William Casey

Director of the CIA DUANE CLARRIDGE Head of the Latin American Department, CIA, Director of Operations

In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed William Casey as the head of the CIA. In the following years, the agency greatly expanded its secret activities. One of these was a secret war. The CIA contracted former officers of the hated National Guard of the deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza in order to attack Nicaragua. This was the “contra,” an abbreviation for counter (Contra) revolution.

In 1982, Casey authorized Operation “Black Eagle,” a secret operation to finance and supply the Contras. Casey’s plan was to create a private network that would be large enough to arm, finance and secretly direct an entire war, without openly using military forces or intelligence agents. It was called “The Company” and was made up of “ex” CIA officers and agents.

To finance The Company, Casey and his representatives dealt with governments belonging to the Yankee “family”: Israel, Argentina, Brunei, Saudi Arabia and the military governments in Central America. In exchange for all kinds of favours, these governments contributed weapons, money and trainers to The Company. The existence of this operation was discovered during the Iran-Contra Scandal, but during those hearings they covered up the fact that The Company had also conducted many drug-trafficking operations. The CIA had offered the drug lords a very attractive deal: if they would finance and transport arms to the Contras, the CIA would make sure that U.S. Customs and the DEA would leave them alone. It was truly a deal they could not refuse, offered by the powerful Washington godfathers. (1)

Clarridge and The Honduras Connection

Casey appointed Duane Clarridge, a top CIA officer, as de facto commander in chief in the Contra War. In August 1981, before the war broke out, Clarridge flew to Honduras, a country to the north of Nicaragua which was going to be the Contra Base. There he met with the President, Policarpo Paz Garcia, Colonel Leonidas Torres (head of military intelligence) and Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martinez (chief of National Police). The three men were already deep into cocaine trafficking and they had connections with the main Honduran drug lord, Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (1). “We don’t know how deep into the drug trade the Honduran military really are,” said a State Department official. “We assume that the upper echelon of officers is aware of this situation, many are involved…and everyone is turning a good profit.” (2)

Even though Matta was in prison at the time, the report by the Kerry Senate Sub-Committee of 1989 documented that his airline SETCO was one of the main means of transport for the Contras, “carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms and other military hardware” between 1983 and 1985. In their return flights, the planes often carried cocaine.

In 1983, when the SETCO Contra flights were beginning, Vice President George Bush placed DEA operations under the control of “national security” apparatus. In June 1983, one month after the Honduras DEA office began investigating SETCO, the DEA closed its office. In 1983, SAT planes (Southern Air Transport, a company that the CIA had just “privatized”) were seen loading cocaine in Barranquilla, Colombia (Washington Post, January 20, 1987). SETCO and SAT were part of the air supply network directed by “retired Air Force General” Richard Secord, military logistics expert who is also said to be a CIA officer.

1984: The Company gets in even deeper

Certain sectors of the ruling class were complaining that the Contras were “inefficient” and that they would never overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The commanders were accused of being more concerned about building their private fortunes than they were about fighting. In 1984, Congress prohibited sending direct arms to the Contra. In response, the CIA removed the direction of the supply network from their headquarters in Langley.

After 1984, the Contra supervisor was Donald Gregg, former CIA officer, and he was appointed as advisor to Vice President George Bush. In the White House, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a team player on the National Security Council, was directing the supplying of the Contras under the leadership of William Casey himself. The CIA was keeping the operation firmly in the hands of their experts. At the top, George Bush was in charge of three key government areas: “crisis management,” “counter terrorism” and “drug trade policy.”

The Company continued growing. In 1986, the CIA had at least 300 agents in Honduras. (3) In 1984, SETCO began to receive funds directly from the State Department. The State Department had declared before Congress that the CIA approved giving funds to Matta´s organization. It also gave information that North had paid SETCO more money from secret accounts. (1) According to Newsweek (5 May 1985), Matta’s organization was bringing up to a third of the cocaine coming into the United States. When the scandal about Company dealings with Iran erupted, Oliver North said: “Casey told me to clean out the files. I destroyed and altered documents.” (Time, July 27, 1987). Casey died of a brain tumour in the midst of the Iran-Contra Scandal.