U.S. government finally exacts revenge on Iran/Contra whistleblower Cele Castillo

[Joanne98]

Celerino “Cele” Castillo III, a former DEA agent who played a key role in exposing the U.S. government’s role in narco-trafficking as part of the Iran/Contra scandal, is now a discredited man.

At least that is what the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny “House of Death” Sutton in San Antonio, Texas, who is a “dear friend” of President George W. Bush, would like us to believe. The black mark now affixed to Castillo’s reputation courtesy of Sutton’s office, however, is a thin conceit on the eve of a presidential election that is expected to usher in a sea change in American politics that might well lead to a re-examination of Castillo’s revelations — which also were supported and advanced by legendary investigative journalist Gary Webb and a host of congressional inquiries in subsequent years.

“United States Attorney Johnny Sutton announced that in San Antonio yesterday , 58-year-old former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo, III, of McAllen, Texas, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for his role in dealing firearms without a license,” states a press release issued recently by Sutton’s office.

In other words, Castillo, a Vietnam veteran (an expert marksman who was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery) will spend the next three years of his life in prison, even though he has no prior criminal record, for the act of selling some firearms (mainly hunting rifles and shotguns at gun shows in South Texas) absent the proper paperwork. The federal judge in San Antonio ordered that Castillo be committed to a medical facility due to his multiple medical problems, including diabetes and heart problems.

“I thought the judge was doing me a favor by sentencing me to a medical facility,” Castillo says. “But I recently talked to someone who just got out of one of these medical facilities and he said there isn’t a day that goes by where someone inside doesn’t die because of a dose of the wrong medication or maybe an overdose of chemo. So maybe it is a death sentence. I can’t tell you.”

For those who have an aversion to guns and the NRA, it’s important to remember that the Second Amendment does protect an individual’s right to possess firearms — as much as the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to protest the Second Amendment. The government’s role, as the law is now constructed, is to regulate that right to “keep and bear arms” — but the regulations it has created are byzantine in nature and subject to many degrees of nuance in interpretation.

For example, the Gun Control Act distinguishes between individuals who sell firearms as a hobby and those who engage in the practice as a business — the latter requiring a license issued by the government.

Here is the wording from that act:

The term “engaged in the business” means … a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.

The definition above is further rarified by a host of complex case law developed at the expense of accused violators over the years. So anyone who is charged with a firearms violation is well advised to find good legal counsel, since the law can easily be twisted to the wrong ends by over-zealous federal agents and prosecutors.

Castillo is honest about his activity in this case, but whether the government actually had the evidence that he crossed the line into committing a crime is a bigger question. And even if Castillo did broach that line, the question of the punishment fitting the crime is now a matter of an appeal filed in the case — though Castillo says he is still trying to find the money and an attorney to handle that appeal.

Here is what Castillo says about the case against him on his Web Site:

Approximately three years ago, I started to attend the Saxet Gun Show by selling my book, "Powderburns.” I found the experience overwhelming because it turned out to be great therapy for my PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). To ease my "cutting edge" a bit, I was back to wearing my Vietnam attire for the gun shows.

… As time went on I started to collect Vietnam vintage surplus to sell. But before long, I began to do what most of the vendors were doing at the gun show, selling and buying both used and new guns without a license. Over half of the gun show vendors are still doing what I got charged with. However, I strongly believe that because of my involvement as an "expert witness" and an activist against certain actions of our government, I obviously had become a target.

After all, I had been forewarned by a defense attorney, that an AUSA Federal prosecutor had advised him to instruct me that in some way, shape or form, they were going to target me until they got me. And that they did.

Whistleblower

Castillo, while a DEA agent in Central America in the 1980s, during the Reagan/Bush administration, uncovered evidence that the CIA and the White House National Security Council, through San Antonio, Texas, native and national counter-terrorism coordinator Lt. Col. Oliver North and other CIA assets, were carrying out illegal operations at two hangers at Ilopango Airport in El Salvador. Those airport hangars, Castillo contends, served as weapons and narcotics transshipment centers for funding and arming the U.S.-backed Contra counter-insurgency against the government of Nicaragua.

From that moment forward, Castillo became a target of those pulling the strings in that dirty war.

“Cele became a household word inside DEA,” says Sandalio Gonzalez, a retired DEA commander who worked in Latin America at the same time Castillo was stationed in the region. “They ruined his reputation over the stuff that happened in El Salvador and he became a target. He took on the Establishment, and it didn’t come out so good for him.”

Castillo’s investigation into the Ilopango operation was eventually torpedoed via CIA interference and he was subjected to a steady stream of retaliatory DEA internal investigations.

Castillo subsequently, after a 12-year career, retired from the DEA, but to this day he has remained an outspoken critic of the hypocrisy of the war on drugs, penning a book about his experiences in DEA, called Powderburns, and appearing on numerous radio and TV shows —most recently in a Showtime series called American Drug War.

Continued>>>>
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2008/11/us-government-finally-exacts-revenge-irancontra-whistleblower-cele-cast

[TomInTib]

1. Those bastards never give up, do they?

I hope Castillo is Obama's first pardon.

That guy has cast-iron balls.

[gtar100]

8. Has the mark of papa bush all over it.

[peacetalksforall]

2. I think this guy needs a team of blue or puple lawyers and doctors.

One is to do something about this guy getting charges and the guys in the same shows not getting charges. Isn't there precedent here or something legal?

Also, can the doctors follow his charts to make sure they are not giving him anything that is life threatening? Can there be outside medical consultation? And can't they do something for his health to allow him to go to regular jail, not the medical jail?

We can do something by making his case a public show with lots of attention - BECAUSE he is a whistleblower and we need every whistleblower to live. Especially one who risked plenty to expose the hypocrisy in our government paid employees and their bosses.

There is an entirely secret sub-government being conducted in this country - this one involves a lot of money and a destiny that involves our soldier kids in getting killed and maimed and becoming mental cases because of the war aspects.

And abortion lovers won't care about the children who are being born with horrible deformities and problems because of the spraying of their beautiful lands - or not being born because of chemicals. Chemicals for show or chemhicals to take care of competitors.

[bananas]

3. His website is powderburns.org

http://www.powderburns.org/

[Joanne98]

4. Thanks. Whistleblowers need all the help they can get.

[roody]

5. knowledgability is not a word. These Fox talkers are idiots.

[Octafish]

6. Celerino Castillo has been a marked man for a long time.

The fact the gun-loving right wing Bush department of Just-Us
is now interpreting the law they used to evade accountability
for their own guns-n-drug running operations against him
shows their desperation.



Background on what Mr. Castillo saw as head of the DEA in El Salvador:

WRITTEN STATEMENT OF CELERINO CASTILLO III, (D.E.A., RETIRED)
FOR THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

April 27, 1998

EXCERPT...

Facts of my investigation on CIA-Contras drug trafficking in El Salvador:

The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money.

As my friend and colleague Michael Ruppert has pointed out through his own experience in the 1970s, CIA has often bypassed congressional intent by resorting to the drug trade (Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc).

When the Boland Amendment(s) cut the Contras off from a continued U.S. government subsidy, George Bush, his national security adviser Don Gregg, and Ollie North, turned to certain foreign governments, and to private contributions, to replace government dollars. Criminal sources of contributions were not excluded. By the end of 1981, through a series of Executive Orders and National Security Decision Directives, many of which have been declassified, Vice President Bush was placed in charge of all Reagan administration intelligence operations. All of the covert operations carried out by officers of the CIA, the Pentagon, and every other federal agency, along with a rogue army of former intelligence operatives and foreign agents, were commanded by George Bush. Gary Webb (San Jose Mercury News) acknowledged, that he simply had not traced the command structure over the Contras up into the White House, although he had gotten some indications that the operation was not just CIA.

On Dec. 01, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a secret order authorizing the CIA to spend $19.9 million for covert military aid to the recently formed Contras--- hardly enough money to launch a serious military operation against the Cuban and Soviet-backed Sandinista regime.

In August 1982, George Bush hired Donald P. Gregg as his principal adviser for national security affairs. In late 1984, Gregg introduced Oliver North to Felix Rodriguez, (a retired CIA agent) who had already been working in Central America for over a year under Bush's direction. Gregg personally introduced Rodriguez to Bush on Jan. 22, 1985. Two days after his January 1985 meeting, Rodriguez went to El Salvador and made arrangements to set up his base of operations at Ilopango air base. On Nov. 01, 1984, the FBI arrested Rodriguez's partner, Gerard Latchinian and convicted him of smuggling $10.3 million in cocaine into the U.S.

On Jan. 18, 1985, Rodriguez allegedly met with money-launderer Ramon Milan-Rodriguez, who had moved $1.5 billion for the Medellin cartel. Milan testified before a Senate Investigation on the Contras' drug smuggling, that before this 1985 meeting, he had granted Felix Rodriguez's request and given $10 million from the cocaine for the Contras.

On September 10, 1985, North wrote in his Notebook:

"Introduced by Wally Grasheim/Litton, Calero/Bermudez visit to Ilopango to estab. log support./maint. (...)"

In October of 1985, Upon my arrival in Guatemala, I was forewarned by Guatemala DEA, County Attaché, Robert J. Stia, that the DEA had received intelligence that the Contras out of Salvador, were involved in drug trafficking. For the first time, I had come face to face with the contradictions of my assignment. The reason that I had been forewarned was because I would be the Lead Agent in El Salvador.

CONTINUED...

http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/cellerinocastillo.html

More on the subject:

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

DEA Agents Agree: CIA means Cocaine Importation Agency

Thank you for a most important article, Joanne98. We must all work fulltime to return Justice to America. Remembering Mr. Castillo, Gary Webb, Michael Devine, Hector Berrellez and a good many others and their work will hasten that Day.

[formercia]

7. Stay out of the can

“I thought the judge was doing me a favor by sentencing me to a medical facility,” Castillo says. “But I recently talked to someone who just got out of one of these medical facilities and he said there isn’t a day that goes by where someone inside doesn’t die because of a dose of the wrong medication or maybe an overdose of chemo. So maybe it is a death sentence. I can’t tell you.”




YUP.

[loudsue]

9. It's time for Michael Ruppert to come back "from the wilderness".

There's a new war to be fought on the "drug war" front, and I'd sure like to see him back in action!

fromthewilderness.com