Last week I promised to bring readers up to date on recent developments in this story. Some of these developments have been quite unexpected. For example, I was contacted on February 23 by Ron Gold, ex-Special Agent for Army Counterintelligence. Mr. Gold did independent interviews with some of my sources to confirm the major thrust of my first article. Portions of his interviews, along with related documents, are now posted on the internet at Web Interview News [1]. Another unexpected development was my introduction to a former Coast Guard Intelligence Officer who has firsthand information about major drug-smuggling operations into the state of Montana. Portions of my taped interview with this person appear below. This week we begin with a follow-up interview with Melissa Buckles, Lay Legal Advocate for the Assiniboine-Sioux tribe on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. The interview took place on February 27, 1998.

QUESTION: What are the recent developments regarding your attempts to halt the drug running at Fort Peck Reservation?

BUCKLES: The Tribal council had a meeting on Monday, February 23. They agreed they would investigate tribal officer Terry Boyd, whom we suspect of dealing drugs. I had provided them with a lot of documentation at their committee meeting on the previous Tuesday. They pushed that aside. They ordered the investigation on the basis of a complaint submitted by another tribal member, citing five years of harassment by Terry Boyd. One of the Council members recommended that they suspend him with pay pending an investigation, but that did not pass. We're afraid now, since he's not suspended, and he has full access to his investigative file, things might disappear out of those files.

QUESTION: And what do those files contain?

BUCKLES: They would have anything that had to do with the cases he's handled here on the reservation.

QUESTION: Did you think Boyd's activities were somehow connected to former FBI agents stationed in Glascow?

BUCKLES: Yes. In 1993 Raymond Dupree was a client of mine. He was arrested and convicted by a jury. He didn't understand his rights. Boyd was the criminal investigator in that case. Dupree, when he contacted me, was very angry. He said, "How can someone like Terry Boyd investigate me, when I have been framed on these charges? I'm sitting here in jail and he's walking around dealing drugs." I said, "Can we prove it?' He said, "I can. I know three other people right now who deal for him." I said, "Put it in writing." Before I could get back up there to him, he was released from jail. He had been sentenced to a year apiece on three different charges! I was told that the local prosecutor had come over to the jail with an order to release him, so he went free. He stayed clear of me. Last year he was arrested again for possessing eagle feathers for sale, and then released on bail. So I tried again to get an affidavit from him regarding Boyd. I started telling people I wanted to talk to him. Within a week, he was given a urine test, which he failed, and transported to federal holding in Billings.

QUESTION: Do you think they did that to keep you from getting to him?

BUCKLES: Oh yes. There was another man in the Roosevelt County jail. A local attorney and I talked to him on a Saturday by phone. He wanted to release documents to us. I typed up a release of information and ran down to the jail. The officer took it in to him and he signed it. By Monday- -and there was no indication of this before we talked to him- -he had been moved to federal holding in Billings. His family was shocked and angry.

QUESTION: What information could he have given you?

BUCKLES: I think information on Boyd and former FBI agent Jim Wixon out of Glascow, because those were the two who were involved in his case. They spirited this guy away within 48 hours of our talking to him.

QUESTION: So every time you locate someone who can produce information that tribal officers or FBI agents are involved with drugs, somehow they end up in federal custody?

BUCKLES: Yes. It's getting really frustrating. You get these people nailed down, and they know something, and they're willing to talk to you, and then they're gone.

QUESTION: What was his name?

BUCKLES: Vernon Chopper.

QUESTION: Has the tribal council considered getting the Bureau of Indian Affairs involved in this investigation of Boyd?

BUCKLES: The chairman of the Law and Order committee of the Council, Bob Welch, wanted the BIA Internal Affairs Division out of Albuquerque to do an investigation. A couple of the women on that committee fought vehemently against that. They didn't want the Internal Affairs Division out of Albuquerque involved, because they have covered up things in past investigations. The women did not want the Glascow FBI office involved for obvious reasons, and we don't want BIA out of Billings involved. We want the Eastern Office of the Interior Department, Bureau of Indian Affairs to conduct the investigation. We want it to come from Washington D.C. We have to make sure they don't pick agents that have any involvement out here. This is the first time the Tribal Council has voted for such an investigation. I'm hoping for the best.

QUESTION: Have other reservations in Montana experienced the same kind of problems with drug smuggling and murders that Fort Belknap and Fort Peck have?

BUCKLES: Northern Cheyenne has.

QUESTION: Where are they located?

BUCKLES: They are south of us down in Lame Deer, Montana.

QUESTION: What has happened there?

BUCKLES: On February 18, I did a phone-in interview with a program called "A Public Affair" on WORT radio in Madison, Wisconsin. They had a young lady from the University of Wisconsin on with me, Lauren McColley [2]. She is from the Northern Cheyenne reservation. She came into the studio that day and participated in the interview. She told of clandestine landings on her reservation. She said she lived in a very remote area of the reservation, and they would hear helicopters coming in late at night and landing. Then they would hear trucks coming down the dirt road. The helicopters would then take off, and the trucks would come out. They speculated that those were drug drops.

QUESTION: What else could it be?

BUCKLES: Nothing.

QUESTION: Have there been deaths on that reservation?

BUCKLES: Oh yes, a number of unsolved murders. She said there were about as many as here. She said that within the last week she got word from home that there had been a recent murder. A person who was known to be an FBI informant was found murdered along the highway. She said nothing was being done about that. Nobody knows how that person was killed, and there was no investigation.

QUESTION: Are you in touch with people on the other reservations in Montana?

BUCKLES: Willy Bradley has been in touch with people on the Rocky Boy Reservation, that's the Chippewa-Cree [3].

QUESTION: He mentioned that to me last week. He said they had had similar incidents.

BUCKLES: Yes. They have also had clandestine flights into their reservation and unsolved murders.

QUESTION: So this is rampant in reservations across the state?

BUCKLES: Yes. I'm sure that if we were completely networked with the other reservations we would find that the same thing is happening on all of them. Lauren McColley told the radio host, Esty Dinur, that the police were corrupt on her reservation, and the FBI doesn't do anything. They rubber-stamp whatever the tribal police or BIA police say.

QUESTION: Have you had any response to the open letter to Louis Freeh? [4]

BUCKLES: We have had no response.

QUESTION: Ron Gold has sent Janet Reno an email describing the situation. Have you heard anything back from that? [5]

BUCKLES: Nothing.

David Hume was an intelligence officer with the U.S. Coast Guard from 1978-1991. He was stationed at different times in Miami, Puerto Rico, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Columbia, and Venezuela. Prior to serving in the Coast Guard he was a police officer and an assistant to the Attorney General in Delaware. The following is an excerpt from an interview conducted on February 27.

QUESTION: As you know, I am focusing on how drugs are getting to Canada from South and Central America. Can you help me out with that?

HUME: The narco-traffickers have an organization that is both vertical and horizontal in structure, and beats the hell out of most of our intelligence organizations.

QUESTION: Does it have ties to our people?

HUME: I think it has had ties to our people, and I'll say flatly that there have been people looking the other way. Let me describe how these things happen. Traffickers have known for years that most drug interdiction efforts focus on northbound traffic. If you have someone coming north through the Caribbean, you say this is someone coming to distribute drugs. Because of the limited enforcement capacity, people decided to not pay attention to southbound traffic. The drug runners are brilliant, and they decided to do an end-around and back-flush the drugs. That meant, for example, they would go out as far east as Bermuda sometimes and then go up to Nova Scotia, the maritime provinces--Prince Edward Island. Then they would come south and be able to off-load their drugs.

QUESTION: So they would fly out farther into the Atlantic, then go north.

HUME: Yes, using both air and maritime routes. But the maritime routes began to dwindle and the air routes went crazy.

QUESTION: So most drugs going into Canada are now taken by plane?

HUME: Yes, the majority, because there are so many dead areas for radar. That's one thing. The second thing is up in--for example, let's pick a state. Let's say Montana. Just as a hypothetical.

QUESTION: Good.

HUME: You have a hell of a lot of places where there are going to be tough reads on the radar. Many of the radar sets being used need to have an IFF tag.

QUESTION: What's that?

HUME: Identification friend or foe. It's called a squawk box. It's a radio transponder set on certain frequencies. On many of the law enforcement radar sets, unless you are squawking, you don't show up, especially if you're not painted well. The circle you see on air traffic control radar, that little circle, that's a squawk.

QUESTION: So law enforcement radars would not pick these planes up?

HUME: Hell no.

QUESTION: Do you know anything about an organization that is responsible for moving drugs into Montana from Weyburn, Saskatchewan?

HUME: There are a couple. One is run by a French-Canadian Mafioso. I can't remember his name. This is not public record, but it's known. He's on the maritime side of things.

QUESTION: That means shipping?

HUME: Yes. He got shut down pretty hard. He took some heavy losses.

QUESTION: What's the other organization?

HUME: There is another group that operates out of Montana.

QUESTION: Which city is it based in?

HUME: It varies.

QUESTION: Do you know the principals involved?

HUME: You need to speak with the newspaper people in Montana.

QUESTION: I have spoken to Mike Perry, who no longer lives there.

HUME: Mike Perry. There's a good man right there.

QUESTION: Well, he named some names, but I don't have any documents. I also spoke with Paul Richardson. He's supposed to run a series of articles, but they are tied up in the legal department.

HUME: This probably has something to do with people who are close to XXXXXXXX [Montana state official].

QUESTION: Yes, Perry tells me he is involved in it.

HUME: It's a tough one to call, you have to have documentation.

QUESTION: But you wouldn't contradict what he has told me?

HUME: No I would not.

QUESTION: And that's based on your past work in intelligence?

HUME: Yes.

QUESTION: Previously you shied away when I mentioned another name, XXXXXXX. Is that a dangerous name to say?

HUME: I sure as hell hope it isn't.

QUESTION: I want to know what you know about him.

HUME: OK. I only know what I have heard. You can't use the name for attribution, because I want him to stay out of my knickers. I'm told he has been involved in a number of transactions as a government agent. I'm told he has operations in the Caribbean and up north. Ask XXXXXXX about him and you'll see what this guy does, you'll see the bounds he does not have in his job, that he can do about anything he wants to do. You'll see that clearly.

QUESTION: So you've heard he is involved in these drugs going into Montana?

HUME: Yes.

QUESTION: Do you think it is true?

HUME: Oh yes.

QUESTION: What do you know about how the actual transport of the drugs took place?

HUME: I still have contact with some of my former intelligence mates. They say the maritime area has never completely gone away. The narco-traffickers have on more than one occasion filled a shipping container with products and mixed their drugs with that, or hidden drugs in the double walls of boxes. It gets shipped north and then they truck it south.

QUESTION: So they ship it to Canada and truck it across the Montana border?

HUME: Yes. Last time I checked that border I didn't see a fence one. Or, they will fly it down. As many ways as you can think of for air dropping, they'll do it.

QUESTION: Why would they want to use Indian reservations?

HUME: They are usually very isolated. Not a lot of people like to drive into Indian reservations or run through their woods. And the druggies are always looking for an open area, be it open from radar or human traffic.

It was standard knowledge in 1991, when I left the service, that the air routes were changing. XXXXXXX was a pilot working for XXXXXXX. He was also a radio expert. He perfected a device that--for want of a better term--is an airborne radar detector. It would tell you through the strength of the signal, run through some software, the approximate distance of the AWACs from you.

QUESTION: So they could then change routes to avoid the radar?

HUME: Yes. They found out they could use that to probe for an open area. Wouldn't you? They keep on pushing. They might find it one place today, another tomorrow.

QUESTION: So the routes constantly change, then?

HUME: Yes. But the Chinook (Montana) area is very warm.

QUESTION: That's where it is coming in?

HUME: Imagine how remote it is up there.

QUESTION: How do you know Chinook specifically is warm?

HUME: That was one of the places named as an ideal place because of the lack of a good radar picture.

QUESTION: Where was it named?

HUME: We had an informant who came forward and wanted to get out of a jam he was in, and I was at part of the briefing.

QUESTION: What year was this?

HUME: 1989.

QUESTION: He said Chinook was an ideal place?

HUME: Yes.

QUESTION: Did he say it was actually being used in that way?

HUME: Yes, and everyone laughed.

QUESTION: Did he name the people involved?

HUME: No, it didn't get that far. They all laughed and shut it down. They thought he was crazy, no one listened to him. I understood the reason they laughed. These were good federal employees. They do a good job every day. After 20 years they will retire and draw their pension, and the cause of death will be boredom.

QUESTION: I hope mine is, too.

HUME: They never work past five.

QUESTION: They need to be working in higher education, to see some 10-hour days. So, is that all you can give me to help in this story?

HUME: That's about it.

In the process of researching the current situation in Montana I have spoken to more than 20 people and taped approximately 10 hours of conversations. Obviously, the greatest part of my information has not been published. Nor will it be. My sources all agree that many state and local officials in Montana, and many agents of the federal government, are involved in one way or another with smuggling drugs into the state. These claims are not new, nor are my sources the only ones making them. Jack Wheeler wrote in the August, 1996 edition of Strategic Investment:

Mena in Montana? The Republicans may have their own drug smuggling scandal, similar to Bill Clinton's in Mena, Arkansas. Due to all the bad publicity, the drug cartels moving coke from Mexico through Mena may have relocated a substantial part of their operation to Montana, bringing the stuff in from Canada. There seems to have been a number of drug-related murders along the border, and corruption among state officials is reported to be widespread, perhaps reaching right into the governor's office. DEA sources have hinted that Governor Marc Racicot or some of his top aides might be indicted. Trouble for the Republicans is, Racicot is one of them [6].

Although it is one and a half years since Mr. Wheeler's words were printed, the FBI and the Justice Department seem no nearer to taking action than they were then. Meanwhile, innocent people are being murdered every month in Montana by narco-thugs; hundreds of others live in fear; and thousands of others are destroying their lives by consuming the illegal drugs. I am saddened by what I have learned through my research over the past two weeks. I fear that our system of government will never be purged of the many rogue agents and officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but instead aid and abet--and profit from--the very activities they are hired to prevent.

Notes

[1] Mr. Gold's site is located at http://www.netinterview.com Mr. Gold's help is appreciated, because the more publicity given to events in Montana, the safer everyone fighting the corruption will be.

[2] I called the station and confirmed the interview took place. I was unable to locate Lauren McColley.

[3] The interview with Willy Bradley appeared in the February 23 edition of Washington Weekly.

[4] The Open Letter to Louis Freeh is now posted at Web Interview News.

[5] Ron Gold's email to Janet Reno follows:

Dear Attorney General Janet Reno,

Melissa Buckles, Lay Law Advocate, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, co-authored an "Open Letter" to FBI Director Louis Freeh on Dec 15, 1997, which alleges, in part, that evidence exists of a smuggling operation into Montana from Canada which involves and implicates agents of the FBI and that witnesses are available who can link FBI agents and other officials to drug related activities and violent civil rights abuses. Wesley Phelan wrote the story "Murder and Drug Running in Montana" which appeared in this week's online issue of "Washington Weekly" and I have posted additional material to my online news service www.webinterview.com.

Forty people have been murdered on one reservation alone, Melissa Buckles reports that witnesses have been attacked and threatened into silence. There are people in Montana who are clearly scared and are begging for help. Buckles reports that, since Dec 15, neither she nor any of the available witnesses have been contacted by the FBI, nor is there evidence of any investigative activity by the FBI. Why is the FBI silent and inactive in the face of these extremely serious allegations against their agents?

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