, specifically the San-
dinistas; that he would go through Nicara-
gua and get loads and bring them back;
that he had brought loads of cocaine
[through Nicaragual In the past and he
could continue to do it."
Thomas Sclafani, who was just becom-
ing Mr. Seal's lawyer In Miami at the
time, says that he is "absolutely" sure that
nailing Nicaraguans was "a key Ingredi-
ent" in the deal Mr. Seal offered the gov-
ernment.
Getting Started
Mr. Kennedy sent Mr. Seal to agents
Robert Joura and Ernest Jacobsen in the
DEA's Miami office. They authorized him
to go to Colombia and Panama to arrange
a drug shipment, but they say it was a to-
tal surprise when he returned with news
..that cocaine-cartel leaders were moving
their operations to Nicaragua because of
'law-enforcement pressure in Colombia.
'Mr. Seal testified that the cocaine leaders
explained to him, "We are not commu-
nists. We don't particularly enjoy the same
philosophy politically that they do. But
they serve our means and we serve
tl4eirs."
Continued
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Mr. Gregorie, the federal prosecutor in
Miami, says the politics of it made no dif-
ference to him, either. "Nobody cared." he
says. Nicaragua "was just another place
they I the cocaine cartel l did business."
As Mr. Seal related the story in his tes-
timony, it was in Panama in mid-May 1984
that the Colombians introduced Mr.
Vaughan to him as "some sort of a govern-
ment official from Nicaragua." He said
Mr. Vaughan claimed to be a top aide to
Tomas Borge, the Sandinista interior min-
ister and security-police chief.
Mr. Seal testified that Mr. Vaughan
took him, and a co-pilot to Nicaragua on an
airliner, dodging customs at the airport,
and that they stayed at Mr. Vaughan's
house overnight. Then, he said, a Nicara-
guan military driver gave them a tour of
an airfield and Mr. Vaughan pointed out
antiaircraft batteries they should avoid,
before putting them on a flight to Panama.
As evidence of the trip, he offered his
boarding pass on an airliner to Managua
and a receipt for payment of the Managua
airport tax; neither document appears to
bear any date or name identification.
On his first scheduled drug run after be-
coming an informant, Mr. Seal testified,
his plane skidded off a muddy Colombian
airstrip and crashed as he was taking off.
He said the accident forced the cocaine
shipment onto a smaller plane that needed
to refuel to reach the U.S.; the refueling
stop was in Nicaragua, he said, and Mr.
Vaughan met the flight. As he related it,
after taking off again, his plane was hit
with antiaircraft fire and limped into the
main Managua airport, where he and his
co-pilot were held by military officers.
Eventually, Mr. Seal testified, Mr.
Vaughan's military driver brought a truck
to the Managua airport, transferred the co-
caine off the plane and drove it away. He
said he was jailed overnight, then picked
up by Mr. Vaughan and given a small
plane to fly home to the U.S., leaving the
cocaine in Nicaragua. He said this plane
was owned by Pablo Escobar, who the
DEA says is a major partner in Colombia's
largest cocaine syndicate.
Secret Camera
On the night of June 24, 1984, Mr. Seal
continued, he, a co-pilot and a mechanic
headed back to Managua to get the coke,
flying his newly acquired C-123 cargo
craft. Hidden within it was a secret cam-
era, installed by the Central Intelligence
Agency at Rickenbacker Air Force Base in
Ohio. Although the camera didn't work
right, he said, he managed to squeeze off
dozens of grainy, shadowy photographs.
Most of them show a few men in casual
attire lounging against a grassy back-
ground. Mr. Seal identified one as Mr.
Vaughan, one as Mr. Escobar, the Colom-
bian drug kingpin, and a third as another
Colombian drug dealer. Several pictures
show men, whom U.S. officials called sol-
diers, carrying canvas bags.
After this trip the DEA sent Mr. Seal
back down to Nicaragua with $1 million,
and he said he arranged with Mr. Vaughan
for another cocaine shipment. But in mid-
July of 1984, DEA agent Joura remembers
getting a call from his agency in Washing-
ton saying that a story based on Mr. Seal's
C-123 trip would shortly appear in the
Washington Times.
Chances of using Mr. Seal to catch
members of the Colombian drug cartel
vanished. "At that time, there was a Con-
tra funding bill that was up for approval,
and I guess that precipitated the leak of
the photographs," says Mr. Joura. "It ru-
ined the case. We hoped to go a lot further
with it."
Mr. Joura did have time to tell Mr. Seal
to round up some Florida distributors and
another pilot for a meeting so they could
be arrested. (It was at the 1985 Miami trial
of these men that Mr. Seal, as a govern-
ment witness, related his Nicaraguan
story. He repeated it at another federal
drug trial that year, in Las Vegas.)
Los Brasiles
The Washington Times story, which
touched off many other press accounts,
quoted "U.S. sources" as saying that "a
number of highly placed Nicaraguan gov-
ernment officials actively participated in
the drug smuggling operation," naming In-
terior Minister Borge and Defense Minister
Humberto Ortega. U.S. officials have said
that the defense minister could be impli-
cated because the drug shipment used a
military airfield, Los Brasiles.
But the State Department now confirms
reports from Nicaragua that Los Brasiles
is a civilian airfield used mainly for agri-
cultural flights. It is also listed as a civil,
ian field in a Defense Department Flight
Information Publication.
The Justice Department said in 1984
that cocaine-processing labs had been es-
tablished in Nicaragua and that the drug
was being shipped in "multi-ton" amounts.
Within a month after the story of the flight
broke in the press, Mr. Vaughan was in-
dicted.
The department says it knows that Mr.
Seal's C-123 went to Nicaragua because a
device aboard the plane enabled satellites
to track It. But Mr. Gregorie, the federal
prosecutor in Miami, and the DEA's Mr.
Joura:concede that their only evidence of
who Mr. Vaughan is comes from Mr. Seal
and a tape of a call to a, man Mr. Seal
identified as him. The Nicaraguan govern-
ment says that a Federico Vaughan
worked in 1982 and 1983 as the deputy man-
ager of an export-import company run by
the Sandinista government but had left be-
fore the Seal flight and was never an aide
to a commandant.
Mr. Vaughan hasn't been put on trial.
Though the U.S. has an extradition treaty
with Nicaragua, the federal prosecutors
never tried to extradite Mr. Vaughan. Mr.
'A I
Gregorie says the State Department told
him it would be futile.
While the account of Sandinista drug in-
volvement brought swift Justice Depart-
ment action, U.S. officials have rejected
accusations of major drug trafficking by
the Contras. The handling of those accusa-
tions now is being reviewed by two con-
gressional committees and the independent
counsel for the Iran-Contra affair.
"There have been allegations that the
laws have not been evenly and appropri-
ately carried out, so we're looking into
that," says Hayden Gregory, an investiga-
tor for a' House Judiciary Committee sub-
committee.
Former TWA Not
The imprisoned drug pilots say Mr. Seal
was involved in flights that brought
weapons to Central American airfields for
the Contras and sometimes returned to the
U.S. with drugs. The pilots claim that their
Contra weapons deliveries were directed
by the CIA. The people they say they
worked with are known to have been su-
pervised or monitored by the CIA and by
Lt. Col. Oliver North, the National Security
Council staffer fired for his role in the pro-
gram to sell arms to Iran and fund the
Contras. As is its practice, the Central In-
telligence Agency refuses to comment.
Mr. Seal once was a pilot with Trans
World Airlines, but he lost the job in 1972
after being charged with smuggling explo-
sives to Mexico. The explosives, he later
testified in federal court in Las Vegas,
were for CIA-trained rsonnel trying to.
overthrow C a6'ss Fidel Castro. An appeals
court threw out the indictment.
Fred Hampton, whose Mena. Ark., firm
does a global business repairing aircraft,
says Mr. Seal used to talk in 1982 and 1983
about working for the CIA. He says Mr.
Seal was secretive about it but discussed
aerial reconnaissance of Nicaraguan air
bases when the subject came up.
Jack Terrell. a former Contra merce-
nary who now opposes U.S. intervention in
Nicaragua, says that "we knew he (Mr.
Seal] was flying for the Contras" at Agua-
cote, a Honduran supply base. And a jailed
drug pilot named Gary Betzner says he
once ran into Mr. a at opango air
base in El Salvador, where much of the
Contra weaponry was transshipped.
Another imprisoned drug pilot, Michael
Tolliver. says he was recruited toot the
Contra supply network by Mr. Seal,
whom he had known since they were both
airplane enthusiasts in Louisiana. He says
Mr. Seal called him in the spring of 1985
and said, "I've got some interesting flying
for you to do." Says Mr. Tolliver: "I fi-
gured it was government because every-
body knew he was working for the govern-
ment."
Gotnued,
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630001-8
J,
Gumed Down
Following Mr. Seal's drug convictions,
his undercover efforts served him well
with sentencing judges. In federal court in
Fort Lauderdale, Judge Norman C.
Roettger reduced a 10-year drug sentence
to six months' probation after DEA agents
spoke to him. The judge specifically
praised Mr. Seal's cooperation in the Nica-
raguan case. Then, under a deal worked
out with the Justice Department, Mr. Seal
also got probation for another Florida drug
conviction and for drug charges in Louisi-
ana.
But the judge in the Louisiana case, up-
set at the leniency of the Justice Depart-
ment terms, required Mr. Seal to spend
nights during his probation at a Salvation
Army shelter in Baton Rouge. The require-
ment made him easy for his enemies to
find, and one day early last year some of
them did. Three Colombian men have been
charged with killing him.
Of the two others Mr. Seal said went to
Nicaragua on the C-123, one, co-pilot Emile
Camp, died in a crash of his one-man
plane. The other, mechanic Peter Everson,
who has never been charged or asked to
testify, won't discuss Mr. Seal's story ex-
cept to say he would corroborate it if
called. He lives in a fortresslike building
in Louisiana.
One final footnote: Mr. Seal's C-123, af-
ter a change in ownership, crashed in Nic-
aragua last October while on a Contra sup-
ply run. The Nicaraguans captured an
American cargo handler who survived. His
name was Eugene Hasenfus and his cap-
ture began the unraveling o secret U.S. ef-
forts to supply the Contras.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630001-8