Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War

By Celerino Castillo and III Castillo, Celerino

Book Overview

The truth about the remaining dark secret of the Iran-Contra scandal- the United States government's collaboration with drug smugglers. Powderburns is the story of Celerino Castillo III who spent 12... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889625786
• ISBN13: 9780889625785
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Mosaic Pr
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.2" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Very Interesting Account

A very plausible and chilling account about humanity and America's role south of the border. Yes there are some typos but the brutality and sentiment expressed in this book stay with me to day just as if I had read it yesterday. A great read, not too long, and intriguing to boot.

100% true

I live in El Salvador and know many of the people involved. Down here this is all highly common knowledge to the point that it is not even a conspiracy. I have personally spoken with many of the people who were on the side of the CIA and contras, and who benefitted from this, who sit and laugh about it over beers and talk about how gullible Americans are for believing that only foreign governments are corrupt. I also am friends with a CIA "consultant" during the war, an American ex-marine (this was before Blackwater made this sort of thing common) who was contracted to train the contras in the jungle. He was friends with Oliver North, and has photos of the two of them all over his house. He said that he personally escorted and helped pilot boatloads of crack and cocaine from Puerto Cabezas, Nicargua to Houston, TX and New Orleans, and the govt, coastguard, etc. was instructed to look the other way. This guy went to jail for Iran Contra for 2 years and was pardoned, and even though he fully admits to all of the activities and shenanigans, and took the fall for it, he thinks that Oliver North is a the greatest American we have. Yet even he concedes that Americans and the media are gullible idiots for everything that they got away with. Others have mentioned that there was no incentive becuase the US was funding the operation- this is BS- the whole reason for Iran Contra, as well as the drugs, ws because congress was cutting off funding and heavily restricting the funding that they did get. The guy who said otherwise on this board is either lying or has no idea what he is talking about. There are still a lot of spooks down in this part of the world, although its mellowed out since 9/11 since the govt. has other priorities...

www.truthring.org gives it '2 Owls Up!'

Excellent book. Not only is this book based on a life of a top DEA agent, but it's also written very well! It's not dry nor tedious, it's a pleasure to read! And the information contained here is a goldmine. This book is a 'must-read' for every single hard-working Patriotic American who is ready to Wake Up. review by www.truthring.org

The Bush Crime Family involved in drugs? Say it isn't so!

The foreward, written by Michael Levine, encourages the reader to cancel all appointments for the next several hours as the reader will not be able to put this book down. Levine wasn't kidding. This book is about the life of Cele Castillo. It begins with Cele's childhood under the rule of a military father. Cele ends up being drafted for the Vietnam war and his experiences in Vietnam are so amazingly vivid that it's impossible to put this book down. The drug use in Vietnam was so rampant that this is where Cele learns that narcotics were much more of a threat to America than Communism as he vows to fight the illegal drug industry if he ever makes it out of Vietnam in one piece. Cele survives the jungle, the snipers, and even his first helicopter crash. He's hired by the DEA and assigned to work in New York. He works hard, risking his life many times to bust drug dealers and ends up working in Central America. As if a second helicopter crash and being the guy responsible for upsetting powerful drug lords weren't risky enough, Cele stumbles upon the CIA and Oliver North's involvement in the illegal drug industry & illegal gun running during the Iran-Contra scandal, which also involved Bush Sr. & the Reagan administration. North & his crew were selling over-priced weapons to Iran as well as selling tons of cocaine to American cities as they used all of those profits to buy massive amount of weapons that they flew in to the Contras. As the cash and weapons were flown into the Contras, cocaine was brought back to America under the protection of the US military and CIA. The airplanes & airplane hangars were all CIA and NSA owned, and the pilots (Barry Seal & others) were contracted by the CIA. The corruption and involvement of our own CIA in the illegal drug industry wasn't enough to make Cele give up, he kept fighting to make a dent in the illegal drug industry. He was warned to stay away from the operations of Oliver North and the CIA but he pressed on anyway. That's when his career suffered as an internal investigation was launched against him. As if death threats and surviving a plane crash (his 3rd crash) weren't enough, trumped-up charges were used against him to end his career at the DEA. Cele risked his life countless times, got tons of cocaine off the streets of America & traded his marriage for dedication to his career. Senator John Kerry's investigation went nowhere, Bush Sr. pardoned North's crew as they only got a slap on the wrist (probation) while the DEA rewarded Cele by ending his career.

I recommend this book highly. A cogent, stunning expose.

Castillo, a former DEA field agent, stationed in Central America became an unwitting witness to the CIA's, Oliver North's, and the Reagan Administration's involvement in the smuggling of cocaine to fund the Contra army. Published years before the 1997 San Jose Mercury News/Gary Webb article, "Dark Alliance", about the CIA's role in bringing crack to the streets of America, Castillo provides a shocking but entirely credible story from the inside. Castillo, during the course of his field investigations into cocaine smuggling, inevitably ran into the CIA's cocaine network. A fly-drugs-up/fly-guns-down network operated by Oliver North, Richard Secord, and CIA front company Southern Air Transport out of the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador. He was repremanded time and time again by his DEA superiors for sticking his nose places it didn't belong. Warned off by claims he was endangering missions critical to our National Security. Yet, Castillo continued to file tell-all reports to the DEA in Washington. This is the story of the uncovering of these revelations, and one man's fight to expose the truth and bring these injustices to light. I highly recommend it.