For those of our readers who find it just too incredible to believe that the CIA has been shipping drugs wholesale into the United States to finance its multitudinous 'black' operations, we invite you to go directly to 'Clinton And CIA Drug-Smuggling Through Mena Airport, Arkansas', to read the revealing and irrefutable quotes there, and then to return and read the first-hand testimony below by an acknowledged and courageous 'insider'.And, as you'll see from these bestselling titles, they're still at it - but this time in Columbia...
Terrell, a brilliant, tough, self-made millionaire, gave up a comfortable life in the South to fight for democracy in the jungles of Central America.'Surviving two assassination attempts, Jack Terrell lived to reveal the inside story of how the CIA and other intelligence agencies are literally running out-of-control, plotting against the presidents, defying federal court orders and doggedly pursuing their own represensible military agenda. Terrel's story reads like a novel, with a fascinating mix of oddball characters, and complicated subplots involving assassination plans, gunrunning and drug dealing. 'Disposable Patriot'
'Disposable Patriot'
In the mid-1980's, Terrell hooked up with an Alabama-based paramilitary group called Civilian Military Assistance, which was formed with the encouragement of the Reagan Administration, to provide illegal assistance to the Contras. CMA attracted a motley crew of misfits, loners and good old boys, either in search of adventure or determined to combat a middle-age crisis. Terrell was tapped by Donald Fortier, the number three man at the National Security Council (NSC), who needed a "plant" within the CMA to act as its eyes and ears in Central America. Terrell was an essential part of Oliver North's campaign in Honduras and Nicaragua who, with Fortier's assistance, acted as a conduit for cash and weapons to the Contras.
Terrell later became disenchanted with the U.S. government and the Contras because of widespread corruption, drug dealing and the skimming of contributions. Sickened by the slaughter of innocent Miskito Indians, he joined their ranks and helped them defend their native lands and families from the U.S. government.
Furious with Terrell's activities, the Honduran government expelled him at gunpoint. As he re-emerged in the United States, a clandestine group of intelligence officers, known as 'Internal Command and Control' [InComCon], used him to funnel secret information to the national media. From 1986 to 1988 Terrell released to the press information designed by InComCo to embarrass and expose the Reagan-Bush Administration. This information was so accurate and damaging, that five days before Attorney-General Edwin Meese revealed the first details of the Iran-Contra scandal, Terrell provided the 'New York Times' and other news media [with] the exact same information.
On national television Terrell exposed Oliver North's illegal support of the Contras, opening up the investigation of North's secret and illegal private war in Latin America. North returned the fire, and initiated a private vendetta to discredit Terrel, putting him at the top of the first White House enemies list since the Nixon Administration. - publisher's note.
'This is a MUST-READ book, told from ground zero. It is a vivid, shocking, fully-documented eye-opener by a former CIA 'asset,' unmasking in terms everyone can understand, the long-standing global secrecy, lies and criminality practiced by the U.S. government in the persons of Reagan, Bush, Casey, North, and others.' - Margaret Brenman-Gibson; Professor, Harvard University; Consultant, Center for Defense Information.
'Terrell has appeared on various television 'documentaries' alleging corruption, human rights abuses, drug running, arms smuggling, and assassination attempts by the resistance [the Contras] and their supporters. Terrell is also believed to be involved with various Congressional staffs in preparing for hearings and inquiries regarding the role of U.S. government officials in illegally supporting the Nicaraguan resistance...[H]is charges are at the center of Senator Kerry's investigation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.' - Memorandum for President Nixon from John M. Poindexter, prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, July 28, 1986.And, from 'Disposable Patriot'
itself...
"According to Glibbery, strange events happened regularly on Hull's ranch.And...A number of Americans of some apparent importance arrived at various intervals, met with Hull for a while, then departed. One of them, according to Glibbery, was Andy Messing, a high-profile Contra supporter in Washington and director of the National Defence Council. But Messing's business card indicated he was something else. "Andy Messing, Arms Dealer" was on the card he gave Glibbery.
Carr said that on March 6th the previous year, he and Robert "Pantera" Thompson were flown from the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport in south Florida aboard a CV-440 cargo plane owned by Florida Aircraft Leasing Corp. and leased by American Flyers, a secretive air cargo company in south Florida.
American Flyers was owned by Daniel Vasquez III, who had been convicted of illegally running guns to Cuba in the 1950's and again in the 1960's. The air cargo manifest for the trip listed "50 cartons medical supplies" and "30 cartons clothing". It was, according to the manifest, "a relief shipment to the refugees of San Salvador."
Some relief shipment.
Aboard the plane, according to Carr, were a 14-foot 20mm cannon with 150 rounds, 30 G-3 automatic rifles, a box of M16 rifles, some 60mm mortars and a .50-caliber machine gun with 250 rounds of ammunition. All of the weapons came from the home of Rene Corvo and Frank Chanes of Ocean Hunter. Carr's claims were later backed up by FBI documents.
According to Carr, the plane flew from Fort Lauderdale to Illopango in El Salvador, the arms were transferred to an Islander cargo plane belonging to the Salvadorean Air Force, and they were then flown to Hull's ranch.
More troubling than the arms shipments were claims by Carr and Clibbery that much of the activity around [John] Hull's [Costa Rican] ranch involved the transshipment of cocaine to the United States.
Carr said he had personally witnessed cocaine being loaded on aircraft that regularly landed at Hull's ranch. Before they were allowed to take off, the pilots were charged exorbitant fees for landing rights and refueling.
Glibbery said at one point he overheard a call Hull received from someone in Washington expressing concern about the drugs. Washington wanted to "clean up" Hull, according to Glibbery.
Carr and Glibbery confirmed my earlier suspicious about the real reason for the southern front. It was a drug front. The information provided by Carlos Cassell and the offer from Paco Chanes only reinforced what I was hearing from these two. There remained little doubt in my mind that the U.S. government had knowledge about the drug trade being advanced under the protection of its war against the Sandinistas.
John Davies, the other British mercenary, refused to talk to me. But Pantera, the former Florida highway patrolman, was happy to see me because I represented the first semi-friendly face he had seen in a while. He had lost at least 50 pounds since the last time I saw him because the meager [Costa Rican] prison food that was being restricted due to Hull's influence.
Pantera was disoriented and talked in riddles most of the time, but he told me enough about the drug trafficking schemes on Hull's ranch to support Glibbery and Carr.
Human mules were humping 10 to 12 kilos of cocaine each from labs around Bluefields and taking it across the Rio San Juan onto Hull's ranch before being flown to the States.
The drugs were being processed in labs in Nicaragua because at that time the Colombians were having problems getting ether they needed for the final step in processing coca paste into cocaine. They'd ship the paste from Colombia into Nicaragua, where they could get plenty of ether, process the paste into cocaine there, and then take the cocaine through Costa Rica and Honduras.
Hull's ranch was the most convenient transshipment point. But drug shipments also provided a good source of funds for the Contras. They supposedly were going to do this only until Congress re-established funding for the Contras. It was short-term, creative financing in the incredibly lucrative commodity of cocaine.
The five mercenaries knew the ins and outs of the scheme and that knowledge made their lives virtually worthless as long as they stayed in Costa Rica. Glibbery, Carr and Pantera were wide-eyed with fear when I talked to them. Hull had a lot of influence in Costa Rica and could just as easily have had them killed as he could ensure they spent many years in prison.
"A day earlier (November 1, 1984) the FBI arrested eight people in the United States and charged them with plotting to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova and take over the government.And...The plot, which included General Jose A. Bueso-Rosa, the military attache at the Honduran embassy in Chile and a favorite of American military officials, was to have been financed by $10 million worth of cocaine. That was the wholesale price. Retail it could have brought as much as $40 million. The 760 pounds of coke in 15 duffel bags was confiscated by the feds at a small airport in Keenansville, Florida, on October 28th, shortly before the arrests were made in Miami.
...Implicated in the plot by Sikaffy and Latchinian (two coup conspirators who did face justice), but never charged, were retired Army Colonel "Charging Charlie" Beckwith of Delta Force fame and Desert One infamy, and U.S. Army Major Charles Odorizzi. Sikaffy and Latchinian charged that the CIA, through Beckwith and Odorizzi, were interested in getting rid of Suazo because of what were perceived as his "Communist leanings."
The conspirators planned to have Suazo killed sometime in the next few weeks and take over the government in the ensuing unrest.
Latchinian laid out the plan for me from his jail cell in Florida several years later. He told of pressure being put on Suazo's government to cooperate with U.S. plans to expand its role in the country. Since there had been a growing disenchantment among the public and some politicians with both the U.S. and Contra presence in Honduras, (Suazo) Cordova threatened to oust the U.S. military unless hundreds of millions of dollars were paid.
U.S. officials, through the CIA, put together contingency plans for a coup attempt against Suazo and let it be known in certain circles so it would get back to him. A last-minute deal was cut for nearly $150 million dollars in aid to Honduras, thus scuttling the overthrow plan. According to Latchinian, cocaine was planted on the yacht that was being used by the conspirators and the DEA was tipped off.
Suazo was not exactly the most stable of the Central American leaders. But he was certainly pliable, especially from external pressure from the U.S. State Department and the CIA. That made him the perfect leader for those interests.
...Latchinian and Sikaffy later were convicted of their part in the conspiracy to assassinate Suazo and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Bueso-Rosa pleaded guilty to three of nine counts against him and was sentenced to five years in prison, but not before throwing his weight around and, not surprisingly, getting a lot of support from the Pentagon. Another of Bueso-Rosa's allies just happened to be a U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North.
By the time of Bueso-Rosa's sentencing North has become an incredibly powerful figure in the White House, possibly the first four-star lieutenant colonel in history. According to his notes, he was concerned that the Honduran might start "singing songs nobody wants to hear" if he went to prison.
Eventually, efforts to get Bueso-Rosa's sentence reduced involved the likes of Admiral John Poindexter, head of the NSC; Elliot Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs; Dewey Clarridge of the CIA; Nestor Sanchez, deputy assistant secretary of defense; and several U.S. Army generals.
The capper on the whole Bueso-Rosa affair came in the spring of 1986. Two days before he was to plead guilty to charges he conspired to assassinate the duly elected president of his country, Bueso-Rosa was slated to be the guest of honor at a lunch sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Pentagon's executive dining room. After several lengthy meetings among senior officials from the CIA, the DIA, the Department of Justice and the State Department, DIA finally was convinced that the lunch wasn't such a good idea after all."
Press reports hinting of a White House-orchestrated private aid network to assist the Contras had been appearing since June 1985. But it was not until August that names were attached to the scheme.Essential, and now hard-to-find, reading on the U.S. intelligence community, and its connection to drugs, secret wars, and political assassinations. Terrell was an insider; this extraordinary book is as fast-paced as a novel, but packed with valuable and detailed information. Read 'Disposable Patriot'The first name belonged to Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North. On August 8th, 1985, the 'New York Times' published a front-page article in which it was revealed that a top NSC staffer was responsible for the scheme to aid the Contras. Although the staffer was not named, it was widely known in Washington that the staffer was North.
The following day I was sitting in my apartment at the Beauregard House when the telephone rang.
"It is Friday, August 9, 1985. Is this Jack Reynolds Terrell?" a voice asked.
I was a bit taken aback. The call was eerily reminiscent of the one I had received 10 months earlier from Donald Fortier of the National Security Council, the call that had started me on this strange odyssey.
"I can tell you who I am by referring to the fact that I worked with Don," the caller continued.
"Who is this?" I asked.
"Just call me Mr. Smith."
"What do you want?"
"How would you like to get some revenge?"
It was as if somebody threw a rope into the pits of hell and yanked me out.
That call played right into a mind that was ready to explode on someone, if not myself. "Mr. Smith" was giving me an opportunity to get some direction and focus in my life again. He was rescuing me from myself by giving me the opportunity to get back at whoever had stopped me from doing what I thought my country wanted me to do. I was determined to inflict as much pain as had been inflicted on me. It was payback time.
I was leery of Mr. Smith at first, but was able to glean enough information from him to assure myself that he probably had worked with Donald Fortier in some capacity. He certainly knew what I had been doing. Besides, it didn't really matter to me if he wasn't who he said he was. I would have worked for the devil just for a chance to back at those who I felt had wronged me.
Mr. Smith never appealed to my patriotism, as had Meg Hunt from Jeremiah Denton's office. He never offered me an ideological excuse for what I would be doing. Perhaps he knew that appeals to whatever patriotism I retained would have been useless. I was beyond politics.
All he offered was simple revenge and I jumped at the chance. It was as if a leash had been taken off a mad dog.
In that one short telephone call I became a dangerous person, ready to strike in any direction because of what I felt was an injustice done me and the Indians. My agenda became one of treachery. They were wrong in using the system to back thugs and I wanted to show them they were wrong.
The only time I felt I belonged anywhere was in the Miskitia. In those few brief weeks with the Indians I had been given a glimpse of something I thought was right. It was a gift from the Indians, but it had been taken away from me by my own government because what I was doing didn't fit the agenda of those running foreign policy.
Over the next few months I received numerous phone calls from Mr. Smith. He often was a different person, but he was always "Mr. Smith."
Sometimes Mr. Smith was casual and chatty. Sometimes he was all business. Sometimes he had a faint Southern accent. Other times he came from the Midwest or the Northeast.
Whichever Mr. Smith called knew of my rage and my willingness get back at the system. But Mr. Smith would not allow me to strike out blindly. There had to be a focus to what I did. There had to be targets not necessarily specific individuals, but institutions within the government that were responsible for the mess in Central America.
During these conversations we plotted strategy on how I could best use the information I had obtained during my time with the FDN, CMA and the Indians, in addition to the information I would be fed by Mr. Smith.
The more I leamed about how the system operated to create policy and problems in Central America, the angrier and more antagonistic I became.
Of course, I did not know the forces at work against me at the time.
I didn't know that North, Owen, John Hull and others intent on preserving their private enterprise were trying to kill Colonel Flaco, if not physically, then surely figuratively through character assassination.
In an April 1, 1985, memo from Owen to North, updated on April 9, my name was again brought up as a potential source of trouble to the enterprise and that something should be done about me.
"Flako [sic] is back in business," Owen wrote. "He has established himself in New Orleans and is working on some new scams. He is staying at the Providence Hotel. It is time someone paid him a visit and told him to go back to the hole he comes from."
In time, North became the focal point of my anger and resentment toward the government. North was the wrong that had been done to me, the man who had assaulted my self-worth and dignity, the man who had taken from me the one thing I wanted most in life - to be left alone with the Indians.
Mr. Smith often talked not so much about North and the NSC as he did about the CIA. He frequently bemoaned the fact that in recent years established procedures at the Agency were being bypassed and anyone who disagreed with the policies of CIA Director William Casey often found himself stationed in some God-forsaken place such as the north African country of Chad.
All the proper protocol within the Agency had been eliminated under Casey's reign of terror, and there was a sense of instability and fear among the veterans, Mr. Smith complained. The Agency had become compartmentalized and the chain of command was being ignored more and more frequently.
More worrisome to some of those veterans was that things were being done without appropriate authorization, things that were outside the scope of what fhe Agency could and should be doing.
The breaking point came when Casey authorized the bombing of a hotel in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 8, 1985, in an effort to kill Hezbollah leader Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. The car bomb missed the mullah, but killed 82 innocent people.
That got the attention of a lot of folks in the Agency. Here they were, accusing terrorists like the Irish Republican Army of torching folks, and yet the director of Central Intelligence was authorizing a bombing of this magnitude that failed to hit the intended target.
People were saying something was wrong with the way the Agency was being run. They decided the Agency was out of control. Something had to be done to bring it and the NSC, which essentially was being run by the CIA, back into line.
The people with whom I was dealing let me know there was a group of people, some apparently within the CIA and others within the NSC who decided to right the wrongs they felt were being done in the name of democracy. Because I was dealing with several different people on the telephone who claimed to be Mr. Smith, I knew this operation was something more than one rogue agent. This was an organization, however loosely knit, that decided to take matters into its own hands and work outside normal channels.
I was chosen to do the dirty work and take the risks for two reasons: I had done what Fortier asked me to do without complaining; and I was expendable, a disposable patriot.
When I asked Mr. Smith one day what I should call this group, he thought for a moment and replied: "Call it Internal Command and Control, InComCon."
It was my belief that InComCon was not made up of super-patriots. It probably consisted of a group of people intent on preserving their jobs and pensions and shifting the focus of the Contra fiasco away from them and onto North and Casey.
But they provided me an outlet for my anger and desire for revenge. They wanted to use me as much as I wanted to use them. I was an opportunist looking for a means to get back at the government, and InComCon, or whatever its name was, provided that means.
I didn't care if they had a problem with the CIA. My only concern was that they were providing the means with which I could hit back at someone. My feud was personal, not political. No one ever understood that except me. I would use either the right or the left to achieve my goals.
In the end, both sides used me.
InComCon wanted me to go to Washington, where my information would have a better audience. I was lost in New Orleans, a voice shouting in the wilderness. But in order to have some credibility and the credentials that would ensure I was listened to in Washington, it was decided that I should first attract the attention of federal law enforcement agencies in New Orleans.
Throughout the fall of 1985, Mr. Smith and I worked out plans to attract the media and federal agents. I had to be believable, yet retain this sense of mystery and the icy persona of Colonel Flaco that would generate interest and fear among those with whom I was dealing.
Mr. Smith was of little help to me in learning to deal with the media. He was totally out of his league. He didn't know how they operated, didn't know what they wanted, didn't know how to use the information at our disposal. It was left to me to find a way to work with some of the Washington-based public policy groups that might have some interest in my information. That would provide me with a base of support and credibility.
Despite my break with CMA and FDN, I maintained some contacts with past associates.
Bruce Jones called me from his new home in Arizona and suggested I get in touch with John Hull about a job as a security guard on his ranch. I knew that was a one-way ticket to a shallow grave and passed on it.
Hull was having credibility problems with his CIA contacts at the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica because of prison interviews given by Glibbery and Carr the previous July that detailed Hull's involvement with gun-running and the NSC. Hull was on the defensive, but his CIA contacts were keeping him operational and free from Costa Rican investigators because his ranch was crucial to the new Contra resupply effort beginning in earnest at Ilopango military air base in EI Salvador.
I was also in touch with Tom Posey and Mario Calero and an assortment of joumalists. A lot of people were finding me because I wasn't really in hiding. The only people who couldn't find me was the FBI.
Cables had been sent from the Miami FBI office seeking information about Colonel Flaco for an investigation that was taking place there concerning Jesus Garcia, the prison guard who had befriended Tom Posey, on a charge of illegally possessing a machine gun.
I was living on Bourbon Street with a listed telephone number but still I was invisible to the FBI.
Not until I picked up the telephone in January 1986, called the FBI office in New Orleans and asked to talk to someone about Central America did the Bureau find me. They wouldn't come to me, so InComCon and I agreed to go to them with my information.
Charlie Calhoon, an agent with counter-intelligence, and his partner came to my apartment to talk to me shortly after that call. They were nervous and unsure of me or my motives. They gave me the impression they thought I was just another right-wing nut until I showed them information on the private aid network. When they returned to their office they learned a nationwide alert had been issued for me and soon came back to my apartment for more information.
Charlie began sending cables to FBI headquarters in Washington about our conversations. Copies of those cables and many documents I gave him were later forwarded to the CIA. The result was that while the FBI had its hooks into me, I now had a direct pipeline for getting information to InCom Con. The information went from me to the FBI in New Orleans to the FBI in Washington and then to the CIA, where Mr. Smith and InComCon had access to it.
Through this channel, InComCon was able to fine-tune our strategy, based upon what I already knew about the extra-governmental operations in Central America."
, and you'll see why Oliver North didn't like him! And you'll also get a sobering inside look at the seamy side of everyday life in the US intelligence community.
Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North urged State and Justice Department officials last year to seek leniency for a Honduran general convicted of plotting to assassinate the President of Honduras in 1984, according to National Security Council documents.
The plot, which was to have been financed by selling more than $10 million worth of cocaine in the United States, was foiled in Miami by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who acted on a tip.
The authorities said the conspirators, who were plotting in Miami, planned to have Roberto Suazo Cordova, who was then the Honduran President, killed, and they would then take over the Honduran Government during the civil unrest that would follow. Letters of Support
The documents have been reviewed by the commission examining National Security Council activities and have been referred to the special prosecutor investigating the Iran-contra affair. The documents include references to the case as well as letters in support of the Honduran general, Jose Bueso Rosa, that were sent to President Reagan and to Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d by Jose Azcona Hoya, who became President of Honduras in January 1986.
According to Government officials familiar with the material, the investigators are trying to determine the circumstances under which the letters from Mr. Azcona were written. They also want to learn whether the efforts on behalf of General Bueso were linked to the covert activities run by Colonel North while he was on the National Security Council staff.
After spending eight months under arrest in Chile while the United States tried to extradite him, General Bueso, who was never indicted on drug charges, voluntarily surrendered in Miami in late 1985 and pleaded guilty in June 1986 to two counts of traveling in furtherance of a conspiracy to plan an assassination.
He was sentenced on July 23, 1986, to five years in prison and is now serving that time in a minimum-security Federal prison at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. A Tip From Retired Officers
The case itself has all the elements of a spy thriller, including a John Wayne-style protagonist in the form of Col. Charles A. Beckwith, retired, who led the ill-fated mission to rescue United States hostages in Iran in 1980.
Colonel Beckwith, and another retired colleague from the Iran mission, Maj. Charles Odorizzi, said they were approached about the plotters and were appalled by their plans. They tipped off the F.B.I. about the the assassination plot, and Mr. Odorizzi acted as an undercover agent to help foil it.
Among those convicted in the failed assassination plot was Gerard Litchinian, a Honduran arms dealer and onetime business partner of Max Gomez. Mr. Gomez, a Cuban-American with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, handled logistics for Colonel North's secret operation to supply arms to the Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, out of Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador.
Mr. Litchinian, who was sentenced to 30 years on murder-for-hire and cocaine smuggling charges, has said that he believed he was taking part in a plot sanctioned by American authorities. Honduran Military Shake-Up
General Bueso was chief of the Honduran Army until a military shake-up in March 1984 in which he and Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, commander of the Honduran armed forces, were ousted from their posts. General Bueso was sent to Chile as an attache by the military council that engineeed General Alvarez's removal.
Both men were considered staunch allies of the United States and were particularly important in assisting the Reagan Administration's efforts to aid Nicraguan rebels, or contras, fighting the Sandinista Government.
Honduras has in the last six years been a base for the contras, but in the period after the Honduran military shake-up, the United States often found the new military council somewhat less inclined to take American advice, and relations between Washington and Tegucigalpa were strained.
To this day, defense attorneys for some of the plotters say they believe the United States engineered the assassination plot so that Washington could then call it off and in the process curry favor with President Suazo. American officials dismiss this theory.
On April 7, 1986, Mr. Azcona, the new Honduran President, wrote President Reagan to ask that the President personally examine the case against General Bueso and that United States charges against the general be dismissed or that Mr. Reagan grant the general an executive pardon, according to Joseph F. McSorley, an Assistant United States Attorney in Miami.
Another letter, dated June 5, 1986, was addressed to Mr. Meese and was hand delivered to the Justice Department on June 6 by the Honduran Ambassador, according to Justice Department records. 'Valuable Services'
The letters, which were not identical, testified to what they said was General Bueso's otherwise unblemished record and said that it would be a shame to deprive both Honduras and the United States of his ''valuable services'' if he were sent to prison. Mr. McSorley, who handled the investigation of the 1984 plot in Miami, said copies of the two letters were provided to him as a courtesy by General Bueso's lawyer.
There were actually two letters to President Reagan, according to a source familiar with the efforts to bring the case to Mr. Reagan's attention. The source said the first did not reach Mr. Reagan directly because it was blocked by aides who did not want to involve him in the case. The source said the second letter did reach the President ''through a channel that could not be ignored.''
Mr. McSorley said that he frequently traveled to Washington to discuss the case with officials at the Justice Department and that he was in close contact with the legal affairs department at the State Department. But he stressed that officials in Washington had not interfered in his conduct of the case. ''No pressure whatsoever was brought to bear on me,'' he said.
General Bueso's attorney, Robert Haggard, said there were no irregularities in the defense or prosecution of the case.
''My client has no connection to North or Poindexter, or any of these people,'' Mr. Haggard said. He was referring to Colonel North and to Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the who resigned as National Security Adviser in November after the revelations of arms sales to Iran and possible diversion of profits to the contras.
Mr. Haggard declined to discuss the letters written on behalf of General Bueso or how they were solicited, citing attorney-client privilege. More Information Sought
An investigator for the Tower commission, a three-member board headed by former Senator John G. Tower of Texas and appointed by President Reagan to review operations of the National Security Council, asked the United States Attorney's office in Miami last week for futher information on the Bueso case, according to Mr. McSorley.
Francis J. McNeil, who as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research was also closely involved in the investigation and subsequent prosecutions before his retirement last month, said, ''The Federal Bureau of Investigation, with help from the State Department, broke up this plot to assassinate a democratically elected president and got a cocaine bust in the process.'' 'Ill-Advised Effort'
''Justice and State turned off an ill-advised effort by some U.S. military officials to assert a United States Government interest in going light on General Bueso,'' Mr. McNeil said. ''Later, the National Security Council - I was told it was Colonel North - reopened the matter.''
''In the end,'' he said, ''common sense prevailed, but only after argument.''
An Administration official familiar with how the case was handled confirmed Mr. McNeil's account, saying Colonel North and Paul Gorman, former commander of American forces in Latin America, were particularly interested in winning leniency for General Bueso and that their requests were turned down after review by the Justice Department.
Colonel North's efforts last summer on behalf of the Bueso case raised eyebrows and tempers at both the Departments of State and Justice, where such efforts were deemed inappropriate interference in a criminal prosecution.
Two American military officers, Col. Nestor Pino-Maria and Lieut. Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer, eventually testified on General Bueso's behalf at the sentencing hearing last July, but said they were doing so as individuals rather than representatives of the United States Government.
General Schweitzer, who retired in September, said he testified because the general had been helpful to the United States in national security matters and could continue to be so if allowed to return to Honduras.
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