Wayne Madsen Report – February 24, 2006
WMR can now report further on the mysterious aircraft sighted on remote runways in Afghanistan and engaged, according to U.S. intelligence sources, in flying around Afghan tribal leaders and warlords and questionable "cargo." Afghan and U.S. intelligence sources report that opium production is at an all time high in Afghanistan and that President Hamid Karzai, the U.S. viceroy for Afghanistan, who has nor real political power outside of Kabul, is handsomely profiting from the heroin trade.
The plane in question is a Beech 200, Model 65-A90-1, Serial number LM-64. Although the tail number (ends in 8A) is new, its former tail number was N70766 and the owner was Pactec (still seen on the plane's tail in the photo below), a California-based non-governmental organization that claims to help humanitarian groups install satellite terminals and other high-tech communications systems in remote locations like Afghanistan and Pakistan. The history of the plane shows that it was exported from the United States to Mali and then re-exported to Afghanistan. At the present time, however, the Beech 200 shown below as well as another similar plane, are operated by Air Serv International. The planes are based in Kabul but the one pictured below reportedly belongs to Pactec.
Air Serv is a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) corporation that was formed in 1985 at the height of U.S. covert involvement in Central America. PacTec's directorship interlocks with MAF. Air Serv is billed as "not religious by charter" and can "operate in areas where MAF may be restricted." MAF was particularly active in Honduras and Guatemala where it coordinated its activities closely with the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, which included other organizations linked to CIA activities, including World Vision and Trans World Radio.
And it what may be a related story, WMR has obtained the flight itinerary for another CIA prisoner rendition aircraft, a Gulfstream IV, call sign N85VM (later re-registered as N227SV), the same plane that illegally took kidnapped Imam Abu Omar to Egypt from Milan via Germany. The Gulfstream was leased to the CIA by Phillip H. Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, through his charter agent, Richmor Aviation of Hudson, NY. The owner of the aircraft was listed as Assembly Pointe Aviation, Inc., for which Morse is sole owner. The plane was purchased by Assembly Pointe from El Paso Gas and Electric. The plane's base of operations was Schenectady, NY. Morse's residences are in Jupiter, FL; Boston; and Lake George, NY. Morse is an acquaintance of George H. W. Bush.
Some of the stops made by the Gulfstream parallel those of CIA-chartered Gulfstream V (N379P, N8068V, N44982), nicknamed the Guantanamo Bay Express, and fit the profile of a drug-running aircraft, especially the stops made in various Caribbean islands well known as drug trans-shipment points -- Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, Bahamas, St. Lucia, Anguilla, etc. -- coupled with frequent stops in Afghanistan and other Middle East countries known as major drug sources. See full itinerary
here.
In 1985, at the height of the CIA's and Ollie North's drug running operations, the chief minister, the minister of commerce and development, and a member of the Legislative Council of the Turks and Caicos were arrested in Miami in a narcotics "sting" operation run by the DEA.
Mystery Beech on remote runway in Afghanistan
Last updated 28/02/2006
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