U.S. government finally exacts revenge on Iran/Contra whistleblower Cele Castillo [View All]

[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