Phaler later established a boat company called Freedom Marine in San Diego and sold three radardeflecting Kevlar boats to the Contras for $140,000, according to testimony by Robert Owen before the Iran-Contra committee. In a 1987 San Diego Union story about the boat purchase, Karl Phaler gushed that "Oliver North said I was a great American. After a compliment like that, I would have done just about anything.” 11 “North by Northwest,” Toys for Eden Until May, 1984, Contra leader Eden Pastora was the major beneficiary of weapons shipments to Hull’s ranch and Santa Elena. Costa Rica actually has three areas called Santa Elena; Plumlee says Oliver North and his courier, Robert Owen, assigned the code name “ Point West” to the Santa Elena staging area on the northwest coast of Costa Rica. So Plumlee's notation refers to Oliver North, the location of Santa Elena, and the main reason for its existence. On May 30,1984, at Pastora's jungle hideout La Penca, just inside Nicaragua, a bomb exploded during his press conference. Pastora was decrying the CIA’s pressure on him to merge with the main faction of Contras in Honduras. One American [Linda Frazier of Portland] and several Costa Rican journalists were killed, but Pastora survived. The bombing became the basis of a lawsuit filed by the Christie Institute, a nonprofit publicinterest law firm based in Washington, D.C. The suit claims that the bombing was part of a criminal conspiracy that also included illeA Note On Sources [From the author and the San Diego Reader] To make this story easier to read, attribution was withheld from many assertions of fact. But all these facts have been established and are available in the following publications, which were invaluable in this story’s preparation. Cockburn, Leslie, Out of Control. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1987. Subtitled “The Story of the Reagan Administration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection,” this book details the web of connections between government functionaries, greedy arms suppliers and the Contra rebels. Plumlee appears in this book as a source. Kwitny, Jonathan, The Crimes of Patriots, A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1987. The Nugan Hand Bank scandal inAustralia is shown to be intricately entwined with many of the same people who controlled the Contra war. This book gives excellent background information on the worldwide operations of several American arms merchants. Wass, Murray, “Cocaine and the White House,” L.A. Weekly, Sept. 30 and Oct. 7, 1988. An exhaustive account of high-level connections between drug dealers and U.S. government agencies working in Central America, this story draws the larger context within which Plumlee was one small but crucial player. Woodward, Bob, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987. A good source for background information and confirmation of Plumlee's stories regarding the types of information the Black Crews helped ferret out. This book also confirmed the time frames in which Plumlee says he performed certain undercover tasks. A Note from Clinton St. An additional source of interest is the report by Sen. John Kerry’sU. S. Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations entitled Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, referred to in Matthews’ story. Released April 13,1989, the report describes drug-running throughout the hemisphere, and devotes considerable ink to John Hull (pgs. 142- 153), Felix Rodriguez (pgs. 161-164), and many others cited in this story. The “Kerry Report," which has yet to receive major attention from any mainstream media, is obtainable by request through your U.S. Senator. For further information about drug-running, arms-smuggling and the La Penca bombing, at which Linda Frazier of Portland was killed, the only American civilian murdered in Nicaragua this past decade other than Portlander-University of Washington graduate Benjamin Linder, contact the Christie Institute’s Northwest Regional Office, (503) 234-4107. Brought to you by a generous contribution from 35 “Points of Light" in Port Townsend. gal covert arms smuggling, violations of banking and currency laws, and political assassination. Filed in federal court under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, the suit names 29 defendants (including Hull, Secord, Owen, Pablo Escobar, and several CIA officials) who allegedly had a direct or indirect hand in the La Penca bombing and in various secret wars all over the world. The lawsuit is currently on appeal. Before the bombing Plumlee says that Pastora's guerrilla commanders often complained about the shoddy gear they were receiving and the escalating prices they had to pay for equipment. “ Sortie of the stuff was crap— boots with holes in ’em, old M-ls instead of M-16s, medical supplies that had their seals broken. It was a business and we were bringing drugs back to pay for it. We were trading better weapons to the drug cartels in return for use of their airstrips. I thought this was a shitty way to fight for democracy.” Once the Contra resupply effort was outlawed by Congress in 1984, Plumlee says, the airplanes themselves became rattletraps. Oliver North's job was to circumvent the congressional ban on government aid to the Contras, and that was accomplished by commissioning Richard Secord to bring in private arms dealers and aircraft suppliers to do the work for profit. Plumlee says these outfits didn’t take care of their airplanes nearly as well as the CIA did. “ See, this way, if a plane went down, it would be much easier to claim it was a shoddy free-lance operation not connected to the government.” MUSIC MILLENNIUM ROCK RAP JAZZ BLUES SOUL FOLK COUNTRY REGGAE NEW AGE CAJUN OLDIES BOTH IN THE UPTOWN SHOPPING CENTER CHANGE YOUR BLAHS IN TO BRIGHTS INTERNATIONAL SOUNDTRACKS CLASSICAL AND MORE! M U S IC M IL LEN N IUM EASTPORTLAND 32ND&E BURNSIDE 231-8926 NWPORTLAND 23RD& NWJOHNSON 248-0163 La Paloma Hillsdale Shopping Center Mon.-Fri.-10am-9pm 5 minutes from Downtown - 246-3417 Sat. 10am - 6pm Clinton St.—Spring 1990 11
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