Helms refuses to comment on the ARDE cocaine connection -- but the official paper trail tells much of the story.
The Senator's Silence
The Helms connection is but one aspect of the larger contra cocaine scandal. But it revolves around one of the clearest cases of contra participation in smuggling drugs to the United States. In a recent Washington Post report, Douglas Farah and Walter Pincus noted that the Morales/ARDE alliance "seems to remain the best-documented example of a contra group cooperating with a drug trafficker and receiving substantial aid in return."
Still, even though the case is detailed in an extensive official paper trail that makes frequent mention of Helms and his aides, the senator has until now eluded detailed media reports on his role. And he has not been forthcoming about his involvement with Pastora and ARDE. Helms' office did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story. Nor was there any response to a list of questions about Helms' support of ARDE, faxed to Helms' foreign policy spokesman, Marc Thiessen.
Amid the senator's silence, important questions remain unanswered:
Did Helms meet with Pastora during the guerrilla leader's fundraising visits to Capitol Hill?
Exactly when did Helms become aware of Pastora's drug ties?
How, if at all, did that knowledge affect the senator's crusade to procure U.S. money and weapons for ARDE?
One thing seems clear: If Helms and his staff were unaware of ARDE's ties to traffickers, they had to avert their eyes from extensive evidence. As a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Helms likely had access to intelligence reports implicating ARDE in the drug trade. And he certainly had access, as did all Americans, to the Associated Press report in December 1985. Yet Helms continued his overtures to Pastora for months afterward.
Robert Parry, one of the AP reporters who broke the story, said in a recent telephone interview that by late 1985, "we found that all the significant contra groups had involvement" with drug trafficking at some level. Parry, who still investigates the case for "The Consortium," his online news service, said his sources in several law-enforcement agencies and even the White House told him of ARDE's ties to cocaine smugglers.
Does Parry think Helms was also privy to this information? "Oh sure," says Parry. "Anyone who was following this closely knew about it."
In a deposition for the Kerry Committee, Pastora's air force director, Marcos Aguado, remarked that drug lords "took advantage of the anti-communist sentiment which existed in Central America... and they undoubtedly used it for drug trafficking." During the contra war, it appears, the anti-communist sentiment that existed in Washington led North Carolina's senior senator to similarly ignore the contras' involvement in shipping cocaine to the United States.
