'SHADOW' OPERATIONS TO BE EXAMINED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200710002-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 23, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200710002-3
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BOSTON GLOBE
13 December 1936
`Shadow' operations to be examined
Former ' 'tart', intelligence agents 6
B Ben
turning up in Iran-contra probe Globe Staff Bradlee Jr.
As the Iran arms-contra scan-
dal continues to unfold, at least
some congressional committees
will closely examine the so-called
"shadow network" of former mili-
tary and intelligence operatives
who were instrumental in aiding
the contras arfd selling arms to
Iran, as well as probe allegations
that the contra supply effort was
sustained by profits from drug
trafficking.
To many observers, one of the
most alarming aspects are the ties
between two of the affair's central
figures. a retired Air Force major
general. Richard V. Secord. and
an Iranian business partner. Al-
bert Hakim, to former military in-
telligence operatives called "cow-
boys" by some Capitol Hill
sources.
These figures are personified
by Edwin Wilson, the renegade
former CIA agent who is now serv-
ing a lengthy federal prison term
for having shipped weaponry to
Libya's Moammar Khadafy in the
1970s.
According to congressional and
private sources, news reports and
court documents, since the mid-
1970s, Wilson and other former
CIA agents including Theodore
Shackley. Thomas Clines and
Ralph Quintero. associated with
one another and Secord and Ha-
kim through a web of interlocking
corporations that have reportedly
played key roles in both the contra
supply effort and Iranian arms
sales.
And even before corporate rela-
tions were forged, most of these
former operatives had worked
closely with one another, their ac-
tivities going back to the early
1960s In intelligence operations
around the anti-Castro movement
In Florida, and later. in Southeast
Asia and Iran.
Some analysts. including Peter
Dale Scott. a professor at the Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley,
said freelancing by Wilson and
the others is rooted in the CIA's
purges of hundreds of covert oper-
atives in the mid-1970s.
Scott noted that these men
were on good terms with foreign
CIA contacts. and after the mass
firings, were forced to seek em-
ployment through those contacts.
And as clandestine operations fell
more and more out of favor at
home, some former spies began to
resort to more questionable kinds
of activities. Scott and others said.
But under President Reagan,
the clandestine services were re-
born. as evidenced by a budget
that has grown faster than the
Pentagon's. The old intelligence
hands were put to work by an ad-
ministration trying to bolster an-
ticommunist insurgencies. In
some cases, the operations were
conducted under private auspices
to give the government deniabi-
lity.
Turned to Secord
In putting together a private
contra supply network after Con-
gress barred US aid in 1984, and,
later. to facilitate the Iran arms
deal. Lt. Col. Oliver North. the
fired National Security Council
aide who is at the heart of the
Iran-contra affair, turned to Se-
cord and other members of this
private network.
'In a effort to win the release of
US hostages. Secord accompanied
North on a clandestine trip to Bei-
rut on Oct. 31. Just days before the
Iran-contra arms connection was
publicly revealed. the Washington
Post reported Saturday.,
"The administration was faced
with the question of how to keep
the contras alive. and with the
CIA out of the game, they gave Ol-
lie the portfolio." a congressional
aide said.
"The NSC is better shielded
than the agency," the aide went
on, "but they don't have any mon-
ey or operatives. So they went to
the 'cowboys,' the former opera-
tives, who are looking for work,
who have relations with other
governments, who know how to
get things done. and if they make
a buck on the side. that's OK."
But if North saw a certain logic
to this arrangement, many ob-
servers said he erred seriously in
picking people for the assign-
ments in Central America and
Iran.
"It surprises me that anyone
could be so naive as to hire some-
one with such a close association
to Edwin P. Wilson, and I think it
was an act of irresponsibility to
bring people like that into govern-
ment employment," said Stans-
field Turner, who was CIA director
from 1977 to 1981. Turner was re-
ferring to Shackley. Clines and
others.
Because of their ties to Wilson.
Turner removed Shackley as the
agency's No. 2 man In covert oper-
ations and reassigned Clines. See-
ing no future under Turner, both
men resigned from the agency
soon afterward.
Meanwhile, increasing atten-
tion is being given to charges
raised in a pending federal lawsuit
in Miami. That suit links the con-
tra supply operation to the Iran-
ian arms transfer by detailing a
complex and bizarre series of
crimes allegedly committed by the
Wilson-Shackley group over 20
years.
Suit's charges
The suit charges that members
of the group. despairing about an
isolationist drift in Washington
that was preventing the United
States from its role as leader of the
free world. trafficked in arms and
narcotics to support anttcommun-
ist insurgency around the world.
The charges are spelled out in a
95-page affidavit filed last week in
a S23.8 million civil suit brought
by Tony Avirgan and Martha
Honey. a husband-and-wife team
of freelance journalists, against
two dozen contra leaders and sev-
eral former CIA and military offi-
cials.
These figures. according to the
lawsuit. include Shackley. Clines.
Secord, Hakim, Quintero and re-
tired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, for-
mer chairman of the World Anti-
Communist League, who is also
active in assisting the contras.
The defendants have denied
the allegations and at a hearing
last Monday in Miami. their law-
yers characterized the charges as
nothing more than "malicious
gossip."
Continued
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The lawsuit. filed in May after
a two-year investigation, stems
from the 1984 bombinr: of a press
conference held by the contra
leader Eden Pastora in Costa Rica
in which five persons were killed
and two dozen injured, Including
Avirgan.
Pastora. who led an indepen-
dent anti-Nicaraguan group along
the country's southern border,
was allegedly targeted for assassi-
nation because he had refused to
take up arms with a contra fac-
tion he considered a puppet of the
CIA.
The suit charges the defen-
dants with responsibility for the
bombing as part of a larger con-
spiracy to sell cocaine in the Unit-
ed States to raise money and other
supplies for the contras.
It charges that Shackley, while
overseeing the CIA's secret war in
Laos in the mid-1960s. along with
his deputy. Clines, had entered
into an alliance with Hmong
tribesmen and helped a faction
gain a monopoly on opium traf-
ficking to help fuel the war effort.
Later. before the fall of Saigon
in 1975. Shackley. Clines and oth-
ers began skimming money from
Hmong heroin profits and pilfer-
ing US weapons in Vietnam as
part of an unauthorized effort lat-
er to wage anticommunist insur-
gency in Chile. Iran before the fall
of the shah. Libya and now Nica-
ragua. according to the suit.
In 1979. both Shackley and
Clines were out of the CIA, and
most the network went private.
though Secord was still in the Air
Force as director of international
programs.
By then, the suit asserts.
Shackley. Clines. Wilson. Secord
and Hakim had created a number
of corporations and subsidiaries
around the world to conceal their
operations, which would later in-
clude aid to the contras and sell-
Ing arms to Iran.
Swiss-based
The suit says some of these cor-
porations were based In Switzer-
land. including Lake Resources
Inc.. Into which Secord and North
allegedly funneled profits from the
Iran arms sales. Stanford Tech-
nology Trading Group inc., and
Compagnie de Services Fidu-
ciaires. CSF Investments Ltd. and
Udall Research Corp. were based
in Central America, and others,
like the Egyptian-American
Transport Service Co. and the
Orca Supply Co., in the United
States.
All these companies are figur-
ing in the investigation into the
Iran-contra affair.
Now that Wilson's name has
surfaced again. many are starting
to take a second look at his claim
that he was acting on behalf of
the CIA - a claim he was prevent-
ed for national security reasons
from airing in court. -
Few doubt that Wilson abused
or misrepresented his CIA links
while profiteering in the name of
patriotism. But he reportedly re-
mains insistent that he was still
funneling intelligence information
to the agency, and that he re-
mains a spy left out in the cold.
Shackley and Clines were nev-
er compelled to testify at Wilson's
trials, and Secord, after acknowl-
edging their friendship, said Wil-
son had once offered to supply the
United States with a Soviet MIG-
25 fighter plane from the Libyan
Air Force.
Whatever the truth about Wil-
son and his allegiances, evidence
that he committed a string of felo-
nies Is overwhelming, and under
those circumstances, that for
North and the National Security
Council would turn to turn to this
group to carry out sensitive as-
signments on behalf of the nation,
continues to amaze many.
"I'm not in a proper position to
say if it's a proper way to conduct
foreign policy, but it is certainly
stupid tradecraft." said Lawrence
Barcella, the lead prosecutor in
the Wilson trials. "During the tri-
als, many of these people were
linked together in a not very flat-
tering way. and to use them again
seems ill-advised. To the extent
that you use the identity of one, a
reporter only has to go to the
morgue-file to learn the identity of
others. They are part of an infa-
mous networI."
21
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