his campu s apartment with a pet lio nname Pet unia, flew to Paris o n week ­ends , and dou ble -dated wit h h is twinO laf (also '66 W, '68 WG), who wasthen roman cing a coe d named CandiceBergen, )67 C vv, )92 Hon. orr campus,t he b ro th e rs h o b no b b ed w it h th ebrightest lights in Philadelphia ' s bu si­ness, spo rts, and entertainment wo rlds,including o ne of the city' s most co lorfulcharacters , Jerr y w olrnan , the d yna micyoung owner of the Philadelphia Eaglesfoo t ball team . The br o t hers no t o nlypartied with wolman, they became hispar tne rs in rea l estate deals and nigh t­clubs , including a popular campus discocalled Th e Classroom . " w hat I remem ­ber abou r Penn," says Thor H alvo rssennow, " is that I enjoyed every m inute ofmy life there."

He continued to enjoy every minu te ofhis life after he ret urned to Venezuela to

help run the fami ly businesses his late fa­ther had established . (O istein Halvorssen,a Norwegian war hero who starred as acar repossesso r in New Yo rk, eventually

No one suspected that he wo uld play aro le in the battle that produced the firstcracks in an elitist bank ing system longluxuria ting in its own greed and corrup­tion.

No o ne suspected that he would noton ly dare defY and expose the secret plansof the most pow erful cart els in interna­tional narcot ics trafficking but also be­come enmeshed in the coUusions and con­spiracies within the United States enforce­ment and intelligence agencies that oftennourish such trafficking.

No on e suspected that he wo uld de ­clare to the world that his country's politi­cal and economic system s arc steeped incorruption and are under the malevolentinfluence of what he calls the "Forces ofEvil."

No wonder he got his ass in a jam.

W ·n, that' s on e way to loo k at it.T he re's mo re than o ne o therway. wbar happen ed to T ho r

H alvc rssen can' t be explained simply orfrom a single perspective. It 's a scenario

shake n the Caracas financial district thatsummer. It was) said Jordan Petit , "finan­cial terro rism, " because H alvorssen andhis cohorts planted the bombs to destabi­lize the financial market so they couldmake a fort une on stock fluctuatio ns.

The press termed H alvorssen's allegedcoh or ts the "Yuppie Gang," because theywere all high -flying youn g execu tive types,

mostly stoc kbrokers. Th e key membe r ofthe ga ng was Rarniro H clmeyer, a 36 ­year-old owner of a security firm who hadmarried into a wealthy family. Halvorssenknew H elmeyer but hadn' t seen him inmo re than two )'cars. It was H elmeyer­and o nly H e lmeye r- who finge redH alvorssen as the "intellectual author" ofthe bo mb scheme.

Th at was it. T he police never searchedH atvorssen 's horne or office to look forother eviden ce linking him to the bombs."No other evide nce was ever present edagainst me)" H alvorsscn says- " no t evenfab ricate d evide nce." Ne ve rt hele ss,H alvorsscn was detained, and thu s beganhis skid into hell.

Halvorssen was charged with being the mastermincbecame president o f General Mo to rs Ac­ceptance Co rporation in Venezuela beforehe began his own distributing operations.He died while sons Th o r and Olaf werestill at Penn . H is o ldest son, Erik, was alsoa Penn g rad uat e , )63 W, ' 65 WG; t heyoungest, Stein, went to Columbia Uni­versity) Th e family businesses rolled alongwell with little atte nt ion, so yo ung ThorHalvo rsscn ro mped regularly at the eliteCaracas Country Club , flew his own plane(he had taken lessons between classes du r­ing his senior year at Penn ), and traveledextensively.

H e hop ped regularly to Miami, NewYork, Lo ndon, Paris- and to a farm his fa­ther had bo ught adjacent to King Olav'sco untry estate in Norway. "Was the re any­t h ing se r io us about m y li fe the n? "H alvorsscn now asks rhetorically: "Ab ­solutely not."

No o ne suspe cted that T horH alvo rsscu, t he easygo ing , per son able,fun-loving jetscttcr, wou ld one day be in­volved in anything serious.

No one suspected he would become aco ntroversial figure in the eco nomic tur­

bulence now ro cking Latin America 'sonce-wealthiest country.

No one suspected that he wou ld helpexpose the immorality and fiscal glutto nyof a president to whom he owed his ap­pointment.

th at radi ates from a g lobe o f mi rr o rs,where images change with laser-like veloc­ity and defining reality is like trying tocatch a spook floating through a cloud.And ther e are a lot ofspooks in this sto ry.

·H alvo rssen's arrest was a surpriseto him on ly as mu c h as aPhiladelphian running across the

Schuylkill Expressway at rush hour wouldbe surprised if he got hit by a car. UI had agu t feeling tha t somethi,'B was going tohappen ," he now sa}'S. But he didn't ex­peer that sinister forces against him cou ldmanipulate the Government and media soeffectively. The re was irony in that. Nord id he expect to get clobbered so hardand unmercifully.

Early on Friday morning , Octo ber 8 ,1993 , H alvorssen was "invited" by thePo licia T ec nica Judicial in Ca racas toco rne to P.T.J. headq uart ers to give "astatement ." He was told to sit in a cornerof the homicide office, that the chief ofthe P.T.J. would take his statement short ­ly. H e wa ite d. Finall y, a t 11 :00 t hatevening, in waddled the head of the P.T.].,Orlando Jordan Petit, a bald, portly fellowwith wide-set eyes and a squat nose . In­stead of taking a statement, Jordan Petittold H alvorsscn he was det aining him. Hecharged H alvorsseu with being the mas­termind of a series of bo mbings that had

T hat nigh t, he was taken downstairs toa small room leading to the cellblocks andplaced in a chair next to the latrine . Everytwo hours) men in white co veralls carr yingbuckets and rollers came in to paint thewall next to him. T he same wall. Everytwo hours. H alvo rsse n' s eyes be gan to

burn, his throat tightened , breathing be­came more d ifficult . Periodically, as he be ­gan to full asleep in his chair, he wo uld be:awakened and taken to PT.}. chief JordanPetit 's office for inte rroga tion. H e wouldthen be returned to his chair in time towatch the walls being painted again. Heendured the process at P.T.] . headquart ersfor five da ys. At one po int , an offi cialstatemen t was ty ped and pres ent ed tohim , but Halvo rsscn refused to admit anyassociatio n with the bombings.

On the second night of H alvo rsscn' sdetainment ) on e of the four guards whowere always in the room to watch him puthandcuffs on him. H a lvo rssen thought hewas again bein g taken for all interroga­tion . Then the guards walked out of theroom as a hefty, well-dressed young manwalked in. Halvorssen now says he didn 'tknow at the time who the mall was, buthe did identify him later. The yo ung manwalked over to him and , without saying awo rd, began punching him in th e headand neck. H alvorssen began bleedin g pro ­fusely from his nose, his mouth, his ears.

20 November 1994 T H E P ENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE

of a series of bombings in Caracas.

The young man then pummeled him inthe stomach and his chest, breaking threeribs. As H alvorssen crumb led to the floorbleeding , the young man stood ove r himand said, "This is just the beginning, be ­fore the cemetery. I want you to get thefeci of it."

Halvorssen remem bers the pain andwrithing about on the floor in his blood.:'\'0 one came to help him, none of theguards returned when the man lett. Aftera while, he was able to struggle back intohis chair and assemble some though ts. "Iknew I had to make myself as serene aspossible," he recalls: " I could nor lose it, Ico uld not shed a tea r. I had rcccn tl vlearned how to find the Spir irualiry withinmyself, and I relied on rhar. I star ted torncd irar c , and th arts wh at go t methrough. Rut I knew then and there thatit W3 S 311 over. T hey were out to kill me."

Halvorsscu had been conveniently de­tained at the beg inn ing o f a four-d ayCo lumbus Day holiday and, since most ofthe jud icial system was out of town, hisfamily and his lawyers cou ld do lin k to

help him. Pub liciz ing his plight wouldhave been futile. Th e newspapers and therad io and TV stations were in a feedingfrenzy, helping officials co nvict him in themedia . In at least nine statements to thepress over the weekend , PT.J. Co mmis­sioner Jordan Petit declared that "T ho rHalvorsscn is guilty."

The pu blic was ready to believe it. Itsnerves had been o n edg e fo r to o long.Th e first lette r bombs had arrived at theVenezuelan H igh Court in [uly, one blow­ing off a clerk's hand . T hen, in the weeksthat followed, oth er types of bom bs beganexploding all over town . On e went off in agaso line station, anothe r at an automatic­teller machine, another in a financial busi­ness office. People were terrified just to goto wo rk each day. So everyone brea thedeasier when Commissioner Jordan Peti tannounced he had captured the pcrpctra­ro r, a disgru nt led for mer po lice officer.Th e officer, in tu rn, said he was orderedto do it by fo rmer police com mission erHenr y Lopez Sisco , a rough cop who hadgained no toriety when he overpowered agroup of skyjackers. Lopez Sisco deniedany invo lveme nt in the bombings and ,other than t he cx-officers acc usa tion ,there was no evidence. But Lopez Siscowas arrested , and Jordan Petit graciouslyaccepted the kudos heaped upo n him to rmaking the city safe again.

Th en an­o t he r bombwent off in mid­August , the largestone yet. It explodedin the parking garageof a fashionable shop­ping center. No one waskilled but , fo r those wholived or worked in th e cit y,enough was enough. Soon, hu n­dr eds of Venezuela ns ro ok to thestreets, formed car convoys, tooted horns,and carried banners demanding the Gov­crnmcnt find and punish the bombers. Sowhen Jordan Petit annou nced that, withthe arrest of the Yuppie Gang and its pu­tative master mind Th or Halvo rssen , hehad all the culprits this time for sure, thegood citizens of Caracas were ready fo rthe dispensation of some harsh justice.

FiVC days after H alvorsscn 's detain ­ment, he and the 14 members oft he alleged " Yuppie Gan g" - in ­

eluding his accuser, Ramiro Hclmcvcr-c-

were transferred from P.T.J. headquarter sto the notor ious Catia prison . Such trans­fe rs are no rmally discreet , backdoor af­fair s, bu t th is was an un precedented ,showcase production involving 60 police­men , 20 highway patro lmen , and 10 vehi­cles. A huge crowd of reporters, photog­raphers , and TV camera crews pushed andjostled for position as the prisoners wereled, one by one, our of the P.T.J. buildin gand shoved into the van. The highligh t ofJordan Pet it ' s presentat ion , the well ­kno wn bu sinessma n H alvorssen , wassaved fo r last. H is ph oto gr aph- eyesglazed, face pufl)', his wrists cuffed tightly,his arm s gripped hard by bu rly polic e­men- app eared in every newspap er, onevery TV news show, on the cover of themajor magazines. (vl r was sl)(J. mefitl, whatt he y did to me ," he would late r say,searching for a way to suru up his ordeal­" that' s the word, shamefu/. "')

Betin de Cntie is a maximum securityjail packed with the most unsavory crimi­nal s . o r only are murders wit hin itswalls freq uen t, investigat ions of them arerare. Every minute of Halvorssen's life inCatia was a painful descent into increas­ingly hideo us versions of Hades. And , inhis own mind , there was no doub t hewas sent the re to be killed . H e becameconvinced whe n he learned that a gro upof inmates armed with daggers had en-

rercd the wing wh ere he was int ern edand, without apparent mot ivation, killedtwo prisone rs in Cel l #4 07 . H nlvorssenwas in Cell #4 .1 7 .

Eventually, because he wou ld not con­fe ss to th e crimes with which he wascharged, he was led down to a (ell in thedeepest , dankest dungeon of the prison, asection called El Fo:;o-"The Pit." There ,in the tirucline of H alvorsscn's life, thedistant images of a once-carefree Pennstuden t, the wealthy businessman, the im­portant Governm ent official merged intothe dark figure of a badly bartered man ,his bod y racked with pain and his crackedbo nes aching from beat in gs, cudd ledagainst a Stone wall wet with mo ld andblack fungus. In the darkness, roaches andrats scurried by, barely visible ill the sliver

THE PENN SYLVANIA G AZ ETT E November 1994 21

of light squ eezing from a slit near me topof one wall where the drain for feces andurine from the cells above splashed down.It was the unrelent ing stench that remind­ed H alvorsscn he wasn't having a night­mare, his heUwas real.

Thor Halvorssen was released on De­cember 21,1 99 3, after 74 days of deten­tion . His son, Th or, helped organize aninte rnational outcry for his release amo nglaw-enfo rcement , int elligence, political,hum an-rights, and foreign-media associ­ates of his father.

Halvorssen's accuser, Ramiro Hclm cy­er, had recanted , claiming he had beentortu red by police to name Halvorsscn asthe mastermind. {Helrneyer admitted hewas involved in the bo mbings, but the po­lice had a murder rap they also held overhis head. )

Accord ing to Halvorssen, another rca­son for his release was because his case hadfinally come before an honest jurist, Supe­rior Co urt Judge Hector Marcano Battis­tini, who not only gave him his immediateand uncondition al freedom but chastised

flowed in and out of the manu facturi ngcartels in neigh boring Colombia.

But neither that nor the economy norpolitics was of great interest to the ThorHal vorsscn fre sh ou t of the Wh artonSchool. He simply enjoyed hobnobbingw ith the rich and politically powerful andappreciated a bit of social recognition forhimself. He became involved in communi­t y service and , fo r six years, headedVenezuela's largest charity. He wo rkedhard at it, held meetings every morning at6:30, and began a successful program ofbuilding sports facilities for youths in meco untr y's poorest barrios. Halvorssen 'sbusiness and social statu s eventua lly Jedhim to meet Carlos Andres Perez, th enthe leader of Venezuela 's most powerfulpolitical party. When Perez was elected tohis first term as President in 1974 , he ap­pointed Halvorssen vice president and, lat­er, president of the state-owned telephonecompany.

That resulted in what was like lyHalvorssen's first contact with the worldof spooks. He was later given a military-

prison was the C.I.A.-backed former Con­tra leader and O llie North buddy, AdolfoCalero .

It was in that same interim period thatHalvorsscn began paying the price for hisyears of serious socializing and hard party­ing. The drink got to him. But he foughtthe battle of the bottle, found Salvation inthe Lord , and tu rn ed righteous with avengea nce: . When Ca rlos Andres Perezwas elected Presiden t again in 1989 , heappointed Halvorsscn his special cornmis­sioner for interna tion al narcotics affairs.Perez may have given him the job becausehe assumed Halvorssen was still a guzzlerwho wouldn' t cause problems. If so, it wasthe worst assumption Perez ever made.

By the time Halvorssen was appoint­ed the ant idr ug czar, Venezue lahad become a major player in the

big leagues of the dope business. No lawenforceme nt agency or political o fficialseemed to notice. Th ere were few, if any,major dru g busts in Venezuela duri ng theSeventies or Eighties. Yet, it was during

In his own mind, there was no doubt Halvorssenearlier judges for manipulating the judicialprocess.

None of it makes much sense, does it?Is it true? It is as tru e as a Gabriel GardaMarquez magical mystery novel, which isto say, yes, mostly. It is an outrageouslysim pli fied na rr ative but, even so, it ismeaningless out of context . In fact, it ismeanin gless out of a multitud e of con­texts. The fundamental question is simple:Wh o the hell is Thor H alvorsscn really,and why did they do such terrible thingsto him? Simple maybe, but those mirrorimages change quickly when you' re loo k­ing for answers.

T he Ven e zu ela to wh ic h ThorHalvorssen returned after he leftPenn was a far different place than

it is today. The country 's last dictator wasoverthro wn in 1958, and political reformcreated a stable social structure. Its boo m­ing oil business fueled the most prosper­ou s lifestyle in Latin America, increasinglyurbane and sophi sticated. Perh aps a bittoo sophisticated, because when the oilmarket took a dive, most Venezu ela nsturned a blind eye to what replaced it asth e force that drove thei r econo my andhelped maintain their level of high living:th e illegal narcot ics business. Venezuelabe came the main pipelin e for both th edru gs and the vast amounts of money that

intelligence identification card but, he ad­mits, "even before that, I was helping, be­cause being president of the phon e com ­pany, which is a very sensitive area, you' rein contact with both military intelligenceand D .S.J. P." (D .S.I.P. is Venezuela' smo st powerful secret polic e and intclli ­gence force. At the risk of mingling mirrorima ges here, this is relevant : Many ofD.S.I.P.'s top officers and at least two ofits chiefs during the Seventies and earlyEighties were on me payroll of the UnitedSta tes Ce nt ral Inte ll igen ce Age nc y. )Som ewhere along the way, H alvorssenseems to have been bitten by the JamesBond bug.

Halvorssen's stint as head of the tele­phone company ended when Carlos An­d re s Pere z fin ished hi s fi rst ter m asVen ezue la's President in 19 79 . Perezwould beelected again in 1989. In the in­tervening decade, Halvorsscn did a lot oftraveling, because, he now claims, he hasalways been "curious" and interested inhistory. He spent a lot of time in the Mid­dle East when events in places like Iran ,Iraq, and Saudi Arabia were making head­lines. He then became involved in " hu­man-rights activities" in icaragua and EISalvador when the Contra movement andgue rrilla battl es were hot there. Amon gtho se who sent letters on his behalf to theVenezuelan Government when he was in

this time th at the Sicilian Mafia, whichcontro ls most o f the in ternational nar­co tics traffic, set up a heroin-cocaine al­liance with the Colombian carrels that , ona glo bal scale, would merchandise $200billion a year. By 1982, four -fifths of thecocaine shipped to the United States andEurope was moving through Venezuela,with just the Venezuelan branch of the Si­cilian Mafia alone recycling an estimated$2 billion in narco-dollars through a mul­titude of financial fronts and cooperatingbanks. Venezuela was a safe haven for theSicilians' most powerful drug family, thebrothers Cuntrera-c-Pasquale, Paolo , andGaspare. Yet, in 1984 , Camilo Cussati, theD .S.I.P. commissioner to ld Venezuelanjournalist Rudolfo Schmid t, "The Mafia assuch do es not exist in Venezuela; a fewMafiosi JUSt come here for rest and recre­ation." T he commission er appa rentlyd idn 't no ti ce when Pao lo C un t re rasdaughter got married in Caracas to NinoMongiovi, then on e of Miami's biggestnarcotics dealers, and he likely missed thenational television coverage of it, billed asone of Venez uelan society' s most lavishextravaganzas ever.

Thor Halvorssen decided that his newjob required him to rip the blinders offVene zue la, whet he r o r not th e rulingpowers wa nted him to . Utili zin g hisworldwide contacts and intelligence con-

22 November 1994 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE

was sent to prison to be killed.

ncctions , he was soo n deluging PresidentPerez with investigative reports detailingthe depth and extent of Venezuela's role indrug traffickin g and mon ey-launderin g.H alvorsscn event ually noticed , however,that he wasn ' t getting a respon se fromPerez and that his reports were ending upin the President's bottom drawer. Frustrat­ed by the lack of action, Halvorssen teamedup with an ally, Venezuelan Senato r Cristo ­bal Fernandez Dalo, and had himself ap­pointed special overseas investiga tor for theSenate's Anti-Money-Laundering Commis­sion.

Soon, the bad guys began to feel hissting. It was in that position , for instance,that H alvorsscn was able to push throughan investigation of the Cuntreras and forcethe Govern ment to hon or a four-year-oldextradition request from Italy. The remain­ing Mafia in Venezuela do not rememberHalvorssen fondly for that .

Then , H alvo rssen hit a big vein in themother lode . 'Working with Manhatt anDistrict At torney Ro ber t Mor gcnrhau ,whose New York City jur isdiction includes

the world 's largest money-d earing bankingcenter, Halvo rssen discovered more than$19 million that Presiden t Perez and hismistre ss, Ce cilia Matos, had sq uirreledaway in secret accounts. Rumors of Perez'schicanery had been floating aro und fo ryears, but exposing it forced the politiciansand the media to react to an enraged pub-­lic. That led to Perez being ousted as Presi­dent in May of 199 3; a year later, he wasarrested.

Could an avenging Perez have been re­sponsib le for what late r happened toH alvorssen? Certainly H alvorssen himselfconsiders Perez amo ng the Forces of Evilwho conspired against him. Those forces,one assumes, might have had to convene atsome tim e to plan th e co nspiracy. Theproblem is, if one believes H alvorsscn, thatmeeting would have required a rather largefucility-like, say, Franklin Field.

Is Halvorssen implying that the Forcesof Evil had infiltrated almost every segmentof Venezuela's economic and political life?"T here' s no question about it," he says. H epoints out that the focus of his investiga­tions wasn' t simply President Perez but thehuge amount of narcotics money-launder­ing done by the country's largest and mostprestigious banks. " Everyone just got sogreedy," he says: "T hey didn't care howevil the mon ey was, the y just wanted to

keep the good life it gave them."

It is di ffi­cu lt to measur ethe linkage, but notlo ng after H alv o r­ssen ' s inves tig atio nswe re heating up,Venezuela began a tu­mu lt uo us po lit ica l andeco no m ic di ve . Therewere two attempted militarycoups, then the summer of bomb­ings in Caracas, and, finally, the disinte­gration of irs banking and financial sys­tems. It became a country, as The M01JthLyReport in Caracas put it, "scuttled by po­litical crisis, economic turmoil, and ram­paging corruption. "

Two days after his release from prison,Ha lvorssen flew to Miami with his wifeNelly and settled in their luxury condo atthe Jockey Club, where Halvorssen restedbriefly. Very briefly. Then , he wrot e a col­umn that appeared on the Op-Ed page ofThe Watt Street j oun zaLon March 4. Twod ays befo re that , a Ven ezuel an ju dgecharged 83 of the co untry's tOP bankers

with fraud and other crimes that had ledto the collapse in January of Banco Lati­no , the country's second largest bank.Those charged included its chai rman,Gustavo Gomez Lopez, who had resignedthe month before the bank's collapse.

H alvorssen indicated in the WattStreet [ owmal col umn th at hisinvestigations were instrumental

in focusing atte ntion on the suspicious op­erations of Banco Latino. (Pro bably nobank in the world had more members ofits board with individual private jets; thechairman alone had three .) He also wrotet ha t, in Septem ber of 1993, ab o ut amonth before his arrest, he received evi­dence from an informant that Banco Lati­no was money-laun de ring and playinggames with narco-dollars. "Shortly after Irece ive d tha t evi de nc e," H alvo rssenwrote, "an attempt was made on my life."(He was pursued by alleged assassins and ,forced to flee his car while escaping, hadto leave his briefcase behind. He claimsdocuments in the briefcase provided hisenemies with knowledge of his investiga­tions and fostered the conspiracy againsthim.)

After that incident, H alvorsscn imme­diately left for New York to confer withD .A. M orgen thau . Whi le th er e, he re­ceived a call from a Banco Latino repre-

scntativc asking him to re­turn to Venezuela for a meet ­in g wi th Chai rman GomezLopez. "A Treasury age nt inN ew York warned me that itmigh t be a trap , " H alvorssenwro t e. Di smissin g t he wa rn ing ,H alvorssen returned for the meeting,set for that Friday morning, Octo ber 8,19 9 3 . T he n , t he nig ht before ,H alvorssen received a call fro m GomezLop ez's secre tary canceling the meeting .The next morning, Thor Haivorsscn wasarrested .

It was obvious tha t H alvorssen usedthe Watt Street [ ournal column to fingersuspects he linked to the conspiracy to dohim in. It was also o bvious that his primecand idate was a Cuban -bo rn billionairenamed Orlando Castro Llanes. In fact, henow declared in the column, it was Cas­tro ' s son, Orl ando Cas tro Castro, whohad beat t he he ll o u t o f h im at P.T.].headquarters .

Here, again, is where the mirro r im­ages converge and the details becomeconvoluted , but it is within those imagesand convolutions that the elements of thetruth are hidden. So are some fascinatingrevelations.

Orlando Castro Llanes, a sho rt, bald,d istingu ished- looking gentleman, dapperin thin, go ld -rimm ed glasses and neat

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE November 1994 2 3

Clark Gable moustache, is a Cuban exile with copies of checks he claimed were "vi- ent repreneur was not t he subjec t of awho started his career in Venezue la as an tal evidence" linking H alvorssen to th e D .E.A. money-laundering investigation.insurance salesman and wound up one of bom bs. Amo ng the checks was one for Shedd later told reporters that the infer-the country 's wealthiest men, contro lling 54,000 payable to Henry Lopez Sisco, the mar io n tha t H alvorssen pr ovided th ea conglomerate of insuran ce companies, former police commissione r wh o had D .E.A. proved to be "unreliable, manipu-banks, and a few do zen radio stations. In been arrested in connection with the ini- lative, and planted. "1990, Castro Llanes bought a large bloc tial series of letter bombs. (Photos of the Strong stuff. And why in th e wo rldo f shares in Ban co d e Venezuela and copied checks had appeared the day be- wou ld the D.E.A. say such nasty thingsmoved to ge t on it s board . Banc o de fore in the newspaper El Nacionnl, with abou t a man who had devoted himself to

Venez uela, then the country's thi rd largest figures on the Lopez Sisco check changed fighting the dru g wars and put his life onprivate bank, with deposits 0[S1.6 billion, to S40 ,000 but written as "Fcurty thou- the line do ing it? How could it crucify awas a bastion of Caracas's old-money elite. sand ." Castro de nied he provided the gu y wh o had garne red th e support o fWhen Castro showed up at a stockholders copies to the newspaper or had anything such luminaries as New York District At-meeting determined to push for a scat on to do with the alteration.} rorney Robert Morgenthau, United Statesthe board, the bank's chairman suspended While Halvorsscn was still in prison, his Senate Judi ciary Commi tt ee membe rthe meeting and muffled Castro's protest lawyers filed suit in Miami against Castro Strom Thurmond, Nicaragua n Card inalby shutting off his microphone. Thus be- and Int r iagc , accusing the m of invading Miguel Ohando Bravo, and othe r inrcm a-g:m a lon g and bitte r battle that would his bank records and using those records tional figures, all of whom had written let-eventuall y entangle Thor Halvorssen . to falsely implicate H alvorssen in the rers on Halvorsscn's behalf when he was

H alvorsseu says th at Ban co d e bombings. Castro, in rum , would later sue in prison: Why should tile D.E.A. want toVenezuela hired him to investigate the ru- Halvorsscn, charging him with conspiring clobber Thor Halvorsscn!mors of Castro's links to money-launder- with, among others, the president of Ban- The answer lurks in a larger context. Iting and narcotics. The rumo rs, claims co de Ven ezu ela, Carlos Bcrnardez, to encom passes a period whe n significantHalvcrsscn, originated with the surfacing damage his business reputation and "o r- political and economic forces were start-of a letter from Colombian dru g kingpin chestratc . a smear campaign" against ing to buffet the Western Hemisphere. It

Aft;;']4"'d~;~«of'd~~;~ti~~:'H~~~~;~;~;;;';ele~names Castro and adds: " His proposals in­terest me .. . insurance firms arc a suitablemechanism." The issue of the letter's au­thenticity still rages.

Althou gh Castro pushed a reponedS 100 million in to Banco de Venezuelastock in an attempt at a hostile takeover,he was never able to get a scat on th eboard . He blamed Halvorssen for orches­trating a C. I.A.-like disinformation cam­paign against him and blocking his bid forthe board. He decided to counterattack incourt in the United States, because that'swhere his investigators said they smelled amoney trail. Leading Castro 's team washis Miami lawyer, Char les In tr iago , atough bantam of a trial attorney who wasonce a United States Federal prosecuto rand Co ngressional counsel. Intriago is al­so the publisher of a thriving publicationcalled Mouey Lmmderiug A lert, which, headmits, was started with seed money fromCastro . The publication , aimed at keepinglegitimate banks and other financial firmsout of tro uble, gives Intriago access to andcontac ts in law-enfo rcement agencies allove r the world , especially the UnitedStates Drug Enforcement Administration.

As a resu lt of information Int riagohelped develop, two days after Halvorsscnwas arrested by the P.T.J. in Caracas, Cas­tro and a retinue of aides, including hisso n, showed up at police headquarters

t he Banco de Venez uela wiredHalvorsscn's bank accounts in Miami andCanada more than S 1.7 million , part ofwhich was to pay cohorts to participate inthe master plan to destroy Castro 's repu­tation. That plan, charged Castro , includ­ed planting false information , such as theEscobar le tt er, with law-enfo rce mentagencies in the United States. As he de­tailed in the suit, Castro atto rney lnrriagoclaims the reason the Banco de Venezueladirectors didn ' t want Castro on the boardwas becau se they were afraid he woulddiscover their scheme of setting up an off­shore tru st to give them control of thebank 's assets outside of th e Venezuel anGovernment's regulations.

III response, H aivorssen doesn't denyrece ivin g mo ne y from Banc o deVenezuela but insists it was strictly for

an investigation of Castro and, relevant to

that, to continue his narcotics-traffickingand mon ey-la un de ring probes. Th e$4,000 check to Lopez Sisco, he says, wassimply a small loan to an old friend whilehe was recuperating in Miami from a dis­abili ty.

In Halvorssen 's initial suit against Cas­tro , Jim Shedd, a spokesman for the Mi­ami office of the Drug Enforcement Ad­ministration, showed up to testify on Cas­tro's behalf, proclaiming that the wealthy

Ronald Reagan , continued by PresidentGeorge Bush, but actually formulatedand directed by William Casey, former di­rector of the Central Intelligence Agency.Ca sey de veloped a two-p ronged pro ­gram-one oven, one covert , ea.ch in­vo lving some illegal aspe ct s- t ha t hetermed Pro Democracy. It was an aggres­sive policy aimed at crushing leftist gov­ern me nts and gueri lla mo ve ments inLatin America. It involved huge resourcesof mone y, weapons , and personnel , in­cluding many C. I.A. agent s. Venezuela 'sint ell igence ser vice , for instance , wasdeeply infiltrated by (anti-Castro) CubanC .I.A. agent s and served as a base forsupporti ng the Co ntras in Nicaragua. Infact, the C .LA. had its fingers deep intoVenezuela's political structure, and manyleading politi cians were o n the agency'spayroll. (Halvorssen himself denies he wasever a contract agent for the c.I.A., buthe admits he has "cooperated " with theagency and associated closely with Duane" Dewey" Clarridg e, the form er head ofthe CLA. 's Latin American division whowas indicted for perjury in the Iran-Co n­tra scandal.)

Perhaps not so coincidentally, withinthis period of aggressive United Statespolicy, there also came the tremendousgrowth of the illegal narcotics business,and man y of the highly-trained C.I.A.

2 4 November 1994 T HE PENN SYLVAN IA GAZETTE

sed when his accuser recanted.

covert opera tives began purring their tal­cnrs imo th at side line . T hat' s how, asCong ressio nal inve stigative reports laterrevealed , drugs became a major ingredientin the illegal Contra arms network. Whatcom plicat ed th e pict ur e was t his: Al­tho ugh the Dr ug Enforcement Adminis­tration had long been the priority agencycharged with com batting the illegal ncr­co nes trade, in 1978 Presiden t Reagansigned J. directi ve enabling the c.1.A. to

also become invo lved in the war againstd rugs. Th at rankled the D.E.A. and setrhc foundation tor a major tu rf war.

It was-and still is- a vcry dirty, well­hidde n war, but a flash from it was ex­posed last November by Lowell Bergman ,an investigative prod ucer lor CBS-lV's 60Mi nutes. Bergm an discovered that morethan a ton of pure cocaine had been takenfro m the C .I .A.-financed Coun rernar­corks Intelligence Ce nter in Caracas and ,wirho ur the consent of the D.E.A.-butwith the consent of the c. J.A.-smugg lcdinto the United States, unmon itorcd anduncontrolled . Four o ur of the five ship-

mcnrs got through and were sold on thestreets . Th e last one, the final 800 pou nds,was inrercepred by Custom s agents in Mi.ami. Before Bergman's piece could air, tileC. I.A. tried to soften irs impact .

T he heat qu ickly came down on Gen ­eral Ramon Guillen Davilla, head of theVenezuelan 1 ational Guard unit workingclosely with the G l.A. antinarco tics ope r­at io ns in Vc nc z uc la . An ano nymou sso urce to ld a WarlJillgtoll Post repo rterthat Gu illen "confessed" when confrontedby D.E.A. age nts. " He admitte d to ourinvestigators that he had run loads behindo ur back," the source said; " he justified itas alaw-enfo rcement techn ique."

Guillen hardl y " co nfessed ." WhatGui llen said- and to ld 60 Mintttc~was

that he d id perm it the shipment to gothro ugh because the C. I.A. told him to.

( It likely wasn 't the first time . Both theD.E.A. and the C.l.A. usc the techniqueto monito r the distribution of the drugsa nd identify t he carr els' netwo rks ofwholesalers and dealers. What isn 't knownis what happen s to the profits, or whethe ro r no r they are siphoned back to fun do t he r off-t he -boo k o pe rati o ns .) TheC. I.A. denied it had officially approvedthe shipment, but a joint D.E.A.-C .I.A.investigative team gave General Guillenimmunity for his testimony. That permit­ted the c.1.A. to b y the blame lor "bad

j u dg m e n tand poor man­agcmcnt" on twosupe rvisory agentsin Car acas , onc ofwhom was permittedto resign and the otherto re t ire. T he D .E .A.was also anxio us tor Guil­len to take the hit so it couldshift irs own improprieties down to

a lower level, specifically to its station 'chief in Cara cas, veteran agent Anab ellGrimm.

T hor H alvorsscu carne into the pic­ture when Grimm, anxious to pro­tect her own reputation , asked him

pr ivately to int erview Gui llen to deter­mine his t ru th fulness. [ H alvo rsscn saysGrimm was o ne of the few D.E.A. agentshe t ru sted or dealt with ; he refused tohave anything to do with the D.E.A.'s Mi­ami office. ) Grimm had also put rrcrucn­dous hear o n herself by making publicstate ments rebutting the C. I.A.'s med ia

campaig n to shift the blame onto the gen ­eral. "General Gu illen and his officers,"she to ld 60 Minu tes) M ike w allace ," d idn' t go to th e bath ro om witho uttelling the C. I.A.."

Halvorssen says he spent more than 20hours with Gui llen: " I came away, afteranalyzing what he told me and putting ittogethe r with the intelligence I had, con­vinced he was innocent . And 1 declaredthat publicly."

It was that public declaration , not ap­prec iated by eit he r th e C. LA. o r th eD.E.A., that shot Halvorsscn into the no ­man's-la nd of agency inform ants and outinto the cold . Th e mirror images flash andHalvorssen squints throu gh the m and seeshis own reality. "But there arc conspiraciesgoi ng on," he says, " no question about it.Everyb()dy is involved."

"Ta ke a loo k at the big pictu re," saysthe fo rmer head of an int elligence unitwho has worked with both the D.E.A. andthe Cj.A: "what happened to Halvorsscnwas the result of a collision of some mightyforces. He tho ught he was enough of afancy da ncer to play g-Jmcs with the bigboys and get awa y wit h it . Nobody iswearing white hats in this one . J wo uld betthe D.E.A. put some pressure on OrlandoCastro to get himself an inside track intoBanco de Venezuela. For some reason-s­most likely it had used the bank in the past.

or was still using it tor somecovert fun ny busin ess-c-rhcC. I. A. didn ' t wa nt th at rohappen. So both agencies weretr yin g ro sq ueeze eac h otherOut , bur H alvorssen was in themiddle and got his testicles caughtin thc wringer."

when Halvorsscn is asked aboutthe scenario in terms of his o rdeal andwha t had hap pen ed (0 him, he srares "silently for a momen t. T hen he slowlynod s his head. "Smart ," he says softly."whoe ver yo u 've been talking wit h isvery smarr ." He do esn 't elaborate.

There are just so man y questions thatare lost in the complexities, the answersperhaps inextricably tangled in the realitybehind the multiple mirror images. Fun ­damcntaily, tor instance, one still wondershow a non chalant yo ung man who rel­ished so dearly the com forts and joys ofaffluence co uld ever have purs ued a mis­sion that led to his life balancing on therazor's edge . One wonders how that care­free, fun-loving Penn stud ent cou ld haveever become so seriously invo lved in inter ­national intrigue an d enmeshed in th edirty intricacies of antinarcotics affairs, theconspiracies of covert operations, and thetu rf wars of intelligence agencies.

And , thcn too , one wonde rs whateverbecame of Petunia. END

THE l' EN NSYLVAN IA GAZETTE November 1994 2 5