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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Dwight D. Eisenhower.md
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---
title: Dwight D. Eisenhower
aliases:
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Dwight Eisenhower
- Eisenhower
- Ike
- President Eisenhower
- Dwight David Eisenhower
created: 2026-05-14
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Political Figure"
tags:
- KeyFigure
- Person
- President
- CIA
- Politician
- Israel
- Dimona
- MJ12
- Soviet
- Military
- 1950s
- 1960s
summary: "Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961) who authorized Operation AJAX, Operation PBSUCCESS, and the U-2 aerial reconnaissance program, and whose farewell address warning against the military-industrial complex became foundational to critiques of Cold War national security state expansion."
summary: "Thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953-1961) who authorized CIA operations in Guatemala, received the first intelligence on Dimona, and warned in 1961 against the military-industrial complex."
born: 1890-10-14
died: 1969-03-28
location: "Denison, Texas"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[United States]]"
start: 1953-01-20
end: 1961-01-20
role: "34th President"
fn: 1
- type: appointed
with: "[[Allen Dulles]]"
role: "Director of Central Intelligence"
fn: 3
- type: appointed
with: "[[Christian A. Herter]]"
role: "Secretary of State, 1960"
fn: 6
- type: appointed
with: "[[Thomas S. Gates]]"
role: "Secretary of Defense, 1960"
fn: 6
- type: appointed
with: "[[John McCone]]"
role: "Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1960"
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Operation PBSUCCESS]]"
start: 1953-08
role: "authorized the operation with a $2.7 million budget"
fn: 2
- type: investigated
with: "[[Church Committee]]"
reverse: true
start: 1975
role: "Committee examined whether he authorized the 1960 plot against Patrice Lumumba and found the record unclear"
fn: 3
---
Dwight D. Eisenhower, born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890 and died on March 28, 1969, served as the 34th President of the [[United States]] from January 20, 1953 to January 20, 1961.[^1] The record below follows his administration through the clusters on which the vault holds material: covert action, the discovery of [[Dimona]], the Majestic-12 documents, and the farewell address.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the [[United States]], serving from 1953 to 1961. His reliance on aerial photography as Allied Commander in Chief in World War II was reaffirmed by postwar bombing surveys, which concluded that a significant portion of useful intelligence came from overhead reconnaissance. Upon becoming president, he was concerned about the lack of aerial intelligence on the [[Soviet Union]] and ordered the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] to address this.[^1]
### Covert action
Eisenhower authorized a daring reconnaissance program, primarily targeting the [[Soviet Union]], and assigned the development of the revolutionary [[U-2 Spy Plane]] jointly to the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and the Air Force. The U-2 became operational in July 1956, providing crucial intelligence on Soviet military and nuclear programs.[^1]
The National Security Archive's edition of the CIA's 1997 Guatemala release states that [[Operation PBSUCCESS]] was authorized by Eisenhower in August 1953 with a $2.7 million budget for "psychological warfare and political action" and "subversion," after an earlier effort, PBFORTUNE, had been authorized by [[Harry S. Truman]] in 1952; the release included an assassination instruction guide found among PBSUCCESS training files.[^2] The CIA's internal history of the 1953 Iran coup was published by the Archive in 2000 (see [[Operation AJAX]]).
Eisenhower and his administration, including [[John Foster Dulles]] and [[Allen Dulles]], were angered by [[Israel]]'s attempt to mask its military buildup before the 1956 [[Suez Crisis]]. The U-2 continued to monitor sensitive areas, including the [[Middle East]], and by 1958, CIA photo interpreters observed significant activity at an Israeli Air Force practice bombing range south of [[Beersheba]], which turned out to be the early signs of the [[Dimona]] nuclear reactor.[^1]
In 1975 the [[Church Committee]] investigated the 1960 plot against the Congolese premier [[Patrice Lumumba]]. It reported that in the fall of 1960 two CIA officials were asked by superiors to assassinate Lumumba, that poisons were sent to the Congo, and that Lumumba was killed in early 1961 by Congolese rivals with no evidence of United States involvement in the killing. On August 25, 1960, at a Special Group meeting, [[Gordon Gray]], Eisenhower's national security adviser, reported that the President "had expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action" against Lumumba; the next day [[Allen Dulles]] cabled the Leopoldville station that "in high quarters" Lumumba's "removal" was "an urgent and prime objective." The National Security Council staff member Robert H. Johnson testified that at a summer 1960 NSC meeting Eisenhower said something that "came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba," while adding that he had since had doubts and that it would have been uncharacteristic of Eisenhower to announce a decision in an NSC meeting. Under Secretary of State [[C. Douglas Dillon]] gave the opinion that the August 18, 1960 meeting was most likely the one Johnson meant, said he would not have taken the remark as a clearcut order, and testified that it was "perfectly possible" that Dulles would have treated strong presidential language as implicit authorization, and Gray testified that "it was not my impression that we had in mind the assassination of Lumumba." The Committee concluded: "the record is unclear and serious doubt remains concerning whether assassination was authorized by the respective Presidents," and that the system of command and control left open "the possibility that there was a successful 'plausible denial' and that a Presidential authorization was issued but is now obscured."[^3]
Despite being sympathetic to [[Israel]]'s precarious international position in 1958, Eisenhower secretly authorized the U.S. Air Force to provide fighter pilot training and courses in aerial reconnaissance and photo interpretation to the Israelis. However, when presented with clear evidence of the secret nuclear reactor at [[Dimona]] in late 1958 or early 1959, Eisenhower showed no interest in a follow-up investigation, a decision that puzzled intelligence officials like [[Arthur C. Lundahl]] and [[Dino A. Brugioni]].[^1]
### Atoms for Peace and the Soreq reactor
Under the 1955 "Atoms for Peace" bilateral agreement the United States gave [[Israel]] a 1 megawatt swimming-pool light-water reactor at Nahal Soreq, installed by American Machine and Foundry Atomics; see [[Atoms for Peace]].[^4]
### The discovery of Dimona, 1960
The journalist [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that Eisenhower had been concerned about the lack of aerial intelligence on the [[Soviet Union]], that the U-2 became operational in July 1956, that by 1958 CIA photo interpreters saw activity at an Israeli Air Force practice bombing range south of [[Beersheba]] that proved to be the early Dimona reactor, that Eisenhower secretly authorized the Air Force to train Israeli fighter pilots and to teach aerial reconnaissance and photo interpretation, and that when shown clear evidence of the reactor in late 1958 or early 1959 he showed no interest in a follow-up, which puzzled [[Arthur C. Lundahl]] and [[Dino A. Brugioni]]. Hersh also wrote that the Eisenhower administration, including [[John Foster Dulles]], was angered by Israel's attempt to mask its military buildup before the 1956 Suez crisis.[^5]
The published Eisenhower Library and National Archives record, assembled by the [[National Security Archive]] and the Wilson Center, dates the administration's discovery to the last months of 1960. In late July 1960 embassy officials in Tel Aviv learned from an American Machine and Foundry employee that French personnel were building what he described as a 60 megawatt power reactor near Beersheba; Professor Henry Gomberg of the [[University of Michigan]], a consultant to the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, reported on December 1, 1960 that Israel was building a large secret project; and Special National Intelligence Estimate 100-8-60, issued on December 8, 1960, determined that the complex included a reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. The January 1961 CIA post-mortem stated that "information was available to some elements of the intelligence community as early as April 1958" and that information from "special intelligence sources in mid 1959" had been discounted. The Wilson Center editors wrote that it "is still a puzzle whether, and to what extent, U-2 overhead photographs were especially telling or whether they were being distributed within the intelligence community."[^6]
On December 8, 1960, with Eisenhower presiding, the National Security Council heard [[Allen Dulles]] report that Israel was building with French assistance a complex including a reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, and passed around photographs taken by the United States Army attaché; Secretary of State [[Christian A. Herter]] said the Arab reaction would be "severe," and Under Secretary of the Treasury Fred Scribner suggested that "Jewish charitable organizations in the U.S." with tax-deductible contributions might have been a funding source. On December 19, 1960, after press reports partly based on leaks by Atomic Energy Commission chairman [[John McCone]], Eisenhower met Herter, Dulles, McCone, [[Thomas S. Gates]] (Secretary of Defense), the science adviser [[George Kistiakowsky]] and Gray. Gates said "our information is that the plant is not for peaceful uses"; McCone said his people believed there was a chemical separation plant; Herter said the plant had been built "through diversions from private and public [U.S.] aid to Israel"; and Eisenhower said "we had evidence" the cost was between $100 and $200 million and that "we do not know where they have obtained the funds." Eisenhower agreed that the American public statement should call on Israel, as an IAEA member, to allow inspection, said a visit to the site by the United States would be unnecessary if the agency inspected it, and the meeting ended with the decision that the State Department rather than the White House would handle the matter. Portions of the December 8 and December 19 records remained classified, and the editors noted that the classified portions of the December 8 record were the subject of a mandatory declassification review request filed in 2014.[^6]
On January 19, 1961 the State Department told the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that Israel and France had given "unequivocal" official statements as to the non-military character of the Israeli program, that Israel had given "formal assurance that visitors from the United States or another friendly country will be received when the present intense public interest in the question has subsided," and that the Department would "take any feasible measures to damp down speculation."[^7]
### The Majestic-12 documents
A document headed "Briefing Document: Operation Majestic 12 Prepared for President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower (Eyes Only), 18 November 1952," and a memorandum dated July 14, 1954 from the presidential assistant [[Robert Cutler]] to General [[Nathan Twining]] referring to an "NSC/MJ-12 Special Studies Project" and a briefing on July 16, 1954, are the two documents on which the Majestic-12 claims connect to Eisenhower; see [[Majestic-12]] and [[Cutler-Twining memorandum]].
The National Archives' Military Reference Branch recorded on July 22, 1987, in a reference report signed by Jo Anne Williamson, that the Cutler memorandum in Record Group 341 lacks the top secret register number the series requires, is the only item in its folder about "NSC/MJ-12," carries a marking, "Top Secret Restricted Information," that the National Security Council and the Eisenhower Library said was not used in the Eisenhower administration, and bears no eagle watermark of the kind found on all Cutler documents in the Library's collection; that a search of National Security Council meeting minutes found no meeting on July 16, 1954 and no mention of MJ-12 or Majestic; and that a folder titled "Special Meeting July 16, 1954" held a notice that NSC members would be called to a civil defense exercise. The Eisenhower Library wrote on July 16, 1987 that the President's appointment books contain no entry for a special meeting on July 16, 1954, that Cutler was visiting overseas military installations on July 14, 1954 at Eisenhower's direction (a report to the President dated July 20, 1954 refers to visits between July 3 and 15), and that the NSC's declassification office had no record of declassification of the memorandum.[^8] The researchers who published the documents, [[William L. Moore]] and [[Jaime Shandera]], and later commentators including [[Stanton T. Friedman]] took positions on authenticity that are recorded on the [[Majestic-12]] page.
### Farewell address, January 17, 1961
In his farewell radio and television address on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower said: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government." He continued: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." On research he said that "a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity" and warned "that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."[^9]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 4.
[^1]: Miller Center, University of Virginia, "Dwight D. Eisenhower" (born October 14, 1890, Denison, Texas; inaugurated January 20, 1953; term ended January 20, 1961; died March 28, 1969). https://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower
[^2]: Doyle, Kate, and Peter Kornbluh, eds. "CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 4, documents released by the CIA on May 23, 1997. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ ; "The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 28. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/index.html
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report*, 94th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Reports vol. 3-8, 1975, summary of findings on Lumumba; section on the Congo; testimony of Robert H. Johnson (June 18, 1975), C. Douglas Dillon (September 2, 1975) and Gordon Gray (July 9, 1975); findings on authorization. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^4]: "The U.S. Discovery of Israel's Secret Nuclear Project," Wilson Center, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, with the National Security Archive, document headnote on American Machine and Foundry Atomics. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-us-discovery-israels-secret-nuclear-project
[^5]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, ch. 4. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^6]: "The U.S. Discovery of Israel's Secret Nuclear Project," sections "The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona," Documents 1 to 14, including the post-mortem on SNIE 100-8-60, the National Security Council meeting of December 8, 1960 and the meeting of December 19, 1960 (Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Christian Herter Papers; White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary, International Series, box 8, Israel (3)); also National Security Archive, "Israel and the Bomb: Dimona Revealed." https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/israel/documents/reveal/
[^7]: Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations William B. Macomber, Jr., to Executive Director of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, January 19, 1961, with enclosed summary of January 17, 1961, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, Volume XVII, Near East 1961-1962, Document 3. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v17/d3
[^8]: National Archives and Records Administration, Military Reference Branch, "Reference Report on MJ-12," July 22, 1987 (Jo Anne Williamson, Chief), quoting the Eisenhower Library letter of July 16, 1987 to NNMR; text as transcribed at https://mirror.cyberbits.eu/textfiles.com/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2437.ufo
[^9]: Eisenhower, Dwight D. "Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People," January 17, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/farewell-radio-and-television-address-the-american-people

80
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Thomas Gates.md
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---
aliases:
- Thomas Gates
- Tom Gates
- Special Agent Thomas Gates
- Thomas Gates (FBI)
created: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
tags:
- Person
- Journalist
summary: "Gates conducted a wiretap of MCA under the supervision of U.S."
- FBI
- LosAngeles
- OrganizedCrime
- Inslaw
- Casolaro
- MCA
- RobertBoothNichols
summary: "FBI special agent in Los Angeles who led the 1987 investigation of Robert Booth Nichols, was sued by Nichols's company, and gave the House Judiciary Committee a sworn statement on Danny Casolaro in March 1992."
location: "Los Angeles, California"
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]"
start: 1987-09
role: "special agent, Los Angeles Division"
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "[[Robert Booth Nichols]]"
start: 1987-09
role: "led the organized-crime investigation of Nichols and Meridian International Logistics"
fn: 1
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Meridian International Logistics]]"
start: 1989-06-16
role: "defendant in a libel, slander and interference-with-contract suit for $11,000,000; the United States was substituted as defendant"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[House Committee on the Judiciary]]"
start: 1992-03-25
end: 1992-03-26
role: "gave a sworn statement on Danny Casolaro and Nichols in the INSLAW investigation"
fn: 4
---
[[Thomas Gates]] was an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agent in Los Angeles who played a significant role in the investigation of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] for organized crime penetration and was a key contact for investigative journalist [[Danny Casolaro]].[1]
Thomas Gates was a special agent of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] assigned to its [[Los Angeles]] Division, where in September 1987 he began leading the investigation of [[Robert Booth Nichols]], who was suspected, "acting through Meridian," of involvement in organized crime.[^1] The Ninth Circuit's opinion in the later civil suit records that Gates learned Nichols "had potential illegal contacts with individuals in both Japan and Australia" and pursued those leads through the Japanese and Australian legal attaches.[^1] He is not the same person as [[Thomas S. Gates]] (Thomas S. Gates Jr.), the Secretary of Defense under [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]].
Gates conducted a wiretap of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] under the supervision of [[United States Attorney|U.S. Attorney]] [[Marvin Rudnick]] and later [[Richard Stavin]]. He, along with Rudnick and Stavin, believed that [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] had been penetrated by organized crime, based on the wiretaps. These wiretaps recorded communications between [[Robert Booth Nichols]] and [[Eugene Giaquinto]], then president of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] home entertainment division, revealing connections to [[La Cosa Nostra]], including the [[Gambino Crime Family]] and [[Bufalino Crime Family]].[1]
### Meridian International Logistics v. United States
Gates had frequent conversations with [[Danny Casolaro]] until three days before Casolaro's death. Casolaro reportedly told Gates that [[Robert Booth Nichols]] had warned him to drop his investigation into "[[The Octopus]]." Gates was also involved in learning about [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s statement to the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in October 1992, which implicated Nichols, [[Glenn Shockley]], [[Jose Santacruz Londono|Jose Londono]], [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela|Gilberto Rodriguez]], and [[Michael Abbell]] in illicit financial activities.[1]
On June 16, 1989, Nichols's company [[Meridian International Logistics]] sued Gates in California state court, in his individual capacity, for libel, slander and interference with contractual relationships, and prayed for $11,000,000. The complaint alleged that Gates had told the [[Australian Federal Police]] and various individuals in Australia and Japan that Meridian was involved in organized crime and specific frauds, and that he acted outside the scope of his employment in making those contacts.[^1][^2]
Despite the evidence gathered, the [[Department of Justice|DOJ]] sealed the wiretaps, and no prosecutions were pursued in the [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] organized crime investigation. The Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force was disbanded, and Gates closed the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] investigation. He was one of the investigators who found themselves on a collision course with the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] when their inquiries led to high-level organized crime, drugs, and money laundering.[1]
On July 20, 1989, the [[United States Attorney]] certified that Gates had acted within the scope of his FBI employment, which removed the case to federal court and substituted the United States as sole defendant. The government filed declarations from Gates, his supervisor and a [[Department of Justice]] attorney, which the district court sealed on an ex parte application and reviewed in camera. Meridian filed a declaration from the former FBI special agent [[Ted Gunderson]], who stated that the types of foreign contacts Gates made "would never, under FBI policies, be initiated by an agent assigned to the Los Angeles field office." On September 25, 1989, the district court found that Gates had at all material times acted within the scope of his employment and dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Federal Tort Claims Act. On July 19, 1991, the [[Ninth Circuit]] (Judge Wiggins) reversed the dismissal and remanded.[^1]
### The MCA wiretap, as described by Seymour
The writer [[Cheri Seymour]] wrote that Gates conducted a wiretap of [[Music Corporation of America]] under the supervision of the Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force prosecutors [[Marvin Rudnick]] and later [[Richard Stavin]] (both Department of Justice attorneys, not United States Attorneys), and that the three believed on the basis of the recorded calls that MCA had been penetrated by organized crime. In Seymour's account the calls were between Nichols and [[Eugene Giaquinto]], then president of MCA's home entertainment division, and showed connections to [[La Cosa Nostra]], including the [[Gambino Crime Family]] and the [[Bufalino Crime Family]]. Seymour wrote that the Department of Justice sealed the wiretaps, that no prosecutions followed, that the Los Angeles Strike Force was disbanded, and that Gates closed the FBI investigation.[^3] Seymour is the sole source for the passages so cited.
Stavin gave the House Judiciary Committee a 72-page affidavit that Gates had submitted to a federal court, containing the results of an FBI wiretap on individuals in the entertainment industry suspected of ties to organized crime.[^4] The committee wrote that it "takes no position on any of Gates' assertions or suppositions vis-a-vis Nichols, except to note again that they were duly sworn statements."[^4]
### Danny Casolaro
[[Danny Casolaro]], the writer investigating what he called [[The Octopus]], was found dead in a Martinsburg, West Virginia hotel room on August 10, 1991, with his wrists cut numerous times. The Martinsburg Police investigation concluded in January 1992 that the death was a suicide.[^4] Three separate people (Riconosciuto's attorney, a private investigator and an FBI agent) told House Judiciary Committee investigators that Gates likely had information on Casolaro's efforts to investigate the INSLAW matter; Director [[William S. Sessions]] agreed to let Gates give a sworn statement, which the committee described as the first time it knew of that the FBI permitted a field agent to do so, after "initial resistance from the Bureau."[^4]
Gates gave the statement on March 25 and 26, 1992, after Rudnick and Stavin had given theirs on March 13 and 14. According to the committee's summary, Gates stated that Casolaro claimed to have found a link between the [[INSLAW]] matter, the activities at the [[Cabazon Indian Reservation]], and the federal investigation of organized crime influence in the entertainment industry in which Gates had been involved; that Casolaro had several conversations with Nichols in the weeks preceding his death; and that Casolaro called Gates several times beginning approximately four weeks before his death. Gates said Casolaro sounded "upbeat" in conversations held even days before the death, that a phone book of Casolaro's containing Gates's number had not been located in the police investigation, that Martinsburg police told him the wounds were "hacking" wounds inconsistent in his view with a self-inflicted wrist cut, and that an open bottle of wine had been reported in the room but not tested when he spoke to the local authorities. He called the Martinsburg authorities and the local FBI office with his suspicions, and concluded under oath that "there is cause for suspicions to be raised."[^4]
Throughout the statement Gates tied several strands of his conversations with Casolaro to Nichols, and acknowledged that Nichols had sued him over another crime investigation centered in southern California; he maintained that important information on Nichols's past remained in sealed wiretap and confidential grand jury investigations that by law he could not disclose without a subpoena.[^4] Seymour wrote that Casolaro told Gates that Nichols had warned him to drop his investigation of the Octopus, and that Gates spoke with Casolaro until three days before his death.[^3] The House report places the start of the calls at about four weeks before the death.[^4]
### Faith Burton and the Department's transcripts
At the March 25 statement Gates and his attorney Richard Bauer said that Faith Burton of the Department of Justice's Office of Congressional Affairs had told them the committee routinely gave the Department copies of all depositions in the INSLAW investigation, and that "to date, the Department has reviewed all transcripts and no wrongdoing has been found." The committee wrote that the implication was that the Department would know everything Gates said, that this may have had a "chilling effect" on his testimony, and that its policy in fact barred giving the confidential statements to anyone but the witness or the witness's attorney. On March 26 Burton told committee investigators the allegation was "totally false" and that Gates and Bauer must have misunderstood her, which she attributed to their long flight; asked whether he could have misunderstood, Gates answered "It's always possible, but it was fairly clear to me, what she said." Bauer said there had been a clear indication of receipt and review of transcripts. The committee listed the episode under the heading "Department Official May Have Attempted to Influence a Key Witness."[^4]
### After the House report
Seymour wrote that in early 1992 [[John Cohen]] began communicating closely with Gates, and that in October 1992 Gates and Cohen learned of [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s statement to the FBI implicating Nichols, [[Glenn Shockley]], [[Jose Santacruz Londono]], [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela]] and [[Michael Abbell]] in illicit financial activities.[^3] Seymour is the sole source for the passages so cited.
The Department of Justice's 1993 report by Special Counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] concluded that Casolaro's death was a suicide, that the physical evidence in the hotel room supported that conclusion, and that there was no evidence of any Justice Department influence on the West Virginia authorities' investigation; the report does not name Gates.[^5] The House committee, for its part, wrote that "the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death have led some law enforcement professionals and others to believe that his death may not have been a suicide" and that further investigation was "imperative."[^4]
---
### Footnotes
[1] Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^1]: *Meridian International Logistics, Inc. v. United States*, 939 F.2d 740 (9th Cir. July 19, 1991) (Wiggins, J.). https://static.case.law/f2d/939/cases/0740-01.json ; also https://openjurist.org/939/f2d/740
[^2]: Same, Facts and Procedural Background (complaint filed June 16, 1989; certification July 20, 1989).
[^3]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^4]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report*, H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992, sections "Additional Questions," "Possible Connection Between Earl Brian, Michael Riconosciuto, Robert Booth Nichols and the Cabazon Indian Reservation," "Department Official May Have Attempted to Influence a Key Witness," and notes 214 to 217 and 323 (citing Gates's sworn statement of March 26, 1992, pp. 10, 56, 61). https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport
[^5]: U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua*, March 1993, section "The Death of Joseph Daniel Casolaro," pp. 246 to 248. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993

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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/John F. Kennedy.md
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@ -1,31 +1,110 @@
---
aliases:
- John F. Kennedy
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- JFK
- President Kennedy
- Kennedy
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Political Figure"
tags:
- KeyFigure
- Person
- President
- Nuclear
- Israel
summary: "Kennedy's presidency was marked by a struggle with Israel over its nuclear ambitions, particularly concerning the Dimona reactor."
- Dimona
- CIA
- Assassination
- Cuba
- 1960s
summary: "Thirty-fifth President of the United States (1961-1963) whose Dimona diplomacy, Cuban operations and assassination on November 22, 1963 are documented in FRUS volumes, the Church Committee, the Warren Commission, the HSCA and the Review Board."
born: 1917-05-29
died: 1963-11-22
location: "Brookline, Massachusetts"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[United States]]"
start: 1961-01-20
end: 1963-11-22
role: "35th President"
fn: 1
- type: appointed
with: "[[John McCone]]"
start: 1961-11-29
role: "Director of Central Intelligence, succeeding Allen Dulles"
fn: 4
- type: appointed
with: "[[Myer Feldman]]"
role: "presidential point man for Jewish and Israeli affairs, as described by Hersh; Feldman attended the December 27, 1962 meeting with Golda Meir"
fn: 2
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Warren Commission]]"
start: 1963
end: 1964
role: "Commission concluded Oswald alone fired the shots and found no evidence of conspiracy"
fn: 10
- type: subject_of
with: "[[House Select Committee on Assassinations]]"
end: 1979
role: "Committee concluded he was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy"
fn: 11
- type: subject_of
with: "[[Assassination Records Review Board]]"
start: 1994-04-11
end: 1998
role: "Board reviewed and released more than four million pages of assassination records"
fn: 13
---
John F. Kennedy, born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917 and killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963, served as the 35th President of the [[United States]] from January 20, 1961.[^1] The record below covers his policy toward the Israeli nuclear program, the Cuban operations of his administration, and the successive official inquiries into his death.
John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the [[United States]], serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was intellectually and emotionally committed to a halt in the spread of nuclear weapons, with nonproliferation being a topic he would discuss for hours.[^1]
### Dimona and nonproliferation
Kennedy's presidency was marked by a struggle with [[Israel]] over its nuclear ambitions, particularly concerning the [[Dimona]] reactor. He established himself as firmly opposed to the Israeli bomb, and his administration insisted on American inspection teams being permitted full and unfettered access to [[Dimona]]. This stance was met with resistance from [[David Ben-Gurion]] and [[Shimon Peres]], who sought to protect the secret.[^1]
The journalist [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that Kennedy was intellectually and emotionally committed to halting the spread of nuclear weapons, that the administration insisted on American inspectors having full access to [[Dimona]], and that [[David Ben-Gurion]] and [[Shimon Peres]] resisted. Hersh wrote that Kennedy angrily told his friend [[Charles L. Bartlett]] that the Israelis "lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability," that Kennedy appointed [[Myer Feldman]] as point man for Jewish and Israeli affairs, a post that created "bureaucratic chaos" because of Feldman's pro-Israel bias, and that the "surprising" appointment of [[John McCone]] as Director of Central Intelligence reflected Kennedy's view of nonproliferation, which McCone shared.[^2] McCone, as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, had been at [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s December 19, 1960 meeting on the reactor, where he urged IAEA safeguards, and succeeded [[Allen Dulles]] as Director on November 29, 1961.[^3][^4]
Kennedy continued to pressure [[David Ben-Gurion]] throughout 1962 about international inspection, receiving bland and irritating assurances that [[Israel]] had no intention of becoming an atomic power. He angrily told his friend [[Charles L. Bartlett]] that the Israelis "lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability." In what amounted to a direct move against Ben-Gurion's leadership, Kennedy invited Foreign Minister [[Golda Meir]], one of Ben-Gurion's leading critics, to his [[Palm Beach, Florida]], home for a private talk in late December 1962. During this meeting, Kennedy made an extraordinary private commitment to [[Israel]]'s defense, stating that in case of an invasion, the [[United States]] would come to [[Israel]]'s support.[^2]
The historian [[Marc Trachtenberg]] wrote the opposite reading: that Kennedy's policy on Israel's program was "rather lax, at least until 1963"; that the May 1961 meeting with Ben-Gurion "was relaxed and the president was friendly" although Ben-Gurion made clear Israel was keeping its nuclear option open; that the first visit to Dimona, arranged by the Israelis outside regular channels, was a guided tour by two American physicists who reported "no evidence of weapons-related activity"; that Kennedy's national security adviser [[McGeorge Bundy]] later admitted the inspections "were not as seriously and rigorously conducted as they would have had to be to get the real story"; and that the historian Avner Cohen called the period from May 1961 to March 1963 a "long slumber" before real pressure began in mid-1963.[^5]
Despite his tough stance, Kennedy's political needs, particularly the significant Jewish vote that contributed to his narrow victory in 1960, complicated his approach to Israeli issues. He appointed [[Myer Feldman]] as his presidential point man for Jewish and Israeli affairs, a position that created bureaucratic chaos due to Feldman's strong pro-Israel bias.[^1]
The Foreign Relations of the United States volumes record two exchanges. At the Palm Beach meeting of December 27, 1962, Kennedy told Foreign Minister [[Golda Meir]]: "I think it is quite clear that in case of an invasion the United States would come to the support of Israel. We have that capacity and it is growing." He added that he would hope Israel "would give consideration to our problems on this atomic reactor. We are opposed to nuclear proliferation," and the memorandum records that "Mrs. Meir reassured the President that there would not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor." The same memorandum lists the Hawk missile among the sources of strain, and Kennedy referred to "our actions with respect to the Jordan waters, Hawks, and aid."[^6]
Kennedy's relationship with [[David Ben-Gurion]] became increasingly strained due to the ongoing correspondence about [[Israel]]'s bomb program. Ben-Gurion's responses were often perceived as evasive and even rude by Kennedy. The President's apprehension about the Israeli bomb was a factor in his surprising appointment of [[John McCone|John A. McCone]] as [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] director, who shared Kennedy's strong views on nonproliferation.[^1]
On May 18, 1963, in a letter transmitted through the State Department to Ambassador Barbour, Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion: "I am sure you will agree that there is no more urgent business for the whole world than the control of nuclear weapons," recalled that "when we spoke together in May 1961 you said that we might make whatever use we wished of the information resulting from the first visit of American scientists to Dimona and that you would agree to further visits by neutrals as well," and wrote that "development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel would almost certainly lead other larger countries, that have so far refrained from such development, to feel that they must follow suit." He wrote that he saw "no present or imminent nuclear threat to Israel" from the United Arab Republic and that "we have the capacity to check" any contrary information, and pressed for "your Government's early assent to the proposal first put to you by Ambassador Barbour on April 2." Four and a half lines of the source text remain classified.[^7]
In mid-1962, Kennedy's administration authorized the sale of Hawk surface-to-air missiles to [[Israel]], a major departure from past policy of selling no weaponry to [[Israel]]. This decision was linked to [[Israel]]'s agreement to permit American inspection teams into [[Dimona]], though these inspections were largely a whitewash, with [[Israel]] controlling the visits and concealing the true nature of the facility.[^1]
Hersh wrote that in mid-1962 the administration authorized the sale of Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel, a departure from past policy, linked to Israel's agreement to allow inspection teams at Dimona, and that the inspections were "largely a whitewash." Hersh wrote that Kennedy invited Meir, one of Ben-Gurion's leading critics, to Palm Beach as "a direct move against Ben-Gurion's leadership." Hersh also wrote that a memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy dated November 22, 1963 indicated a change in policy toward the French, allowing France to use the [[Nevada]] test site for underground testing. Hersh is the sole source for the passages so cited.[^2]
Kennedy's persistent pressure on [[Israel]] stemmed from his belief that [[Israel]] had not yet developed any nuclear weapons and was not yet a proliferator. There is evidence that once [[Israel]] actually began manufacturing bombs, Kennedy was prepared to be pragmatic. While he remained resolutely opposed to a nuclear [[Israel]] to the end, he did change his mind about [[Charles de Gaulle|de Gaulle]]'s bombs. A memorandum from [[McGeorge Bundy]] to the President, dated November 22, 1963, the day of Kennedy's assassination, indicated a change in policy toward the French, suggesting cooperation and allowing them to use the [[Nevada]] test site for underground testing.[^2]
### Cuba and the CIA
The Church Committee's chronology records that Allen Dulles approved on December 11, 1959 that "thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro"; that in late 1960 [[Johnny Roselli]] and Robert Maheu met a CIA support chief; that in March 1961 Kennedy told Senator George Smathers he disapproved of assassination; that Roselli passed poison pills to a Cuban in Miami in April 1961; that the Bay of Pigs invasion failed on April 15 to 17, 1961; that Operation MONGOOSE was created in November 1961 and ended in November 1962; and that in April 1962 William Harvey made contact with Roselli and passed him poison pills in Miami. The Committee wrote that "United States Government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965," using American underworld figures and Cuban exiles.[^4][^8] See [[Operation Mongoose]], [[Bay of Pigs]] and [[Operation NORTHWOODS]].
The Select Committee's account of the final months states that on October 29, 1963 [[Desmond Fitzgerald]], head of the CIA's Special Affairs Staff, met the Cuban official code-named AMLASH ([[Rolando Cubela]]), told him he was the "personal representative" of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and stated that the United States would support a coup; that on November 22, 1963, at a pre-arranged meeting, a CIA case officer told AMLASH he would be provided rifles with telescopic sights and explosives and offered a poison pen device; and that the case officer referred to the President's November 18 speech in Miami as an indication of presidential support, telling AMLASH that Fitzgerald had helped write the speech. DCI McCone testified that he was not aware of the AMLASH assassination effort.[^9]
### The Warren Commission, the Senate and the House
The Warren Commission reported that the shots which killed Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, were fired by [[Lee Harvey Oswald]], and that it "found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy."[^10]
The Senate Select Committee's Book V (1976) reported that "the Warren Commission was not given information about CIA attempts to assassinate foreign leaders" and was unaware of the full extent of agency operations against Cuba; it quoted the Commission counsel David Belin that "at no time did the CIA disclose to the Warren Commission any facts which pertained to alleged assassination plans to kill Fidel Castro."[^9] The House Select Committee on Assassinations quoted the Senate committee that "why senior officials of the FBI and the CIA permitted the investigation to go forward, in light of these deficiencies, and why they permitted the Warren Commission to reach its conclusion without all relevant information is still unclear," and that "the possibility exists that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information." It found that the CIA also withheld from the Commission its information on a conversation of Luisa Calderón, a Cuban consulate employee in Mexico City, about five hours after the assassination in which she indicated possible foreknowledge.[^11]
The House Select Committee's finding was that "President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy." It also found, on the evidence available to it, that the Soviet and Cuban governments were not involved; that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, and the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, were not involved, though the evidence did not preclude the involvement of individual members; and that the Secret Service, FBI and CIA were not involved.[^11]
### Joannides and the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil
In 2003 the journalist [[Jefferson Morley]] filed a Freedom of Information Act request for CIA records on George E. Joannides, the CIA case officer for the anti-Castro [[Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil]] in 1963, a group whose members had contact with Oswald in the months before the assassination, and for records on Joannides's selection as the agency's liaison to the House Select Committee in May 1978. The CIA answered that it could "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of records on his participation in covert operations; the D.C. Circuit in 2007 reversed summary judgment for the CIA and in 2013 remanded a fee dispute, and in December 2004 the CIA released three documents in full and 112 with redactions.[^12]
### The Assassination Records Review Board
Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which President Bush signed on October 26, 1992; the Review Board's members were sworn in on April 11, 1994. The Board's final report states that Congress, "frustrated by the lack of access and disturbed by the conclusions of [[Oliver Stone]]'s JFK," passed the Act, and that its legacy is "more than four million pages of records" in the National Archives. Its list of accomplishments includes opening previously redacted CIA Directorate of Operations records, releasing 99 percent of the "Hardway/Lopez Report" on CIA records of Oswald's trip to Mexico City, arranging the first known authenticity study of the Zapruder film, and acquiring original notes of Oswald's Dallas Police interrogation.[^13] See [[Assassination Records Review Board]] and [[Church Committee]].
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8.
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 9.
[^1]: Miller Center, University of Virginia, "John F. Kennedy" (born May 29, 1917, Brookline, Massachusetts; inaugurated January 20, 1961; term ended November 22, 1963). https://millercenter.org/president/kennedy
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, chs. 8 and 9. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^3]: "The U.S. Discovery of Israel's Secret Nuclear Project," Wilson Center and National Security Archive, record of the meeting of December 19, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-us-discovery-israels-secret-nuclear-project
[^4]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies*, Book V, S. Rept. 94-755, 1976, chronology of the Castro plots ("November 29, John McCone succeeds Allen Dulles as Director, CIA"). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^5]: Trachtenberg, Marc. "Appendix Eight (Chapter Nine, Note 134): Kennedy and the Israeli Nuclear Program," to *A Constructed Peace*. https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/appendices/appendixVIII.html
[^6]: Memorandum of conversation, Palm Beach, December 27, 1962 (participants: the President, Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Ambassador Harman, Myer Feldman, Phillips Talbot, Robert Komer), *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, Volume XVIII, Near East, 1962-1963 (Washington: GPO, 2000); text as reproduced at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/FRUS12_27_62-2.html
[^7]: Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Israel transmitting the President's letter to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, May 18, 1963, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, Volume XVIII, Document 258; text as reproduced at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/FRUS5_18_63.html and listed at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v18/d258
[^8]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report*, 1975, summary of findings on Fidel Castro. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^9]: Senate Select Committee, Book V (1976), sections on AMLASH and the Warren Commission's information (pp. 99 and following of the chronology; Belin quotation). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^10]: *Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy* (Warren Commission), 1964, ch. 1, "Summary and Conclusions." https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1
[^11]: U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report*, 1979, findings and sections on the CIA and the Warren Commission. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c and /part-1d
[^12]: *Morley v. Central Intelligence Agency*, 508 F.3d 1108 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 7, 2007) (Rogers, J.); *Morley v. Central Intelligence Agency*, 719 F.3d 689 (D.C. Cir. June 18, 2013) (per curiam, Kavanaugh, J., concurring). https://static.case.law/f3d/508/cases/1108-01.json ; https://static.case.law/f3d/719/cases/0689-01.json
[^13]: Assassination Records Review Board, *Final Report*, September 30, 1998, Introduction, "Executive Summary" and accomplishments list. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/arrb-final-report.txt

84
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jose Santacruz Londono.md
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@ -1,22 +1,86 @@
---
title: Jose Santacruz Londono
aliases:
- Jose Santacruz Londono
- José Santacruz Londoño
- Jose Santacruz-Londono
- Jose Santa Cruz Londono
- Jose Santa-Cruz Londono
- Santacruz Londono
- Chepe Santacruz
- Londono
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Organized Crime"
tags:
- Person
- OrganizedCrime
- Cartel
summary: "Londono was a target of a major DEA Centac investigation, which led to his indictment in Los Angeles and New York in 1978."
born: 1943-10-01
died: 1996-03-05
- CaliCartel
- Cocaine
- TheOctopus
- Colombia
summary: "Colombian cocaine trafficker and Cali cartel leader, investigated in New York from 1979, whom a federal court found had ordered the 1992 killing of the journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue."
location: "Cali, Colombia"
died: 1996-03-05
relations:
- type: member_of
with: "[[Cali Drug Cartel]]"
role: "leader with the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers; head of the 'Santa Cruz Family' of the cartel"
fn: 1
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York]]"
reverse: true
start: 1985
role: "ten-count indictment in No. 85 CR 596 (E.D.N.Y.) naming Santa-Cruz Londono and seven others"
fn: 3
- type: investigated
with: "[[DEA]]"
reverse: true
start: 1979
role: "New York investigation of his organization; New York Drug Enforcement Task Force arrests in October 1985"
fn: 4
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Murder of Manuel de Dios Unanue]]"
start: 1991-11
end: 1992-03-11
role: "found by the Eastern District of New York to have issued the $50,000 contract from Cali"
fn: 7
---
[[Jose Santacruz Londono]] was a key figure in the [[Cali Drug Cartel]], a powerful Colombian drug trafficking organization that, by 1994, controlled a significant portion of the world's cocaine trade. He was often mentioned alongside [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela|Gilberto Rodriguez]] as a leader of the cartel.[1]
José Santacruz Londoño was a leader of the [[Cali Drug Cartel]], named alongside [[Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela]] and [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela]] in the 1997 congressional statement of the [[DEA]]'s Chief of Operations, which said the three were building "the most prolific and successful criminal enterprise in history" while the [[Colombian National Police]] was dismantling the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín Cartel]].[^1] He was shot to death by police outside [[Medellin|Medellín]] on March 5, 1996, two months after escaping from La Picota prison in [[Bogota|Bogotá]].[^2]
Londono was a target of a major [[DEA|DEA]] Centac investigation, which led to his indictment in Los Angeles and New York in 1978. However, these cases reportedly did not progress beyond the indictment phase, and the Centac 21 task force was dismantled during the [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[George H.W. Bush]] administrations, leading to suspicions among disgruntled [[DEA|DEA]] agents of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] connection.[1]
### The Eastern District of New York cases
His name surfaced in connection with [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s claims that [[Robert Booth Nichols]] paid [[Michael Abbell]] to "crowbar" the extradition of Londono and [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela|Gilberto Rodriguez]], as they were considered "intelligence people."[1]
The federal court in Brooklyn described him in 1993 as the head of a Colombian conglomerate, the Cali cartel, that allegedly imported about 3,000 kilograms of cocaine a month into the [[United States]] and used bank accounts throughout the United States, Europe, and Central and South America to store and move its proceeds. An international letter rogatory from the Eastern District of New York, quoted by the Second Circuit, described the government's investigation of Santacruz-Londono "since 1979."[^3]
Londono's activities were also part of the broader "[[The Octopus]]" investigation conducted by [[Danny Casolaro]], which sought to expose the interconnectedness of organized crime, drug trafficking, and intelligence operations.[1]
The earliest case in the published record is No. 85 CR 596 (E.D.N.Y.), a ten-count narcotics indictment naming Jose Santa-Cruz Londono, Jose Omar Sanchez, Jairo Escobar, Fouad Hazzi, Angelica Carvajal, Soffy Mejia Carvajal, Luz Marina Carvajal and Luis Soto Garcia. On October 28 and 29, 1985, officers of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force arrested Jairo Escobar at a house in Bayside, Queens, where a telephone warrant issued by Judge Henry Bramwell at about 11:40 p.m. led to the discovery of cash, jewelry, false identification and "a memo book listing information relating to customers of the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono cocaine trafficking organization." Sanchez, described as indicted "for his alleged role as a primary distributor in the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono cocaine trafficking organization," was stopped by agents near his Old Westbury, Long Island residence, and a wallet taken from him held documents that, in the agents' opinions, reflected narcotics quantities, cash amounts and code names of known customers of "the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono network." Judge Joseph McLaughlin ruled on the suppression motions on May 4, 1987.[^4]
### Luxembourg arrests and the 1992 forfeiture trial
Three associates of Santacruz-Londono were arrested in Luxembourg on June 28 and 29, 1990. According to the Second Circuit, they had opened hundreds of bank accounts throughout Europe and deposited large sums for the cartel. Luxembourg authorities asked several countries to freeze funds, and in July and August 1990 a series of electronic transfers through New York intermediary banks was attached through oral orders and eight in rem arrest warrants naming "all funds on deposit" in the names of persons and entities connected with Santacruz-Londono. A two-month jury trial before Judge Jack Weinstein began on March 9, 1992. The government's evidence included bank records from around the world, documents seized by the Colombian National Police in Cali, and the testimony of former cartel members, DEA agents, a Luxembourg police officer, an Internal Revenue Service investigator, a customs official and an accountant; it linked Santacruz-Londono's proceeds to Panamanian and Colombian shell corporations, while the claimants maintained that the funds came from clothing sales. The court of appeals recorded that he "had already been indicted in this country for various narcotics and money-laundering violations," and Agent Michaelis was allowed to testify as an expert on Santacruz-Londono's money-laundering techniques.[^3]
### The de Dios Unanue contract
In a 1994 memorandum, Judge Edward Korman summarized evidence from the trial of Wilson Alejandro Mejia-Velez: [[Manuel de Dios Unanue]], a journalist and former editor of New York's largest Spanish daily, was shot in the head in a Queens restaurant on March 11, 1992, and was "singled out for execution by Jose Santa Cruz Londono, head of the 'Santa Cruz Family' of the cartel" because of his "scathing exposes" of the cartel. In November 1991, from Cali, Londono issued a contract offering $50,000. He passed it to his aide Guillermo Leon Restrepo Gaviria, who kept $30,000 and handed the $20,000 contract to John Harold Mena, head of the family's "New York Office." Mena offered it to Juan Carlos Velasco, who, after aborted attempts, subcontracted it in February 1992, when Londono "became impatient," to Jose James Benitez and Elkin Farley Salazar, who recruited Mejia-Velez as the gunman for $7,000. Velasco's wife, Diane Elizabeth Castaño, showed the men a photograph of de Dios and took them to the Meson Asturias restaurant, and Mena paid the balance the next day.[^5] Castaño pleaded guilty on October 21, 1992 to using a telephone to facilitate a murder-for-hire, and the Second Circuit affirmed her resentencing in 2000.[^6]
### Lawyers for the Cali cartel
The Southern District of Florida case No. 93-0470-CR is a nine-count indictment of fifty-nine defendants charging racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and conspiracy to launder money. Two of the defendants, the lawyers [[Michael Abbell]] of Washington and [[William Moran]] of Miami, were charged on the theory that their acts furthered "promoting and protecting the Cali Cartel's drug importation and distribution network." Search warrants on their offices were executed on September 9, 1994, on the strength of an affidavit by a Customs agent that described calls from Abbell's office to numbers in Cali for Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela.[^7]
### Escape and death
The Associated Press reported on March 6, 1996 that Santacruz, 54, regarded as the number three leader of the Cali cartel, was killed on Tuesday night when police intercepted his Chevrolet four-wheel-drive shortly after 11 p.m. in Medellín, "once home to a rival drug gang." A police patrol had chased the vehicle after an informant's tip, said General Alfredo Salgado, the Medellín police commander. He had fled La Picota prison on January 11, "apparently with the help of corrupt prison guards," and U.S. officials were described as furious. The killing came a week after President [[Bill Clinton]] cut some U.S. aid to Colombia partly because of evidence of drug money in the campaign of President [[Ernesto Samper Pizano]], who said the manhunt was "a way of showing the world that this country is not an executioner but is rather the main victim of drug trafficking."[^2]
### Allegations in the Casolaro material
According to [[Cheri Seymour]], [[Michael Riconosciuto]] told [[Danny Casolaro]] and her that [[Robert Booth Nichols]] paid Abbell to "crowbar" a Justice Department inquiry that would have led to the extradition of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Santacruz Londoño, whom Nichols considered "intelligence people"; she places Santacruz Londoño among the figures of Casolaro's "[[The Octopus]]" investigation. Seymour also wrote that Santacruz Londoño and Rodríguez Orejuela were targets of a DEA Centac investigation that produced indictments in Los Angeles and New York in 1978, that those cases did not go beyond indictment, and that disgruntled DEA agents suspected a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] connection after the Centac 21 task force was dismantled under the [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[George H.W. Bush]] administrations. Sole source for the passages so cited; the New York court record dates the investigation to 1979 and the indictment in No. 85 CR 596 to 1985.[^8]
---
### Footnotes
[1] Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^1]: Statement of Donnie Marshall, Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement Administration, Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice, July 9, 1997. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1997_hr/h970709m.htm
[^2]: Associated Press, "Colombian Police Kill No. 3 Drug Kingpin," *Deseret News*, March 6, 1996. https://www.deseret.com/1996/3/6/19229025/colombian-police-kill-no-3-drug-kingpin/
[^3]: *United States v. Daccarett*, 6 F.3d 37 (2d Cir. 1993) (appeal from the 1992 trial in *United States v. All Funds on Deposit in Any Accounts Maintained in Names of Meza, et al.*). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8619261/united-states-v-daccarett/
[^4]: *United States v. Londono*, 659 F. Supp. 758 (E.D.N.Y. May 4, 1987) (No. 85 CR 596(S)), pp. 760-61, 764-65. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1957276/united-states-v-londono/
[^5]: *United States v. Mejia-Valez*, 855 F. Supp. 607, 608-10 (E.D.N.Y. June 15, 1994) (Korman, J.). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1973343/united-states-v-mejia-valez/
[^6]: *United States v. Castaño*, 234 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2000). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/771330/united-states-v-elizabeth-castano/
[^7]: *United States v. Abbell*, 926 F. Supp. 1545 (S.D. Fla. 1996) (No. 93-0470-CR), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2280404/united-states-v-abbell/; *United States v. Abbell*, 963 F. Supp. 1178 (S.D. Fla. 1997), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1645124/united-states-v-abbell/
[^8]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Not re-verified against the book.

2
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/George Otis.md
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@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ location: "Payne, Ohio, USA"
---
[[George Otis]] (April 20, 1917 – July 22, 2007) was a former Lear executive and a member of [[Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International|FGBMFI]]. He was a significant figure in Christian broadcasting and evangelism, particularly in the [[Middle East]], and had notable connections within political circles.[^1][^2]
In 1970, Otis, along with [[Pat Boone]], [[Shirley Boone]], and [[Harold Bredesen]], prayed with then-California Governor [[Ronald Reagan]] at his home in Sacramento. Otis was reportedly "overcome with the Spirit" and began to speak in the voice of God, comparing Reagan to a king and prophesying that Reagan would "reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" if he continued to walk in God's way. Reagan reportedly took the prophecy very seriously. A Reagan Aide who later worked on [[Pat Robertson]]'s presidential campaign invited [[Nita Scoggan]], the wife of an FGBMFI member, to form a prayer group in the [[White House]]. [[Oliver North]] reportedly attended these prayer meetings.[^1][^2]
In 1970, Otis, along with [[Pat Boone]], [[Shirley Boone]], and [[Harold Bredesen]], prayed with then-California Governor [[Ronald Reagan]] at his home in Sacramento. Otis was reportedly "overcome with the Spirit" and began to speak in the voice of God, comparing Reagan to a king and prophesying that Reagan would "reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" if he continued to walk in God's way. In Bob Slosser's account, Reagan looked at Otis and said "Well!"; Otis said his own hand had shaken during the prayer, and that the governor's legal affairs secretary [[Herbert Ellingwood|Herbert E. Ellingwood]] told him Reagan's other hand had shaken similarly.[^2] A Reagan Aide who later worked on [[Pat Robertson]]'s presidential campaign invited [[Nita Scoggan]], the wife of an FGBMFI member, to form a prayer group in the [[White House]]. [[Oliver North]] reportedly attended these prayer meetings.[^1][^2]
Otis founded [[High Adventure Ministries]], a Christian organization known for operating what was probably the first radio station in the Middle East (first located in [[Lebanon]] then moving to [[Israel]] after being attacked by terrorists) to preach the Gospel and play country music. The station was established in 1979 on a battlefield in southern [[Lebanon]] under the "Voice of Hope" banner. This evangelical radio ministry later expanded globally via shortwave radio. Otis also founded [[Middle East Television]] (METV), which was later passed on to CBN. In 2000, METV relocated to [[Cyprus]]. High Adventure also ran a program called [[Lebanon Aid]].[^2]

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10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Oliver North.md
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@ -4,83 +4,130 @@ aliases:
- Oliver North
- Ollie North
- Oliver Laurence North
- Oliver L. North
- Lt. Col. Oliver North
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-09-22
category: "Military"
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- KeyFigure
- Person
- IranContra
- ArmsDealer
- Israel
- NationalSecurityCouncil
- Contras
- Enterprise
- MarineCorps
- DarkAllianceInvestigation
- 1980s
summary: "Marine lieutenant colonel and National Security Council staff member who ran the illegal Contra resupply operation from the White House, central figure in the Iran-Contra Affair implicated in drug trafficking, arms dealing, and obstruction of justice."
summary: "Marine lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council staff who directed the Contra resupply Enterprise and the Iran arms diversion from 1984 to 1986; his 1989 convictions were vacated in 1990 and dismissed in 1991."
born: 1943-10-07
location: "San Antonio, Texas"
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[National Security Council]]"
start: 1981
end: 1986-11-25
role: "deputy director of political-military affairs; fired November 25, 1986"
fn: 1
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Robert McFarlane]]"
role: "National Security Adviser; delegated North's Contra and Iran operations"
fn: 1
- type: reported_to
with: "[[John Poindexter]]"
role: "National Security Adviser; instructed North to leave the diversion out of the NSC's accounts"
fn: 2
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Richard Secord]]"
start: 1984
end: 1986
role: "Secord ran the private Enterprise that North directed; Secord gave North a home-security system"
fn: 3
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Albert Hakim]]"
start: 1984
end: 1986
role: "Hakim managed Enterprise accounts, Swiss accounts and shell companies"
fn: 3
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Iran-Contra Affair]]"
start: 1984
end: 1986-11
role: "NSC action officer for the Contras and the Iran arms initiative"
fn: 2
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[Lawrence Walsh]]"
reverse: true
start: 1988-03
end: 1991-09-16
role: "indicted on 16 counts March 1988; convicted on three counts May 4, 1989; convictions vacated July 20, 1990; remaining counts dismissed with prejudice September 16, 1991"
fn: 1
---
Oliver North was a Marine lieutenant colonel and National Security Council staff member who ran the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s illegal Contra resupply operation from the [[White House]] during the 1980s, making him a central figure in the [[Iran-Contra Affair]].[^1][^2] North oversaw the covert arms and funding pipeline to the [[Contras]] during periods when Congress had prohibited such assistance, operating what became known as "the Enterprise."
Oliver North was a Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the [[National Security Council]] staff from 1981 until he was fired on November 25, 1986. As deputy director of political-military affairs he became the White House official most directly involved in secretly aiding the [[Contras]], selling arms to [[Iran]], and diverting Iran arms sales proceeds to the Contras, and the Independent Counsel wrote that he had "working control" of the Secord-Hakim covert-action Enterprise.[^1] He was not an employee of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]; the Independent Counsel's report states that the NSC was used to run covert operations after CIA assistance to the Contras was cut off by the [[Boland Amendment]].[^1]
### Iran-Contra and the Octopus
### Authority
The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that North received drug profits from [[Monzer Al-Kassar]], a Syrian kingpin and arms dealer, to purchase arms for the Nicaraguan Contras. The [[United States]] Tower Commission probe into Iran-gate revealed that Al-Kassar had been paid $1.2 million by North's co-conspirator General [[Richard Secord]] to move weapons from [[Israel]] to the Contras.[^1]
[[Lawrence Walsh]]'s Final Report lists six sources of North's authority: the President's directive to [[Robert McFarlane]] to keep the Contras together "body and soul" despite the Boland cutoff; an "extraordinary delegation of authority" by McFarlane and [[John Poindexter]]; the decision by Reagan, [[William J. Casey]] and others to run covert operations from the NSC, "where there was no institutional framework for conducting such operations and no system of accountability or oversight"; his designation as secret point man for Contra support; the perception, "promoted by North and his operational partners," that the President had authorized the work; and his "powerful, can-do persona" and "ruthlessness."[^1] North said repeatedly that he took much of his direction from Casey, and testified that he believed Reagan knew of and approved his activities; the Independent Counsel could not prove that Reagan approved North's criminal actions.[^1]
[[Bill Turner]], a friend and confidante of [[Danny Casolaro]], claimed to have seen papers from Casolaro that connected North and the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]]. North's personal notebooks documenting the Iran-Contra Affair also contained [[Ian Stuart Spiro]]'s name.[^1]
Walsh found that Reagan was aware that North was the NSC's action officer for the Contras and was regularly briefed on the growth of the movement while Boland was in force. Alan Fiers, then head of the CIA's Central American Task Force, told the grand jury on August 14, 1991 that at the National Security Planning Group meeting of May 16, 1986 Reagan said, "Can't some of Ollie's people help out?" and that Chief of Staff Donald Regan changed the subject; the official minutes record Reagan's words as a question about private groups that paid for advertisements for the Contras.[^2]
### Contra Resupply Operation
### The Enterprise and the funding
North was the National Security Council official overseeing the Contra project. He wrote in his 1991 memoirs, *Under Fire*, about the death squad terror in [[El Salvador]], noting: "Under the guise of anti-Communism, the death squads terrorized the entire country - murdering nuns, teachers, labor organizers, political opponents and thousands of other civilians." North wrote that it was clear most of the death squad activity was the responsibility of the ultraright ARENA party and its leader, [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]].[^2]
In fall 1984 North introduced retired Air Force Major General [[Richard Secord]] to Contra leader [[Adolfo Calero]] to help Calero buy arms with a Saudi contribution; in 1985 North and Secord took purchasing power away from Calero and ran the "Enterprise" with [[Albert Hakim]] through Swiss accounts and shell companies.[^3] The Final Report names three sources of Contra money during the Boland period: third-country grants, largest among them $32 million from Saudi Arabia and $2 million from Taiwan; about $1.7 million of private contributions passed through the tax-exempt National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty to accounts North controlled; and about $4 million diverted from the Iran arms proceeds.[^2] The Enterprise chapter's trial-proof estimate of the diversion is $3.6 million, a figure that excludes a $200,000 Jetstar, about $535,000 spent on the Danish freighter Erria, and a $500,000 weapons purchase from the dealer [[Monzer Al-Kassar]], who "was not available to testify."[^3]
North's courier in [[Central America]], [[Robert Owen]], reported to North in 1985 that a DC-6 owned by Mario Calero (brother of [[Adolfo Calero]]) "which is being used for runs out of [[New Orleans]] is probably being used for drug runs into U.S." Owen's phone number was found aboard a DC-4 seized by the [[DEA]] in March 1987 on a suspected drug run off [[Florida]]'s coast. Aboard the plane was marijuana residue and Moss's notes which, according to a CIA cable, contained "the names of two CIA officers and their telephone numbers."[^2]
The writer [[Cheri Seymour]] wrote that North received drug profits from Al-Kassar, a Syrian arms dealer, to buy arms for the Contras, and that the Tower Commission probe revealed Al-Kassar had been paid $1.2 million by Secord to move weapons from [[Israel]] to the Contras.[^4] The Final Report places the Enterprise's payment to Al-Kassar at $500,000 in July 1986 for Contra weapons.[^3] [[Bill Turner]], a friend of Casolaro's, claimed to have seen papers from [[Danny Casolaro]] connecting North and the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]; Seymour added that North's personal notebooks contained the name [[Ian Stuart Spiro]].[^4] Seymour is the sole source for the passages so cited.
### Barry Seal Connection
The Enterprise's air operation used the [[Ilopango Airbase|Ilopango]] base in [[El Salvador]]. North wrote to [[Felix Rodriguez]] in September 1985 asking him to use his influence with Salvadoran Air Force commander [[Juan Rafael Bustillo]] to secure hangar space; the CIA's records, as the writer [[Gary Webb]] reported, show Hangar No. 4 at Ilopango was used by the CIA for covert Contra operations until it was turned over to the NSC and North's Enterprise in 1985, while the adjoining Hangar No. 5 remained CIA-run.[^5] Walsh's Enterprise chapter records that the Salvadoran chief at Ilopango, General Bustillo, ordered the operation's warehouse of parts and supplies there, and that the downing of [[Eugene Hasenfus]] on October 5, 1986 "settled irrevocably the question of CIA assumption" of the Enterprise's operation.[^3]
Congressional records show North was being regularly briefed by the CIA on [[Barry Seal]]'s sting operation against the [[Sandinistas]], was supplied with some of the evidence it produced, and allegedly leaked the information to the press shortly before a critical vote on Contra aid was coming up in Congress. North maintains that his only involvement in the Seal sting was as an observer, but a statement he gave to the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] in June 1986 suggests that his relationship with the trafficker was considerably more complex.[^2]
### Panama and Noriega
After Seal's murder on February 17, 1986, North called the FBI and claimed there was an "active measures program" being directed against him by the Sandinistas. "North expressed further concern that he may be targeted for elimination by organized crime due to his alleged involvement in drug running," a Washington-based FBI agent wrote.[^2]
According to testimony before the [[Kerry Committee]] by the Panamanian official José Blandón, [[Manuel Noriega]] met North in June 1985 on a boat anchored off Panama City to discuss Panamanian cooperation in the war against Nicaragua while the Boland Amendment barred direct or indirect CIA support. Blandón testified that this meeting produced Noriega's agreement to help train Contra troops and to let Contra leaders enter and leave Panama freely, and that at a second meeting Noriega suggested Panamanian units could be used in operations on Nicaraguan territory; Blandón had no information that Noriega acted on North's request. Noriega met Casey in November 1985; a memorandum Casey wrote suggested Noriega left "reassured" and the narcotics issue was not mentioned, and other U.S. officials concluded that Casey had "let Noriega off the hook."[^6]
### Terry Reed and Mena, Arkansas
The Independent Counsel's summary of North's "Quid Pro Quo" admission describes discussions with Noriega about acts of sabotage against the Sandinista government in exchange for U.S. help in rehabilitating Noriega's public image.[^7] Webb wrote, citing government documents filed in North's trial, that Noriega also offered to have the entire Sandinista leadership assassinated in exchange for a promise to "clean up Noriega's image"; that North raised the proposal at a top-level meeting but was told to say the administration was not keen on murdering Nicaraguan officials though Panamanian help with sabotage would be acceptable; that North returned to Panama a month after the torture-murder of [[Hugo Spadafora]] to assure Noriega of increased U.S. aid; and that within a year $200 million in additional U.S. funds and bank loans went to Noriega.[^8] Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.
Former Air Force intelligence officer [[Terry Reed]] claimed that North was his CIA contact for both a pilot-training program and a machine-tool company front in [[Arkansas]]. Reed described a "shredding party" in which an Arkansas State Police Intelligence Unit staff member was ordered to purge the state's Mena files of nearly a thousand documents, including those referring specifically to North and Reed. North has denied knowing anything about Reed or what was going on at [[Mena, Arkansas]]. He was later indicted on multiple charges related to the Iran-Contra Scandal and was pardoned by former CIA director [[George H.W. Bush]].[^2]
### NHAO and the contractors
### Fraudulent End-User Certificates
North used the State Department's [[NHAO|Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office]] to move Contra supplies. The Kerry Committee report found that the State Department selected four companies owned or operated by narcotics traffickers to supply humanitarian assistance to the Contras: SETCO Air, established by the Honduran trafficker [[Juan Matta Ballesteros]]; DIACSA, a Miami air company that served as headquarters of a trafficking enterprise run by the convicted traffickers Floyd Carlton and Alfredo Caballero; Frigorificos de Puntarenas, owned and operated by Cuban-American traffickers; and Vortex, partly owned by the admitted trafficker [[Michael Palmer]]. The State Department paid the four a total of $806,401.20 between January and August 1986, and the report states that in each case federal law enforcement had received information about the individuals controlling the company before the contracts were signed.[^9] One of the pilots who flew Contra missions for SETCO was Frank Moss, who had been under investigation as an alleged trafficker since 1979 by ten different law enforcement agencies, without indictment.[^9]
When North began supplying arms for the Contras after Congress cut off funding through the [[Boland Amendment]], he frequently used fraudulent end-user certificates (EUCs) from the Guatemalan and Honduran governments to divert weapons to the Contras. EUCs are sworn declarations in which the purchasing government certifies it actually ordered the weapons, providing assurance that American-made weapons were not ending up with terrorists or Communist guerrillas. Former CIA official [[Alan Fiers]] explained: "So what happens is an arms broker will get an intermediary country to issue false end-user certificates. . .the arms are either not shipped to the country that issued the certificate or are trans-shipped through that country on to a disguised end user, in this case, the Contras."[^3]
Webb wrote that North installed his courier [[Robert Owen]] as a $50,000 "facilitator" at NHAO, that North instructed NHAO director Robert Duemling not to "dislodge or replace their existing arrangements," and that Fiers said: "I believe we guided them toward the carriers they ultimately used." Webb also wrote that Frigorificos was created by the [[Medellin Cartel]].[^8]
### Drug Money Proposal
### Barry Seal and Federico Vaughn
At a top-level meeting with DEA officials in Washington in 1984, North shocked the room into silence by suggesting that $1.5 million in cocaine cash the DEA planned to seize from the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín cartel]] should be turned over to the Contras. The DEA says it declined North's suggestion. Subsequently, a White House leak blew the DEA operation, and several DEA officials believed North was responsible - something he has denied.[^4]
The Kerry Committee report states that the DEA informant [[Barry Seal]] photographed a man identified as Federico Vaughn, a Nicaraguan government official, and [[Pablo Escobar]] loading Seal's plane with drugs; that the Seal operation "was disclosed prematurely by an administration official who leaked to the press evidence supposedly collected" in an effort to influence a pending congressional vote on Contra aid; and that "one individual in the U.S. government, Lt. Col. Oliver North, decided to play politics with the issue."[^6] The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime found that the phone number Vaughn used in calls from Seal was controlled by the U.S. Embassy; the State Department later reported no evidence of Nicaraguan use for drug shipments to the United States "since the allegations made in 1984 in connection with the Seal case."[^6]
With the assistance of CIA director [[William J. Casey]], North created an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts to conceal the source of money sustaining the Contras through the Congressional funding cutoff. North wrote that Casey didn't want the Contras' "unofficial funds" coming into U.S. banks because of fears that Treasury agents on the lookout for drug money would grow suspicious of the large sums of cash arriving in those accounts.[^4]
Webb wrote that congressional records show North was regularly briefed by the CIA on the Seal sting and supplied with evidence; that North said his only involvement was as an observer; that North's diary contained a July 6, 1984 entry, "Freddy coming in late July," and an October 15, 1986 entry, "46 boxes of transcripts of SF Frogman case. Justice never provided"; that four DEA officials testified they were pressed by North and the CIA to leak Vaughn's involvement; and that after Seal was murdered North told the FBI of an "active measures program" by the Sandinistas against him and said he might be targeted by organized crime.[^5][^8] Seal was shot on February 19, 1986, as he parked at the Salvation Army Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge, and three men were convicted of first-degree murder in 1987.[^10] Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited, other than the Seal date.
### Dealings with Manuel Noriega
### Drug-related contacts
In June 1985, aboard a luxurious yacht in Panama's Pacific port of Balboa, North and Panamanian dictator [[Manuel Noriega]] struck a bargain. Noriega offered to provide Contra training at bases in Panama and free access for Contra leaders. According to government documents filed during North's trial, Noriega also offered to have the entire Sandinista leadership assassinated in exchange for a promise from the U.S. government to "clean up Noriega's image." North raised the proposal at a top-level meeting but was instructed to tell Noriega the administration wasn't keen on murdering Nicaraguan officials, though Panamanian assistance with sabotage would be acceptable. A month after the torture-murder of Contra fighter [[Hugo Spadafora|Dr. Hugo Spadafora]], North returned to Panama to assure Noriega that the U.S. would boost his foreign aid payments. Within a year, $200 million in additional U.S. funds and bank loans flowed Noriega's way.[^5]
Webb wrote that North's courier Robert Owen reported to North in 1985 that a DC-6 owned by Mario Calero, brother of Adolfo Calero, "which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S."; that Owen's phone number was found aboard a DC-4 seized by the DEA in March 1987 off Florida; and that a CIA cable said Frank Moss's notes aboard that plane contained "the names of two CIA officers and their telephone numbers."[^5] The Kerry report separately states that Honduran General José Bueso-Rosa, convicted in 1985 of conspiring to assassinate President Suazo Córdova in a plot to be financed by the sale of $40 million of cocaine, received a sentence cut to five years through intervention by senior U.S. officials, and that according to the United States's admissions in the North trial North suggested efforts be made concerning Bueso-Rosa to keep him from disclosing details.[^6]
### NHAO and Drug Trafficker Contractors
Webb wrote that at a 1984 meeting with DEA officials North suggested that $1.5 million in cocaine cash the DEA planned to seize from the Medellín cartel be turned over to the Contras, which the DEA declined; that a White House leak then blew the DEA operation; and that North wrote that Casey did not want the Contras' "unofficial funds" entering U.S. banks for fear Treasury agents would grow suspicious.[^11] Webb also wrote that North relied on fraudulent end-user certificates from Guatemala and Honduras after Boland, quoting Fiers: "an arms broker will get an intermediary country to issue false end-user certificates."[^12]
North "hijacked" the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office ([[NHAO]]) to use as a vehicle for Contra support. He installed his courier Rob Owen as a $50,000 "facilitator" and steered contracts to companies run by drug traffickers, including [[Frigorificos de Puntarenas]] (created by the Medellín cartel), DIACSA (run by a drug dealer), Vortex Aviation (operated by Detroit drug dealer [[Michael Palmer]]), and SETCO (owned by Honduran drug kingpin [[Juan Matta Ballesteros]]). North instructed NHAO director Robert Duemling not to "dislodge or replace their existing arrangements." CIA official Alan Fiers confirmed: "I believe we guided them toward the carriers they ultimately used."[^5]
Webb further wrote that Dagoberto Núñez, a Costa Rican trafficker working for North and the CIA, signed a contract with the Sandinista agency Heroes and Martyrs Trading Corporation, and quoted a 1986 Owen memo to North: "He believes this will provide an opportunity to use his boats for cover operations, or to implicate the Ortegas and Borge in taking money on the side." In Webb's account, in November 1986 the FBI's "Operation Front Door" interviewed the realtor of [[Ronald Lister]], who said Lister claimed to run a "CIA-approved" security business and had told a neighbor he worked for North and Secord and had sent arms shipments to the Contras; the lead was not pursued.[^5][^13] The former Air Force intelligence officer [[Terry Reed]] claimed North was his CIA contact for a pilot-training program and a machine-tool front in [[Arkansas]], and described an Arkansas State Police "shredding party" to purge the state's [[Mena, Arkansas]] files of nearly a thousand documents including those naming North and Reed; North has denied knowing anything about Reed or Mena.[^5] Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.
### Ilopango Operations
Webb quoted North's 1991 memoir, *Under Fire*, as saying that the death squads in [[El Salvador]], "under the guise of anti-Communism," terrorized the entire country and murdered nuns, teachers, labor organizers, political opponents and thousands of other civilians, and that most of the activity was the responsibility of the ARENA party and its leader [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]].[^5]
North wrote to [[Felix Rodriguez]] in September 1985 asking him to use his influence with Salvadoran Air Force commander [[Juan Rafael Bustillo]] to secure hangar space at [[Ilopango Airbase|Ilopango Air Force Base]] for Contra supply flights. CIA records show Hangar No. 4 at Ilopango was used by the Agency for covert Contra operations until it was turned over to the National Security Council and North's "Enterprise" in 1985. The adjoining Hangar No. 5 remained CIA-run.[^6]
### November 1986 and prosecution
North's daily diaries contained several references to "Freddy Vaughn" - [[Federico Vaughn]], the alleged Sandinista aide shown by President [[Ronald Reagan]] loading drugs onto an aircraft - including a July 6, 1984, entry: "Freddy coming in late July." A 1988 [[House Committee on the Judiciary|House Judiciary Committee]] investigation produced evidence that the Seal sting was stage-managed by North and the CIA as a domestic disinformation operation. Four DEA officials testified they received pressure from North and the CIA to leak Vaughn's involvement with drugs to the press. On October 15, 1986, North noted in his diary: "46 boxes of transcripts of SF [[Frogman Case|Frogman]] case. Justice never provided."[^6]
When the Iran arms sales and the Contra supply operation became public in October and November 1986, North told investigators little; the Independent Counsel wrote that his "wide destruction of records" eliminated possible documentary proof, and that he called the diversion the "secret within the secret."[^2] At the Select Committees' hearing on July 7, 1987, North testified under a grant of immunity that he believed the President had authorized the diversion.[^2] On November 25, 1986, Reagan telephoned North at a Sheraton hotel in Tysons Corner for two minutes; Reagan's sworn interrogatory answer says he told North he had no personal animus and "may have referred to LtCol North as a national hero."[^2]
### Dagoberto Nunez and H&M Corp
North was indicted in March 1988 on 16 counts with Poindexter, Secord and Hakim. After the conspiracy count was dropped because of classified-information problems he stood trial before Judge Gerhard Gesell on 12 counts and on May 4, 1989 was found guilty on three: aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress, shredding and altering official documents, and accepting an illegal gratuity from Secord in the form of a home-security system. The Court of Appeals vacated the convictions on July 20, 1990 because trial witnesses might have been affected by his immunized congressional testimony; the Supreme Court denied certiorari on May 28, 1991; and on remand, after Robert McFarlane testified that his trial testimony had been "colored" by North's immunized testimony, the Independent Counsel consented to dismissal of the remaining counts with prejudice on September 16, 1991.[^1] President [[George H.W. Bush]] did not pardon North. On December 24, 1992 Bush pardoned [[Caspar Weinberger]], McFarlane, [[Elliott Abrams]], [[Duane Clarridge]], [[Clair George]] and Fiers.[^14]
[[Moises Nunez|Dagoberto Núñez]], a Costa Rican-based drug trafficker working for North and the CIA, obtained a contract with Heroes and Martyrs Trading Corporation (H&M Corp.), the official import-export agency of the Sandinista government heavily infiltrated by CIA operatives. A 1986 memo from CIA operative Rob Owen to North described Núñez's plan to sign an agreement with H&M for shrimping rights off the Pacific Coast of [[Nicaragua]]. "Nunez is doing this so he can help us. He will cooperate and do anything we ask," Owen told North. "He believes this will provide an opportunity to use his boats for cover operations, or to implicate the Ortegas and Borge in taking money on the side for their own pocket. He is right on both counts."[^6]
### Ronald Lister's Claims
In November 1986, during the FBI's "Operation Front Door" probe of Iran-Contra, [[Douglas Aukland|FBI agent Aukland]] interviewed [[Ronald Lister]]'s realtor, who said Lister claimed to run a "CIA-approved" security business and was raising money for the Contras. When asked directly about Contra training, Lister refused to answer unless "an unidentified representative of 'another agency' be present." The next month the FBI learned Lister "had told an unidentified neighbor over drinks that he worked for Oliver North and [Richard] Secord, and had sent arms shipments to the Contras." That lead was not pursued.[^7]
Seymour wrote that North reportedly attended a White House prayer group that [[Nita Scoggan]], wife of a [[Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International]] member, was invited to form by a Reagan aide who later worked for [[Pat Robertson]]'s presidential campaign.[^4]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty"
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction"
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 12: "This guy talks to God"
[^6]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends"
[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter"
[^1]: Walsh, Lawrence E. *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters*, Volume I, August 4, 1993, ch. 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," including "The Decision to Prosecute" and the section on the 1990 and 1991 appellate and dismissal proceedings (D.D.C. order of Sept. 16, 1991). https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm
[^2]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 27, "President Reagan," sections on contra financial support, the resupply organization, the cover-up of November 1986 and the call of November 25, 1986. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_27.htm
[^3]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 8, "The Enterprise and Its Finances," including note 51 on the diversion estimate. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_08.htm
[^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapters 6, 13 and 20.
[^6]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165, December 1988 (Panama chapter; "Barry Seal and the Cartel"; "Bueso-Rosa and the Contras"; Nicaragua chapter). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^7]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 2, section on the "Quid Pro Quo" admission and the "Heads of State" documents.
[^8]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapters 11 and 12.
[^9]: Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, section "U.S. Government Funds and Companies with Drug Connections."
[^10]: Lau, Maya, and Amy Wold. "Man who gunned down drug informant Barry Seal in Baton Rouge street dies at Angola." *The Advocate* (Baton Rouge), September 2, 2015, citing court documents. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_f09fb38d-4bb9-59ea-bda3-557497d84561.html
[^11]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 11.
[^12]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 10.
[^13]: Webb, *Dark Alliance*, chapter 20.
[^14]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Executive Summary and ch. 27, notes on pardons of December 24, 1992. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm

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10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Ronald Reagan.md
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@ -3,32 +3,131 @@ title: Ronald Reagan
aliases:
- Ronald Reagan
- Ronald Wilson Reagan
- Reagan
- President Reagan
- Governor Reagan
created: 2024-04-25
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Political Figure"
tags:
- KeyFigure
- Person
- Politician
- President
- DarkAllianceInvestigation
- OctoberSurprise
- IranContra
summary: "40th President of the United States who authorized CIA operations in Nicaragua, oversaw the Contra war and the secret drug-crimes reporting exemption, while simultaneously prosecuting the War on Drugs."
- Inslaw
- Contras
- 1980s
summary: "Fortieth President of the United States (1981-1989) whose 1980 campaign, Contra policy, Iran arms sales and Justice Department were the subject of the October Surprise, Iran-Contra and INSLAW inquiries."
born: 1911-02-06
died: 2004-06-05
location: "Tampico, Illinois"
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[United States]]"
start: 1981-01-20
end: 1989-01-20
role: "40th President"
fn: 1
- type: appointed
with: "[[William J. Casey]]"
role: "campaign manager in 1980, then Director of Central Intelligence"
fn: 3
- type: appointed
with: "[[Edwin Meese]]"
role: "Counselor to the President, later Attorney General; supervised the White House task force chaired by Earl Brian"
fn: 11
- type: appointed
with: "[[William French Smith]]"
role: "Attorney General who signed the February 11, 1982 memorandum of understanding with the CIA"
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Iran-Contra Affair]]"
start: 1985
end: 1986-11
role: "approved the 1985 Israeli arms shipments to Iran, signed the December 5, 1985 retroactive finding and the January 17, 1986 finding, and directed that Congress not be notified"
fn: 8
- type: investigated
with: "[[Lawrence Walsh]]"
reverse: true
role: "Independent Counsel concluded his conduct fell well short of prosecutable criminality; sworn interrogatory answers and July 1992 deposition"
fn: 8
- type: subject_of
with: "[[October Surprise]]"
start: 1980-07
end: 1981-01-20
role: "named beneficiary of the alleged 1980 contacts between his campaign and Iranian representatives; the House Task Force found no credible evidence"
fn: 3
---
Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the [[United States]], serving from 1981 to 1989. His administration's first [[Middle East]] crisis involved the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]] in June 1981. Upon being informed of the bombing by his national security adviser, [[Richard V. Allen]], Reagan privately expressed delight, remarking, "Well. Boys will be boys."[^1] Despite public condemnation from the [[State Department]] and proposals from some of his high command, including [[Caspar Weinberger]], to sanction [[Israel]] by canceling F-16 aircraft sales, Reagan had no intention of taking such steps. The suspension of F-16 deliveries was lifted two months later.[^1]
Ronald Reagan, born in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911 and died on June 5, 2004, served as the 40th President of the [[United States]] from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989.[^1] Before that he was Governor of [[California]]. The inquiries that touched his campaign, his National Security Council and his Justice Department are summarized below in the order in which they arose.
### Contra War and Drug Policy
### Sacramento, October 1970
Reagan authorized [[Central Intelligence Agency]] operations in [[Nicaragua]] and made the Contra war a central pillar of his foreign policy.[^2] He signed Executive Order 12333 in 1981, the same week he authorized CIA operations in Nicaragua, establishing rules that gave the CIA veto power over Justice Department crimes reporting proposals. This framework led to the secret 1982 agreement between CIA director [[William J. Casey]] and Attorney General [[William French Smith]] that exempted CIA assets from drug crimes reporting.[^3]
On a Sunday afternoon in October 1970 [[Pat Boone]], [[Shirley Boone]], [[Harold Bredesen|Harald Bredesen]] and [[George Otis]] visited Governor Reagan and Nancy Reagan at the leased Tudor house in Sacramento, driven from the airport by the governor's legal affairs secretary Herbert E. Ellingwood after a Christian rally. Otis led a prayer; in the account written by the CBN executive Bob Slosser from the participants' recollections, Otis's words changed to a first-person address to Reagan as "My son" and ended: "If you walk uprightly before Me, you will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." Slosser wrote that Reagan then looked at Otis and said "Well!", and that Otis later said his own hand had shaken during the prayer and that Ellingwood told him Reagan's other hand had shaken similarly; Ellingwood recalled feeling a "bolt of electricity." Otis told Slosser the prophecy was "conditional" and "hinged on Reagan's actions." During the same visit Reagan discussed the fulfilled prophecies concerning the founding of [[Israel]] with Bredesen, who pressed the case for a coming outpouring of the Holy Spirit.[^2]
Reagan's administration simultaneously prosecuted the "War on Drugs" while the CIA's Contra army was connected to [[Cocaine]] trafficking in American cities. The passage of anti-crack laws during Reagan's presidency packed prisons with thousands of young black dealers while the cocaine importers who supplied them walked free.[^4]
### The 1980 campaign and the October Surprise allegations
[[William J. Casey]] managed Reagan's 1980 campaign. [[Gary Sick]], [[Barbara Honegger]], the Hashemi brothers, [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] and others alleged that Casey and other campaign figures met Iranian representatives in Madrid and Paris in 1980 to delay the release of the American hostages until after the election, in return for arms and the release of frozen assets; the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan's inauguration. Those claims are set out on the [[October Surprise]] page.
The House Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980, chaired by [[Lee Hamilton]] with [[E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr.]] as chief counsel, reported on January 3, 1993. It stated that it had interviewed or deposed more than 230 people in the United States and ten other countries, reviewed tens of thousands of documents from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, National Security Council and other agencies, and had the FBI's electronic surveillance of Cyrus Hashemi (more than 21,000 recorded conversations on 548 tapes, September 1980 to February 1981). Its findings included that there was "no credible evidence supporting any attempt or proposal to attempt, by the Reagan Presidential Campaign" to delay the hostages' release, and no credible evidence of a link between arms transfers to Iran and the hostages' release. The same report records that the campaign established formal and informal working groups on the hostage issue, spoke to executive branch counterparts to learn what they could, and kept "visual monitoring of certain military locations" for signs of a rescue mission, hostage staging or arms shipments; it found no credible evidence these activities were illegal, while the majority wrote that "legitimate questions can be raised" about the campaign's failure to notify the government of certain "over the transom" information and about passing information to selected media outlets.[^3]
### Osirak, June 1981
The journalist [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that when national security adviser [[Richard V. Allen]] informed Reagan of the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi reactor at Osirak in June 1981, Reagan privately remarked, "Well. Boys will be boys," and that, despite State Department condemnation and proposals from [[Caspar Weinberger]] and others to cancel F-16 sales to [[Israel]], Reagan had no intention of doing so; the suspension of F-16 deliveries was lifted two months later. Hersh is the sole source for the passages so cited.[^4] See [[Osirak bombing]].
### Executive Order 12333 and the 1982 reporting agreement
Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 on December 4, 1981. Section 1.7 covers collection of information on "international narcotics activities" and directs senior intelligence community officials to participate in developing procedures approved by the Attorney General governing criminal narcotics intelligence activities abroad.[^5]
In 1982, under 28 U.S.C. 535 and the executive order, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Department of Justice]] entered into a memorandum of understanding titled "Reporting and Use of Information Concerning Federal Crimes," signed on February 11, 1982. The Justice Department's Inspector General wrote that it defined "employee" as staff or contract employees, which left open whether the CIA had to pass on information about "assets" or paid informants, and that its list of crimes reportable even when a non-employee was involved omitted narcotics trafficking. Attorney General [[William French Smith]] wrote to Casey the same day that "no formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures"; Casey replied on March 2, 1982 thanking Smith for the letter without comment on its reporting point. A 1995 memorandum added reporting of drug-law violations by non-employees.[^6]
The writer [[Gary Webb]] wrote that the executive order gave the CIA veto power over Justice Department crime-reporting proposals, that Reagan signed it the same week he authorized CIA operations in [[Nicaragua]], and that the secret 1982 agreement between Casey and Smith exempted CIA assets from drug-crime reporting; he also wrote that anti-crack legislation passed during Reagan's presidency filled prisons with young black dealers while the cocaine importers who supplied them walked free.[^7]
### The Contras, 1984 to 1986
The Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, [[Lawrence Walsh]], wrote that Reagan "created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others by his secret deviations from announced national policy as to Iran and hostages and by his open determination to keep the contras together 'body and soul' despite a statutory ban on contra aid," and that it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Reagan knew of the criminal underlying facts or made criminal misrepresentations about them.[^8]
At a National Security Planning Group meeting on June 25, 1984, [[William J. Casey]] reported that the CIA had $250,000 left from its fiscal 1984 Contra appropriation; Vice President [[George H.W. Bush]] said the problem would arise only if the United States promised third parties something in return for help to the Contras; and [[Robert McFarlane]] proposed that "none of this discussion will be made public." The minutes record Reagan: "If such a story gets out, we'll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House until we find out who did it." In May or June 1984 McFarlane told Reagan that the Saudi ambassador, Prince [[Bandar bin Sultan]], would deliver $1 million a month to a Contra bank account, and according to McFarlane Reagan answered "Good news" or "That's fine"; in February 1985 King [[Fahd]] told Reagan in Washington that the Saudis would double it to $2 million a month, and McFarlane testified that Reagan directed the information not be shared. The Final Report puts Saudi grants at $32 million and Taiwanese grants at $2 million, with about $1.7 million of private contributions routed through the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty to accounts controlled by [[Oliver North]].[^8]
Reagan was a frequent fundraising speaker for Contra causes beginning in April 1985, and met and corresponded with donors to the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, which his sworn answer compared to its public-information work on the Strategic Defense Initiative. On April 25, 1985 he telephoned Honduran President Roberto Suazo Córdova to ask him to release a Contra weapons shipment seized by the Honduran army; a May 1985 briefing memo for the Suazo meeting advised reminding him that "in return for our help" the United States expected cooperation on the Contras, and in his deposition Reagan agreed that was the expectation. At the May 16, 1986 meeting [[Alan Fiers]] recalled Reagan saying, "Can't some of Ollie's people help out?", after which Chief of Staff [[Donald Regan]] changed the subject; the official minutes record a question about private groups that pay for advertisements. Walsh also wrote that North was regularly briefed through McFarlane and [[John Poindexter]], that the President's diary is "replete with references to the contra-aid struggle with Congress," and that the OIC was permitted to read only excerpts deemed relevant by White House counsel and to take notes but not copies.[^8]
North entered into evidence at his trial seven "Heads of State" documents showing, in the Independent Counsel's words, greater presidential knowledge of contra-assistance efforts than previously public; one, of October 30, 1985, indicated that McFarlane sought Reagan's approval of reconnaissance overflights of Nicaragua and that the President was informed of the illegal air-drop of recoilless rifles.[^9]
### The Iran arms sales
According to Walsh, Reagan was informed of and approved in advance an Israeli shipment of 504 TOW missiles to Iran in August and September 1985 and a November 1985 shipment of HAWK missiles, directing that Congress not be notified; he knew the sales conflicted with his announced policies, and Weinberger and Secretary of State [[George P. Shultz]] opposed them. On December 5, 1985, ten days after the HAWK shipment, Reagan signed a finding retroactively authorizing CIA assistance; he has said he does not recall signing it, and Poindexter testified he destroyed it on or about November 21, 1986. The January 17, 1986 finding listed three purposes: a more moderate Iranian government, intelligence, and the release of the hostages held in Beirut. In 1986 the United States itself sent 1,000 TOW missiles in February and spare parts for HAWKs in May and August through the CIA and the Enterprise; the Enterprise collected about $16 million more from Iran than it paid the CIA, and about $4 million of it went to Contra support controlled by North.[^8]
In November 1986, after the disclosure, Poindexter and Casey advised "no comment" while Regan and the White House staff argued for fuller disclosure; the November 10 and 12 briefings, according to Walsh, left out the 1985 sales. Meese told a November 24 meeting that the President "did not know" of the November 1985 HAWK shipment, although Shultz had told him two days earlier that Reagan recalled contemporaneous knowledge. On November 25 Reagan announced Poindexter's resignation and North's dismissal and left the podium to Meese, then telephoned North for two minutes and, in his sworn answer, said he "may have referred to LtCol North as a national hero." Meese and Regan testified Reagan was "shocked" on learning of the diversion on November 24; Poindexter testified he never told him. Walsh wrote that it was "doubtful that President Reagan would tolerate the successive Iranian affronts during 1986 unless he knew that the arms sales continued to supply funds to the contras," but that "only Poindexter could supply direct evidence" and North's destruction of records "eliminated any possible documentary proof."[^8]
Walsh found no prosecutable evidence that Reagan authorized or knew of the illegal features of North's operation. He recorded that North testified on July 7, 1987 that he believed the President had authorized the diversion and that Poindexter believed Reagan would have approved it had he been asked.[^8] On December 24, 1992 President Bush pardoned Weinberger, McFarlane, [[Elliott Abrams]], [[Duane Clarridge]], [[Clair George]] and Fiers.[^10]
### INSLAW and the Reagan Justice Department
The House Judiciary Committee's 1992 report on [[INSLAW]] records that [[Earl Brian]], whom the Hamiltons alleged received the stolen PROMIS software, was Secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency in Governor Reagan's administration, chaired the White House Health Care Cost Reduction Task Force during the first two years of the Reagan presidency, reporting to Meese, and was nominated by Reagan to the National Science Board; the nomination was approved by Reagan and later withdrawn, and the committee wrote that an FBI background report and the independent counsel report by Jacob Stein contradicted Brian's account of why. The Stein inquiry of April 1984 examined a $15,000 loan by Edwin W. Thomas to Mrs. Meese to buy stock in Biotech Capital Corporation, which Brian controlled, and Meese's offer of a White House counselor post to Thomas before the loan. Meese and Brian swore that their contacts after the governorship were sporadic and social.[^11]
[[Bill Hamilton]] and [[Nancy Hamilton]] alleged that Meese and Deputy Attorney General [[Lowell Jensen]] manufactured a contract dispute to drive INSLAW into bankruptcy and give Enhanced PROMIS to Brian's Hadron, Inc.; [[Elliot Richardson]], counsel to INSLAW, alleged a possible criminal conspiracy including Meese, Jensen and Brian. On September 28, 1987 Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.]] ruled orally that the Department "took, converted, and stole" Enhanced PROMIS "by trickery, fraud, and deceit," and on February 2, 1988 awarded INSLAW $6.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in fees; on November 22, 1989 District Judge William Bryant upheld the liability and damages findings. The committee wrote that its investigation "largely supports the findings of two Federal courts" that the Department took the software and that officials at the highest levels were involved, while stating it could not reach a definitive conclusion on motive. The Justice Department's position was that the matter was a contract dispute.[^11]
### The 1987 United Nations address
On September 21, 1987, Reagan told the United Nations General Assembly: "I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?"[^12]
### Astrology
The May 1988 disclosures that the Reagans consulted the San Francisco astrologer [[Joan Quigley]] are recorded on the pages for Quigley, [[Donald Regan|Donald T. Regan]] and [[Marlin Fitzwater]].
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 9: "He would have had me by the tail"
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Epilogue: "The damage that has been done"
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 27: "A very difficult decision"
[^1]: Miller Center, University of Virginia, "Ronald Reagan: Life Before the Presidency" and facts page (birth February 6, 1911, Tampico, Illinois; inaugurated January 20, 1981; term ended January 20, 1989; died June 5, 2004). https://millercenter.org/president/reagan
[^2]: Slosser, Bob. "A Prophecy," from *Reagan Inside Out* (Word Books, 1984), reproduced by the Christian Broadcasting Network. https://cbn.com/article/relationships/prophecy
[^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, *Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980* ("October Surprise Task Force"), H. Rept. 102-1102, January 3, 1993, Executive Summary, sections A.1 to A.4. https://archive.org/details/14148-h.rp.-1102
[^4]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^5]: Executive Order 12333, "United States Intelligence Activities," December 4, 1981, section 1.7, 46 Fed. Reg. 59941. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html
[^6]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions*, December 1997, ch. XI, "DEA's Response to Information About Contra Drug Trafficking," discussion of the 1982 memorandum of understanding and Smith's letter of February 11, 1982. https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch11p1.htm
[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 9 ("He would have had me by the tail"), the epilogue and chapter 27. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^8]: Walsh, Lawrence E. *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters*, Volume I, August 4, 1993, ch. 27, "President Reagan," including notes 6, 7, 10, 15, 45 and 50 to 53, 64 and 103 to 119. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_27.htm
[^9]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," section on the "Heads of State" documents and note 55. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm
[^10]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Executive Summary. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm
[^11]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report*, H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992, sections on INSLAW allegations, Dr. Brian and Mr. Meese, the Bankruptcy Court ruling and Judge Bryant's decision. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport
[^12]: Reagan, Ronald. "Address to the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York," September 21, 1987, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-42d-session-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-new-york