As the Abu Ghraib scandal widens, the Bush administration is sticking to its mantra, “This is not America.” But this essay sent to us by veteran deep cover operative Celerino “Cele” Castillo III offers a stark reminder of this country’s true legacy of the use of torture. Castillo knows what he’s talking about. A 20-year veteran of state and federal law enforcement, Castillo spent twelve years in the Drug Enforcement Administration, working undercover in Central and South America during the 1980s. While in El Salvador, he found himself smack in the middle of another Bush’s illegal war. He discovered that drug sales authorized by the CIA were being used to fund the brutal and corrupt Nicaraguan Contra army. He also found out firsthand that the use of torture is not limited to the world's so-called "evildoers." He sent us these thoughts on Abu Ghraib, the Nick Berg killing and the connections between the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror":
“We’re going to ask you some questions. If you give an answer we like, we’ll let you smoke. If we don’t like the answer, we’ll burn you. The anticipation was worse than the burns.” - A CIA agent and his goon squad torturing an American nun Diana Ortiz, by burning her 75 times with a cigarette.
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“We’re going to ask you some questions. If you give an answer we like, we’ll let you smoke. If we don’t like the answer, we’ll burn you. The anticipation was worse than the burns.” - A CIA agent and his goon squad torturing an American nun Diana Ortiz, by burning her 75 times with a cigarette.
There is no doubt, in my mind, that the CIA was involved in the murder of Nick Berg, the American who was executed in Iraq. There is a history of how the CIA has a way of staging murders of Americans, so that the enemy takes a fall from it. My opinion is that the CIA found that Nick was getting to close to some Iraqis, which made him an automatic target of the CIA. According to his family, he had been detained by American intelligence and later disappeared.
I saw it time and time again in the 1980s in Central America. Our government has staged several events where it attempted to implicate Nicaragua government in drug trafficking. The CIA was also implicated in the torture of an American nun in Guatemala. And in El Salvador, it had staged the murder of Jesuits priests. The FMLN were supposed to have to taken the fall for the murders, but it backfired on the CIA. A U.S. military adviser, who accompanies the Salvadorian soldiers, gave up the U.S. involvement. Once again, in my opinion, Berg’s murder was set up to enrage the American people in support of what American is doing to the prisoners in Iraq.
I saw it time and time again in the 1980s in Central America. Our government has staged several events where it attempted to implicate Nicaragua government in drug trafficking. The CIA was also implicated in the torture of an American nun in Guatemala. And in El Salvador, it had staged the murder of Jesuits priests. The FMLN were supposed to have to taken the fall for the murders, but it backfired on the CIA. A U.S. military adviser, who accompanies the Salvadorian soldiers, gave up the U.S. involvement. Once again, in my opinion, Berg’s murder was set up to enrage the American people in support of what American is doing to the prisoners in Iraq.
