Behind the cover-up: Contragate's hidden history surprisingly, many of the same "players" are the ones

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Not long ago on the scale of human history, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed in the opening chapter of their "Communist Manifesto" titled "Bourgeois and Proletarians" that, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Today, a small group of people in the United States—a tiny minority called the capitalist or "bourgeois" class—seek to render this classic Marxist proposition obsolete. Through the carefully orchestrated congressional hearings on Contragate, they seek to camouflage their rule and cover up the fact that warmaking in the United States and in all capitalist nations is the prerogative of the ruling rich and their agents in government.

The capitalist class would prefer to hide from public view the fact that a long succession of presidents— Democrats and Republicans alike-have functioned as their chief representatives in the pursuit of profit through war, terror, and genocide.

At the opening of the Contragate hearings, there was but a single question to be posed by the congressional "guardians" of law and order. Did President Reagan know that the top government officials in his National Security Council (NSC) were funneling money to the Nicaraguan contras?

The answer to this question soon became obvious when virtually every "witness" brought to testify at the hearings provided information to implicate the president, who continued to deny his involvement.

The American public was far ahead of the Congressional "investigators." National polls taken before the opening of the hearings indicated that more than 65 percent of the public believed that President Reagan was lying. This figure increased with each passing week.

Reagan was compelled to shift to higher ground. Admitting his intimate knowledge of the contra-arms shipments, he asserted that the Boland amendment, the legislation supposedly prohibiting such shipments, was limited in its application to the "intelligence" gathering agencies of the United States— such as the CIA.

The National Security Council, Reagan argued, was merely his personal advisory board, not a formal agency of the government. It was exempt from the Congressional ban and was therefore not prevented from organizing a massive flow of arms, planes, explosives, and other weapons to the professional murderers Reagan likened to the "Founding Fathers" of the United States.

While congressional lawyers and constitutional experts puzzled over the legal aspects of Reagan's claim, a littleknown and unlikely candidate for the job of exposing at least a portion of the truth behind the coverup has begun to emerge.

Historic lawsuit

Daniel Sheehan, general council of the Christic Institute—a public-interest law firm and interfaith public-policy center in Washington, D.C.—has filed a lawsuit under the provisions of the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). The suit was filed in a Florida Federal District Court on Dec. 12, 1986.

In the suit, Sheehan and plaintiffs Tony Avirgan and Portions of this article are based on material taken from an affidavit filed by Daniel Sheehan of the Christic Institute in December 1986. In some instances, formulations have been taken directly from the affidavit.

Although the Christic Institute's allegations have not yet been certified in a U.S. court of law, the charges presented are consistent with numerous published findings on this subject as well as the conclusions of the World Court and the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal. Martha Honey, victims of one of the U.S.-instigated terror bombings, directly link the president of the United States to a chain of illegal terrorist acts against the people of Nicaragua.

But their suit does more. It demonstrates that the perpetrators of these crimes—including Reagan, the highest officials in the U.S. government, and their underlings-carry out vital aspects of the foreign policy U.S. advisers in Honduras: Antiwar sentiment of Amı wars against victorious revolution in Nicaragua and lil of the U.S. ruling class through a "Secret Team" which has functioned clandestinely over the past 27 years.

Sheehan's affidavit documents how this team-which is largely directed by the National Security Council, the real decision-making body of the U.S. ruling class—is responsible for a series of U.S.-sponsored acts of international terror. The lists begins with the 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and runs through acts of individual assassination and mass murder in Vietnam, Laos, Iran, and Libya.

The suit focuses its central attention on the direct responsibility of the U.S. president and the "Secret Team" for the illegal terrorist activity of the Nicaraguan contras. It specifies some 79 sources of information, including past and present top CIA officials, a host of government agency personnel, contra functionaries, Costa Rican government officials, elected representatives, members of the clergy, and others.

Sheehan's case has already withstood all efforts to dismiss it from court.

Ruling-class politics exposed

The suit has met the legal requirements to show "probable cause" to substantiate its allegations against 29 defendants. The list of defendants includes Contragate hearing witnesses Major Gen. Richard Secord; Major Gen. John Singlaub; businessman Albert Hakim; and Robert Owen, the man who functioned as Lt. Col. Oliver North's personal representative to the contras.

Other defendants include top CIA officials in four administrations, a number of professional assassins directly linked to the Mafia and organized crime, former terrorist supporters of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the central Colombian crime figures behind the This has been well documented by credible researchers in countless studies.

The uniqueness of this lawsuit, funded in part by church-based foundations, is its exposure of the functioning of the internal decision-making bodies of the U.S. ruling class—primarily the National Security Council.

The lawsuit demonstrates that the concerted and worldwide application of terror and violence against innocent people is not the product of conspiracies among demented individuals, but rather the carefully calculated an people forces U.S. to secretly finan "secret" tion struggles in Central America.

and historic practice of the ruling rich.

Although it is not its stated intention, the suit shows that a tiny minority in society, driven by the laws inherent in capitalist production, is compelled to employ the ultimate weapon of war against the peoples of the world.

A suit worthy of support Daniel Sheehan and the Christic Institute are not newcomers to the field of political law and social struggles.

The Christic Institute handled the successful litigation in the Karen Silkwood case; the Brownsville, Texas, sanctuary trials; and the defense of Mayor Eddie Carthan against murder/frameup charges in Mississippi.

After the failure of all government "efforts" to dismiss the suit, the Christic Institute secured murder indictments against the Ku Klux Klan and members of the Nazi Party and Greensboro Police Department in North Carolina. Over the past decades, Sheehan has been centrally involved in some 60 important legal battles in defense of civil liberties and democratic rights.

While the chances of this current lawsuit achieving its stated goal of removing from public office all those found guilty of violating the laws of the United States are infinitesimal, the Institute's Contragate lawsuit merits the support of all those who struggle for truth and justice.

It is an important part of the ongoing struggle to inform the working people of this country about the real workings of capitalist government. The knowledge gained will be put to good use in the future as a new generation learns that a truly democratic society can only (continued on page 8)

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1987 7

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= Contragate cover-up explosives for use against Cuba's major urban centers.

Between January 1961 and April 1961, the low-profile guerrilla-infiltration strategy of "Operation 40" was transmuted into a plan for a full-scale invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

The invasion of April 1961 used the personnel of "Operation 40" and thousands of Cuban counterrevolutionary mercenaries trained under Eisenhower and Kennedy. These contras were armed with U.S. naval, air, and army weapons. Within three days of their April 17, 1961, landing in Cuba, the contra army was routed by an aroused Cuban population that included an armed militia of 250,000 workers and students.

By June 1961 Robert Kennedy regrouped the tattered remains of "Operation 40" and reinitiated the old lowprofile guerrilla "raids" into Cuba. "Operation 40" was renamed "Operation Mongoose" and was continued by POL subordinates was about to be indicted for smuggling arms to Libya.

The assassination program was under the direct control of Shackley and Clines, who operated out of Laos. Between 1966 and 1975 the Special Operations Group in Laos, through the secret program funded by Van Pao's opium income, assassinated over 100,000 non-combatant village mayors, bookkeepers, clerks, and other civilian officials in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.

In 1968, Shackley was transferred to Saigon, where he became CIA station chief. At this time, Shackley's former associate in the "JM/Wave" operation in Miami, Santo Trafficante, flew to Saigon to meet Shackley's Laotian associate Van Pao.

They formed a partnership to import China White heroin into the United States. By 1969, Trafficante became the top U.S. heroin importer. Van Pao's financial contributions to the "unconventional warfare" project of Shackley and Clines increased correspondingly.

Overthrow of Allende in Chile In 1972, Shackley was transferred to the United States, where he became chief of the CIA's operations for BESIDES. THE NO. ET