ustxtxb_obs_1996_12_06_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

smuggling involving the contras and the infrastructure which supports them.” Kerry handed Weld an eleven-page sworn statement from FBI informant Wanda Palacio, which directly implicated the CIA in drug trafficking. According to the minutes, Kerry asked Weld to read the statement and left the room. Winer, who stayed in the room, said Weld “read about a half page and chuckled.” He said, “This isn’t the first time today I’ve seen allegations about CIA agents’ involvement in drugs.” Concerned that Weld was shrugging off the statement, Winer told the Justice Department official that “Wanda had been told this by the Miami FBI…. “Weld said he didn’t doubt that; it happened all the time. There were bum agents, former and current CIA agents; it didn’t surprise him.” But Weld never acted on the Palacio statement or any other evidence gathered by Kerry,’ who last month defeated Weld in a Senate race in Massachusetts. According to ftimer Kerry committee counsel Jack Blum’ s recent testimony before Senate Intelligence Committee hearings prompted by the San Jose Mercury News series, Weld had put up an “absolute stone wall” between the Justice Department and the Kerry investigation. “There were stalls, there were refusals to talk to us, refusals to turn over data…Weld put a very serious block on any effort to get information.” Miami-based attorney John Mattes, a former federal public defender, supplied some of the information discussed at the 1986 meeting with Weld. To this day Mattes is confounded by Weld’s failure to act, noting that “Weld claims he followed up with an investigation. But there is, however, no record that while Weld was the chief prosecutor for the U.S., that so much as one contra-related narcotics trafficker was brought to justice.” THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH Despite the Reagan-Bush Justice Department’s strategic inaction in prosecuting contra-connected drug operations, legal actions were taken against some disillusioned contra supporters who spoke out against the drugs and corruption. On June 28, 1988, a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, handed down two separate indictments against thirteen pro-contra mercenaries, charging them with conspiring to violate the Neutrality Act. An important target of the indictment was former contra-trainer Jack Terrell. Months before the Iran-contra scandal became public, Terrell voluntarily provided the U.S. Attorney in Miami, the FBI, Congress, and journalists with information about the illegal contra network. Terrell even prepared an extensive “Index of Participants” that listed the major and minor players in the contra secret war. But after Terrell’s June 1986 ap pearance on the now-defunct CBS news-magazine program West 57th Street, the Reagan Administration de cided to act. In an official document, National Security Advisor John Poindexter labeled Terrell a “Terrorist Threat.” In a memo to the President, Poindexter noted that “Terrell has appeared on various television documentaries, alleging corrup tion, human-rights abuses, drug running, arms smuggling, assas sination attempts by the resistance and their supporters. “Terrell’s accusations have formed the basis of a civil law suit in the U.S. District Court in Miami and his charges are at the center of Senator Kerry’s investigation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Poindexter wroteto support his extraordinary claim that Terrell might be a foreign agent for the Nicaraguan government, threatening to assassinate the President. “This is the ultimate reward you get for talking,” Terrell said after he was indicted. TEXAS OBSERVER 15 Mitt 011.. 3 1101V owtiftegypook…n.