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60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Dimona.md
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ aliases:
- Dimona reactor
- Dimona facility
created: 2025-01-09
updated: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-08
title: Dimona
tags:
- Place
@ -39,23 +39,31 @@ Special National Intelligence Estimate 100-8-60 of December 8, 1960 stated that
### American visits, 1961 to 1969
Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion insisted that inspection by the [[International Atomic Energy Agency]] would violate Israeli sovereignty, and that [[John F. Kennedy]]'s White House agreed to an American team on terms by which it "would have to schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of Israel. There would be no spot checks permitted."[^9] He wrote that [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]] dated the first inspection to 1962 and that Culler's teams made the visits.[^10] According to Hersh, the Israeli scheme "based on plans supplied by the French" built a false control room at Dimona "complete with false control panels and computer-driven measuring devices that seemed to be gauging the thermal output of a twenty-four-megawatt reactor"; Culler told him he reported to the White House that the reactor was a "standard reactor," and when informed of the false room replied, "It's possible to make a system appear that it's controlling something when it's not." A former member of the Israeli General Staff Reconnaissance Unit told Hersh that weeks before an inspection soldiers brought "eight semitrailers loaded with grass. It was sod, all for camouflage," to cover walks and bunkers.[^11] The CIA photo interpreter Brugioni told Hersh that the sudden grass "just spotlights activity."[^11]
Hersh wrote that Ben-Gurion insisted that inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency would violate Israeli sovereignty, and that [[John F. Kennedy]]'s White House agreed to an American team on terms by which it "would have to schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of Israel. There would be no spot checks permitted."[^9] He wrote that [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.]] dated the first inspection to 1962 and that Culler's teams made the visits.[^10] According to Hersh, the Israeli scheme "based on plans supplied by the French" built a false control room at Dimona "complete with false control panels and computer-driven measuring devices that seemed to be gauging the thermal output of a twenty-four-megawatt reactor"; Culler told him he reported to the White House that the reactor was a "standard reactor," and when informed of the false room replied, "It's possible to make a system appear that it's controlling something when it's not." A former member of the Israeli General Staff Reconnaissance Unit told Hersh that weeks before an inspection soldiers brought "eight semitrailers loaded with grass. It was sod, all for camouflage," to cover walks and bunkers.[^11] The CIA photo interpreter Brugioni told Hersh that the sudden grass "just spotlights activity."[^11]
The documents of 1969 give the American side. On March 17, 1969 Secretary of Defense [[Melvin Laird]] wrote to the Secretary of State, the national security adviser and the Director of Central Intelligence, under the subject "Stopping the Introduction of Nuclear Weapons Into the Middle East," that he had seen "additional evidence of activity" (the object is redacted), referred to export licenses granted the previous June and October for two Control Data 6400 computers and one IBM 360/65 computer, and endorsed [[David Packard]]'s recommendation that shipment of the second CDC 6400 be withheld.[^12] The visit of July 10 to 13, 1969 was, in a State Department memorandum of June 12, 1970, "the last 'visit' to Dimona"; the memorandum added that "no one in the U.S. community has been satisfied with the restrictions and conditions Israel has imposed."[^13] In a memorandum of conversation of August 13, 1969 between Dr. Charles H. Reichardt, the AEC's Director of Intelligence, his deputy Charles A. Sommer, George B. Pleat, chief of the Dimona inspection team, and a State Department officer, the team was said to have drawn "the inference that the US government is not prepared to support a real 'inspection' effort," to have been "cautioned to avoid controversy" and to "be gentlemen," and to have been "criticized roundly" by the Israelis on one occasion "for having 'acted like inspectors'"; the State officer added that "visits conducted under these approaches may even be counter-productive."[^14] A State Department background paper of September 19, 1969 for the visit of Golda Meir, drafted by Robert H. Munn and cleared by [[Joseph Sisco]], [[Rodger Davies]], the Atomic Energy Commission and a CIA officer named Chamberlain, stated: "Our 'visits' to Dimona have shed virtually no light on the role that site may play in a weapons program," that "we have actually learned very little from the standpoint of a weapons program," that Israel had since about 1963 "moved as rapidly as possible" on strategic missiles and warheads, that "all the facilities required for production of plutonium have been identified with the exception of a separation plant," that "others feel confident that Israel already has one or more complete nuclear weapons now," and that Israel's formula was "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East."[^15] [[Henry Kissinger]]'s memorandum of October 7, 1969, "Discussions with the Israelis on Nuclear Matters," was written after the meeting of [[Richard Nixon]] and Meir.[^16] Hersh wrote that the Israeli leadership "correctly interpreted the end of the Culler inspections as an American carte blanche."[^17]
### June 1967
A Control Group paper dated by the Foreign Relations of the United States editors to June 17, 1967 carries an annex on indigenous capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. It describes the reactor at Dimona as a French-built facility of 25 MW, not under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards but inspected by the United States, which "is capable of producing enough plutonium for approximately one nuclear weapon per year." It states that the spent fuel rods "are still at Dimona and have not been subjected to chemical separation," that before the crisis the Israelis "had probably not made a decision to develop nuclear weapons, but probably had decided to keep that option open," and that a decision made then would probably mean 18 months or longer before a first weapon.[^18]
On June 27, 1967, the American ambassador [[Walworth Barbour]] reported from Tel Aviv that Israelis "who have technical capability to build bomb, would, it may be argued, be foolish not to produce extra-conventional weapons." He wrote that the rising popularity of [[Moshe Dayan]], "who has been associated with those favoring the nuclear weapons development," and any rise in the standing of Dayan's associates Peres and Ben-Gurion, "who made the decisions to build Dimona," could lead Israel closer to the nuclear route.[^19] Hersh writes that after the war the intelligence about Dimona became highly compartmentalized as the White House decided to side more openly with Israel, and quotes an unnamed American official: "We knew about the yellowcake, but we weren't allowed to keep a file on it."[^20] Relying on Bill Dale, the embassy's deputy chief of mission, Hersh writes that Barbour told the military attaches at the end of the war that they were no longer to report on Dimona, and quotes Barbour: "Israel is going to be our main ally."[^21]
Avner Cohen, on the basis of interviews with the late [[Yitzhak Ya'akov]], describes the assembly in May 1967 of two or three rudimentary nuclear explosives and a plan, [[Operation Shimshon]], to detonate them in the Egyptian desert as a last resort; the [[Wilson Center]], which released Cohen's collection in June 2017, described Ya'akov's testimony as revealing "for the first time the existence of a crash effort to assemble Israel's first nuclear device."[^22][^23] [[Isabella Ginor]] and [[Gideon Remez]] argue that Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat aircraft overflew Dimona in May 1967, to encourage Israel to launch a war and to ensure the site could be destroyed in a planned Arab-Soviet counterattack, and report that in August 2007 the Russian Air Force spokesman Colonel Aleksandr V. Drobyshevsky confirmed in writing that Soviet pilots had flown the sorties.[^24]
### Facilities, as described by Vanunu
Mordecai Vanunu, a technician, gave photographs and an account to the London Sunday Times in 1986 that Hersh summarized as follows. The complex has a main reactor and at least eight other buildings (machons). Machon 1 houses the silver-domed reactor, 60 feet in diameter and visible from a nearby highway, with uranium rods left in the core about three months, heavy water cooled by ordinary water through a heat exchanger, and steam vented into the atmosphere. Machon 2, "the Tunnel," is the six-level underground reprocessing plant where plutonium is extracted; its control room contains an observation area called "Golda's Balcony" for Meir's visits after 1969; plutonium is molded into hemispheres in glove boxes on level five, with lithium compounds and beryllium; and Vanunu gave the output as a weekly average of nine "buttons" of plutonium weighing 1.2 kilograms. Machon 3 converts lithium 6 and processes natural uranium; Machon 4 treats waste; Machon 5 coats rods with aluminum; Machon 6 supplies services and power; Machon 8 holds a test laboratory and Special Unit 840, "where Israeli scientists have developed a gas centrifuge method of enriching uranium for weapons use"; Machon 9 holds a laser-isotope facility; Machon 10 isolates depleted uranium. Unit 92 had been removing tritium from heavy water since the 1960s and Unit 93, opened in 1984, produced tritium on a large scale. The reactor ran 34 weeks a year.[^18] Vanunu's account is the sole source for these passages; Hersh's note states that the nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby spent two days with Vanunu for the Sunday Times and concluded that the account "is totally convincing." The vault's pages on [[Machon 1]], [[Machon 2]], [[Machon 3]], [[Machon 4]], [[Machon 5]], [[Machon 6]], [[Machon 8]], [[Machon 9]] and [[Machon 10]] carry the individual descriptions.
Mordecai Vanunu, a technician, gave photographs and an account to the London Sunday Times in 1986 that Hersh summarized as follows. The complex has a main reactor and at least eight other buildings (machons). Machon 1 houses the silver-domed reactor, 60 feet in diameter and visible from a nearby highway, with uranium rods left in the core about three months, heavy water cooled by ordinary water through a heat exchanger, and steam vented into the atmosphere. Machon 2, "the Tunnel," is the six-level underground reprocessing plant where plutonium is extracted; its control room contains an observation area called "Golda's Balcony" for Meir's visits after 1969; plutonium is molded into hemispheres in glove boxes on level five, with lithium compounds and beryllium; and Vanunu gave the output as a weekly average of nine "buttons" of plutonium weighing 1.2 kilograms. Machon 3 converts lithium 6 and processes natural uranium; Machon 4 treats waste; Machon 5 coats rods with aluminum; Machon 6 supplies services and power; Machon 8 holds a test laboratory and Special Unit 840, "where Israeli scientists have developed a gas centrifuge method of enriching uranium for weapons use"; Machon 9 holds a laser-isotope facility; Machon 10 isolates depleted uranium. Unit 92 had been removing tritium from heavy water since the 1960s and Unit 93, opened in 1984, produced tritium on a large scale. The reactor ran 34 weeks a year.[^25] Vanunu's account is the sole source for these passages; Hersh's note states that the nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby spent two days with Vanunu for the Sunday Times and concluded that the account "is totally convincing." The vault's pages on [[Machon 1]], [[Machon 2]], [[Machon 3]], [[Machon 4]], [[Machon 5]], [[Machon 6]], [[Machon 8]], [[Machon 9]] and [[Machon 10]] carry the individual descriptions.
### The security apparatus
Hersh wrote that [[Binyamin Blumberg]], a former military intelligence officer chosen by Peres, headed the Office of Special Tasks, later known as [[LAKAM]], placed in the Defense Ministry to protect the nuclear project, collect technical information abroad and set up front companies for restricted equipment.[^19] He wrote that Israeli forces watched for photography, that aircraft, "including those belonging to the Israeli Air Force," are forbidden to overfly the site, and that in 1967 an Israeli Mirage was shot down in its airspace.[^20]
Hersh wrote that [[Binyamin Blumberg]], a former military intelligence officer chosen by Peres, headed the Office of Special Tasks, later known as [[LAKAM]], placed in the Defense Ministry to protect the nuclear project, collect technical information abroad and set up front companies for restricted equipment.[^26] He wrote that Israeli forces watched for photography, that aircraft, "including those belonging to the Israeli Air Force," are forbidden to overfly the site, and that in 1967 an Israeli Mirage was shot down in its airspace.[^27]
### Output and tests, as reported by Hersh
Hersh wrote that "sometime early in 1968, Dimona finally was ordered into full-scale production and began turning out four or five warheads a year," and, in another chapter, that by 1973 "according to former Israeli government officials, the Israeli nuclear arsenal totaled at least twenty warheads"; his chapter on the Tunnel states a figure of more than twenty-five by the Yom Kippur War.[^21] He wrote that "well-placed Israeli sources" said that technicians conducted "at least one successful low-yield nuclear test sometime in the mid-1960s at an underground cavern" in the Negev.[^22]
Hersh wrote that "sometime early in 1968, Dimona finally was ordered into full-scale production and began turning out four or five warheads a year," and, in another chapter, that by 1973 "according to former Israeli government officials, the Israeli nuclear arsenal totaled at least twenty warheads"; his chapter on the Tunnel states a figure of more than twenty-five by the Yom Kippur War.[^28] He wrote that "well-placed Israeli sources" said that technicians conducted "at least one successful low-yield nuclear test sometime in the mid-1960s at an underground cavern" in the Negev.[^29]
On September 22, 1979 the Vela 6911 satellite recorded a double flash over the South Indian Ocean; the technicians of the [[Air Force Technical Applications Center]] at [[Patrick Air Force Base]] had seen 41 earlier double flashes, each confirmed as a nuclear explosion.[^23] Hersh wrote that "former Israeli government officials, whose information on other aspects of Dimona's activities has been corroborated," said the event was a low-yield Israeli artillery shell tested with the South African Navy observing and was the third such test over the ocean; he wrote that the presidential science adviser [[Frank Press]] wanted the review panel to buy time and that an aide recalled Press "did not want that panel to conclude there had been a nuclear explosion."[^24] The panel chaired by [[Jack Ruina]], which included [[Richard Garwin]], [[Luis Alvarez]] and [[Wolfgang Panofsky]], concluded in May 1980 that the signal was more likely a meteoroid striking the satellite and sunlight reflecting off the ejected particles, while reports from [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]], [[SRI International]], [[Sandia National Laboratories]], the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Aerospace Corporation]] published in 2006 included several that held a nuclear test most probable.[^23] See [[VELA Satellite]] and [[Nuclear Intelligence Panel]].
On September 22, 1979 the Vela 6911 satellite recorded a double flash over the South Indian Ocean; the technicians of the [[Air Force Technical Applications Center]] at [[Patrick Air Force Base]] had seen 41 earlier double flashes, each confirmed as a nuclear explosion.[^30] Hersh wrote that "former Israeli government officials, whose information on other aspects of Dimona's activities has been corroborated," said the event was a low-yield Israeli artillery shell tested with the South African Navy observing and was the third such test over the ocean; he wrote that the presidential science adviser [[Frank Press]] wanted the review panel to buy time and that an aide recalled Press "did not want that panel to conclude there had been a nuclear explosion."[^31] The panel chaired by [[Jack Ruina]], which included [[Richard Garwin]], [[Luis Alvarez]] and [[Wolfgang Panofsky]], concluded in May 1980 that the signal was more likely a meteoroid striking the satellite and sunlight reflecting off the ejected particles, while reports from [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]], [[SRI International]], [[Sandia National Laboratories]], the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] and the [[Aerospace Corporation]] published in 2006 included several that held a nuclear test most probable.[^30] See [[VELA Satellite]] and [[Nuclear Intelligence Panel]].
### Doctrine and deterrence
@ -80,10 +88,17 @@ Hersh's title phrase, [[The Samson Option (GFE)|the Samson Option]], is treated
[^15]: Department of State, "Background: Israel's Nuclear Weapon and Missile Programs," enclosed in Executive Secretary Theodore L. Eliot to Henry Kissinger, September 19, 1969, EBB 189, document 21 (pp. 2 to 8, with drafting and clearance box). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-21.pdf ; Cohen, Avner, and William Burr, "Israel crosses the threshold," *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,* May/June 2006.
[^16]: Kissinger, Henry A., to the President, "Discussions with the Israelis on Nuclear Matters," October 7, 1969, EBB 189, document 22 (title and date; the National Security Archive's index describes it as written "in the wake of the Nixon-Meir meeting"). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-22.pdf
[^17]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 16, "Prelude to War," on the end of the Culler inspections.
[^18]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 15, "The Tunnel."
[^19]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars," and chapter 10 (Office of Special Tasks).
[^20]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131 and its footnote.
[^21]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 13, "An Israeli Decision" (1968 production; more than twenty-five bombs), and chapter 16, "Prelude to War" (at least twenty warheads by 1973).
[^22]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131.
[^23]: Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm
[^24]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 20, "An Israeli Test," pp. 271-273.
[^18]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 305, Paper Submitted by the Control Group, undated (dated June 17, 1967 by the editors), with annex. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d305
[^19]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 326, Telegram 4311 from the Embassy in Israel (Barbour) to the Department of State, June 27, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d326
[^20]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 11, p. 156. Sole source for the passages so cited; the official is unnamed.
[^21]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12, p. 168. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^22]: Cohen, Avner. "Israel's Secret Plan to Nuke the Egyptian Desert." *Politico Magazine*, June 5, 2017, republished by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. https://nonproliferation.org/israels-secret-plan-to-nuke-the-egyptian-desert/. Sole source for the passages so cited; Cohen relays the testimony of Ya'akov.
[^23]: Wilson Center, "Wilson Center Archive Sheds New Light on 1967 Six-Day War," June 5, 2017. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/wilson-center-archive-sheds-new-light-1967-six-day-war
[^24]: Ginor, Isabella, and Gideon Remez. *Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War*. Yale University Press, 2007; their report of the 2007 Russian Air Force statement, https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/42140. Sole source for the overflights.
[^25]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 15, "The Tunnel."
[^26]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 5, "Internal Wars," and chapter 10 (Office of Special Tasks).
[^27]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131 and its footnote.
[^28]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 13, "An Israeli Decision" (1968 production; more than twenty-five bombs), and chapter 16, "Prelude to War" (at least twenty warheads by 1973).
[^29]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 10, p. 131.
[^30]: Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm
[^31]: Hersh, *The Samson Option,* chapter 20, "An Israeli Test," pp. 271-273.

25
60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Ilopango Airbase.md
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@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ aliases:
- Ilopango Air Force Base
- Ilopango
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-08
category: "Military Installation"
tags:
- Geography
@ -21,7 +21,9 @@ Ilopango Air Force Base is a military airfield outside [[San Salvador]], [[El Sa
### Contra Resupply Hub
The [[Contras]] had been using Ilopango with Salvadoran Air Force commander General Juan Rafael Bustillo's blessings since 1983, when [[Norwin Meneses]]'s friend, CIA pilot [[Marcos Aguado]], arranged to base [[Eden Pastora]]'s ARDE air force there. Most accounts date the Contras' intensified use to September 1985, when North wrote to [[Felix Rodriguez]] asking him to use his influence with Bustillo to secure hangar space. Rodriguez "greased the skids" with Bustillo and became overseer of North's Contra resupply operation. Rodriguez recruited [[Luis Posada Carriles]] as his day-to-day manager, operating under the alias "Ramon Medina."[^1]
According to Gary Webb, the [[Contras]] had been using Ilopango with Salvadoran Air Force commander General [[Juan Rafael Bustillo]]'s blessing since 1983, when [[Norwin Meneses]]'s friend, the pilot [[Marcos Aguado]], arranged to base [[Eden Pastora]]'s ARDE air force there.[^2] The CIA Inspector General gives Aguado a Sandinista Air Force and Aeronica career until his 1983 defection and records him as Chief of Air Operations for the Sandino Revolutionary Front and ARDE by September 1984.[^3] Most accounts date the Contras' intensified use to September 1985, when North wrote to [[Felix Rodriguez]] asking him to use his influence with Bustillo to secure hangar space. Rodriguez "greased the skids" with Bustillo and became overseer of North's Contra resupply operation. Rodriguez recruited [[Luis Posada Carriles]] as his day-to-day manager, operating under the alias "Ramon Medina."[^1]
In October 1986 the [[Christian Science Monitor]] reported that the Contras had used Ilopango "at least since 1984, and probably earlier," to ship supplies to Pastora in Costa Rica, and that Bustillo "has been a major contact person for aiding the contra shipments, according to diplomats and other informed sources."[^4] Senate subcommittee records show some 156,000 pounds of material moved from Ilopango to Costa Rican airfields between October 18, 1984 and February 12, 1986 on a C-47 that had been transferred to Aguado for one dollar, on 24 flights, eleven of them to [[La Penca]].[^5]
The operation was run openly. The assistant regional security officer for the U.S. embassy in San Salvador told Iran-Contra investigators in 1991: "The woman selling tortillas at the gate of Ilopango could tell you what was going on. Anyone who ever flew into or over Ilopango air base could see something like that was going on. When looking down at Ilopango from the air, one could see one side of the airfield having a ragtag operation of inferior planes, dilapidated buildings and the like. On the other side of the airport were nice facilities, lift trucks unloading supplies from more sophisticated and bigger aircraft, and gringos running around." The modern facilities "all belonged to the American operation."[^1]
@ -35,7 +37,11 @@ In March 1986, a cable from the Costa Rican [[DEA]] office reported that a pilot
DEA agent [[Celerino Castillo]]'s informant Murga, who wrote flight plans for private planes on the civilian side of the base, reported that Contra pilots were brazenly flying drugs to the United States and money to Panama, sometimes leaving with kilos in plain view or arriving with boxloads of money. When Castillo ran pilot names through DEA computers, nearly all came back as documented narcotics traffickers. Among the busiest pilots was [[Francisco Guirola Beeche]], who was later observed zooming in and out of Ilopango hauling drugs in and carrying cash to the Bahamas.[^1]
Former Meneses aide [[Enrique Miranda]] testified that cocaine from [[Colombia]] arrived at various Costa Rican airstrips, including one on CIA operative [[John Hull]]'s farm, and was placed aboard Contra planes flown into Ilopango. There, Marcos Aguado and Norwin Meneses supervised loading the cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and, on occasion, the Miami-based CIA contractor [[Southern Air Transport]]. Miranda said Meneses told him U.S. military hardware stockpiled at Ilopango was loaded onto Salvadoran transport planes and flown south, where guns were traded for cocaine and flown back.[^1]
Former Meneses aide [[Enrique Miranda]] testified at the 1991 Nicaraguan trial that cocaine from [[Colombia]] arrived at various Costa Rican airstrips, including one on CIA operative [[John Hull]]'s farm, and was placed aboard Contra planes flown into Ilopango. There, according to Miranda, Aguado and Meneses supervised loading the cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and, on occasion, the Miami-based CIA contractor [[Southern Air Transport]]. Miranda said Meneses told him U.S. military hardware stockpiled at Ilopango was loaded onto Salvadoran transport planes and flown south, where guns were traded for cocaine and flown back.[^1]
In February and March 1988 a CIA station cable reported that the Guatemalan suspected trafficker Reyner Veliz Cruz flew into Ilopango with Aguado in a twin-engine aircraft, the second time after customs officers had left, and that customs personnel at Ilopango "assume that Aguado has connections with drug trafficking."[^6]
The Justice Department Inspector General reports that on December 14, 1988 Bustillo met DEA agent Celerino Castillo to discuss Castillo's suspicions that Salvadoran Air Force officers were using Ilopango for drug trafficking; Castillo named, among others, Air School Director Lieutenant Colonel Manfredo Koenigsberg, and according to a State Department cable of January 3, 1989, Bustillo said he would investigate and seek to transfer the officer. After DEA agent Richard deTriquet was detailed to Guatemala in 1989, he and Castillo went to El Salvador to investigate reports that cocaine moved through hangar five; a Salvadoran security officer denied them access, and the CIA chief of station told them there was no drug activity associated with hangar five.[^7]
### CIA Obstruction of Investigations
@ -43,8 +49,19 @@ When Celerino Castillo's investigation began probing the hangars, the CIA sent a
U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr sent a secret "back channel" cable to the State Department requesting an internal DEA review of Castillo's allegations. The DEA informed Corr that Castillo's information was "totally inaccurate" and Castillo was told to close his investigation. When he continued, Corr personally ordered him to "stop the witch hunt." Three years later, when Castillo opened another investigation into drug trafficking at Hangar No. 5, the CIA refused to allow him on the base.[^1]
[[Alan Fiers|Alan Fiers Jr.]], the former CIA official who headed the Contra program from 1984 to 1988, acknowledged: "We had a capability and indeed a responsibility for reporting what had been happening at Ilopango." The DEA later claimed under FOIA that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango - a claim the [[Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General|Justice Department Inspector General]] exposed as false, having found and quoted from the reports liberally.[^1]
[[Alan Fiers|Alan Fiers Jr.]], the former CIA official who headed the Contra program from 1984 to 1988, acknowledged: "We had a capability and indeed a responsibility for reporting what had been happening at Ilopango." The DEA later claimed under FOIA that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango, a claim the [[Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General|Justice Department Inspector General]] exposed as false, having found and quoted from the reports liberally.[^1]
### Bombs from the Airport Battalion, 1992
Five 500-pound bombs were taken from a battalion at the San Salvador airport on February 26, 1992. [[Semana]] reported on April 12, 1992 that the arrested men, among them a Salvadoran army colonel, [[Roberto Antonio Leiva Jacobo]], confessed that members of the [[Cali Drug Cartel|Cali cartel]] had hired them and paid four million dollars for the bombs, and that the bombs were meant for a plan to kill [[Pablo Escobar]] in the [[Envigado]] prison.[^8]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends"
[^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion* (Seven Stories Press, 1998), Chapter 13, "The wrong kind of friends," and Cast of Characters. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^3]: CIA Inspector General, *Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States*, Volume II (October 8, 1998), Marcos Antonio Aguado section of the Southern Front chapter, https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html
[^4]: "Salvador airport said to be transfer point for arms to contras," *Christian Science Monitor*, October 10, 1986, https://proof.csmonitor.com/1986/1010/omerc.html
[^5]: 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), pp. 37, 50 to 52, https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^6]: CIA Inspector General, *Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States*, Volume II (October 8, 1998), Marcos Antonio Aguado section and the pilots chapter (March 23, 1988 cable on Reyner Veliz Cruz), https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html and https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/pilots.html
[^7]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter X, sections D and E, https://irp.fas.org/agency/doj/oig/c4rpt/ch10p3.htm
[^8]: "¿Bombas contra Escobar?", *Semana*, April 12, 1992, https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/bombas-contra-escobar/17208-3. Sole source for the 1992 bomb-case details; the Cali cartel buyers are Semana's report of the arrested men's confessions and of an unnamed Salvadoran government source.