Part III--Dean Henderson: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf. Chapter 4: Nicaraguan Contraband --The Enterprise

The Enterprise

Posted on 09/26/2016 | 2 Comments

(Excerpted from Chapter 4: Nicaraguan Contraband: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

Official channels were proving cumbersome for North & Company  The passage by Congress of the Boland Amendment in 1984 added more ammunition to the cause of those already citing the Neutrality Act as proof that Reagan’s contras were illegal.  So North and CIA Director William Casey decided to take the operation “off-the-shelf”.

Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Richard Secord joined with Iranian business magnate Albert Hakim to form The Enterprise, which quickly became the main arms supplier to the contras.

In Miami, Nugan Hand Bank sanitation expert Donald Beazley took over National City Bank with seed money that Columbian cocaine smuggler Albert Duque had acquired from wealthy oil sheiks in Bahrain.  Watergate plumber Raphael Quintero returned to his Operation Mongoose Miami haunt and set up a transshipment point for Enterprise-procured weapons bound for the contras, using the Tamiami Gun Shop as cover.

Tamiami’s owner, Ronald Joseph Martin Sr., was one of the largest suppliers of weapons to ultra-right wing paramilitary organizations in the Western Hemisphere.

Martin helped Quintero forward Enterprise weaponry to an arms supermarket being set up by North in Honduras.  SOG veteran and WACL chair John Singlaub helped North obtain surface-to-air missiles for the contras and procured private donations from people like Adolf Coors of Coors Brewing and Peter Grace of W.R. Grace.  Both had extensive business interests in Somoza’s Nicaragua.

While Quintero ran the Miami operation, another Bay of Pigs SOG veteran was put in charge of re-supplying the contras out of Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador.  Felix Rodriguez, author of The Pink Plan, had earned his stripes when he murdered Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor turned Cuban revolutionary leader, in Bolivia, where General Echevarria coordinated the CIA hunt for Guevara while protecting the Roberto Suarez cocaine ring.

A cocaine lab in Huanchaco, Bolivia was alleged to have been run by the CIA and witnesses claim to have seen Oliver North at the lab. [140]  Felix Rodriguez still wears the gold watch he snatched from Guevara’s corpse.

Rodriguez’ Ilopango resupply had an open channel to Vice President George Bush Sr.  Rodriguez answered to Donald Gregg, Bush’s national security adviser and a 30-year veteran of the CIA.  Gregg had been Rodriguez’s superior in Vietnam. [141]  In 1986 Rodriguez complained to Gregg at a meeting in Washington that “Clines and Secord are ripping off the contras”.

He called the Enterprise, “a bunch of crooks…that were making immoral profits off of other people’s blood.”  Rodriguez described North as “chairman of the board” and Secord as “chief operating officer”. [142]

The eleven meetings between Rodriguez and Gregg prove that North’s network was not private, but was in fact being directed by the Reagan Administration in defiance of the Boland Amendment.  Evidence of the meetings led to queries which culminated in the Iran/Contra hearings.

Secord and friends were up to their Iranian tricks, buying weapons at manufacturer’s cost and selling them at replacement cost, skimming off the difference in profits.  This practice shielded defense contractors from being linked to the contras, while providing The Enterprise with surplus funds to be deployed for covert operations elsewhere.  The lion’s share of the funds was being used to buy weapons for the Iranians for their coming war with Iraq.

In Guatemala City Israeli Mossad arms merchant Pesach Ben-Or ran the contra resupply with help from Israeli General Pinchas Sachar.  Both were employed by Israeli Military Industries.  Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams wired money to Sachar’s accounts at Israel’s Bank Hapoalim.  The Israelis were deeply involved in the contra effort, and moonlighted training Guatemalan right-wing death squads.

In 1987 Richard Brenneke, an arms dealer and CIA contract agent, testified before Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations that the arms supermarket in Honduras being supplied by the Enterprise was in constant contact with Bush NSA Donald Gregg.

Brenneke said his involvement began when he was approached by agents of Israeli Mossad who asked Brenneke to buy certain weapons in Eastern Europe for the contras and gave him Donald Gregg’s phone number to call if he needed verification.

Dean Henderson is the author of five books:Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve, Stickin’ it to the Matrix & The Federal Reserve Cartel.  You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @www.hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com