WHERE DID D'AUBUISSON'S PAL COME UP WITH $6 MILLION IN CASH? - INSIDE DOPE IN EL SALVADOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000604920038-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: April 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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ARTI CLS I~PPF-~~
ODi PAGE_~
NEW Rt;PU13LIC
15 April 1985
Where did d'Aubuisson's pal come up with ~6 ml Ion In cas .
INSIDE DOPE IN EL SALVADOR
$y CRAIG DYES AND LAURIE BECKLUND
?N FEBRUARY 6 several U.S. Customs agents
stopped a sleek white Sabreliner jet as it was fuel-
ing up at the Kleberg County Airport, 60 miles out-
side of Corpus Christi, Texas. They suspected it
was carrying the cash profits from a series of major
drug deals. The plane had made two suspicious flights
to Panama and El Salvador in the previous three weeks.
There were four men traveling on the plane, all of
whose names appeared on police computers as suspected
narcotics smugglers. When customs agents attempted to
search the men's luggage, the apparent leader, aself-
possessed 34-year-old businessman from Central America
named Francisco Guirola, resisted. "It would cause
trouble," he warned the agents in near-perfect English.
He swore he was not carrying drugs or arms. He insisted
that he was entitled to diplomatic immunity, and he
showed a Costa Rican diplomatic passport to prove it.
Customs officials checked with the State Department and
learned that, although Guirola's passport was genuine, he
was not protected by diplomatic immunity. The agents
opened Guirola's eight large suitcases. Each one was
stuffed With thousands of 520 and 5100 bills. There were
650 pounds of unmarked bills, a total of more than 55.9
million. Guirola- and two of the men with him are now
awaiting trial on charges of violating federal regulations
restricting the removal of money from the country.
In El Salvador, where Guirola lives, he was quickl}' nick-
named "the six-million-dollar man." He had been known
in Salvadoran political circles as orie of a group of wealthy
young businessmen active in right-wing activities. Since
1979 he had served intermittently as a quiet and effective
fund-raiser for his close friend Roberto d'Aubuisson, the
leader of the Arena part}' and a man repeatedly charged
with organizing death-squad activities. Arena is the
.country's largest and most extreme right-wing political
organization. (See "Mi Asesino, the Freedom Fighter,"
page 19). In March 1984 d'Aubuisson ran unsuccessfully
for president against the Christian Democratic candidate,
Jose Napoleon Duarte. During the campaign, he used
Guirola's home in San Salvador as his personal headquar-
ters. In their search warrant affidavit; the customs agents
cited Drug Enforcement Administration files that state,
"Guirola in March 1984 was reportedly involved in
Cocaine and arms smuggling in El Salvador and
Guatemala."
Guirola Clearly belongs to d'Aubuisson's inner circle.
Last spring the United States heard of a plot among
d'Aubuisson associates to assassinate U.S. ambassador to
El Salvador Thomas Pickering. U.S. authorities believe .
that Dr. Antonio Hector Regalado, a dentist who is
d'Aubuisson's personal security adviser and who is
known as ' Dr. Death," was behind the plot. His pri-
vate phone number was found in Guirola's address book.
President Reagan dispatched special envoy General Ver-
non Walters to inform d'Aubuisson personall}' that the
United States would not look kindly on the murder of its
ambassador. Only four men are known fo have attended
the meeting: Walters, Pickering, d'Aubuisson, and Chico
Guirola.
D'Aubuisson was reportedly in no condition to meet
with anyone. One knowledgeable source recalls, "He's
known to take anything-full glasses of alcohol, cocaine,
you name it. He scares the hell out of people when he goes
on a bender. He goes crazy. For this meeting with Picker-
ing, [they) had to stand him in a shower and pour coffee
down his throat. He took Chico Guirola [to the meeting) as
his witness. It was real South Italian-Guirola was the
hombre de confianza to say d'Aubuisson didn't rat on
anyone."
The credentials and papers that Guirola was carrying at
the rime of his arrest testified to his political connections.
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a.
In particular, Guirola carried official credentials, signed IIY
d'Aubuisson, which said he was a "special adviser to the
Constituent Assembly." Guirola and one of the other men
arrested-a Cuban-American-also carried special cre-
dentials signed by the highest law enforcement official in
EI Salvadoz, Attorney General Jose Francisco Guerrero.
Guerrero, incidentally, is also d'Aubuisson's personal
attorney.
For d'Aubuisson, Guirola's arrest came at a bad time.
The National Assembly and municipal elections will be
held on March 31. D'Aubuisson is leading the Arena par-
ty's campaign to consolidate right-wing control of the leg-
islature, and is running for an assembly seat himself. "La
avio~i pirata"-"the pirate plane," as it has been dubbed in
El Salvador-became a campaign issue. The Christian
Democrats have run full-page ne~'spaper ads pointing out
d'Aubuisson's ties to the anion pirata. D'Aubuisson has
acknowledged Guirola is a friend, but he said he could not
be responsible for the actions of all his acquaintances. In
any case, d'Aubuisson has survived far worse charges
than that of a friend being charged with illegally removing
money from the United States.
D'Aubuisson's real problem may be that Guirola's suit-
cases never reached San Salvador. Arena-has formed a
formal alliance with the- next largest conservative party,
the Party of National Conciliation (PCN). The PCN, ho~'-
ever, is believed to be almost broke. In addition, wealthy
supporters of Arena have grown tired of funding
d'Aubuisson and his private security force. U.S. govern-
ment officials close to the case have not ruled out the
possibility that Guirola planned to keep the money him-
self. But they believe that at least part of the X5.9 million
was intended to rescue the PCN and to protect d'Aubuis-
son from the dissatisfaction in his own party.
U.S. law enforcement officials are reluctant to release
details of the Guirola case because it is still under investi-
gation. On the record they stress that they are not yet sure
what Guirola intended to do with the 5~.9 million. "The
money is dope money," one U.S. Customs agent asserted
in an interview'. "Whether it was part of a terrorist-money-
dope connection" is not known, the agent said, "but we
strongly believe it."
What is definite is that the arrests at ICleberg County
Airport have exposed some of the clandestine activities of
d'Aubuisson's inner circle. At the very least, government
documents and recent interviews with more than a dozen
sources both here and in Central America demonstrate
that El Salvador's drug smugglers, death-squad killers,
and right-wing politicians knova each other, do business
with each other, and share complete immunity from the
law.
RANCISCO GUIROLA, known to friends as Chico, is
typical of the people who travel in this world. He
comes from that small class of people whom Salvadorans
describe as "adjunct oligarchs." They are the men and
women of Jaycee age who cannot quite afford to live out
their lives without working; but rn~ho are rich enough to
fear being kidnapped by leftists. Revolution and reform
have deprived them of the undisturbed power that they
once would have inherited. These entrepreneurs have re-
sponded with fervent right-wing patriotism and support
for d'Aubuisson. Their counterrevolutionary zeal is the
soul of the Arena party.
We first talked with Chico at the Camino Real Hotel in
Guatemala City in June 1982. He was the picture of casual
wealth, amiable and well dressed. Those were euphoric
days for the "adjunct oligarchs." The elections in March
1982 had given the Arena party (which was formed only in
late 1981) near control of the National Assembly. More
important, the elections had restored some of the political
legitimacy that the right had lost after 1979 because of the
death squads. Between October 1979 and the summer of
1982, hundreds of unarmed civilians were murdered ev-
ery month in El Salvador: D'Aubuisson and his closest
associates openly resented domestic and international re-
vulsion at the violence. "It's not a legal war," Ricardo
Paredes, an Arena party activist and one of Chico's best
friends, explained in 1982. "We don't want to fight a
fair war. We have to go and beat their pants off."
Guirola and a few dozen other civilians closest to
d'Aubuisson had studied counterrevolutionary theory
with aging French mercenaries who told stories of the
Battle of Algiers. They had rubbed shoulders with secret
Argentine police who trained Salvadoran military officers
to run death squads one day and who shuttled to Hondu-
ras to train the contras the next. Their friends and family
had fled to Miami or been killed. But the}' had toughed it
out, and they had won. By the summer of 1982 Guirola
and his friends were feeling cocky enough to brag about
their adventures.
Guirola told us that his background and personal ambi-
tions had coincided with the needs of the right-wing
underground. As a young man he studied business at the
Menlo School and College in California with a close
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friend who was a nephew of Nicaraguan dicator Anastasio
Somoza. He said he learned "how to manage mone~~, how
to make money." But when his family's large rice planta-
tion began losing money, he had to return to El Salvador.
The family's holdings were then broken up by the coun-
try's land-reform program. Deeply embittered, he joined
the Salvadoran Nationalist Movement (MIL'S), a small
group of friends who described themselves as "violently
anticommunist." "I supported them with my otim funds,"
he explained. As financial director of the group, he re-
ceived limited contributions from secret donors to under-
write the group's activities. '-'They just put money in our
pockets. I never asked the source." D'Aubuisson, he said,
was "our- liaison to the military."
Guirola claimed that the movement used its money for
standard political purposes. The group was not a death
squad, but Guirola's friends said he had also given money
to people who were involved in other illicit activities, in-
cluding ablack propaganda campaign that portrayed re-
formist military officers as closet Communists, purchases
of arms on the black market, and acounter-terror cam-
paign in which bombs were planted at some 30 churches,
schools, and other institutions considered too sympathetic
to the left. Guirola's own role was described by these
acquaintances as that of an all-purpose smuggler, acontra-
bandista. They said he regularly flew his Beechcraft Baron
surreptitiously between the three cities where the Central
American right was strongest: San Salvador, Guatemala
City, and Miami.
But as Chico talked in the bar of the Camino Real, he
was also fighting off disillusionment. He had seen corrup-
tion in men he once admired. He had watched Arena
supersede the MNS as older and wealthier men moved in
to take control of the party now that it was legitimate. And
though he was still willing to work with the counterrevo-
lutionaries, he hinted that he had been sickened by seeing
their work firsthand.
After mid-1982 Chico dropped out of politics for a while
and began spending more time in Florida. His parents had
fled to Albuquerque, where his mother, a native_of Costa
Rica, obtained the job of vice consul for the Costa Rican
government. He didn't live with his parents, but there
were advantages to his mother's largely honorary post.
For one thing, as the son of the vice consul, he used a
diplomatic passport from Costa Rica. This entitled him to
avoid customs searches when entering and leaving the
United States.
~HREE MONTHS after we talked with Chico, the U.S.
Embassy in Sari Salvador began to receive reports that
d'Aubuisson and his close associates might be financing
their political activities partly by smuggling guns and
cocaine. The reports dealt with a friend of d'Aubuisson
named Julio Vega. Vega owned a cotton farm in Usulutan,
the eastern province of EI Salvador where hit-and-run
guerrilla attacks had driven many cotton farmers into
debt. Yet-Vega always seemed to have money to throw
around. U.S. officials later concluded that Julio operated a
~.
thriving gun and cocaine smuggling enterprise and-rani
death squads ~~ith the profits.
Vega took off in his private plane for Guatemala on
September 14, 198?. Just before he left, Vega obtained a
51.6 million government loan, ostensibly for a new cotton
crop. A well-placed Salvadoran official told us that
d'Aubuisson had encouraged Vega to get the loan, and
that the future attorney general Francisco Guerrero had
provided' legal advice. According to U.S. Embassy reports,
the proceeds were stashed aboard Vega's t~~in-engine Pip-
er Navajo, as part of a load of contraband cargo. At least
two intelligence reports received by the Central Intelli-
gence Agency from as-
sociates of Vega al-
leged that the money
was part of a multi-
million-dollar guns I ,
and cocaine deal.
Vega and his plane
never returned from
Guatemala. The U.S.
Embassy, recognizing
that the incident might
have political ramifica-
tions, immediately
tried to find out what
had happened. "The
right wing was a chron-
ic challenge in both
Guatemala and El Sal-
vador," said the em-
bassy official who con-
ducted the inquiry.
"There were two as-
pects to the threat that
this episode presented.
The first aspect, and I,
the main reason we
were concerned, was
because of the alliance
between the two right-
wing movements and
the potential involved forright-wing coup plotting. Drugs
were the second aspect."
The president of Guatemala, Efrain Rios Montt, appar-
' . ently had similiar concerns. Rios Montt, who was over-
thrown in amilitary coup in 1983, was an evangelical Protes-
~ tant deeply opposed to drugs. D'Aubuisson and his friends
'~, had often used Guatemala as a refuge, but as one source put
~~ it, Rios Montt concluded that this time the Salvadoran "had
crossed the line."The Guatemalan government announced
publicly that Vega and his co-pilot had been stopped by po-
lice and turned over to Salvadoran authorities.
The embassy. officer said he later learned that Vega's
,I wife, Marta Luz, was the last person to hear from him.
"Marta, darling," Vega reportedly said, "I'm having trou-
ble entering the country because my name is on a list at the
', airport." After that, Vega and his money vanished. The
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only remaining question was exactly how the Guatema-
lans disposed of Vega and his co-pilot. "Either he was
turned into cement in a cement factory or dropped into a
volcano," said one foreign observer. "The volcano is the
traditional way in Guatemala."
D'Aubuisson made no secret of his concern about Vega.
Twice he abruptly left his duties as president of the Con-
stituent Assembly to make trips to Guatemala to seek a
meeting ~~ith Rios Montt. But, according to the embassy
officer, the presidential aides "told him something heavy
enough to make him back off. He never touched it again."
D'Aubuisson may. have mourned his missing friend but
not for too long. When
Vega did not resurface,
d'Aubuisson left his
wife and moved in
with Marta Luz.
As a rule the State
Department investi-
gates only those for-
. eign crimes that have
implications for U.S.
policy. The Vega scan-
. dal quickly subsided,
and U.S. officials in
Central America came
to regard it as just one
more unresolved dis-
appearance. It wasn't
until the arrest of Guir-
ola seven weeks ago
that American diplo-
mats in San Salvador
began to reconsider the
possibility that d'Au-
buisson and his .back-
' ers were involved in
drug trafficking.
There was a good
deal of evidence link-
ing Guirola and his
companions to the
drug trade. U.S. Customs officials first became interested
in the Sabreliner jet, according to an affidavit for the
search warrant, when they learned that Guirola allegedly
had unloaded more than one million dollars in cash in
~ Panama on January 21. On January 22 Guirola and three
other men had landed at a small airport in the town of
Alice, Texas, to refuel. An unidentified airport employee
thought the refueling stop was suspicious and alerted cus-
toms officials. The affidavit says that customs had been
informed that the plane had been used in "a large-scale
illegal money laundering operation" in Central America.
On February 6 customs officials seized the plane at the
Kleberg County airport, on the technicality that the air-
craft had allegedly not reported to customs authorities
since returning from Panama. Guirola and two Cuban-
Americans, Gus Maestrales and Oscar Rodriguez Feo, ` '
were arrested. for conspiring to violate a federal statute
that requires anyone taking more than 510,000 in cash out
of the country to file a report with the U.S. Treasury De-
partment. Maestrales was the owner and pilot of the
plane. Bail for Guirola and Rodriguez Feo was set at two
million dollars, and the}' remain in jail in Corpus Christi.
Maestrales's bail was set at one million dollars, which he
posted. The fourth man on the plane, co-pilot Arturo
Guerra, who was named in the affidavit as a "large-scale"
narcotics trafficker, was questioned but not charged. In-
vestigators said there was no evidence he was involved in
the scheme.
U.S. authorities are not yet certain what the arrest of
Guirola and Co. means. Records from the Drug Enforce-
ment Administration confirm that all four men have been
suspected of cocaine or marijuana smuggling. Law en-
forcement officials say that the men appeared to be work-
ing around the clock shipping money out of the United
States. One law official familiar with the case said, "They
never slept." An encyclopedic array of personal papers
confiscated from the men shows large cash transactions.
They also indicate that Guirola and Rodriguez Feo were
connected with a Salvadoran business that has a bank
account in Panama.
The four men had obtained enough identification of
their own to operate without challenge from the law-at
least in El Salvador. In addition to the Costa Rican pass-
port, Guirola carried the Salvadoran passport that identi-
fiedhim as a government official. His credentials from the
Salvadoran attorney general's office identified him as a
"special commissioner." Curiously Rodriguez Feo also
had signed credentials from the Salvadoran attorney gen-
eral-even though he is a naturalized American citizen.
I Rodriguez Feo's credentials as a "security adviser" are
also unusual because he is known, at least to U.S. law
~' enforcement authorities, as the registered owner of a
shrimp boat found in the Bahamas in November 1982 with
10,496 pounds of baled marijuana on board: No one was
aboard the boat at the time it was seized, and no charges
were brought th the case. It is not known whether the
Salvadoran attorney general knew about the shrimp boat
case. Nor is it clear whether the LD.s mean -that Guirol
and Rodriguez Feo were on the attorney general's payroll
held merely honorary titles, or had bought the credentials,
After Guirola's arrest, Pickering wrote an unclassifiei
cable to the State Department reporting that d'Aubuissot
had called him about the incident. Pickering saic
d'Aubuisson claimed "he had only a slight and nodding
acquaintance" with this "ne'er-do-well young man.''.
When Pickering "asked Major d'Aubuisson if this wasn't:-
the same Mr. Guirola whom he brought along to the ver)
sensitive meeting" with General Walters, d'Aubuisson
said yes, according to Pickering, but "attempted to dis?
miss the importance of their association."
~nuw!
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The major law enforcement question now' is whether
Guirola's travels and "fund-raising" could have remained
completely unknown to d'Aubuisson and to other officials
in the Salvadoran government. But the even more impor?
tant political question is whether the U.S. investigation
~~ill be followed up in EI Salvador and Panama. U.S. intel-
lig nce files are already crammed full of far more serious
allegations against d'Aubuisson. Nevertheless, the Rea-
an administration has continued to treat d Aubutsson as
if he were a legitimate conservative politician: Better to
have him struggling for votes in the legislature, the rea-
soning goes, than to have him killing his opponents on the
streets.
If the U.S. government will not stand up to d'Aubuis-
son, it is certain that no one in the Salvadoran govern-
ment, from President Duarte on down, will do so either.
D'Aubuisson dismisses the most credible death-squad al-
legations as "disinformation" spread by communist sym-
pathizers. He is sure that neither American nor Salvador-
an officials. will challenge him on the Guirola case or
any other. His lawyer is EI Salvador's attorney general,
and his longtime friends sit on the Supreme Court. When
d'Aubuisson was last in Washington, he spoke to fawning
members of the Young Americans for Freedom at George-
town University, and expressed his usual confidence that
not even the worst charges against him will ever stick.
"Where is the proof?" he demanded. "If anyone has any
real evidence against me; let them give it to a judge." He is
El Salvador's Teflon terrorist. ?
CHICO AND
TxE MEN
Here are the major characters in the
story of the mysterious six million
dollars.
Roberto d'Aubuisson: leader of the far
right-wing Arena party and reputed
organizer of Salvadoran death
squads. He campaigned out of Chico
Guirola's house when running for
president of El Salvador last yeai.
Francisco "Chico" Guirola: arrested
carrying 55.9 million in cash in Texas
on February 6. A young well-to-do
Salvadoran rice farmer, he has raised
Craig Pyes is an associate of the Center for Investigative
Reporting. Laurie Becklund is a reporter for The Los Angeles
Times. Their articles on El Salvador's death squads won the
1984-85 "Outstanding Media Coverage" award from the
Latin American Studies Association.
money for d'Aubuisson and the Are-
na party.
Jose Francisco Guerrero: attorney gen-
eral of EI Salvador and d'Aubuisson's
personal lawyer. He issued and
signed the official law enforcement
credentials that Chico Guirola and
Oscar Rodriguez Feo were carrying
when arrested in Texas.
Thomas Pickering: outgoing U.S. am-
bassador to El Salvador. He was the
target of a suspected death-squad
plot by key d'Aubuisson aides last
May.
role as d'Aubuisson's security
chief. U.S. officials say he organized
the plot against Pickering.
Oscar Rodriguez Feo: aCuban-Amen-
can suspected drug trafficker who
was arrested with Guirola. His cre-
dentials identified him as a "special
security adviser" to El Salvador's at-
torney. general.
Julio Vega: friend of d'Aubuisson who
disappeared in Guatemala in 1982.
U.S. authorities believe he was in-
volved in guns and cocaine
smuggling.
Hector Antonio Regalado: Salvadoran Marta Luz de Vega:.Julio Vega's wife,
dentist known as "Dr. Death" for his now d'Aubuisson's mistress.
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