
          Contras in Dixie
          By Guthey, EricEric Guthey
          Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, pp. 1-6
          
          In 1984 an assassin's bomb intended for Contra leader Eden Pastora
killed eight people, including an American journalist, at the Contra
outpost of La Penca on the southern front of the U.S.-sponsored war
against Nicaragua.
          Four years later, the shock waves of that explosion still
reverberate along the southern front of another, even more secret war
being waged against the democratic principles of the U.S. Constitution
and the will of the American people.
          Revelations of illegal activities in support of the U.S.-backed
Contras continue to crop up in local communities around the South. The
revelations contribute to the case that the Christic Institute, a
Washington-based public interest law firm and policy center, has
mounted in a Miami federal_court against members of the criminal
conspiracy it believes was behind the La Penca bombing, behind an
extensive guns-for-drugs campaign, and behind the rest of the untold
story surrounding the Iran-Contra affair.
          * In Miami in 1986, convicted drug pilot Michael Tolliver landed a
plane carrying 25,000 pounds of marijuana at the Homestead U.S. Air
Force Base. Tolliver has testified before Congress that his action was
part of a massive guns-for-drugs operation to resupply the U.S.-backed
Contras.
          * In Mena, Ark., local law enforcement officials are trying to shed
light on a drug smuggling and Contra supply airstrip which they were
told not to investigate because it was an official covert operation of
the CIA.
          * In Marietta, Ga., alleged arms merchant Gary Best continued until
very recently to run the company he took over from local toymaker
Robert Fletcher to use as a front for his illicit dealings. Fletcher
says that Best, who has close ties to former major general and
indicted Iran-Contra co-conspirator John Singlaub, threatened
his 

(Fletcher's) life and forced him out of the company after he
refused to become involved in arms smuggling to Angola.
          * And in nearby Atlanta, Fulton County Chief of Detectives
E.E. Nixon testified in early May concerning his aborted 1984
investigation into a warehouse allegedly containing C-4, the same type
of plastic explosive that killed American journalist Linda Frazier at
La Penca in the spring of that year. According to the Chicago-based
weekly IN THESE TIMES, Nixon called off his
investigation at the request of former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver
North.
          These and many other equally lurid goings-on point to the extent of
the Iran-Contra affair--corruption which has penetrated local
communities across the South and around the nation with drastic and
lasting consequences. Largely glossed over by the President's Tower
Commission, by the Congressional Iran-Contra Committees, and even by
special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, the pattern of subversion and
illegal activity that resulted in "Contragate" has been reduced in the
public eye to little more than a problem of executive management
style, an aberration on the part of otherwise well-intentioned
"national heros."
          
            Christic Institute Challenges the Whitewash
          
          Although still ignored for the most part by the mainstream press,
the Christic Institute has been digging up the real story behind the
Iran-Contra affair for over three years. Christic filed its federal
civil lawsuit against several of the key figures in the scandal a full
six months before Attorney_General Ed Meese reluctantly released the
story to the public.
          The Christic Institute's staff has since swelled from fifteen to
over sixty members, all of whom work for no more than $15,000 per
year. Christic's main office in Washington, with a budget of more than
$80,000 per week, now works exclusively on the Contragate
suit. Christic funds its operations through private donations, through
support from national church and peace groups, and through national
foundation grants.
          "When we filed the suit in May of 1986, a lot of people thought
we were crazy," says Sara Nelson, the Institute's executive
director. "They didn't know these names, and they couldn't imagine
that there was this massive illegal military supply operation to the
Contras."
          "Six months later the [Eugene] Hasenfus plane went down in
Nicaragua," Nelson recalls. "Our defendants' names surfaced in
Hasenfus's business cards and telephone records. The press came to our
office to find out what we knew. Then the Iran-Contra scandal broke,
and there were more of our defendants--Albert Hakim, Richard
Secord--in the middle of the Iran weapons sale."
          Christic has discovered that all of the principals in the
Iran-Contra scandal also worked for the "Secret Team" or "Enterprise,"
a covert, privately-funded, anti-communist organization made up of
present and former U.S. military and CIA officials. According to
Christic, members of the Secret Team, "acting both officially and
on their own, have waged secret wars, toppled governments, trafficked
in drugs, assassinated political enemies, stolen from the U.S.
government, and subverted the will of the Constitution, the Congress,
and the American people" for the past twenty five years.
          "These are people who believe that they are above the 

law, who
are perfectly willing to lie to protect their programs, who think that
their agenda is so important that our representatives do not matter
and neither do we," says Nelson. "We never voted for death
squads. We never thought that this is what they were doing in our
name. We believed them when they said 'We are spreading democracy. We
are fighting for freedom.' But that is not what has been going
on."
          
            La Penca and the Contragate Lawsuit
          
          Christic filed its $17 million civil lawsuit against twenty-nine
members of the Secret Team on behalf of American journalist Tony
Avirgan and his wife and fellow journalist, Martha Honey. In 1984,
Avirgan had been covering Eden Pastora's La Penca press conference for
ABC News when he was severely injured by the failed attempt to
assassinate the Contra leader. On a recent, nationally televised
episode of the PBS series, FRONTLINE, Avirgan recounted how the
wounded Pastora was spirited away in the only boat available at the
remote river outpost, and how the rest of the victims of the attack
lay on the floor for a full nine hours before help arrived. That same
night, the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, falsely reported that
no Americans had been injured in the bombing, and refused to offer any
assistance. FRONTLINE quoted George Jones, the deputy in charge of the
embassy, as elating at the time, "We are not in the rescue
business."
          After Avirgan recovered from his injuries, he and Honey began to
investigate the bombing, fully expecting to find that it had been
carried out by the Sandinistas. But every piece of information they
uncovered led them to believe that the operation had been launched
from the Costa Rican ranch of American millionaire John Hull, an
alleged member of the Secret Team and now a defendant in the Christic
lawsuit. Honey and Avirgan discovered that the Secret Team had decided
to eliminate Pastora because he refused to follow CIA directives or to
associate himself with other Contras who had been part of Anastasio
Somoza's National Guard, members of which had murdered Pastora'a
father.
          Honey and Avirgan also uncovered substantial evidence that Hull's
ranch was being used as a trans-shipment point for cocaine entering
the U.S. and arms coming back to the Contras.
          In 1985, after Honey and Avirgan published their findings, Hull
sued them for criminal libel in a Costa Rican court. According to a
sworn affadavit from Christic Institute general counsel
Daniel Sheehan, who defended Honey and Avirgan, several witnesses for
the defense were kid-

napped and tortured on Hull's ranch. According to
a member of the Costa Rican Rural Guard, one of their key witnesses
wee executed there as well. A Costa Rican judge threw Hull's case out
of court.
          The allegations by Honey and Avirgan about Hull's drug smuggling
and arms dealing activities in support of the Contras have recently
received independent confirmation from Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.)
during hearings on the Contra-drug connection. On Frontline, Hull
still denied any wrongdoing but said, "If it were within my power,
people like [Senator Ted] Kennedy and Kerry would be lined up and shot
tomorrow."
          Other defendants in the Christic lawsuit include retired general
Richard Secord; Robert Owen, Oliver North's private courier; Contra
leader Adolfo Calero; and Thomas Posey, head of Civilian Materiel
Assistance (formerly "Civilian Military Assistance"), an ultra-right
wing group involved in supplying the Contras out of Decatur,
Ala. Christic asserts that the Secret Team is headed by defendant
Theodore Shackley, who served as CIA Deputy Director in charge of
worldwide covert operations under the agency's former director, George
Bush.
          Christic has refrained from naming any present members of the
U.S. government in its suit in order not to bring the Justice
Department into the case on the aide of the defendants.
          In testimony before the Iran-Contra committees, Robert Owen called
the charges against him "scurrilous." In an article in the
ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, Shackley called members
of the Christic Institute "practitioners of character assassination
through legal terrorism" whose charges amounted to "rubbish."
          But defendants in the Christic lawsuit participate in character
assassination of their own. During the Iran-Contra hearings, former
CIA operative Glenn Robinette testified that Richard Secord paid him
more than $60,000 in funds diverted from the Iranian arms sales to
carry out a smear campaign against the Christic Institute.
          In the December 1987 issue of Soldier of Fortune
magazine, retired major general John Singlaub said in a funding
appeal, "If I were back in Vietnam in a firefight, then I'd ask for
an airstrike to blow the bastards away. But to win this fight we need
money. To fight the damned Christic Institute lawsuit takes money."
          Christic's lawsuit charges the twenty-nine defendants with
violating the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations, or RICO Act. Under the statute, Christic's lawyers must
prove that each defendant committed two offenses contributing to the
conspiracy within a ten-year period. But Christic asserts that the
Secret Team has been committing terrorist acts from positions both
within and outside the government for the last twenty-five years.
          
            Christic Focuses on the South
          
          Although the Christic Institute wants to see the members of the
Secret Team brought to justice, it also views the lawsuit as an
opportunity to inform the American people of the crimes being
committed in the name of their country. "If we don't speak out and
say we want to know about all this--as long as they can keep these
things covert--then we can't begin to correct the injustice and the
immorality that is going on under our noses," says Sara
Nelson. For this reason the Christic Institute devotee half of its
efforts to getting out the word about their lawsuit and about the
illegal dealings of the Secret Team.
          We can uncover the facts and conclude them in a court of law and
resolve the debate about what is true and what is not," Nelson
says. "But it is going to take a massive public_education and
organizing campaign if we are going to develop a groundswell of
pressure on our institutions to get them to do their part in solving
these problems."
          Recently, Christic has stepped up its public_education and
organizing campaign in the South. "We hope that we can bring out
some of this information here 

and that other groups will continue to
work with it," says Christic's Director of Southern Outreach,
Tennessee native Jenny Yancey.
          "The biggest issue here in the South is moving people to feel
that they have the power to do something," says Yancey. "And
this information is power."
          The Christic Institute has a strong history of legal action on
behalf of local communities and individuals in the South. Dr. Joseph
Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Council sits on the
Christic board of advisors. Christic conducted the investigation and
successful lawsuit against the Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in
Oklahoma on behalf of Karen Silkwood, who died mysteriously while
trying to go public about her massive exposure to radiation at the
plant. In 1985, Christic won a verdict against four Klansmen, two
members of the American Nazi Party and two members of the Greensboro,
N. C., Police Department for the murder of five anti-Klan
demonstrators.
          Christic also successfully defended Stacey Lynn Merkt of
Brownsville, Texas, the first Sanctuary Movement worker arrested for
harboring Savadoran refugees, and Eddie Carthan, the first black mayor
elected in the Mississippi Delta since the Reconstruction, who had
been falsely accused of murder.  Christic attorneys worked on behalf
of defendants in the Reagan Justice_Department's unsuccessful
prosecution of civil_rights activists in the Alabama Black_Belt [see
SOUTHERN CHANGES, May/June, 1985]. Most recently,
Christic South's office in Durham, N.C., provided legal and organizing
services to the residents of Keyesville, Ga., where a fifty-year ban
on self-government had left black residents with out such basic
services as plumbing, sewers, a fire department or a school. In
elections held last January, Keyesville residents elected their own
town council and installed Emma Gresham, a black retired school
teacher, as mayor.
          In April, Nelson and Yancey traveled to Atlanta for four days of
speaking engagements and organizing meetings. On Wednesday, April 21,
Nelson spoke at a service at the Cathedral of Faith, a black
Pentecostal church in south Atlanta. A few weeks before a six-year-old
child had been shot in both legs in south Atlanta, caught in the
crossfire of a crack-related shootout. Nelson emphasized that the
Reagan administration's obsession with the Contras has severely
aggravated the drug problem in America's inner cities, because
administration officials have been at the very least looking the other
way so that drug money could be used to fund the Contras. Dr. Jonathan
Greer, pastor at the Cathedral of Faith, drove the point home in a
rousing sermon.
          "It's not the folks out here that are the problem," Greer
said of the increased drug-related crime in Atlanta and other
cities. "It's the folks in Washington. They speak out against
drugs, but they're just playing a game. They tell us 'Just Say
No'--but they say 'yes' behind the scene because the money's
right!
          "All the politicians come in here saying 'We're going to beef up
our protection and round up the dealers.' Well, I say start downtown!
START IN WASHINGTON! Because if you can get that cleaned up, you won't
have to worry about down here!"
          Nelson also spoke at a conference on theology, peace and politics
held at Emory University and the Carter Presidential Center, and
participated in a panel at the conference of the National Alliance of
Third World Journalists at Clark College. She and her husband,
Christic's general counsel Daniel Sheehan, met with television
executive Ted Turner to discuss the progress of their lawsuit and its
coverage in the media.
          Meanwhile, Yancey discussed with local organizers strategies for
spreading the message about the Christic lawsuit. Yancey, fellow
Christic staffer Eva Berkham, and the small group of organizers, which
included representatives from area churches, a student Central America
network, Pledge of Resistance, and Clergy and Laity Concerned,
discussed advertisements, petition, leaflet and letter-writing
campaigns, contacting local politicians for support, and a possible
vigil in front of the Federal Building. Christic and the various
Atlanta groups will try to coordinate their activities around the week
of May 30, the fourth anniversary of the La Penca bombing.
          Christic efforts come at a crucial time. Judge Lawrence King in
Miami has placed certain severe restrictions on Christic's lawyers,
setting an early June 29 trial date and stipulating that Christic must
prove ten years of illegal activity on the basis of only a four-year
discovery period.
          An obvious reason for Christic's interest in Atlanta is the
upcoming Democratic National Convention. Christic's members see the
election year as an opportunity to encourage voters to press for the
kinds of change that might put an end to the state-sanctioned
terrorism carried out by the Secret Team. "We want to keep working
with people between now and the elections to raise these questions and
get them into the debates so that the candidates are forced to come to
grips with this," says Nelson. 
          "It's important that we don't blow this year," says Georgia
Robeson, one of the Atlanta organizers working with Christic. "It's
essential that George Bush does not become the leader of this
country--because he does know more about all of this than he has
admitted." Indeed, press reports continue to indicate that Bush's
chief advisers met with members of the Secret Team on several
occasions. These reports, along with all of the other evidence that
has come out about the Iran-Contra scandal, push the "plausible
deniablity" of Bush, Reagan, and other top administration officials
ever further into the realm of fiction.
          Local groups in New_Orleans also plan to make the Christic message
heard during the Republican National 

Convention later this
summer. "There are many things in the planning stage--including
major demonstrations--and certainly the Iran-Contra drug connection
will be an important part of the issues raised," says Ted Quant of
the Institute of Human Relations at Loyola University in New
Orleans. Quant is particularly concerned about the Christic
Institute's evidence that the Secret Team and the CIA have been
involved in drug running to benefit the Contras.
          There's been a tremendous drug problem, particularly among the
young_people in our community," says Quant. "Then we learn
through Christic that a tremendous amount of the drugs in our
community were actually flown in by the CIA. That means our kids are
being used as cannon fodder for the Administration policy of trying to
overthrow another country that is trying to establish a decent life
for its children as well."
          The South presents "fertile ground" for "the type of
paramilitary program that you see with the Iran-Contra affair,"
Quant says. "The South has a history of support for this sort of
paramilitary behavior going back at least to the Ku Klux Klan--and the
role of extra-legal terror has continued until recent times. We know
for example that the Klan has often traded its white robes for
paramilitary garb to allign itself with the fight against
Communism."
          Quant has witnessed first-hand the disastrous effects that the
successful exploitation of this right-wing brand of Southern
nationalism has had in the New_Orleans community. "In a way the
South has been treated as sort of a second-rate colony by these
people--a place where they can dump these drugs to finance this
war."
          
            The Scandal of the Eighties
          
          The Iran-Contra Committees brushed aside a horrifying story of
state-sponsored terrorism by focusing on the question of whether the
president knew what was going on. But as Noam Chomsky writes in his
book THE CULTURE OF TERRORISM, Reagan is "largely a
creation of the Public Relations Industry," and the question of
what he knew retains significance only "in the world of imagery and
illusion in which ideologists must labor to maintain the pretense that
the public determines policy guidelines by voting for the chief
executive." The scores of conflicting and erroneous statements
that have come out of Ronald Reagan's mouth about the Iran-Contra
scandal serve to confirm his irrelevance to real issues in the real
world. Whether or not Reagan knew what went on, it happened--a secret
government waged wars, murdered at least one American citizen and many
others abroad, flooded the country with drugs, and flouted the will of
the American people. A president with any degree of competence would
have to be held responsible.
          The defense of choice around the White_House these days adheres to
the revised slogan "Just say I don't know"--a defense in which
Administration officials are proud of the fact that they kept
themselves uninformed or, better still, that they haven't been
indicted yet. George Bush's continued assertions that he stayed "out
of the loop" as far as the Iran-Contra affair was concerned illustrate
just how far the Reagan gang will go to insult the intelligence of the
American people. Recent press reports indicate that Bush may try to
manipulate the debates before the election in order to avoid being
confronted with his complicity in the Iran-Contra scandal and the
operations of the Secret Team. He must not be allowed to do so. And
the Democratic candidates must be carefully questioned as well--to
make sure that, if elected, they will put an end to such threats to
the Constitution and to the people's right to know how their country
is being governed.
          On May 2, Oliver North addressed the graduating class at Jerry
Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Falwell likened North's
current legal trials to the sufferings of Christ, and the teary-eyed
patriot said that he wore the accusations against him as "a badge of
honor." The heart of the Iran-Contra scandal is that very perversion
of the American dream, where a U.S. marine can become a terrorist, and
a terrorist can become a national hero of Christ-like
proportions. Such a display of misplaced values thrives on
ignorance--ignorance of what North did, ignorance of what those like
him have been doing for years. By insisting that they just didn't
know, Reagan and Bush proudly uphold this ignorance as an example for
the American people.
          If Americans need to ask themselves whether patriotism means
remaining ignorant of what goes on in their names, Southerners need to
wonder why a figure like Oliver North receives such a sunny reception
in Dixie. Capitalizing on traditional Southern support for
quasi-religious nationalism and militarism, North depends upon
Southerners to remain unaware of the facts, to buy into the slogans of
gung-ho symbolism, to look the other way while right-wing ideologues
conduct paramilitary operations in our own back yard.
          For More Information
          "Contragate Affidavit" by Daniel Sheehan, $10;
LA PENCA REPORT by Avirgan and Honey, $8; Contragate
Video: "The Shadow Government," $20. Order from
Christic Institute, 1324 N. Capitol St., NW., Washington, DC 20002.
          
            Eric Guthey is a student in the Graduate Institute of
Liberal Arts at Emory University.
          
        
